HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Acorn Press Release 3 of 8 (Acorn Pocketbook)
Date: 27 Aug 92 10:29:25 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

Acorn Launches Pocket Book

Acorn Computers is launching its first Pocket Book computer.  
The idea behind the Pocket Book is to provide a small
portable computer that offers functionality aimed at serving
the basic computing needs of every child and that is cheap
enough for parents to purchase for their school children. 

The applications suite provided with the Pocket Book
comprises a word processor, a database, a spreadsheet, a
calculator and an alarm. There is also the option of adding
further applications - such as a diary program via a solid
state disc.  Choices are made from menus of options and each
of the applications provided is self contained in its own
window on the screen. 

The Pocket Book has an optional Archimedes link especially
designed for easy transfer of information between it and
Acorn's 32-bit RISC computers. The link software has been
written in such a way as to make the Pocket Book appear on
the desktop as just another directory viewer. 

In addition to the Archimedes link, there is also a fast
serial port which allows access at 1.54Mbits/sec to other
computers, modems and printers, and there is also a parallel
printer link. On average, the two AA batteries -  which are
readily available - give the Pocket Book some 80 hours of
continuous use. 

Acorn's Pocket Book costs #249.95 inc VAT  (#212.72 ex VAT)

Ends







_______________________________________________________________________________

aglover@acorn.co.uk, moderator of comp.sys.acorn.announce. Submissions to
announce-request@acorn.co.uk, other related mail to announcer@acorn.co.uk.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 16:55:00 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk (Andy Duplain) writes:

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

   I had a sneaking suspicion you were using TWIN. Surely you must be aware
that TWIN is software dating from the Arthur (No I'm not a BBC OS, really!)
days. TWIN has very little to with RISC OS other than the fact that it can
be run under it do to the backwards compatibility of RISC OS.

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks  Syntax: mail < banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz >            @@@@@/|
                                                                        @@@@/#|
The Trojan Signature Virus :-                                           @@@/##|
Hi there! I am an anti signature virus utility. Copy me into your       @@/---|
signature to use me!                                                    @/    |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: guttorm@hp825.bih.no (Guttorm Vik)
Subject: Re: StrongED II version 1.10
Organization: Bergen College of Engineering, Bergen, Norway.
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 15:22:09 GMT

I see that some people (violently) dislikes my error-boxes. These people might
want to stick to !Edit, 'cause the boxes haven't changed. There are some 
improvements though: ESC removes them, but if there is a menu open, this is
closed (That's the WIMPs doing). Also: The drag-a-box => boom error is fixed.

People cries about my boxes not being standard: There *is* no standard. Almost
no programs uses Wimp_ReportError. The various boxes do *look* a bit like the
Wimp_ReportError one (ie. Big & Ugly!)

There is a reason for not using Wimp_ReportError : Try to drag 20 or more
files to !Edit when there's no free memory. After I'd done this a few times,
I started to think there had to be a better way..

Please report your misgivings about any part of StrongED/StrongHelp, but be
sivilised about it or shut the f*ck up.
 _
(-)rmStrong
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: 27 Aug 92 08:39:07 GMT
Organization: BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK

In article <1992Aug26.211041.9706@rdg.dec.com> goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin) writes:
>
>I think even experts would prefer to start life with a much simpler CLI. Or are
>you saying you _need_ to be an expert? 8)
> 
	Simpler than the bourne/korn/C shell ?  Don't you think it's quite
	straight-forward ?  Why I say it is expert friendly, is because the
	utility names and the way they are used is alien to most new users
	(who have been tainted with MS-DOS utility names); once you are
	used to it, you find it was worth the effort to get there.
	
>Since I don't use the CLI much and stay in the desktop, it doesn't make that
>much difference to me. The filing system can be a pain - 10 character filenames
>and only 77 files per directory, who imposed that!!!		  

	The backspace/delete cock-up effects you when using an editor,
	regardless of whether the editor was invoked from CLI or DeskTop.


-- 
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
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: u894776@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (James McCoull)
Subject: Re: New Acorn Kit out today (27/08/92)
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 12:23:51 GMT

>One application which works surprisingly well on the new machines is the new
>version of PC-Soft, Acorn's PC emulator. The long standing problem of lethargic
>CGA-resolution graphics has been solved: the latest release now behaves like
>a perfectly respectable PC/XT with a colour VGA screen.

	This I take it means the '250 has 6 bit DACs for R, G, B, and has
at least 256 colour registers --> Very good news indeed.  Can anyone verify
this for me?

>How will they do ? The A3020 is a much improved A3000 for roughly the same
>money: Acorn is confident it will maintain the A3000's achievement of being
>the best selling computer in schools. The future of the A3010 is harder toi
>predict. Several high street multiples are declaring undying devotion to
>Acorn's new baby, but since Commodore has just cut the pribe of the Amiga 600
>to #299, the battle may already be lost.

	Dunno about lost!  I admit I will not consider commercial development
for the archimedes line until the base machines costs about #399 [inclusive]
but with the "all-on-one-die" 250, acorn have enough room to fight in the market
Acorn will [if they wish] have the flexibility to fight the A600 one-on-one
pricewise - because hopefully the base machines are very simple internally,
and they do not have to worry about recovering R&D, because the chips were
designed by ARM Ltd and not Acorn.

	Personally, I would love to see Acorn fight the A600 to the death!
With the new atari falcon coming out at about #499 [but no OS to speak of]
Acorn will be forced to drop the price - if they are serious about marketing
a low end machine.
From: gjocc@brt.deakin.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: <None>
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:41:09 GMT
Organization: C&CS, Deakin University

I would like to network my A5000 and PC clone together in some fashion.

I am running OS/2 2.0 on the PC and would like to file serve the A5000.

One solution would be an ethernet card in each machine and run Acorns
TCP/IP stuff and IBMs TCP/IP stuff respectively.

The cost of the software and hardware to do this seems to be a little bit
expensive.

Is there any way of doing this via the printer or serial ports?
(I could even use MIDI to MIDI as I have MIDI interfaces in both machines.)

I don't think Acorn have SLIP or PPP support in their TCP/IP package?

I noticed Atomwide have announced RemoteFS for the Acorn, which is a cheap
Acorn to Acorn network solution. What I need is something like this for
Acorn to PC.

Does anyone know of any other software/hardware to network 1 Acorn to 1 PC?

Greg O'Sullivan
(gjocc@brt.deakin.edu.au)
From: lithgow@toy.usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn's New Babies
Date: 1 Sep 92 00:47:35 GMT

[In message "Re: Acorn's New Babies", sgitokyo!waikato.ac.nz!mcg writes:]
>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.

Good so far, Acorn was in the same tradition as Apple and Commodore
here, but with a better machine.

>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.

The Amiga was actually introduced in 1985, and it was the Amiga 1000, a
three-box system, that was the first in the line. An impressive but
flawed machine even at the time, it was way too expensive to be
considered as a mere games machine back then, and didn't move down into
the 6502 market for a few more years. (Commodore kept selling the C64
for quite a while after the Amiga was released.)

The thing is, Acorn, a tiny company that apparently has less than 300
employees, has not only produced two architectures in the last 11 years
(better than Apple, and as good as Commodore, both much larger
companies), but the second architecture is entirely Acorn's own work.

Not only that, but while the other companies like Commodore, Apple, and
Atari were still piddling around with 16-bit machines (68000's), Acorn
leapfrogged them with a new, 32-bit architecture.

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

And if Apple hadn't produced the Mac they would have gone down the
tubes, too. (They had already had two big failures in a row: the Apple
III and the Lisa.) So what? If Commodore hadn't produced the Amiga,
they would have gone down the tubes. If the QL had been a success,
Sinclair would still be around.

What is your point? Or is it just that you can't bear to see Acorn
praised?

-Malcolm.  lithgow@usl.com  These are merely my opinions.
From: etnrwi@raptus.etn.ericsson.se (Raymond A. Wiker (9482))
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements (Was Re: new PC's, what's happening acorn?)
Organization: Ericsson Telecom AS
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 10:50:12 GMT


	I've been following this discussion on the relative merits on
operating systems for a while, and I thought I should throw in my 10
NKr's worth... 

	First of all, maybe I should make my position clear: I work
with Unix on Sun workstations all day, and I have never seen ANY
other OS that offers even 30% of the functionality that Unix gives me.
Unix has been described as "programmer-friendly", and I think that
about sums it up. You cannot expect that a system with so much power
should be easy to use by novices, in much the same way that you cannot
expect a teenager who has just got his drivers' license to be able to
command a DC-9 (the analogy stinks, I know...)

	The same sort of thing has been said about Emacs and vi, but
these editors are INCREDIBLY powerful compared with just about
anything else. Their "weakness" is that they are difficult to use for
casual users. In fact, it seems that the most common criticism of
complex (full-featured, actually) systems/programs is that they are
difficult to use for people who don't actually use them...


	//Raymond.
	


	


--
Raymond A. Wiker    etnrwi@etn.ericsson.se
C programmers do it with side effects /
Machine code programmers take it to bits
From: jrg@doc.ic.ac.uk (James Grinter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn's New Babies
Date: 1 Sep 92 14:56:32 GMT
Organization: Apple Haters synonymous, Department of Computing, IC, London
NNTP-Posting-Host: crane.doc.ic.ac.uk
In-reply-to: lithgow@toy.usl.com's message of 1 Sep 92 00:47:35 GMT

In article <9209010053.AA25102@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> lithgow@toy.usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow) writes:

   [In message "Re: Acorn's New Babies", sgitokyo!waikato.ac.nz!mcg writes:]
   >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.

   Good so far, Acorn was in the same tradition as Apple and Commodore
   here, but with a better machine.

I thought about the two-bit. Could the Tube system be classed as an
architecture? Certainly quite a clever system, and I remember reading
somewhere that they decided to design their own 32-bit system because
they could beat existing 16-bit processors with a 6502 and Tube
interface to other processors.

   The Amiga was actually introduced in 1985, and it was the Amiga 1000, a
   three-box system, that was the first in the line. An impressive but
   flawed machine even at the time, it was way too expensive to be
   considered as a mere games machine back then, and didn't move down into
   the 6502 market for a few more years. (Commodore kept selling the C64
   for quite a while after the Amiga was released.)

I was amazed to see recently that they are _still_ selling the C64,
albeit in a different, revamped box. It has mutated to look more like
a smaller Amiga A500.

On a slightly angle, it really is silly of Acorn to drop the
Archimedes and start refering to A this and A that, because the US
market knows the A3000 as the name for an Amiga, and will become very
confused (if they aren't already). It also leads to sillyness in
product packaging, with things like "for Archimedes and A3000" when
they're basically the same thing, and Acorn User who dropped the Atom
from their masthead, and put both Archimedes and A3000.

James
--
James Grinter,                              Dept of Computing, Imperial College
jrg@uk.ac.ic.doc (JANET)                     180, Queen's Gate, LONDON SW7 2BZ
jrg@doc.ic.ac.uk, (everyone else!); jgrinter@nyx.cs.du.edu (slower replies)
                                             "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
[Working... email response within a day or two at worst]
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk (Lorcan Mongey)
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
Cc: lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk
Reply-To: lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 22:10:45 +0000

In article <1992Aug28.103355.1393@rtf.bt.co.uk> duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk
(Andy Duplain) writes:
 
>>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.
 
Rather than that, try this little utility which makes the Backspace key
generate the Delete character (no responsibility accepted if it mucks up
your computer).
 
begin 644 uucode
M&O]"4W1O1$5, $)3=&]$3P   !T9X;/5:E    !$_/__D5,7%0,    0#@"Ta
M2&<  *AQ$& <] ! P#L$  "H(0'@D3@",*:(&P !TA6.@J[L^_=/"P6#XP1 a
@ !4. (B#'QJ^"]@+G0-X+"'"&!<QQH _!@?<A!4.&@".a
 a
end
 
Lorcan
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: 2105995@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU ()
Subject: Re: Mouse springs
Organization: Ban the Mac Society, Aust. ltd
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 05:26:46 GMT

>[..'fixing' the mouse..]
>
>Now when it came to putting it back together again (not a major task)
>I noticed two springs had fallen out during the operation. Now my
>problem is that I can't for the life of me work out where these damn
>things belong as they don't appear to go anywhere, and the mouse works
>fine without them. But it would be nice to be able to replace them, so
>if anyone knows where they belong, please tell me.
>

Yup I know. the're about 1cm (1/4") and approximately the same size as
the two 'pegs' that the mouse clips together on..hint...hint....
They fit on these 'pegs' and the whole lot screws together again.
That's about all I can tell you about it 'cause it was a LONG time ago
If you can't understand this posting, email me and i'll tell you
more. I think the springs are to absorb the impact of someone jumping
on the mouse, but i'm not sure ;)

>Ian
>
>P.S. I'm not talking about the spring which is used to pull the thing
>that pushes the ball that rotates the rollers that turns the cogs that
>turn the thing-emy-bob that cuts the beam that sends the signal...
See how hard it is to explain? ;)



                             Cheers!

+----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
|___                         | Real Programmers (tm) code in 68000         |
||__| .  __  __ |\/|  __   _ | Real Artists (rm) use Macintoshes           |
|| \    |__ |   |  |  __\ | \| Real Musicians (c) use SoundBlaster Pros    |
||  \ | ___||__ |  | |__| | || Real Idiots (pat. pend) do all of the above | 
+-President of the Ban the Mac Society, Regd office ARMature II BBS Sydney-+
From: mcg@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: VIRUS (Authorities ?)y
Date: 24 Aug 92 10:26:43 +1200
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

In article <1992Aug24.091920.10306@waikato.ac.nz>, pdenize@waikato.ac.nz writes:
> Some details as to the author of this virus is available. I would like to hear
> from any authority that can take legal action.  Or any authority that wishes to
> keep a record of this disgusting individual.
> 
> 

 I say screw the dude or dudes: corrupting other peoples machines with viruses
 is just as bad as having a smoker light up right under your nose and breath in 
 your face! 


 |  |   <- Place votes here to screw the dude(s) (Y/N).


 If there's no legal route :- 
 
    Cheese Wires and Lead Lined Boots will do the job just nicely!
From Martin Glanvill		(mcg@waikato.ac.nz)

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

----------------****=====| A quote to make your day |======****-----------------
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
 Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
 Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
 utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
 forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
 are a pretty neat idea ...
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: aoliver@acorn.co.uk (Ashley Oliver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:54:30 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

In article <1992Sep3.105742.15810@cs.utwente.nl> kortink@cs.utwente.nl (John Kortink) writes:

>steve@acorn.co.uk (Steve "daffy" Hunt) writes :
>
>>[...]
>>As far as the choice of command names goes, I once saw an interesting
>>paper in the proceedings of some HCI conference or other.  It
>>presented the results of a study into how easy people found it to
>>memorise command names.  They found no significant difference between
>>memorability of "obvious" versus "abstract" names.
>
>That's the most sensible thing I have heard yet in this never-ending
>boring argument about 'good' or 'bad' command names.
>
Absolutely! The big single step in coming to grips with IT ( or for that
matter much of philosophy, mathematics, ...) is realizing
that symbols have absolutely no inherent semantic content.
"C'est ne pas un pipe"  for art lovers, or 'the map is not the territory'
for sf-lovers.

In any case, surely it is only an issue at all on OSses that don't have
any form of aliasing. Hands up everyone who has something like...

set alias$cd dir %%0
set alias$ls %cat %%0
set alias$cat root:bin.scripts.cat %%*0
set alias$. %cat %%*0 
set alias$rm wipe %%*0
set alias$mkdir cdir %%0
set alias$more type %%0
set alias$ln mklink %%0

... in their boot file. Surely the real point is that the *individual* 
user want the command 'squiggle' to do the same(-ish) thing on all thirteen
architectures/OSses that he uses daily... You're only stuck if there's no
aliasing. I don't want to learn an OS's command set - I want it to learn mine!

True, the newly user will not want to get involved with aliases, !Boot files, or
whatever. But that freshly minted a user usually has very few preconceptions
about what commands 'ought' to be in any case (you try explaining why a collection
of files is called a directory, and why it's abbreviated 'dir' rather than 'di' or
'direct' or ...). 





        -Ashley Oliver
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:Breac aig na h-uile fir-stiuiridh!!:
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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: 26 Aug 92 11:15:25 GMT
Organization: BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK

In article <1992Aug25.075656.17526@rdg.dec.com> goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin) writes:
>>Each to their own.
>
>Basic UNIX isn't too friendly a development system. The commands are cryptic:
>ls, grep, vi, cat. The editor vi is awful. The debugger has never heard of
>windowing, even on a character cell terminal.

	UNIX is *not* user friendly... it is expert friendly.  Once you
	have got to grips with the basics you hav a very powerful 
	environment; e.g. piping output of one command into another, 
	shell expanding filenames etc.  With this sort of power, the expert
	is free to choose how his/her environment works, by building more
	powerful and tailoured commands from the basic ones.
	
>With Ansi C Release 4, I've got a very pleasant development environment. The
>debugger (which has some weaknesses) is windowing. !SrcEdit is !Edit with
>extensions and is far superior to vi.

	I like the Archimedes; I have one!  I like the windowing environment,
	but I don't like the filesystem, and the command line syntax is
	inferior to UNIX.  Also what idiot decided that the backspace key
	would do nothing, and the delete key would do backspace ?  He should
	be shot.
	
>RISC OS command line can be a bit cryptic too: cat, dir, enumdir, type, list,
>print (three commands that similar things?). Who can forget 'grope' which
>appear as part of the developers toolkit, now defunct!
		
>Still, I'm biased, I like the VMS command line: DIR, SET DEFAULT, TYPE, ED (I'm
>a fan of EVE EDT), SEARCH, PRINT etc.

	Oh.

-- 
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