HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: pmoore@cix.compulink.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Subject: Re: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Reply-To: pmoore@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 19:02:00 +0000

Gavin Flower quotes Tony Sumner:
 
  >> FACT. 
  >> ALL RISC OS 3.10 rom sets contain the same version of the
  >> font manager. 
  >> Thankyou for your attention. 
  >> Tony Sumner (Senior SQA Engineer) 
 
  > Fine! - But, what is it's version? 
 
From Help Modules on my machine, 3.07 (30 Apr 1992)
 
Gustav.
From: goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Hard Disc Prices AGAIN!
Date: 21 Jan 93 13:27:21 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In article <C15zKJ.7K1@compsci.liverpool.ac.uk>, pss@uxb.liv.ac.uk (Mr. P.S. Spencer) writes...

>The question was: is there any reason why I can't buy a hard disc from a
>PC dealer (which means that it would be almost half the price in some
>cases) and, provided I've made sure that it drives the disc, buy a
>controller card from an Acorn dealer. If there is no reason why this
>won't work, then I should be able to get a 170Mb IDE for about $350 (no
>pound sign on this terminal) inc VAT and delivery!
> 
>In case it's important I've got a 4Mb A3000 with RO3.10 installed, but
>nowt else.

The problem is that it's a bit hit and miss. You don't know for sure it'll
work despite being 'standard'. Still, I've gotten 2nd hand DEC SCSI drives
working on my Archimedes with the following controllers:

	Acorn, Oak, Cumana and maybe ARXE (I'm hoping to find out soon).

	Morley's SCSI does NOT work with DEC SCSI drives (RZ22 and RZ23)
	To Morley's credit they bent over backwards to solve the problem
	but admitted defeat and gave a full refund.

The tricky part with DEC drives is that they don't spin up on power on,
and don't recognise SCSI commands UNTIL they've been spun up with START UNIT.
Makes setting up the controller for them fun!

A friend has an ST506 drive working - it was an RD52. The ST506 is the
standard controller on A410/1 etc. I've not had any experience with IDE -
I prefer SCSI, I can plug more drives in! I'm currently on a 40Mbyte ST506
inside my A410/1 with an external RZ23 (100Mbyte). Once I get a beefier PSU and
cables, I'll add my RZ22 (52Mbyte). Lots of space and spare drives if things go
wrong!

Pete Goodwin
goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com
From: alla0008@student.tc.umn.edu (Graham Allan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Re: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Keywords: VIDC, FontManager
Date: 27 Jan 93 21:12:05 GMT
Organization: University of Minnesota

In article <1k6nvgINNqll@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
ig06@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Goetz) writes:
>Graham Allan wrote:
>
>>FontManager depends on a module called SuperSample. The SWI numbers for
>>this module changed at some point, so if you are using a new fontmanager
>	     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>That was bull's eye, Graham !

Thanks, it's nice to get something right occassionally!

>OK, now ? new ?
>
>Some apps, when loaded, cause noticeable flicker just when you for instance
>put the pointer over their icon bar icons - not the sort of '40 Hz flicker',
>it looks more like traveling strips or waves. It was especially bad with
>the green devil - a 50 Hz green/greener monitor I used earlier. Now I have
>a multisync (second hand Eizo 9070S Flexscan and am sitting on bread and water) but the flicker hasn't gone completely and is not to oversee when the
>machine had't run for long. On the whole the picture is not as stable as on
>my brother's PC (doesn't stop him playing !Tertis day and night)

You know, I've noticed something similar to this, which is very strange.
I've never seen any actual flicker on the monitor, but I have noticed that
the apparent load on the CPU changes as you move the pointer over
different icons or windows (and there's no particular reason for the
applications to suddenly receive extra wimp events when this happens -
certainly not for icon bar icons, anyway). You can see this if you're
running something like !Usage; you can see the CPU load change. You can
also sort-of hear it in the CPU noise which breaks through to the audio
system. Often wondered what's going on here...

While on the subject of CPU monitors, does anyone use Ran Mokady's RISC OS
3 CPU monitor? Sometimes when it is running and open, the window manager
seems to decide to do a complete screen update, for no apparent reason.
Strangely this only happens when there are a few filer windows also open;
if you close these, the strange behaviour stops. 

I don't suppose there's any later and more optimised version of this
program around now? It's a nice gadget, but you don't want to use it too
much of the time - a usage monitor which itself consumes 20%-odd of the
CPU (on an ARM3) is a bit much! 

Graham
From: srm2@ukc.ac.uk (Stephen Mansfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: RISCOS_lib and alternatives
Date: 28 Jan 93 09:49:22 GMT
Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

In reply to Andrew Black & Ian Palmer:

I to think that the RISC OS Library is not worth bothering with.
But what I would like to know about is 'several poll loops' in one program.
I am, at this point, looking into this technique and am totally dismayed
at the lack of documentation on the topic as pointed out by Andrew with
respect to magazines and PRM's I might add!!!

Ian knocked the problem on the head with who's in control of what...the
programmer or the library...when the programmer is in control, the program is 
a lot easier to debug and design, also I'm currently looking at DeskLib and
evaluating its merits...it looks pretty goods so far. 

The real reason for this posting is to ask for help.  Could some kind person
briefly detail the use of several polling loops with respect to dialogue
boxes, whether connected to the menu tree or static.  I only realised about
a month ago that this is how the 'dbox' section of the RISC OS Library
works.  I have tried to duplicate this feature using the MENUDIE (0x400c9)
message of RISC OS 3 and have had partial success, but I feel if I ask
about this then perhaps a concise and clear way of doing this can be made
public...its almost a scandle that this is kept a secret.

Also, if there are other areas where they are of use in a program, perhaps
they could be given a mention too.

All help given would be WARMLY welcomed...

Also, of amusement...do you know how long it took me to find out that static
dbox's can be displayed using the 'Wimp_CreateMenu' call?  A loooonnnnggg time.
...its not documented in the pages of the PRM where you'd expect...NO...its in
the application notes at the BACK of volume III!!!  How many novice
programmers know this?


Stephen Mansfield.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Subject: Re: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Keywords: VIDC, FontManager
Organization: Nottingham University
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 12:57:26 GMT

In article <1jph4kINNqur@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> ig06@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Goetz) writes:
>Does the FontManager 2.44 rely on some 'hardware configuration' ?

It's interesting that CC does not supply version 2.44 with any of its software.
Even Artworks is supplied with version 2.42 - I doubt if this is for technical
reasons, more likely that they would have to pay Acorn more to distribute
version 2.44.

Also, can anyone comment on stories that there are RISC OS 3.10 ROM sets
in circulation which contain different versions of the FontManager? I
have had great trouble printing with my LaserDirect using the built-in
fontmanager (not FastText), and have heard that Acorn brought out a
newer fontmanager which fixes this problem without telling anybody.

Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ig06@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Goetz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Date: 22 Jan 1993 19:15:32 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
Keywords: VIDC, FontManager

Hello every body !

I want to thank

Ralph Barrett
Graham Allan
John Tytgat    ( it IS c.s.a.t - the only substitute for my favorite
		 alt.pictures.erotica killed by our News-boss )

for replaying to my 'Help !'-request

200 DM+pp for a new VIDC did cure the problem but if the situation is
as Ralph Barrett wrote in his e-mail:

- The A305/310 ... suffer from this problem. It is due to the lack of any
- protection circuitry on the video interface. Later machines have additional
- components ... to protect the VIDC.

then I'll need another 200 in a week when my brother visits us with
his 3 year old monitor-cable-unplugger ...

Or does anybody know if such protection circuitry exists for the A310
and if so who is selling it, how much does it cost and can you install it
yourself ?

Here's another ?

I have problems when rendering text using anti-aliased fonts - now that I
have 4 Mb, a new VIDC, AtomWide's Enhancer and a colour monitor !

If FontManager 1.15 is installed !Draw and !DrawPlus have no troubles with
Acorns 'standard' fonts (Corpus,Porthouse,Trinity - I am RO2)

When FontManager 2.44 is loaded and I try one of those outline fonts from
Newcastle then:

- !Draw doesn't display anything
- !DrawPlus displays text only when I'm typing and the line disappears (with
  a beep) after a RETURN. Now I select it and switch to the system font -
  it appears again

!Vector demo suddenly got problems too: it displays text areas allright but
single lines are invisible and on every redraw request an 'SWI not found'
error box pops up (no number, no name, no nothing)

Only !NewChars and !KeyBoard are working lovely, displaying any of Acorn's,
Newcasle's or TeX's fonts

I'm really puzzled (and frustrated)

Does the FontManager 2.44 rely on some 'hardware configuration' ?
Is this a FM problem at all ?
I thought the broken VIDC could be the reason but now that I've exchanged it...

Can anybody help ? (that's the last one ;-)

Bye
	Franz
From: rsxdp@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (D.Pead)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Fixing the A310 serial port
Keywords: VIDC, FontManager
Date: 27 Jan 93 09:47:04 GMT
Organization: Shell Centre for Maths Education, University of Nottingham

I have a rather old A310.  Although it is fitted with most of the essentials
of a fulfilling life (ARM3, 4MB, RISC-OS 3, VIDC Enhancer, IDE) the serial
port has never worked.  I now need to use the serial port for something.

I understand the dud serial port on the early A310 is a "known problem" and
can be fixed - can anybody tell me what this involves?

(The problem is - single characters are handled correctly, but as soon as a
stream is sent, it starts spouting garbage and tends to stay that way
until reset.  The problem occurs at all baud rates, and is worse on
receiving than when sending)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Philip Hazel)
Subject: Re: Help needed on Acorn/PC Networking
Organization: University of Cambridge Computing Service
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 14:09:36 GMT

In article <1993Jan28.120306.21387@aston.ac.uk>, davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mik Davis) writes:

|>   The archimedes machines cannot access a novell server (or any other PC type
|> server I know of) and the PCs cannot access a level 4 server however, I

So use TCP/IP, which is available for both the Arc and the PC (and other things
too).


--
Internet: P.Hazel@ucs.cam.ac.uk       University Computing Service,
JANET:    P.Hazel@uk.ac.cam.ucs       Computer Laboratory, Pembroke St,
Phone:    +44 223 334714              Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
From: dhmyrdal@flipper.pvv.unit.no (Dag H}kon Myrdal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Yellow Pages and TCP/IP
Date: 25 Jan 1993 15:00:21 GMT
Organization: ProgramVareVerkstedet - UNIT
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: flipper.pvv.unit.no


I have for some time tried to make a few Arc's use a nameserver on ethernet
rather that the TCP/IP suite's internal "hosts"-file.
Have anybody succeeded in this?

Acorn's documentation says that it can be done using NIS Yellow Pages...
However, the whole nameserver-issue is dealt with on three lines of text...

YP is indeed running on the domain in question, but the ethernet-card
& software seems to ignore this altogether.

We have Acorn ethernet cards iss 1 AND 3, running internetmodule version 1.05.
The cards work OK using the internal hoststable, but this is rather limited
- I cannot possibly put *ALL* hostnames and ip-no. on internet in a 
local file on our own domain...



-- 
--Dag Haakon Myrdal,       dhmyrdal@pvv.unit.no         -
-  Idrettsveien 29,        N-5037 BERGEN, NORWAY        -
-  Med.Tekn.Avd.           N-5021 Haukeland Hospital, No-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: schade@valerie.fmi.uni-passau.de (Oliver Schade)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Two monitors on the Arc?
Date: 27 Jan 1993 13:40:39 GMT
Organization: University of Passau, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: valerie.fmi.uni-passau.de

  Has anybody tried to connect two monitors to the Arc? It would be fine
 to have the WIMP-output on an VGA-monitor and to edit the sources with
 old IBM-monochrome-monitor...
 To connect both computers with an null-modem-cable is not the right way
 (it takes to much power..)


###############################################################################
#                                                                             #
# Oliver Schade                                                               #
#                                                                             #
# electronic mail     : schade@eva.fmi.uni-passau.de                          #
# 'conventional' mail : Oliver Schade, Langlebenhof, Alte Rieser Str 19A      #
#                       D-8390 Passau, Germany                                #
#                                                                             #
###############################################################################
From: ig06@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Goetz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Re: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Date: 27 Jan 1993 19:31:59 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
Keywords: VIDC, FontManager

Graham Allan wrote:

Graham Allan wrote:

>FontManager depends on a module called SuperSample. The SWI numbers for
>this module changed at some point, so if you are using a new fontmanager
	     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That was bull's eye, Graham !

Apparently, ColourTrans' also changed as problems only came with v0.93
which got loaded from System:Modules. I dug out v0.60 and now everything's fine
again

Thank you and thanks to all the people who replied and e-mailed me - you all
are very helpfull indeed and I think I will exploit your h.ness a little bit as
long as I have the opportunity to do so (leaving the uni soon -> no net access)

;-)

As to the subject of VIDC protection, a few people mentioned Ray/Roy Maidstone
producing something of that kind. Does anybody know the address/tel.number ?

OK, now ? new ?

Some apps, when loaded, cause noticeable flicker just when you for instance
put the pointer over their icon bar icons - not the sort of '40 Hz flicker',
it looks more like traveling strips or waves. It was especially bad with
the green devil - a 50 Hz green/greener monitor I used earlier. Now I have
a multisync (second hand Eizo 9070S Flexscan and am sitting on bread and water) but the flicker hasn't gone completely and is not to oversee when the
machine had't run for long. On the whole the picture is not as stable as on
my brother's PC (doesn't stop him playing !Tertis day and night)

In one sentence, I'd like to know more about Arc's video system

Bye,
      Franz

Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mik Davis)
Subject: Re: Help needed on Acorn/PC Networking
Organization: Aston University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL241235]
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 12:03:06 GMT

Philip Watson (pwatson@lincoln.gpsemi.com) wrote:
: Posted on behalf of Alan Benson.
: 
: Start...
: 
: Hello netters,
: 
: My local school is in the process of setting up a school-wide network, and
: wants to incorporate thier PC's (currently with the secretarial staff) and
: Arc's in one network.
: 
: At the moment they are looking at cabling up the whole school, so
: decisions
: need to be made about the 'flavour' of cable to use.
: 

  Thick ethernet backbone with thin ethernet spurs if they can afford it.

: Now I'm quite familiar with PC networking, but know nothing about Arc's
: (except my friends keep wittering on about how superb they are!!! (OK I'll
: probably have to conceed that!))
: 
: Some of the questions which spring to mind are:
: 
: 1) Is a mixed Econet/Ethernet feasable?

  Yes if the ethernet is connected to an Acorn level 4 server running AUN

: 
: 2)	What networking software exists for the Arc and how well does it
:      co-exists with other flavours.

  Econet, AUN Ethernet, Classnet Ethernet - all compatible
 also TCP/IP (mainly for where an NFS system is in place) The Acorn level 4
file server can cope with all of these.

: 
: 3)	What are the 'common' pitfalls with Acorn networking.

  not being able to connect it to PC networks :-)

  Econet is right out. It is WAY too slow for archimedes machines

: 
: 4)	Can you remote mount other disks across the network Al'La NFS.

  not sure what you mean here surely this is what an Acorn server would provide


  Are the PCs using Novell?



  From what I have discovered in the course of setting up a similar(ish)
system for a school, what you want will depend on the relative sizes of
the two networks, lengths of coble involved etc.
  The best solution I can think of off hand is to run a thick (10base5)
Ethernet across the entire school and bridge in thin (10base2) ethernet spurs
wherever there are machines.
  The archimedes machines cannot access a novell server (or any other PC type
server I know of) and the PCs cannot access a level 4 server however, I
believe that the two protocols CAN co-exist on the same cable without problems
(someone confirm this?)

  If you want to mail me with more specific details of the arrangement then
I'll be glad to provide whatever help I can.

  Mik


--
___________________________________________.
 Mik Davis at Aston University, Birmingham |   .  .  __          .
                                           |   |\/|  | \  _,_  _  _
E-Mail: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk           |   |  |. |_/ |_| \/ |/_'
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: idg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (I.D. Griffiths)
Subject: Re: EPS files
Reply-To: idg10@phx.cam.ac.uk
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 11:52:46 GMT

In article <1993Jan18.102504.18587@gate.esat.kuleuven.ac.be>, tytgat@esat.kuleuven.ac.be (John Tytgat) writes:
|> >also be rather hard, since you would need to have a postscript interpretter,
|> >which you don't need to read EPS files (since they're not really programs, but
|> >a postscript representation of a data structure), and then you would have
|> >problems with programs possibly not terminating, and it all gets a bit
|> >horrid.
|> 
|> Tsj, tsj, tsj.  PS is a real graphics language, so PS and EPS files can be
|> considered as programs (if all the procedures are defined).  And what do you
|> mean with "possibly not terminating programs" ???
|> 


It's possible to prove that one cannot generally prove that programs will
terminate, but that was done by Alan Turing a while back so I won't bother
with details.

To give a useful example though, there is a raytracing package written in
Postscript, popular amongst students for annoying departments' laser
printing services, since they typically take 3 hours to render a page, and
are rather hard to stop neatly since flushing the queue doesn't work -
the page has already reached the printer by the time you work out
something has gone wrong, and turning the printer off and on doesn't
go down well with queuing software.  (OK, so you can get round this, but
that's not really relevant to the topic.)

An importer to convert this into, say, an Artworks file would take quite
some time to execute, and it's not impossible to conceive of a scene that
would never finish rendering (just have zero loss reflections) so what
does the import do? 

It is precisely BECAUSE Postscript is a real language that you get problems.

On the other hand you'll only get these termination problems with stuff that
wouldn't print anyway.

However I am dubious as to the extent to which one can usefully interpret it
into a data structure, since it is a real language.  How does one deduce
that a function is, say, a graduated fill?


As for your comment that CC have the in house technology to do this,  do 
they?  Oh.  If you refer to the code in Showpage, that's rather different,
it's just interpretting postscript, and producing a bitmap, and the importers
on Artworks rely on known prologs to do conversions.

Ian
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Thanks for Help ! and some new ?'s
Date: 27 Jan 93 10:07:16 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

In article <3kU6aLj027n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:
>   Fascinating. The A4 ROM set has v3.07 of the FontManager in it. But then
>as the A4 ROMs had to be blown seperately, due to the fact that there appear
>to be only two ROMs in the machine rather than the usual four, I am not
>surprised that it has slightly newer versions of things.
>
>   However most of the four chip ROMs would have been blown in bulk
>manufacture and I would expect the versions number to be constant... Unless
>extension ROMs are fitted to load the newer versions...

I've a feeling that this discussion arises from the fact that there have
been many copies of RISC OS 3.10 issued in EPROM, long before the ROMs were
issued, and quite possibly these had different versions of Font Manager.

Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: automatic file translations
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 20:40:05 +1300
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

jna10@cl.cam.ac.uk (J.N. Abley) writes:

> In the list of filetypes in that nice book you get with Risc OS 3.1, there
> is one called something like TextCRLF, for text line-terminated with CRLF.
> 
> It would be great if I could drag one into any editor and get it converted
> to LF-terminated automatically...

Switch to StrongEdII! It can not only automatically handle all four
combinations of CR and/or LF in a text file, displaying the file correctly,
but it can also convert the line-terminator type in a file from a submenu...

--
Beware of programmers bearing screwdrivers.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech