HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Distribution: world
Subject: Converting modes to 'A540' modes
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.14 $
Organization: None to speak of
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 10:11:27 +0000

Anyone know how I convert VIDC enhancer modes to A540 modes?  I'd like
to use Owen Smith's VIDCclock software on my A440/1 + Taxan 875.  I
therefore need to convert my existing mode definitions to 'A540 style'.
I've got the docs which define the new format, but before I start poking
around and screwing things up, has anyone already written any software to
do the conversion?

The Atomwide supplied mode definer doesn't seem to let me do this easily
- it won't let me redefine modes which are already in use.  For anyone
who doesn't know, the Taxan 875 requires *all* modes to be redefined,
including the standard ones.

Is anyone else out there using an 875?  It's a very nice monitor, but at
times it can be a right PITA.

Steve
|  Steve Loft                                  steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk   |
|  Doncaster,                                                             |
|  South Yorks.                                                           |
From: lithgow@usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: RISC OS 3.10
Date: 4 Sep 92 01:59:01 GMT

I'm reading these messages of people with RO 3.10 upgrades and slowly
getting greener and greener.

I've already asked this once, but no-one replied so I'll try again:

Can the #30 upgrades for the older machines (I have an A440) be fitted
by someone other than a dealer? Can they be mail ordered? What are
they? (Alternatively, does someone know of an Acorn dealer in Tokyo. ;->)

Also, which is the better buy for (primarily) controlling a 200MB hard
disk -- a SCSI card or an IDE card?

Are there IDE cards that also have an HD floppy interface that either
(a) can use the RO3.1 drivers or (b) has RO3.1 compatible drivers?

I hope someone will deign to answer these simple questions this time.

-Malcolm.  lithgow@usl.com  These are merely my questions.
Xref: sparky comp.sys.acorn:8448 comp.sys.acorn.tech:84
From: neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Postlethwaite)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn,comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: GCC for ARM2/3 & pricing info?
Date: 1 Sep 92 09:16:15 GMT
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland

In article <10389@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91) writes:
>
>Acorn user said the ARM610 (ARM600 without copro interface) is US$20 in bulk.
>
>>Pat -- Have a day!
>

How come that Arc is SO expensive then, if this if bulk price for ARM chips.

Neil

P.S. No bollocks about Acorn being small ....
From: tomc@siesoft.co.uk (Tom Crossland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements (Was Re: new PC's, what's happening acorn?)
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:16:59 GMT
Reply-To: tomc@siesoft.co.uk
Organization: Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems Ltd.

Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower) writes:
: You must remember that UNIX was designed as a user friendly operating
: system - people who worked 8 days a week, 25 hours a day, didn't have
: time to type more characters than they had too.  Especially using
: Teletypes at 10, or less, characters per second.  They also had a
: sense of humour.

UNIX was designed as a development environment, not a user friendly
operating system. RISC OS was designed to be user friendly hence the
nice GUI, the same idea behind Windows NT etc. UNIX is anything but
user friendly. This doesn't mean it's bad though, it's by far the most
powerful and flexible operating system I've ever used. I love it ;-)

___ _ __
  ((_))))...
From: mcg@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn's New Babies
Date: 1 Sep 92 11:20:50 +1200
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

In article <9208310420.AA17552@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, lithgow@toy.usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow) writes:
 
> Acorn, with two entire architectures to their credit since 1981,
> doesn't seem to be doing that bad to me.)
> 

Umm, they based their original machines around the 6502; noting that this was 
(one) of the cheapest near-the-top-of-the-line "home-user" chipsets to base a 
computer on in the early 80's.

When Commodore/Atari released the Amiga 500 (16 bit 68000 series chip set) 
in '86/'87 this was the death of 6502/Z80 based computers for the home user 
market. In fact, I reckon that the introduction of the Mac in '84/'85  was the 
start of the collaspe with the coup de grace given by Commodore/Atari with the 
Amiga.

If I recall correctly, if Acorn hadn't produced the Archimedes series 
they would've gone the same way as Sinclair.... down the tubes.....

From Martin Glanvill		(mcg@waikato.ac.nz)

Dept. Maths 							      @@@@@/|@
University of Waikato						      @@@@/ |@
Hamilton							      @@@/__|@
New Zealand							      @@/   |@
								      @@@@@@@@

----------------****=====| A quote to make your day |======****-----------------
The amount of junk carried is in direct proportion to the amount of space
 available.                             -- Tony Hogg
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: alex@winx04.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Alexander Jung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn Press Release 2 of 8 (RISC OS)
Date: 29 Aug 92 14:29:52 GMT
Organization: University of Wuerzburg, Germany



aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover) writes:
>Acorn's RISC OS 3 Now Available for All
> [some marketing about the fine new RO 3.1 ...]
>The new RISC OS upgrade kit will be available in quantity
>from September 1992 at the following prices:
>
>RISC OS Upgrade kit                      #89 
>        Special price until mid-1993     #49 
>Existing A5000 owner special upgrade 
>         (but no manuals)                #19 
>Hardware upgrade for 305/310/440 users   #30
Is this #30 price for the 'local' (the next one is just some 250km away from
here...) dealer to make him upgrade my board (as far as I remember its just
cutting a soldered link and connecting one ribbon to the highest address bit
of the eproms -according to some discussions here, when RO3 was to be 
released early this year...) or is it the price for some fancy plug-in 
solution?

Alexander Jung

Grad. physics student at                    Snail mail: Alexander Jung 
State University of Bavaria at Wuerzburg                Kopernikusstrasse 19
                                                        D-8708 Gerbrunn
Email: alex@winx06.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de          Germany
From: pcolmer@acorn.co.uk (Philip Colmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: How *does* one write a good text editor?
Date: 26 Aug 92 11:35:59 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

[ Apologies if you've already read this on comp.sys.acorn.tech, but I
didn't get many responses and there MUST be someone out there who has
some suggestions ]

If you were writing a text editor which allowed text effects (eg font
changes, colour changes, etc) to be applied, how would you hold the
data? My initial thoughts are:
  
  * keep the text as one contiguous block of memory
  * keep a linked list of effects, specifying the effect to be applied
    and the start and end character offset for the effect
  * keep a linked list of line start offsets.

The line start offsets are calculated using the font manager to format
the text into a given width.

When the text is rendered, for a given line, the linked list of
effects is checked and any that need to be applied are applied to that
line of text. By keeping the effects in this manner, it makes it
easier for the code to cope with effects which last more than one
line.

Does this seem efficient? It certainly seems to work for a fixed block
of text, but what happens when the user wants to change the text, or
the effects? Doing the formatting can take some time using my
approach.

Are there any "standard approaches" for this sort of thing?

--Philip

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Recommended reading: Rising Sun by Michael Crichton ... a frightening vision

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Recommended reading: Rising Sun by Michael Crichton ... a frightening vision
From: ajdh@bnr.co.uk (Andrew J D Hurley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements (Was Re: new PC's, what's happening acorn?)
Date: 2 Sep 92 10:47:59 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Limited, Harlow, GB

This is probably old hat now, but here's my 2p worth:

In article <1992Aug28.080035.15100@rdg.dec.com> goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin) writes:
>I'm sorry but DIR suggests DIRECTORY, TYPE suggests TYPE a file, PRINT suggests
>PRINT a file, SEARCH suggests search.

To me, DIR suggests MS-DOS, TYPE suggests RiscOS or BBC MOS, PRINT suggests
BASIC - I don't like overloaded names on different systems unless they
do the same thing, besides, why are they upper case?

>Now does ls suggest directory, or cat sugggest type or lpr suggest print or
>grep suggest search??? The one command I took from UNIX was cd, which I equate
>to SET DEF in VMS.

ls suggests LiSt which is what it does, cat suggests CATalogue - a little
obscure, lpr suggests Line PRint (or Laser PRint) which is what it does, grep
is Get Regular ExPression and so on. Ok, some are a little obscure but they
are just as workable as any other names - in order to use any OS you have to
know what commands do as well as what they are called. Whilst learning
what they do it is trivial to simultaneously learn what they are called.
I use several OSs regularly and find it a nuisance when two use the same
name to do something slightly different, ie different parameters or
different output format. I rarely have this problem with Unix as the
names are mostly unique.

