HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: merlin@maths.tcd.ie (Merlin Hughes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: RMA Compacting (Was...)
Date: 5 Apr 92 02:37:21 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

In <16bjIqj013n@bridge.welly.gen.nz> julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright) writes:

>Yes there is - they could hang off the TickerV vector, which gets called
>at 100Hz, no matter what screen mode, and ignore every other call...

The reason this is not done is because the Vsync timer is the only
regular timer. The 100Hz ones are brutally irregular, and yes, the
difference is very noticable.

T.
--SICK--Merlin Hughes--    /|            This is only the beginning.
  merlin@maths.tcd.ie     //|         We will regroup. We will prepare.
                         //_|   When the time comes, we will emerge and take
Acorn.. Deus et machina. /  | our place as the supreme masters of the universe.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: RMA Compacting (Was...)
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 07:49:15 +1200
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz (Julian Wright)
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

merlin@maths.tcd.ie (Merlin Hughes) writes:

> The reason this is not done is because the Vsync timer is the only
> regular timer. The 100Hz ones are brutally irregular, and yes, the
> difference is very noticable.

Ok, well what about using IOC's spare timer - set that up to generate an
interrupt every 50th of a second... THAT should be regular enough...

    Cheers, Julian.
--
----------------------------| RO2:SYS 68,59243844 |--------------------------
wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz |---------------------| "I'm sig of sicknatures!"
----------------------------| RO3:SYS 68,60816742 |--------------------------
--
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: ADFSDirCache and SCSIFSDirCache
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 22:52:58 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
Keywords: ADFSDirCache SCSIFSDirCache


I would be interested in knowing a bit more about how these are actually used, or
at least intended, to be used.  Even the PRMs are more than a bit vague on this.  
What is the O/S meant to do with them?  How should one work out the optimum 
values for them, and what factors are involved? If this is only relevant to 
Risc-OS 3.1 (?), please say so.

Gavin


-- 
                     Tomorrow's Society
                         Depends on
                     Today's Children  - help us raise them properly!
******* These comments have no known correlation with dept. policy! *******
From: ssurawls@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Mister E)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: >>>>!ModelPlus, !Rayshade and the Acorn show in Reading
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:05:01 GMT

Ian Palmer wrote;

>Interestingly, as far as I can work out, the person who is to buy the
>system has to buy an LC system, and the person who supplies the tape
>to them also has to have bought an LC system.

Are you sure about this? I couldn't find anything about what you have to do,
apart from pass the cassette onto another person. But then I didn't look hard
or listen to the tape...

>All I need to do now is find someone who's going to buy an A3000 or
>A5000 LC package....

Blast! Just bought one.

>Ian

Ian!


Posted Mon Apr 13 17:04:55 BST 1992

=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Mr Ian Rawlings, Telephone Reading (0734) 662301
	EMAIL ssurawls@susssys1.rdg.ac.uk

A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city sub-
scribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury
was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" said the man. "Only
a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury 20 of them."
From: lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk (Lorcan Mongey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: 8 bit stuff... (inc. postings & moderation)
Date: 15 Apr 92 09:49:49 GMT
Reply-To: Lorcan Mongey <lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Gated to News by demon.co.uk


 
In article <1992Apr09.031430.3479@demon.co.uk> aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan
Glover) writes:
 
>I would be quite happy to stand down if the net concensus is that a
>change is a good idea (... certainly it's likely to better than the
>present posting rate we're achieveing :-/ ). 
 
Oh, I don't mind the lack of postings so much, just as long as whatever
is keeping you busy there at Acorn turns out to be really wonderful! :-)
 
Lorcan
From: lithgow@uslp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: ARM and the New Apple Personal Digital Assistant
Date: 14 Apr 92 03:41:56 GMT

This is from this week's Unigram.X.

	"...  Apple also plans to introduce two low-cost colour Macs
	early next year, the paper says.  One will have a built-in 8-bit,
	10" colour display, 16MHz 68030 processor, 4Mb memory and 40Mb
	disk for under $1,300.  A more powerful colour Macintosh, using a
	25MHz 68030 and aimed at the multimedia market with at least 4Mb
	memory, a 40Mb disk and 14" colour Trinitron display with 640 by
	480 pixel resolution, is expected to cost under $1,900.  And
	Apple could introduce its first Personal Digital Assistant at the
	Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago next month, MacWeek says.
	The device uses an infra- red link to connect to a desktop
	computer or to other Personal Digital Assistants, and it will use
	a low-power RISC processor - Cambridge, UK-based Advanced RISC
	Machines Ltd's ARM600 presumably, a 3" by 5" supertwist but not
	backlit screen and will have no other input devices except a
	pen.  It is said that it will be able to recognise cursive
	handwriting and gestures entered with the pen.  It should cost
	less than $700."

I included the details on the 'low cost' colour Mac's so that you could
laugh along with me. :-) These things will be unusable, if my experience
with LC's is anything to go by.

I've heard other news about Apple's Personal Digital Assistant, to whit,
that Sharp wants to use (market, sell, etc.) it, too.

But US$700 is pretty steep. I think I'll wait for the AT&T iteration of
the Active Book, which should be coming out this year, hopefully.

-Malcolm    lithgow@usl.com    These are my opinions, except for the ones
                               in the quote, obviously.

P.S. Note the 'presumably' after 'ARM600' in the quote. Also remember
that Unigram.X is an English rag that is uncommonly proud of English
products (cw PCW).
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: charles@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (Charles Loader)
Subject: !impression - so how good is it?
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 12:15:13 GMT

I have used troff, view, WordPerfect, Ami-Pro, !impression and a few others.

For my purposes !impression seems as good as any and easier to use than most.
It seems to have a lot similarities to Ami-Pro (ver 2) in the way that it
works. It rarely seems to crash now,  certainly not as frequently as things
running under Windows 3.0 and the Beta-test 3.1. (Windows presents so many
problems we have abandoned it until we ca replace it with something that works
a little better.  My Archimedes is at home and it gets to to the occasional job
that the PC clones will not do.

There some things I would like to see for !Impression

A chemical structure drawing program that runs on the Arch.  At present I can
move files from ChemWindows (PC) but this is not very convenient.  Anyone know
of such a program?

An equivalent to Unix BIB to merge references into !Impression

============

There are some other things that seem to be missing (I do not use them but
wonder how they should be done).

Footnotes - how are they done. There seems to be no built in mechanism.

Envelope addressing - ditto

============


Other that I prefer !Impression to the other packages that I have used (Ami-Pro
is perhaps on of the best of the rest).


Charles Loader
Chemistry Department
MUN
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: help! checkmap fails
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 22:51:59 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

lithgow@uslp.UUCP writes:
>Is it my imagination, or are Philip and I, and the Acorn employees, the
>only Acorn-computer-lovers in this group? ;-)

I'm an Acorn-Computer-lover... if I didn't care about stuff, then I wouldn't
be so critical of most things (except RISC OS Lib, 'cos it's BAD)...
The problem with being devoted to a machine because it is so good is that
it really hurts when Acorn does silly things with it. It hurts even more
when you make suggestions to the mother-company, the great and hallowed
light of the North (well, North from here, anyway), and they either ignore
you or wait for 2 months and then say "NO" in a way that makes it seem like
they really didn't read what you said properly...

It is also really painful to see one of the best (apart from some minor
niggles) hardware designs being held back by bad software (Anyone remember
ArcWriter? Hahahahahah hee hee hee snort! sob!) and low-impact marketing.

Just remember, we criticise out of love. It is a burden, but we must bear it.

Also remember that criticism and wingeing seems to be the only way to draw
any response out of Acorn, albeit the wrong response... This always
surprises me, as individual *people* at acorn all seem to be very eager
and willing to help (good one guys), but the corporate machine has a somewhat
less helpful image from my viewpoint.

I think we all just want everything to be *better*.
We all recognise the good points - they are fine. But the bad points need
to be improved, thus the bad points are discussed more. This is the case
with any machine...

-- 
_________________  "I'd like to answer this question in two ways:
  /____ _ _/_ __       First in my normal voice, and then
 // / //_//_ /_/       in a silly, high-pitched whine." (Monty Python)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: help! checkmap fails
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 22:19:57 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.


In article <9204060724.AA18880@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, lithgow@uslp.UUCP writes:
   [...]
|> Is it my imagination, or are Philip and I, and the Acorn employees, the
|> only Acorn-computer-lovers in this group? ;-)
   [...]
It maybe your imagination, people often criticise that which they love.

Gavin

-- 
                     Tomorrow's Society
                         Depends on
                     Today's Children  - help us raise them properly!
******* These comments have no known correlation with dept. policy! *******
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 19:11:06 +0100
From: kai@nicedel.north.de (Kai Schlichting)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Fast modems on the Arc.
Organization: Archimedes !RUCP Users

n_sabra@pavo.concordia.ca (NIZAR SABRA) writes:

> Hello,
> 
> 	It was mentioned in a previous post that the Arc's serial chip does
> not like (can not handle?) modems with V32.bis. Is this true? I am ordering
> the new Supra FaxModem 14.4K, which has V32bis. Can anyone think of a reason
> why this should not work on an Arc (3000 in particular)?
> 
> 	Any info/advice would be appreciated...
> 
> Nizar.
> 
Hello, I'm using an a3000 with 4megs/100megs scsi and I HAVE some problems
with fast serial speed.
My Zyxel v32bis does fine all the time ,but 19200 is a speed where the serial
chips become unreliable,which is all Acorns fault. If they hadn't build
this sh*t into this machine alot ppl would be happier.
It is notably unstable,when you download (within the desktop) and start doing
something else...ZMODEM errors like hell, the best thing is: put the machine
into a fast mode (0;12 *argh*) and do NOTHING but watching the download
happen.It seems ,that interrupt latency is that high,that it can't do a proper
Wimp_Redraw for some tasks (like !Edit *argh*) without loosing a bit/byte on
the serial port.
I have a module here that extends rs432 buffer to 8kb each ,which doesn't solve
the problem.
I got my serial cable wired 1:1 standard since ages,which is possible,when you
set your modem to AT &c0 (CD always on), because I dont think that the Acorn
solution to the prob (see the fortnightly posted 'famous Q&A' on this group)
does anything but making my 'online/not online' bar in the comms prog working.
(Prove me otherwise,guys!)

Solutions/Conclusions:
- avoid downloading uncompressed files (like .txt) which
push the local DTE rate to the 19.2k margin.
- do nothing while downloading (the prob NEVER occurs with uploading!).
switch machine to a lower resolution mode.
- beg at acorn,that they search/release an upgrade serial chip WITHOUT BUGS,
and with 57kbit/s (like in the A5000,but that is a complete i/o chip which
does harddisk/floppy handling  as well) which my Zyxel v32bis already accepts!
- beg at acorn that they release a add-up serial podule for 30$ (the ususal
price in the PC market) ; rather than that 400$ crop I've seen last
year somewhere....

And: keep modeming ,because speeding comms between arc owners help alot
keeping the arc alive....
bye,Kai.

--------------------------------------------------------------- 
Tel.:  +49 421 556803 (voice)
E-mail: kai@nicedel.north.de (private UUCP site)
       j08i@dhbrrz41.bitnet (not valid;gets forwarded to rs550)
       j08i@rs550.zfn.uni-bremen.de (University)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Scandal: Acorn betrays customers! (:-)
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 02:34:50 +1200
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz (Julian Wright)
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

/G=Richard/S=Crook/O=SJ-Research/ADMD=INTERSPAN/C=GB/@MHS-RELAY.AC.UK writes:

> julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright) writes:
> 
> > Also (and here's a really potentially controversial option) perhaps a
> > configurable option to "Auto mount" a disc when it is inserted in the
> > drive, opening it's root filer window if this is the first time the disc
> > has been seen. After all, what's the first thing you do after putting a
> > new disc in the drive?
> 
> Frequently, to run !Killer, before allowing any viruses on the disc to
> execute...

I am sure that if an Automount option were suddenly to appear in a new
version of RISC OS, Alan Glover or whoever is responsible for the
developement of Killer now would quickly add to their code so that such a
disc would be scanned before the filer window popped up. Remember there is
an option in Killer already to scan a disc automatically when the drive icon
is clicked upon...

    Cheers, Julian.
--
----------------------------| RO2:SYS 68,59243844 |--------------------------
wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz |---------------------| "I'm sig of sicknatures!"
----------------------------| RO3:SYS 68,60816742 |--------------------------
--
From: devijt1@imec.be (Jo Tytgat)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn
Date: 16 Apr 92 12:20:42 GMT
Reply-To: devijt1@imec.UUCP (Jo Tytgat)
Organization: IMEC vzw, Leuven, Belgium

In article <1BlR28j014n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:

>   It is interesting to note that this sort of thing has been taken to a
>higher level in RO3. The internals of RO3 seem now to work totally on *full*
>pathnames at the FS level. All %,^,&,etc... symbols are now handled at the
>FileSwitch level (I think, it could be FileCore...). So all FS's now ever
>need to handle is the simplified case of a full path for all file
>references. Of course this results in smaller FS code size for all new FS's
>but the really cute bit is that this system still works just fine with old
>RO2 style FS's - they are just a bit larger than they need to be...

In RO2 all the %, ^, &, etc. symbols are handled by FileCore which makes
writing a FS under FileSwitch rather tricky as you have to keep your own
library (%) and URD (&) into account.

It would be a great step forward if this would be already done by RO3 but
your new FileSwitch FS would be incompatible with RO2 (Well, incompatible
in that sence that you can not use the %, ^, & symbols in your pathname).

I hope Acorn will give more details about buffered and unbuffered FS
(how to implement it, should you look after you own buffers, etc.)
because the PRMs are not so clear about it.

John
devijt1@imec.be
BASS
From: mcg@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: A5000 disk formats
Date: 15 Apr 92 21:51:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: waikato.1992Apr15.095148.7427
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Right :-


	Format      			Description
	  A				720K Atari
	  B				360K Atari
	  D				800K Arthur
	  E			        800K RISC
	  F				1.6M RISC
	  L			        640K ADFS
	  Q				1.44M MS-DOS
          M  				720K ""
          H				1.2M "" 
          N 				360K  ""
          P				180K  ""
	  T				320K ""
	  U				160K ""

This is straight out of the OS3 guide.....
From: cabr07@ccsun.strath.ac.uk ( G.N.Sinclair)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn News Release - World Didac
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:24:40 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Strathclyde University Physics

In article <14087@acorn.co.uk> bsalter@acorn.co.uk (Brian Salter) writes:
>
> Acorn Computers at World Didac 1992

*What* does Didac stand for?

Gordon.
-- 
JANET: G.N.Sinclair@uk.ac.strath
Other networks:   G.N.Sinclair%strath.ac.uk@   plus one of:
BITNET: UKACRL     UUCP: ukc.uucp      Internet: nsf.ac.uk
From: mark@acorn.co.uk (Mark Taunton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: UNIX filesystem code structure (was Re: Acorn)
Date: 16 Apr 92 09:23:42 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, UK

In article <1BlR28j014n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:

[ long quote from article by Malcolm Lithgow, about UNIX filesystems, deleted ]

>   So, correct me if I am wrong, is that all Unix FS's don't share
>*any* code at all right?
>
><Falls in corner and laughs alot.>

Sorry, wrong.  It varies somewhat among the various implementations of
UNIX, but certainly in RISC iX (based on 4.3BSD and Sun NFS 4.0) and
in many other BSD derivatives, there is a substantial amount of common
code.  All the buffering, for all filesystems, is handled by a single
code module, using FS-specific routines only for the very lowest level
(actual data transfers).  All the processing of filename lookup is
done by common code, only using FS-specific subroutines to access the
individual filesystem data structures (the unified filesystem
namespace & syntax helps a lot there).  All the system calls (e.g.
open(), read(), write()) pass through quite a lot common code.

It is true that at some points, the Sun implementation of NFS client
code - which also involves some restructuring of the original BSD
filesystem code - has rather more duplication of functionality than I
think ought to be possible.  (I haven't yet looked at the independent
NFS implementation done by Berkeley, which might do it better.)
However, it is, overall, nowhere near as bad as Philip seems to
imagine.  He should calm down now, and climb back into his chair :-)

>   Ya know the more I find out about Unix the less I like it...

Well it certainly has some flaws (e.g. it's nowadays rather too big),
but I believe the underlying fundamental structure and concepts of
UNIX to be generally very good.  It has certainly had a huge (and more
often than not, beneficial) influence on the design of other operating
systems.

>Philip R. Banks

Mark.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: basic compilers
From: epoo1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Edouard Malachi     Poor           )
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 07:03:27 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

In <1992Apr6.130749.26936@doc.ic.ac.uk> ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer) writes:

>I was wondering what different peoples expreriences with the various
>(well two) basic compilers that are available, ie. ABC and RiscBASIC
>(I think they're the only two). The only reviews I have of these are
>well over a year old (probably two) and certainly ABC will have
>changed since then, 'cos it was only version 2 then.

>I notice that quite a few things that are floating around the PD
>places are compiled with ABC, and so I began to think there must be
>something in it (but as far as I know it is more difficult to tell if
>something was compiled with RiscBASIC due to the fact that it does not
>have a module library). 

>As far as I recall ABC (then) came out the worse of the two both in
>speed and the fact that it could not handle some of Basic V's features
>(eg. the new array stuff, plus matrix stuff).

>Any comments anyone has on either of these compilers (or any I might
>not have heard about) will be gratefully received.

RiscBASIC (a year ago anyway) was the better product by far. It was more
robust and the code ran much, much faster (It did with mine anyway...)
I belive it was written in C whereas ABC was (ABC) compiled Basic.

The main problem with both products, however, was the fact that only
about 5% of programs I tested them on compiled the first time, and with
(sometimes considerable) work you could get somewhere between 30 and 50%
of them to compile once changes had been made. They just didn't seem to
cope well with my everyday BASIC code. The more simple a program was, the
easier it was to get to compile, but I didn't have much need of simple
programs... The only thing that ever impressed me was my BASIC macpaint
converter... That speed up by a factor to 50 times at least- a couple of
seconds for a picture. Most other code was lucky to get 5 times faster
(if that... although RiscBASIC seemed faster on most things execpt PRINTs
and the like)

My advice is to start useing C... :-)

Edouard.
From: gta@st-andrews.ac.uk (Graham Allan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Fast modems on the Arc.
Date: 10 Apr 92 13:32:24 GMT
Reply-To: gta@st-andrews.ac.uk
Organization: Greyfriars mail-relay

kai@nicedel.north.de (Kai Schlichting) writes:

> It is notably unstable,when you download (within the desktop) and start doing
> something else...ZMODEM errors like hell, the best thing is: put the machine
> into a fast mode (0;12 *argh*) and do NOTHING but watching the download
> happen.It seems ,that interrupt latency is that high,that it can't do a proper
> Wimp_Redraw for some tasks (like !Edit *argh*) without loosing a bit/byte on
> the serial port.

Do you have the standard 'fix' modules like IRQutils loaded? (from the RISC
OS extras disc). The readme file for it says:

  Since the development of RISC OS, a new module IRQUtils has been produced
  which improves the IRQ latency of RISC OS 2.00 under some circumstances. 
  This can make it easier to use certain devices (such as the serial line) in
  the desktop environment. It can also improve operation outside the desktop,
  especially when the device is being used in background.

So, if you're not using it at the moment, loading it may solve your problem.

Graham Allan
Physics Dept., University of St.Andrews.
From: ssurawls@susssys1.reading.ac.uk (Mister E)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: >>help! checkmap fails
Date: 13 Apr 92 13:59:40 GMT

lithgow@uslp.UUCP writes:

> Speaking of caches, my ADFSBuffers setting of 256 may have messed PackDir
> up -- I'll try it with no ADFSBuffers. (I do have the latest version.)

May not be it. I am unable to de-arc a program with packdir. The file is
large, and packdir gets halfway through and then drops dead. I can get the
contents of the archive back again easily enough, but it's a shame about this
kind of thing as for certain areas packdir was useful, and faster than spark.
But I think spark is the order of the day again! Or even compression, if you
can get it.

Ian


Posted Mon Apr 13 14:59:35 BST 1992

=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ 8< =+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Mr Ian Rawlings, Telephone Reading (0734) 662301
	EMAIL ssurawls@susssys1.rdg.ac.uk

A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city sub-
scribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury
was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" said the man. "Only
a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury 20 of them."