HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: boyken@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Karl Boyken)
Subject: Re: No spell check for Win3.1 Write?!
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 13:35:25 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Iowa

In article <1992Aug12.164324.7828@awdprime.austin.ibm.com>,
ken@batman.austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach) writes:

> 
> 
> I can't believe there's no spell checker for Write in
> Microsoft Windows 3.1! What's the deal? Do you have to
> pay extra for it?
> 
> Sheesh - what a fumble!
> 
> 
> THIS POSTING DOES NOT REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF MY EMPLOYERS.
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> "... watch from high atop Tokyo Tower as the twisted world
> you created explodes in rivers of blood and endless pain..."
>     -Tom Servo, announcer, monster action playset commercial
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 

Sheesh--what _else_ do you want bundled into Windows?  A 3-D spreadsheet?  A
relational database?

If you need a spell checker, get Win Spell; it's the file winsp201.zip, and
it's on Simtel20 and its mirrors and the main Windows archive and its mirrors.
It's shareware, not freeware, but it's only $20, I think, and it'll spell-
check any Win app, not just Write.

Disclaimer:  a guy here in Iowa City wrote it, but I don't even know him, and
I have no stake in Win Spell.

*****        _My_ views, no one else's--except those I plagiarize         *****
Karl Boyken, system programmer | Although you wonder me, with your majestic and
Department of Computer Science | superior cackling hen, your people I do not
The University of Iowa         | understand, so to you I shall put an end, and
boyken@herky.cs.uiowa.edu      | you'll never hear surf music again.-J. Hendrix
From: rcw@scicom.AlphaCDC.COM (Robert White)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: DRDOS, Problems with Diskopt
Date: 17 Aug 92 05:47:37 GMT
Organization: The WhiteStar Corporation

I am using DRDOS revision 6, and am having trouble running DISKOPT on a 
386-40 on a 120 meg SSTOR disk drive with four thousand files on it.  
T he problem is that diskopt hangs
sometimes while "analyzing the speedstor tables" and on occasion 
mentions that there is not enough memory to run the program even though
there are 614k free.  What to do?

It concerns me that I can't defrag the disk as performance is worse and
worse over time.

Also, be careful of the recent DRDOS upgrade sent out by Novell.  I called them
(flame on - after they made me rummage around for my install disks to prove
I'm registered - even though I'm in their database how-did-i-get-there, 
flame off),
and apparently there is a problem with the new chkdsk.com that causes 
*some subset* of machines to hang.  The solution given was to restore the 
old chkdsk.com which worked for me, thank god.

Apparently this only happens on a subset of all
machines, wish I could have gotten more details from them, but the
technical person wasn't very familiar with things technical.  oh well.

-- 
  [   Robert Carleton White, Jr.                      rcw@scicom.alphacdc.com]
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
From: jknepley@nyx.cs.du.edu (Ranseus (Jim Knepley))
Subject: Re: GIF2ANS2
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 15:48:32 GMT

In article <TXVmPB3w164w@tcpbbs.pcn.org> jimh@tcpbbs.pcn.org (UUCP SYSOP) writes:
>Hi All, Any info on a file or program  GIF2ANS would be most helpful.  I 
>would like to know.  A.) Is this PD/SHareware?  B.) Is the conversion from 
>GIF to ANSI any good? and C.) Does anyone know where I might get this file 
>(IF PD/Shareware) or Whio carries it if not.

A.  Yup, it's Shareware.  At least, the version I had was.
B.  Nope, it's terrible.  Especially for photo images.  The problem is
    that it only uses one character (the solid block) in its conversion,
    so everything looks a lot like the old Apple2e lowres.
C.  Check wuarchive.wustl.edu, but I really don't know.

Jim

Xref: sparky comp.os.msdos.apps:4377 comp.bbs.waffle:1868
From: dogbowl@dogbox.acme.gen.nz (dogbowl)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: A Poor Stacker application
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 17:03:45 NZT
Organization: The Dawghaus BBS

phil@miracle.com (Phil Hill) writes:

> andyross@infopls.chi.il.us (Andrew Rossmann) writes:
> >  I run a Waffle BBS, and recently tried Stacker on my news partition. I
> >was hoping for big gains since everything is pure text.
> >
> >  The result? About 1.5:1 compression.
> >
> 
> Not what I'm getting
> 
> SCHECK - 2.01, (c) Copyright 1990-92 Stac Electronics, Carlsbad, CA
> 
> Volume in drive E is NEWS
> 
> No errors found
> 
> Stacker Drive Statistics:
> 
>                  Stacker Drive             STACVOL File
>                  Drive E:                  E:\STACVOL.000
>                  ----------------------    ----------------------
>   Total Bytes:     105,136,128                52,570,624
>   Bytes Used:       50,733,056 ( 48.3%)       11,471,360 ( 21.8%)
>   Bytes Free:       54,403,072 ( 51.7%)       41,099,264 ( 78.2%)
> 
> Stacker Drive Compression Ratio = 4.4:1
> Projected Bytes Free            = 54,403,072
> 
> - - - -
> 
> If I put another 50MB in the drive, it would eat another 11MB of real
> disk, leaving 30MB free but unusable (this is the 8K cluster problem).
> 
> But Stacker has an option to compress and re-claim this space, which
> will give you 30MB of free space...
> 
> The final result: 105MB of news on 22MB of disk.  I'd say it's worth it!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't bank on it. Stacker can tell *BIG* lies about compression ratios.
I thought that I was doing quite well when scheck reported 400Mb being 
compressed into 86Mb of actual space, but when I added up the file sizes 
using Xtree, I found that it was actually 134Mb.  This was happening on a 
213Mb partition.
Now that I know that the reports are unreliable I keep a close eye on 
what it says. 

Ideally the cluster size needs to be around 256 or 512 bytes.
I'd prefer to keep using Stacker, as I went and bought the coprocessor 
card to speed things up. Anybody got ideas on tweaks??


dogbowl at The Dawghaus BBS  ( +64 6 357-9245 )


Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
From: pallantj@unvax.union.edu (Joseph Pallante)
Subject: Re: What's holding up PKZIP v. 2.0 (message from PKWARE)
Organization: Union College, Schenectady, NY
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 01:57:48 GMT

bleys@infopls.chi.il.us (Bleys Ahrens) writes:

>It amazes me that you would suggest a software developer should release
>a product with bugs this severe just because it will work on your PC.  I
>provide software support in a corporation with thousands of
>"fancy-schmancy" 386 and 486 PCs.  For us, they are the rule, not the
>exception.  I have enough problems to worry about without trying to
>explain to hundreds of users with licenses for PKZIP 1.1 that the free
>upgrade the have been waiting for since they bought the product five
>months ago doesn't run on their PC.  

>Whenever I find out that companies have released new products with fatal
>bugs on "certain" "fancy-schmancy" systems, I try to make sure our
>corporation doesn't purchase from that company in the future. 
>Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all too often.  It seems to be a
>side effect of unrealistic, artificial product ship-dates which
>companies set.  If the boss says the product "must" ship the tenth of
>the month, no one wants to be the one to discover a fatal bug the night
>before.

>It is my understanding that Windows 3.1 had been intended to ship with
>the speak.drv driver for the PC speaker.  It was discovered that the
>driver had problems on about 10% of the PCs tested.  The product shipped
>on schedule, but without the driver.  Kudos to Microsoft for deciding
>that 10% is way too high.  The same goes to PKWare for waiting until the
>problem is resolved.

Apparently you misunderstand the problem.

It currently exists with ALL software.  You can experience this
problem with PKZIP 1.1.  It happens with DOS's copy command.
It is not a software bug.  It is pure hardware.  The only
ways I can see to get around it is to turn off hardware cache,
do a read-after-write, or spend 2 years researching the problem.
We all know which PKWARE is doing.

I have seen it several times, and if I have some important stuff I
am copying/archiving, I will make sure to test the integrity
of that copy/archive.

In reguards to Microsoft....

How do you explain Windows 3.0A?
                              ^

Or Word for Windows 2.0A?
                       ^

Where MS shipped Word2 early simply to beat WP's release of WPWIN..

Joe

Xref: sparky comp.os.msdos.apps:4391 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:11612 comp.text:1138
From: andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.text
Subject: Crack for "Manuscript Manager"?
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:56:50 GMT
Reply-To: andrew@frip.wv.tek.com
Followup-To: comp.os.msdos.apps
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon

A client owns a legitimate copy of "Manuscript Manager", a thesis
preparation program by Pergamon Press.  The SETUP utility for this
program allows installation on up to two systems, and keeps track of
the installation count on the distribution diskette.  It lets you
uninstall from one system and then install onto another.

Her problem is that her hard disk blew up and she didn't have backups.
(This all happened before she talked to me.)  She got a new hard disk,
went to reinstall the software, and got the message "uninstall first."
But she can't uninstall from the blown-up disk.  Apparently this has
happened twice, so her quota is used up.  Simply copying the diskette
contents onto hard disk yield an executable which prints "Unauthorized
copy" and exits.

Phone calls reveal that the software publisher doesn't exist anymore,
so technical support is unavailable.

I'd be grateful to learn of a crack for this situation, so that we can
install the software on her system.

  -=- Andrew Klossner  (andrew@frip.wv.tek.com)
                       (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew)
Xref: sparky comp.os.msdos.apps:4283 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:11405 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:3259
From: bleys@infopls.chi.il.us (Bleys Ahrens)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: What's holding up PKZIP v. 2.0 (message from PKWARE)
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 92 19:47:46 CDT
Organization: INFOPLUS support, Wheeling, IL

tony@disk.uucp (tony) writes:

> reisert@mast.enet.dec.com (Jim Reisert) writes:
> 
> >[NOTE:  I downloaded this from a telephone BBS last night.  There is a
> >        .ZIP file with the tests and this message, which I will send to
> >	Keith to put up on SIMTEL20. - jjr]
> 
> >During the development of PKZIP v. 2.0 for MS-DOS, PKWARE has 
> >discovered hardware faults in newer 80386 & 80486 computers. 
> >These faults can cause anomalies in the operation of PKWARE 
> >software as well as other software.
> 
> 	Well, it's nice (I suppose), they want to iron out all the bugs, but
> why do those of us still running 8088s have to suffer along with those with
> better equipment than us.  Shouldn't there be _some_ small compensation for
> having to _trudge_ along at 4.77 mHz?????  Why don't they just document the
> anomalies in a READ.ME file and go ahead and post the product for everyone
> else.  I mean, afterall, I have d/l'd dozens of programs in the last three 
> years which, after 2 hours of d/l time, I discover I can't run because the
> programs only run in EGA or VGA.  Nobody thinks about my hardship.  Why shoul
> the makers of PKZIP have to withhold their product just because it won't run
> on a few fancy-schmancy machines that many of us don't own anyways???
> 
> 	-=- Tony Safina -=- disk!tony@uunet.UU.NET -=-
> 
> 

It amazes me that you would suggest a software developer should release
a product with bugs this severe just because it will work on your PC.  I
provide software support in a corporation with thousands of
"fancy-schmancy" 386 and 486 PCs.  For us, they are the rule, not the
exception.  I have enough problems to worry about without trying to
explain to hundreds of users with licenses for PKZIP 1.1 that the free
upgrade the have been waiting for since they bought the product five
months ago doesn't run on their PC.  

Whenever I find out that companies have released new products with fatal
bugs on "certain" "fancy-schmancy" systems, I try to make sure our
corporation doesn't purchase from that company in the future. 
Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all too often.  It seems to be a
side effect of unrealistic, artificial product ship-dates which
companies set.  If the boss says the product "must" ship the tenth of
the month, no one wants to be the one to discover a fatal bug the night
before.

It is my understanding that Windows 3.1 had been intended to ship with
the speak.drv driver for the PC speaker.  It was discovered that the
driver had problems on about 10% of the PCs tested.  The product shipped
on schedule, but without the driver.  Kudos to Microsoft for deciding
that 10% is way too high.  The same goes to PKWare for waiting until the
problem is resolved.

Bleys Ahrens


--
bleys@infopls.chi.il.us (Bleys Ahrens)
Infoplus BBS, +1 708 537 0247, v32bis. Home of Infoplus.
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
From: adelaine@milton.u.washington.edu (Alison Blais)
Subject: Program execution on boot-up
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 03:52:08 GMT

Hello,

I'm looking for a program to execute a command (the Norton Disk Doctor) at
bootup, but only once a day.  That is, I want it to execute the program
from the autoexec file, but only if the date has changed since the last
time it has been run.  I'm fairly certain I've seen something like
this before, but I can't remember where.  Also, is there a simple way
to do it in a batch file?  Thank you.

Erick.
adelaine@milton.u.washington.edu
ehammers@inson.fhcrc.org

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
From: rick@sundance.SJSU.EDU (Richard Warner)
Subject: Re: What's holding up PKZIP v. 2.0 (message from PKWARE)
Organization: San Jose State University - Math/CS Dept.
Date: 13 Aug 92 15:22:35 GMT

bleys@infopls.chi.il.us (Bleys Ahrens) writes:

>It is my understanding that Windows 3.1 had been intended to ship with
>the speak.drv driver for the PC speaker.  It was discovered that the
>driver had problems on about 10% of the PCs tested.  The product shipped
>on schedule, but without the driver.  Kudos to Microsoft for deciding
>that 10% is way too high.  The same goes to PKWare for waiting until the
>problem is resolved.

In light of the recent announcement that MS has developed a sound board, soon
to go on sale, and now being licensed to PC vendors, I wonder if the release
decision on the SPEAK driver might have had more to do with MS's pending
sales of sound boards and less to do with the rumored problems with some
PC's.  Just a thought.

>Bleys Ahrens


>--
>bleys@infopls.chi.il.us (Bleys Ahrens)
>Infoplus BBS, +1 708 537 0247, v32bis. Home of Infoplus.
From: rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: Re: What's holding up PKZIP v. 2.0 (message from PKWARE)
Date: 19 Aug 92 18:11:32 GMT
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA

nevries@accucx.cc.ruu.nl (Nico E de Vries) writes:
>Possible. The problem is real. They are also improving the product (faster
>-es mode than for 1.93, little more compression, better user interface).

Oh Noooooooo, I hope they're not making it a menu driven front end!
-- 
Never hit a man with glasses.  Hit him with a baseball bat.
From: ok@csd.cri.dk (Ole Kristensen CAEE user)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: Re: Word Perfect 5.1
Date: 19 Aug 92 13:32:08 GMT
Organization: Computer Resources International A/S

pelillmr@craft.camp.clarkson.edu (PACO) writes:


> I have been havine using Word Perfect 5.1.  AT the bottom of the screen where all the commands
>show up, my screen in blank.  If I hit the F7 key to save a document and exit, nothing shows up
>at the bottom of the the screen.  The prompt is still there becuase if I type "yes" and then "Yes"
>again, I will exit the program.  It only does this occasionally, but it is really annoying.  
>	I though at first it might be becuase I load the wp.fil file into expanded memory using
>the command of /r, but I have tried it without this command and it still does the same thing.

>	Any idea's????????????

Yes, I had a similar problem when I selected a wrong VGA driver in the
setup/display/textmode menu. I tried to setup WP to show 44 lines
and somehow I couldn't see the bottom menu line. After I changed the type
of the VGA driver it worked (I have a stupid Olivetti with a motherboard
VGA controller).

Hope it helps you

Ole Kristensen
ok@spd.cri.dk
(+45) 4582 2100
Xref: sparky comp.os.msdos.apps:4353 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:11527 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:3302
From: bytehead@bp1742.UUCP (Bryan Price)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: What's holding up PKZIP v. 2.0 (message from PKWARE)
Date: 15 Aug 92 00:11:41 GMT
Organization: Burning Point, Columbus OH

jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth) writes:

...stuff deleted...
> Also, the speaker driver
> recuires ALL of your system resources to run a simple sound-- including
> the clock.  So, continued running of the driver will make the clock in-
> accurate.

Actually, I believe that the driver knows the length of the sound,
and adjusts the clock as neccessary.  I've ran several minutes of
sound through the thing, and my computer still only gets off by the
usual drift.  Maybe it works on mine, but doesn't work on yours?

> Neither of these are bugs with the driver, but M.S. didn't 
> give it out for these reasons.  The clock problem is due to the simple,
> one-bit sound system for the speaker.  It is turned on and offrapidly to
> simulate the AC signal that would normally produce sound, and these controls
> will tie up the clock circuit in addition to the CPU.

Close, you just can't have any interrupts left on to interrupt the
CPU whilst you're doing sound (Well, you can, but your sound
certainly degrades much) plus, if you try it on a networked PC (3Com
3+Open/3+Share) you'll most likely get knocked off, as the NIC
doesn't have a chance to deal with any incoming stuff.

Bryan L. Price       | [ bytehead@bp1742.UUCP ]           *Burning Magnesium*
<Why would I make    | [ {n8emr|nstr}!bluemoon!bp1742!bytehead]
my disc any laimer?> | [ Bryan.Price@p1742.f340.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG ]
From: wall@hercules.cs.uregina.ca
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: What can you tell me about SLIP
Date: 21 Aug 92 17:16:05 GMT
Reply-To: wall@hercules.uregina.ca ()
Organization: University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan

Can anyone give me some information on how I can obtain this for my 
msdos machine and interface it with the university Unix machine.

What is the Actual definition of SLIP and how does it work.  Is it
now a standard protocal.

Thanks

Murray
From: joseph@ariel.its.unimelb.EDU.AU (Joseph D'Cruz)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: Re: Looking for note taking software
Date: 22 Aug 92 15:55:02 GMT
Organization: University of Melbourne, Australia

>  I'm looking for something to help out a friend who will be spending
>a year taking copious notes on his new laptop PC in various archives
>and musemums in Europe.
>  Specifically, we need a good note-taking package -- something that
>allows free-form text entry, with some kind of keyword and date
>searching feature.  I've looked in some recent PC Magazine indexes,
>but came up dry.  Any pointers would be much appreciated.

	I second the vote for InfoSelect (someome recommended Tornado, and
mentioned that IS is the upgrade).  I use it for exactly the purpose you
related.  You don't need to specify keywords, though you could, as it has
a*very* fast string search function, and optional automatic dating (and
time-stamping, if you want!) of all entries.  It has a few other useful
functions, in addition to being a TSR, which is great when you're in the
middle of writing something on your wordprocessor and need to chase up a fact
or reference.  It also comes with a disk/memory swapping module that allows
you to run it in about 7K of main memory.  
	BTW, I'm not associated with the company, etc. - just a very
satisfied customer.  

Regards,
Joseph D'Cruz
Dept. of Politics
Melbourne University
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.os.msdos.misc
From: ldstern@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Larry Stern)
Subject: Re: SideKick Plus????
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 11:01:03 EDT

In article <rick.713719560@sundance> rick@sundance.SJSU.EDU (Richard Warner) writes:
>jheath@CERIS.Purdue.EDU (Jim Heath) writes:
>
>>Did Borland drop Sidekick and/or Sidekick Plus?  If not, what is
>>the current version?
>>-- 
>>"Land of song, said the warrior bard,           Jim Heath
>>Though all the world betrays thee.
>>One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, (The Minstrel Boy)
>>One faithful harp will praise thee."         (Thomas Moore)
>
>They did drop Sidekick-Plus (the Day manager, yuppie, ESTie version).
>They enhanced the original product, adding Paradox-database compatibility,
>network awareness, and some other goodies.  That is all in Version 2.0.
>

Speaking of which, I have a copy of Sidekick 2.0 (original disks, etc.) for
sale.  E-mail me if you're interested,

--

Larry Stern                                  LDSTERN@RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU
From: yuval@violet.berkeley.edu (Yuval Oren)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Subject: (Still) trying to make a library in BC++
Date: 13 Aug 1992 17:26:24 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu
Originator: yuval@violet.berkeley.edu

Allright. I did everything everyone told me to do, and it still
doesn't work. This is what I did:

I compiled the .c file into an OBJ. I typed tlib mydir.lib +mydir.obj.
I included the header file which declared all the functions in my
library. I included the .lib file in my project. And it still doesn't
work. It gave me a "Linker error: undefined symbol dirsize(......)."

Here's my header file:

#ifndef __DIR_H
        #include <dir.h>
#endif
 
#define SLACK 1
#define NOSLACK 0
 
int findfirstdir(const char *pathname, struct ffblk *ffblk, int
attrib);
int findnextdir(struct ffblk *ffblk);
long double dirsize(const char *pathname, int slack);
long double totaldirsize(const char *pathname, int slack);
long slackadjust(long filesize, int bytespersector); 

The functions work perfectly. Here's my main module:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dir.h>
#include <dos.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <mydir.h>
 
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
printf("Directory size of %s is %.0Lf\n", argv[1], dirsize(argv[1],
NOSLACK) );
printf("With subdirectories it's %.0Lf\n", totaldirsize(argv[1],
NOSLACK) );
printf("With slack, dir size of %s is %.0Lf\n", argv[1],
dirsize(argv[1], SLACK) );
return(1);
}     

Do you see any problems? Remember, this is a "Linker error." 


Thanks for reading,

Yuval

-- 
______________________________________________________________
|Yuval Oren						     |
|yuval@violet.berkeley.edu     				     |
| "One spoiled green bird is worth two cooks in grass broth."|
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d