>Whenever I read UNIX shell scripts they read like gibberish. Full of strange
>characters like ~ ` ' # or $. You need to be a real expert to see what's going
>on.

True, but then you need to be an expert to follow any programming language,
if all a script does is execute commands in sequence (a la RiscOS or DOS
script) then it's easy to follow.

>Only if you've been tainted by MSDOS (using you're description 8) I've never
>used backspace as delete, I've always used DELETE.

Ditto, I hadn't noticed there was a problem and I've been using RiscOS for
over two years now. What does annoy me is when I have to use a DrOS box.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J D Hurley ,   ><>         |  Email:   A.J.D.Hurley@bnr.co.uk
                                  |   or      Andrew.Hurley.EG40@bnr.ca
BNR Europe Ltd., London Road,     |  route:   uunet!ukc!bnr!ajdh
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK.       |  Phone:   +44 279 402535
From: duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk (Andy Duplain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
Date: 28 Aug 92 10:33:55 GMT
Organization: BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK

In article <memo.597624@cix.compulink.co.uk> lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>In article <1992Aug27.083907.25862@rtf.bt.co.uk> duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk
>(Andy Duplain) writes:
> 
>>The backspace/delete cock-up effects you when using an editor,
>>regardless of whether the editor was invoked from CLI or DeskTop.
> 
>What cockup? The Backspace key generates the backspace character and the
>Delete key generates the Delete character. It's up to the applications
>to respond to these ACSII codes as they see fit - it's nothing to do
>with the OS. In this here copy of SrcEdit when I press the Backspace key
>it deletes the character to the left of the caret. QED.

	Good, perhaps I could hack into TWIN to get it to act likewise.

-- 
Andy Duplain, BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK.            duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk
#define	DISCLAIMER      My views and opinions are my own, and not my company's
From: pdenize@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: LOOK Systems - Disk Rescue
Date: 2 Sep 92 12:38:55 +1200
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand


I read the great comments about "ARCHIMEDES DISC RESCUE" and decided that
it might be worth getting it for myself.

35 Pounds (all inclusive)

So I send it away + 8 dollars for the exchange of currency, only to be sent an
invoice for 4 pounds additional overseas postage.  It cost 4 pounds and 56 p,
so if Look systems considers postage only costs 56 then it should write (+pp)
for overseas orders.

the original price
 
  35 pounds = about 105 dollars + 8 for exchange = 113 dollars
So 

  4 pounds = about 12 dollars + 8 for exchange = another 20 dollars

or to put it bluntly another 18 percent

My answer will be GET LOST.  All Inclusive means just that.

I think this stinks, I stopped buying Minerva software after Ancestry and now
Look systems is about to follow.  There are good software houses I won't
support bad ones.

By the way I changed one byte in the first sector of a floppy with a disk
editor.  The disk could still be mounted and the files copied off.  But I ran
the disk repair program to see if it could recover the files.  It corrupted the
disk and made the directory report that it was broken from then on and crashed
whenever I ran any of the other applications.  So as a secure product - it may
fall short of expectations.

Paul Denize.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Denize                                Internet: PDenize@Waikato.ac.nz
Department of Computer Science
University of Waikato                         phone: ++64 7 8562-889
Hamilton                                                          Ext 8743
NEW ZEALAND                                   fax  : ++64 7 8560-135
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: long@scr.slb.com (Peter Long)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: NFS
Date: 27 Aug 92 10:56:36 GMT
Organization: Schlumberger Laboratory for Computer Science



	Another plea for help. Has anyone got a work around the
following message we keep ongetting when sending largish files to a
NFS server?

	RPC communication failed on mount *****	
(:RPC unable to send - check hardware or route)
error no= No free buffers available
Error code 74002 


	This is causing a lot of trouble, if it is being used on the
desktop RiscOS 3 allows you to retry but RO2 aborts. From within
programs, e.g. Basic, it bombs every time. Is there anyway of setting
the number of retrys or similar before dropping out? I have scoured
the TCP/IP manuals but with no success, any help would be gratefully
received.

	Typical file lengths  100K - 4M


	
	Thanks Peter Long
From: torbenm@diku.dk (Torben AEgidius Mogensen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn Press Release 6 of 8 (A3000 range)
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:25:35 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover) writes:

>The ARM 250 was purpose designed for Acorn and
>integrates an ARM 2 processor with the other controller
>chips in one small device.

How will this affect the possibility of later upgrade to an ARM 3 or
equivalent? Unless an "ARM 350" is developed, upgrading could be very
expensive (as the upgrade has to replace the controller chips).

A good (and not unrealistic?) solution would be a single chip with an
ARM 3 equivalent, write buffer (as on the ARM 600), controller chips
and FPU, clocked around 40 MHz. Improved versions of VIDC and MEMC
would be handy, but they may be hard to use without modifying larger
portions of the software and hardware. I don't think Acorn will use
MEMC 2. A more realistic solution would be something closer to MEMC 1a,
but using a two level page table similar to MEMC 2.

	Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: <None>
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 02:53:38 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

bwc@waikato.ac.nz (Ug!) writes:

>Actually, I would tend to disagree with the orginal statement.  I don't think
>RiscOS is very exotic at all -- in many respects, it's quite similar to OS/2.

Yes - please don't confuse "good", "fast", or "nice to use" with "exotic"!
-- 
_________________  "I'd like to answer this question in two ways:
  /____ _ _/_ __       First in my normal voice, and then
 // / //_//_ /_/       in a silly, high-pitched whine." (Monty Python)
From: jkf87r@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Julian Field)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: 30MHz Archimedes for sale
Date: 26 Aug 92 15:40:10 GMT

I am trying to sell the following machine...

Started off life as an A310, but...

	30MHZ ARM3 made by Aleph One
	4MB RAM
	42MB hard disc
	PCATS graphics enhancer

This will go with a fully licensed copy of Impression
(with dongle) and Equasor. Also included is a licensed
copy of ANSI C 3 and loads of public domain utilities.

Manuals include Impression, Equasor, Programmers Reference
Manuals and those provided with the machine.

Due to the graphics enhancer and 30 MHz ARM3 this would
make a fantastic DTP machine or development system.

Offers invited in the region of 1200 pounds.

Please contact Julian Field at jkf87r@uk.ac.soton.ecs.

-- 
Julian Field, MEng.                                 jkf@soton.ac.uk
Department of Electronics           ___   __o       Fax: +44 (703) 592082
University of Southampton          ___    -\<,      Tel: 0703 593826/592774
Southampton SO9 5NH, UK              .....O/ O      Disclaimers? Who needs 'em!
From: ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Validation of Acorns DesktopC includes
Date: 27 Aug 92 10:15:54 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
NNTP-Posting-Host: oak10.doc.ic.ac.uk

In article <1992Aug25.115018.1664@rdg.dec.com> goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin) writes:
>
>In article <17csu4INN9v@oak5.doc.ic.ac.uk>, ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer) writes...
>
>>Personally I would hope (no, expect) Acorn to bring out a new version
>>of RiscOS Lib within a few months (wishful thinking I know).
>> 
>>release a new version. Why? Well Wimp_Initialise is different for a
>>start so without a new wimpt_init (or what ever) you will not be able
>>to get at some of the new stuff (what ever the hidden new stuff is :-))
>>Plus there are all the new font things, sprite things, template
>>things, other things, solid drag things (need a new xfer...).
>
>You obviously haven't seen ANSI C Release 4 RISCOSLIB. Take a look at
>wimpt_init - it mentions returning a version number so you can take advantage
>of RISCOS 3 features.
>
>Pete Goodwin
>goodwin@system.enet.dec.com

Yes but then it's too late. Wimp_Initialise (which is done by
wimpt_init) now has an extra parameter in which you pass a list of
things you want to use (although what these things are ???). These (as
far as I can tell) have to be registered for there and then. Now
without a new wimpt_init you will not be able to register for them
(unless you've noticed an extra parameter to wimpt_init that's not
mentioned).

It has been sugested to me that one of the things you need to register
with the wimp at this stage for is the ability to use the 3D icons.
Although this would seem a bit strainge as it (a) would be
inconsistent with RO3.00 (but I understand that they've also changed
from the b0-b8 to a different letter to not clash with Interface, so
anything is possible) and (b) it seems a bit un-necessary.

So simply knowing that you are now under 3.10 when it's too late to do
anything about it is a bit useless. I suppose you could note that you
are under 3.10, detatch yourself from the wimp, re-attatrch yourself
using a direct call to Wimp_Initialise, directly poke the location
that wimpt_init stores all it's info (like task ID) so that all the
other routines that rely on stuff setup by wimpt_init will work, and
in general use special calls to _kernel_swi throughout to account for
the many other RO3 specific things. In fact you could just stop using
RiscOSLib all together, as without a replacement it really will become
more work than it's worth.

Simply being able to note "ah! yes this is OS number 310" doesn't
magically make RiscOSLib work 'with' RO3.10, extra parameters need to
be added to function calls, extra function calls are needed, extra
bits within the functions are needed (eg. allowing drag-a-sprite), and
so on.

Ian

-- 
                            E-mail : ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
 ___           __       Snail mail : Department of Computing, Huxley Building,
  /  _   _    /_/ _   / _ _   _  _   Imperial College, 180 Queens Gate,
_/_ (_|_| )  /   (_|_(_| ) )_|/_)    London. SW7 2BZ. England.
From: duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk (Andy Duplain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements (Was Re: new PC's, what's happening acorn?)
Date: 3 Sep 92 08:54:44 GMT
Organization: BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK

In article <1992Sep2.104759.2124@bnr.co.uk> ajdh@bnr.co.uk (Andrew J D Hurley) writes:
>
>ls suggests LiSt which is what it does, cat suggests CATalogue - a little
>obscure, lpr suggests Line PRint (or Laser PRint) which is what it does, grep
>is Get Regular ExPression and so on. Ok, some are a little obscure but they

#pragma pedantic_mode_on  
				
	"cat" (should) actually suggest concatenation (which someone has
	already correctly pointed out in this thread).  This command is
	not a good example as the resulting functionality (displaying text
	on the screen) is really a side-effect; the output would normally
	be redirected to another file, and the input would normally consist
	of multiple files.

	"grep" actually stands for "global regular expression print" (which
	someone has also already correctly pointed out in this thread), which
	is the command you'd give to sed (g/<re>/p) to obtain the same
	results.				      
	
	You're not helping us win this war :-)
			      
	Anyway this thread's getting a bit dull.  Lets bury the hatchet and
	just say that all operating systems have good and bad points (expect
	for MS-DOS which just has bad points :-).
	
#pragma pedantic_mode_off


-- 
Andy Duplain, BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK.            duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk
#define	DISCLAIMER      My views and opinions are my own, and not my company's
From: Ikki@BEIZ.mediatex.ch (0642210101: Fernmeldedirektion Olten)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: ACORN'S NEW BABIES
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:46:19 GMT
Organization: MEDIAtex AG, CH-8807 Freienbach/SZ

Acorn should use instead their confusing
numbers names. (How about Acorn "Proton"
or "Neutron" or Acorn "Popcorn" or what
ever?? GRIN!!


Greetings


Internet: Ikki(at)BEIZ.mediatex.ch







|B                                    B|
|E           CH: VTX *3600#           E|
|I           D:  BTX *28881#          I|
|Z                                    Z|
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk (Steve Loft)
Distribution: world
Subject: RISC OS 3.10 and non-standard screen modes
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.14 $
Organization: None to speak of
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 16:36:25 +0000

I've just put RISC OS 3.10 into my A440/1 and I have a small problem.  I
use a Taxan 875 with an Atomwide VIDC Enhancer.  The problem is this:
Whenever I switch to a 'non-standard' screen mode (e.g mode 106, a nice
big screen) I lose all my icons - not immediately, but as soon as a
redraw occurs.  Is this a problem with RISC OS 3.10, the Atomwide modes,
or me?

Steve

|  Steve Loft                                  steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk   |
|  Doncaster,                                                             |
|  South Yorks.                                                           |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn