HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st

> The thing that is odd about that is that my other links work fine..  
> Is there a reason for this?  The other links I have a h:\bin u:\bin,
> h:\gnu u:\gnu, etc.

I haven't heard about this before, but this could be related to the
volume-label-same-as-directory-name problem. What's the label on your
H: partition ?

	Jens.
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As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
From: heiden@kboeng.enet.dec.com (Matthias Heiden)
Subject: Pagestream 2.2 problems
Reply-To: heiden@kboeng.enet.dec.com (Matthias Heiden)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 12:00:11 GMT


Last week I reported about my problems getting Pagestream 2.2 to work with
Edisk 2.1, the Ramdisk provided to the ST community by Volker A. Brandt.
Meanwhile I found out that the problem is caused by not providing enough 
memory for Pagestream. Especially printing and importing of image files
requires more memory than I thought. Using the Postscript driver and a few
import modules, I need about 1.4 Mbyte (1 page doc).
Since many people reported similar problems, I strongly suggest to take
a real hard look into the machines memory situation.   

--
--
digital equipment GmbH                  heiden@kbomfg.enet.dec.com
advanced system process development
Sudetenstrasse 5
W - 8950 Kaufbeuren (Germany)           work: +49 8341 913392
--
From: naffara@crc.ac.uk (Dr. N.A. Affara)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Falcon price
Date: 22 Jul 92 12:54:17 GMT
Organization: MRC Human Genome Resource Centre

I posted the (what I think is the original) posting about the price of
the Falcon compared to the amiga.
I said the Falcon would be less than 600 English pounds.
Some people seem to think that I said 600 dollars and then decided the
Falcon would be 399 pounds. This is wrong!!!!

I've just found the article I posted to start with.
This comes from ST Review Issue 3.
"As to the Falcon, well we've all seen Commodore's A600, which is currently 
retailing at 399 (English pounds).
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (399 for A600)
and next to the Falcon it's just a very poor games machine, and it
(the Falcon) can give most consoles a run for their money.
Add to this the fact that you get real computing power for 
less than 600 (English pounds)
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^    (probably 599.99 pounds for Falcon)
it represents fantastic value for money.
I hope this makes the point clear.
Phil      (E-mail naffara@uk.ac.crc) 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
From: leavitt@cheshire.oxy.edu (Thomas VanNess Leavitt)
Subject: Re: Falcon again
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 10:28:41 GMT

Just to make sure... that $399-$1200 price range was for the Falcon,
not the 33mhz '040 accelerator... right?

Thom

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: bammi@acae127.cadence.com (Jwahar R. Bammi)
Subject: Re: GNU C object file format (.o)
Organization: Cadence Design Systems
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1992 05:57:47 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.003817.25951@convex.com> rosenkra@convex.com (William Rosenkranz) writes:
> 
> 
> after grepping around my GNU C included directory, i could not find a
> file describing the object file format (ie .o files). the st-out.h file
....
> 
> i od'ed a few .o files and sort of figured out what they look like but
> i was wondering if this is more formally documented. i suppose looking
> at the src to ld would help and i will do that eventually. i also have

	oh boy! if you had only looked a few one more step further:
in the utilsrc archive you would find <gnu-out.h> that documents
what you are looking for. the stab information is in stab.h/stab.def
 also, in the documentation.zoo archive you should find a paper on
a.out, that will help you decipcher some of this stuff.
(oh another confusing point: do NOT bother looking in symseg.h, its
the old gdb stuff that is NOT used any more).

> finally, is the .o format for gcc 2.x identical to that for 1.4 (gas 1.38)?
	yes, exactly the same. (the details of the stab contents
changed slightly, at some point, but that does not effect anything,
only effects gdb, and atariST-gdb knows about that change).

cheers,
--
--
bang:   uunet!cadence!bammi			jwahar r. bammi
domain: bammi@cadence.com
GEnie:	J.Bammi
CIS:    71515,155
From: MDORMAN1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Mike Dorman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: reset, reset, reset, down...
Date: 30 Jul 92 17:38:09 GMT
Organization: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

In article <1992Jul30.090337.10261@sci.kun.nl>
bartjan@cs.kun.nl (Bart-Jan Bouwers) writes:
>In <5161@krafla.rhi.hi.is> adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David) writes:
>>bartjan@cs.kun.nl (Bart-Jan Bouwers) writes:
>So it must be a hardware problem. I expanded the memory to 3 MB recently and
>before I had some troubles with an overheating power supply. My machine is
>a 1040STf with tos 1.0. Any other suggestions?
First off, 3MB?  I've never ever seen that memory configuration.  Oh, well,
live and learn.
 
If the machine doesn't boot at all, even with no disk in the drive, it's
a memory upgrade problem.  My Z-Ram 3-D board was quite dodgy there for a while
and would display the same problems your machine would.  Check your connections
look for cold solder joints, make sure any cables are really close to the
motherboard so they won't act as antennas
 
Hope this helps,
 
Mike.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Mike Dorman, SSS Consultant     : "If I could have my way, I'd be sleeping  :
: Internet: mdorman1@ua1vm.ua     :  in the alley, on a couch, with a friend, :
: GEnie:    M.DORMAN2             :  and a bottle of gin." M. Etheridge       :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: MDORMAN1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Mike Dorman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: A "C" question...
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:46:58 GMT
Organization: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

I've got a question about how to do something in "C".
 
I'm in the process of writing a C library to make it easier to manage windows
(some of the nasty stuff like outputting text through a printf()-like
interface, etc).
 
I have a structure that describes large parts of the window (things like its
current size, the window handle, etc.).  One of the things I've been thinking
about doing is storing the window name and info fields as part of the structre.
 
Now, obviously, I don't want to have them allocated if they're not going to
be used.  So I was thinking of creating functions wx_name() and wx_info(),
where the function definition would be something like:
 
wx_name(ws,str)
Window ws;
char *str;
 
I would then like to malloc() memory to hold the string that we've been given
so that we won't use any more memory than necessary (I have an ulterior motive,
I want to create a printf() interface to this stuff, too--I have a couple of
programs that could use it).
 
So, what's the best way to declare the variable within the structure?  Is
merely making it a char * sufficient, or do I need to make it static char *?
 
I never have been able to figure out just what the difference is in practical
terms.  If someone could explain, I'd be deeply indebted.
 
Mike.
From: jensk@hpbbrd.bbn.hp.com (Jens Kilian)
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 06:39:20 GMT
Subject: Problems with ARGV
Organization: HP Mechanical Design Division
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech

Yesterday I ran into a problem with the ARGV parameter passing scheme that
I'm sure others must have seen before. The ARGV scheme can't pass empty strings
as parameters !
What happens is that Pexec can't distinguish between an empty parameter and
the end of the environment string (both are represented by two consecutive
NUL bytes). In effect, the first empty parameter will terminate the parameter
list.

Since I haven't seen this problem come up previously, I guess that nobody ever
tried to work around it. Anyway, here's a suggestion for fixing it (while
still remaining compatible to ARGV):

	- Pass all non-empty arguments via ARGV, ignoring empty ones.
	  Let's say you want to execute

		/bin/arrgh foo "" bar baz "" zip;

	  you would pass an environment string ending in

		ARGV=\0/bin/arrgh\0foo\0bar\0baz\0zip\0\0

	- Pass the *positions* of the empty arguments in some other place
	  (within the environment). Most convenient would be the ARGV variable
	  itself, but some shells and/or runtime libraries already use that
	  for other purposes.
	  Assuming you use an environment variable called 'ARRGH' (just for
	  demonstration) and pass the positions in ASCII format (dito), this
	  would look like

		ARRGH=2,5\0

	  in the example above. The C startup code would interpret this by
	  assigning empty strings to argv[2] and argv[5].

This approach won't break any existing code. If a program or shell doesn't
understand it, it will just keep the old behavior. By incorporating the
mechanism into the C library (startup code and exec() or spawn() or whatever),
programs have just to be relinked to be able to use it.

I'd like to hear the experts comment on this.

	Jens.
--
Internet: jensk@hpbeo82.bbn.hp.com    HPDESK : JENS_KILIAN%XU@HP1200
MausNet:  Jens Kilian @ BB                     KILIAN_JENS/HP1200_XU@hpbbi4
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Fax  : (0|+49)7031-14-2049
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: sourada@iastate.edu (Steven D Ourada)
Subject: Re: Problems with ARGV
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 03:07:56 GMT

In <1992Jul29.221225.24054@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> ilepore@nyx.cs.du.edu (Ian Lepore) writes:

> > ARGV doesn't allow passing empty arguments
> > use another env var to pass the position of the empty args
> 
> I don't like it.  It sounds needlessly complicated to create a whole 
>'nother env var for this.  

I agree on that point.

>  I have two variations on an idea for coping with this.  The first variation
>assumes that we never pass binary values in the ARGV.  (IE, isprint() is 
>TRUE for all chars appearing in the args in the ARGV area.)  In this case,
>I'd recommend using \001 as a placeholder for an empty arg.  Using this,
> 
>   grep "" *.c

> would be passed as ARGV=\0grep\0\1\0*.c\0\0.  If my assumption is invalid,
>and folks do pass binary data in ARGV, then use an escape system where an
>empty arg is \1\1, but a true binary 1 is \1\2.  (You could even extend
>this to allow passing binary zeros, escaped as \1\3 for example.)

I was thinking something along these lines, also. What I was thinking about
was using a single space to signify an empty argument. Then, for arguments
that consist of spaces (fairly rare, I'd think), a space is added to the
string. A program using this convention (or compiled with a runtime that
handled it) would subtract a space off any argument that consisted of
only spaces.

The question is, of the schemes mentioned so far (or related ones), which
would break the least of the existing ARGV programs? (I vote for mine :-))

                  Later,     
                    Steven Ourada

-- 
-----------------
Steven Ourada  Member of the Students for Electronic Freedom
Ask me how Iowa State University is censoring my Usenet access!
sourada@iastate.edu     "can't casts no shadow" -- cummings
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: PAULETTI@biel.be.tech.ascom.ch (Pauletti Andreas)
Subject: Re: Need help with odd hard drive problem...
Organization: Ascom Tech Ltd., Corporate Services, Division for Research 
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 11:57:59 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.11


In <KENDALL.92Jul28051950@flammulated.rice.edu> kendall@flammulated.rice.edu writes:

> I'm having a strange problem with my HD, and was wondering if anyone out
> there might know what was wrong:
> 
> My st simply refuses to detect my HD at all anymore!!  When I try to boot
> from the HD, nothing happens, and occasionally the floppy drive gets messed
> up after the boot - all disks put into it show up with 0 byes and 0 items.
> 
> I tried to boot from the Atari HD utility disk, but AHDI says 
> "Unit 0: Identification unavailiavble", and after that HDX rufuses to admit
> that the drive exists even when I try to format.  I've checked the cable,
> which is OK, and everything's plugged into the right place.
> 
I had the same problem with my VORTEX hdplus 30. I have a SH205 as 1. and the
hdplus as 2. HD. When I used HDX version 4 and 5 I got for the VORTEX HD the
mentioned message at boot time and the VORTEX was not available.
The solution was to use my old HDX I think it is version 3.

cheers andreas pauletti
From: haegar@uni-paderborn.de (Thorsten Boehm)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Emacs 18.58 bug
Date: 31 Jul 92 12:23:36 GMT
Organization: Uni-GH Paderborn

skolodzieski@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu writes:

>P.S. perhaps a german reader with access to atari.archive can post he emacs 
>     18.58 to another ftp site, since in the summer a.a does not get updated
>     so people in general are unaware to the new emacs existence. 

You can find it on 
   ftp.uni-paderborn.de 
in 
   /atari/gnu/emacs/1858b-d3.zoo

Greetings
          Thorsten
-- 
,======================================================================.
|  Internet      : haegar@uni-paderborn.de                             |
|  Snailmail     : Thorsten Boehm, Steinberg 8, D-4790 Paderborn       |
`======================================================================'
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: ratlifc@marcus.its.rpi.edu (Christian Adrian Ratliff)
Subject: Numerous ST/TOS questions
Summary: Need info about ST
Keywords: ST, TOS, upgrade, mags
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 14:57:59 GMT

Hi all,

  I've had an ST for about six months now. Its an old jobber with a tweety
board and 2.5MB of RAM. I'm also running a version of TOS which was most
recently copyrighted in 1987. I'd like to get more into this machine, however,
I need a little advice from the old hands.

  First, what is a good company to go to for Atari ST software, and who is
good for hardware. I'm looking for the new edition of the operating system,
a hard drive, and possible other extensions.
  Next, I would like some documentation on the internals of the machine and
its OS [this is why I'm posting to tech]. I'd like a full ins-and-outs of
the hardware and how it compares with similar systems. Is it SCSI? Can
you ethernet it? What is that catridge slot on the side for? These are the
kind of questions I need answered.
  Also, I've wondered who does tech support for ancient STs, for whom the
warranty expired long ago.
  In addition what are the magazines, and where can I send for an issue and
subscription information.

Thanks muchly to any who answer,
Christian


PS. please respond via email <ratlifc@rpi.edu> and I'll summarize to the net
if anyone seems to care.
From: MEBEB@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Unixmode
Date: 24 Jul 92 10:55:08 GMT
Organization: University of Liverpool

Emacs 18.58, where did you download it from? We've missed some news recently,
so if it was announced I might have missed it.

Kev
Xref: sparky comp.sys.atari.st.tech:4141 comp.os.minix:3767
From: adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech,comp.os.minix
Subject: Help!!! Minix ignores 2nd HD (ST)
Keywords: minix ST
Date: 25 Jul 92 07:33:28 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.atari.st.tech

I added a 2nd hard disk to my 1988 Supra hostadaptor, and it works fine
under TOS. I set the partitions to type MIX, recompiled the minix kernel
for 2 hard disks and added the device nodes for the new partitions.
Minix refuses to recognise the extra diskspace on all counts. The disk
LED does not light.

I have the new disk on scsi id 1, lun 0. What I suspect is that minix is
looking for the 2nd disk on scsi id 0, lun 1. As far as I can see there is
no way to set the disk to be at lun 1 with this hardware (it is an embedded
SCSI disk). Has anybody got such a setup to work? or do I have to change
the hardware first? Minix version is 1.5.10.4

1st disk: scsi0,lun0 partitions C: D: are GEM, E: F: are MIX
2nd disk: scsi1,lun0 partitions G: H: are MIX

Maybe I should try #define NR_HD_DRIVES 3, but this is of course stupid to
access the second disk as if it were the third one. All sensible approaches
have failed, so its time to be silly. Any other suggestions?

--
Adam David. (adamd@rhi.hi.is)
From: baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Upgrading the ST or TT ...
Date: 27 Jul 92 22:06:18 GMT
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

In article <1992Jul27.100013.28213@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> ucacmsu@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Stephen R Usher) writes:

>The main problem is that the bus handshaking has totally changed with teh
>'040. On the 680[0123]0 the CPU has the bus by defaults and gives it up to
>peripherals. On the 68040 the bus is "free" by default and is only acquired
>by the CPU when necessary.

	I guess I don't understand the implications of having a free bus by 
default - do you (can you) explain, or if its too esoteric, perhaps via email?
I have read some of the 680x0 manuals (briefly - it wasn't mine :(  ) but
I didn't see anything about this.

>The other problem on course would be adding the '040 FP software to the
>system :-) and hoping that TOS initialises the PMMU in the chip in the
>correct way (the '040 only has a sub-set of the instructions for this that
>the '030 has).

	I thought that 3/2.06 and higher was supposed to support 680[01234]0
without any problems - that and the fact that if Atari does come out with
a '040 workstation, its tos better support the '040 too :).


>
>Steve
>
>If you want to know more get the Motorola 680x0 reference manual.

	But who will interpret it for me.  You _know_ manuals are written in
the most obscure technicalese available so that it is equally obfuscated to
all who read it.  :)!

>--
>Addresses:-
>JANET:-		ucacmsu@uk.ac.ucl or	steve@uk.ac.ox.earth (preferable)
>Internet:-	ucacmsu@ucl.ac.uk or	steve@earth.ox.ac.uk (preferable)

-Mike

PS:  Someone earlier posted about a 68k newsgroup.  Do you remember the exact
name of the group - sounds like I should subscribe...:)!
From: greg@Quotron.COM (Greg "Maddog" Knauss)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Is page flipping safe, and I need to know about syncing
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:43:14 GMT
Organization: Quotron System, Inc.

chu@acsu.buffalo.edu (John C. Chu) writes:

>Is it ok to use Setscreen to do double buffered animation (i.e., draw
>on one buffer while the other is being displayed and switch. I don't
>know if I've used the right term for this). By that I mean, does it
>work on all nominally ST compatible computers, including those with
>video cards? (Of course, I'd also pay attention to what GEM tells me
>when I start up so that I reserve enough memory for each screen.)

"Double-buffering" or "page-flipping."  And, yep, Setscreen works for
all standard ST and TT resolutions (though they are different sizes,
you need to check the resolution and use bigger buffers on the TT).
I don't know about video cards, but I expect you'd have to use VDI
calls for them...

>Also, a little while back, someone (Dave Baggett??) was talking about
>how one should sync one's game to update the screen every n vblanks
>(where n depends on how much is happening in the program), which will
>among other things, insure that the game plays at the same speed
>across variants of ST-type computers. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying
>attention at the time. How do I do this?

First you decide the maximum number of 1/60 second intervals it will
take to draw your most complex screen (say 4).  Then you write your
drawing routine so it keep track of how many jiffies have gone by
since it started to re-draw the screen (between 0 and 4, depending on
the complexity of the screen).  Then you just wait out the remainder.
If a simple screen takes 1 jiffy to draw, you wait for three.  If a
complex screen takes 3 jiffies to draw, you wait for one.  And the
game runs at the same speed (4 jiffies per refresh) no matter how
complex it gets.

>After a hiatus, I've decided I'm going to return to trying to program
>the ST again, so I want to make sure whatever I do will work on as
>many ST-type computers (i.e., STe, Mega STe, TT, Falcon, unusual
>configurations of those etc.) as possible (actually, working on all of
>them would be preferable).

That's the way to do it.
--
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Greg "Maddog" Knauss                      My boss doesn't know I'm doing this,
 greg@duke.quotron.com                           so I doubt he'd agree with me.
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: dont@klic.rain.com (Don taylor)
Subject: STFM, cartridge port, and math co-processor?
Organization: KLIC
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 02:40:04 GMT

Has anyone put together a project to plug a math co-processor into the
cartridge port?

Is there enough documentation (and interest) to do it?

I have a handful of the National Semiconductor math parts and I believe
that those have been successfully used with other processors with some
effort.  Or is it possible to hack the board up enough to get a Motorola
part working?

This is really meant to be one time, done cheap and dirty

Please reply by email if possible
Thanks
Don Taylor
503-235-6853
dont@klic.rain.com
qiclab!loop!dont

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: lsh1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Shane Hebert)
Subject: The Custom Chips
Keywords: chips atari custom help
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 15:11:50 GMT

Hello,
	Does anyone out there have any tech-info
on the custom chips that Atari uses in the ST?
Stuff like pin-outs, timing diagrams, functionality, etc.



+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                   |    Shane Hebert                      | Disclaimer:      |
|    This space     |    hebert@erc.msstate.edu            |    My opinions   |
|     for rent!     |    hebert@ee.msstate.edu             |    are my own.   |
|                   |    lsh1@ra.msstate.edu               |                  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech