HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: volker@sfb256.iam.uni-bonn.de ( Volker A. Brandt )
Subject: Re: MiNT and Ramdisks
Organization: Applied Math, University of Bonn, Germany
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 11:25:16 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.090556.16470@aber.ac.uk> hrs@aber.ac.uk (Herbert Martin Sauro) writes:
>Having finally found a ramdisk (Mdisk from a.a) that can live in TT-RAM,
>it now turns out that it is incompatible with MiNT. Anybody go any ideas?

What version do you have?  MDisk has been working with MiNT for a long time 
now.  I have MDisk 6.93 -- I don't know the version that's on atari.archive
but if people need it I can ftp it there.

-- Volker
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bitnet:   UNM409@DBNRHRZ1                              Volker A. Brandt
UUCP:     ...!unido!DBNRHRZ1.bitnet!unm409             Angewandte Mathematik
Internet: volker@sfb256.iam.uni-bonn.de                (Bonn, Germany)
From: vombruch@quando.quantum.de (Stefan vom Bruch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: reset, reset, reset, down...
Date: 30 Jul 92 11:00:23 GMT
Organization: Quantum Software GmbH, Dortmund, Germany
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

davidli@simvax.labmed.umn.edu writes:
: In article <1992Jul29.101755.27052@sci.kun.nl>, bartjan@cs.kun.nl (Bart-Jan Bouwers) writes:
: >Anyone had this problem? My ST keeps resetting itself when I boot it (from
: >diskette). It does read the prg's in the auto-folder as well as the acc's
: >but as soon as the desktop comes up, it resets. This sequence then repeats
: >and repeats and repeats until I'm fed up. So, I've put it far away in a
: >cupboard... Who knows what could be the cause of this and what needs to be
: >repaired? Tell me!
: 
: A quick guess - you have an AUTO program and/or desk accessory which is either
: corrupted or won't work on your ST.  Typical programs which can cause the
: activity you see include:  monochrome emulators, STe-specific AUTO programs
: or desk accessories run on an ST (and, sometimes, vice versa), and screen
: accelerators run in the wrong resolution (e.g. QUICKST - color version - run
: on with a monochrome monitor).
[ stuff deleted ]

Another possibility is that all programs work just fine on your ST individually
but crash when you put them together on one disc because they are not 100%
compatible. This usually involves just two programs that simply won't work
together. Try to find out which ones they are by copying different combinations
to another disk, then decide which of two you can live without.

Hope this helps, Stefan

-- 
 _--_|\            Stefan vom Bruch                         vombruch@quantum.de
/      | ______________________________________________________________________
\.--._/ (_      /  Quantum GmbH, Emil-Figge-Str.83, W-4600 Dortmund 50, Germany
_____v____) |/ /_)
From: jvt@its.bt.co.uk (John Trickey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: A "C" question...
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:54:19 GMT
Organization: BT Group Computing Unix Support, Birmingham, UK

In article <1992Jul29.135300.12646@quando.quantum.de> vombruch@quando.quantum.de (Stefan vom Bruch) writes:
>MDORMAN1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Mike Dorman) writes:
>
>: I've got a question about how to do something in "C".

>: wx_name(ws,str)
>: Window ws;
>: char *str;

Don't pass a struct on the stack (if typdef Window (strut window *) then
OK). Its messy, slow and how do you return your results to the original
struct as you're only working with a copy.

>: I would then like to malloc() memory to hold the string that we've been given

Yes I do this on memory intensive applications. Where strings are likely
to be common, I save them in a struct for later searching and re-use.
struct string {
	struct string *next;
	char *text;
};

Warning, for read-only strings and also **slow** but if you need the
memory...

>    (as opposed to global variables). So when you call the function again	
>    you can be sure that they have the same value as after the last call
>    of that function.

Thats their use inside a function. The are also used inside a module at
the outer level to define variables in the data seg that are not
exported from that module. eg if you had a prog made up from
main.c, mod1.c & mod2.c you could define
	static char *foo;
in each and they would not interfere.

>    Static variables are very rare (on the atari anyway), and I don't
>    think you'll need them in this program.

Sri, I beg to differ. They are a very valuable tool & you will find many
library routines that return a char * from some other parameter(s) use
the mechanism to store their string (otherwise they would not work). eg

	(char *)ctime((time_t *));

That would be implemented as:

char *
fn(clock)
time_t *clock;
{
	static char result[LENGTH];

	sprintf(result, FORMAT_STRING, ARGS....);
	return result;
}

Hope this helps you understand what is going on.

John


-- 
John Trickey <jvt@its.bt.co.uk>
       Voice: +44 21 524 8200     Fax: +44 21 553 6120
(Home) <john@its.bt.co.uk> || <john@g4rev.ampr.org> || G4REV @ GB7FLG
       +44 21 308 8892
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: seimet@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Uwe Seimet)
Subject: Re: Upgrading the ST or TT ...
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 10:10:18 GMT

baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) writes:

> 
>	Assuming you make a small logic board to enable pin compatibility,
>can the '030 in the TT be replaced with the '040 without much of a major
>hassle (ie: is it more complicated than stealing the signals from the '030
>(and disabling it) and routing them to the '040?)  As far as I know, the
>only major difference (hardware wise) is the larger cache and the bus-snooping
>logic (which wont make much of a difference if you don't plan on putting
>more than one '040 in it - Hmmm maybe two...:).  Can anyone think of a good
>reason for shooting this down?  Or should we all be getting out our bread
>boards (ha! more like etched boards:) and turbocharging our TTs?

Some months ago replacing the '030 by an '040 was discussed in the
m68k-newsgroup. The result was that it's nearly impossible to do so because
there are some major obstacles to it. Don't ask me what the problems are in
detail because I don't know. But there was a general consensus that using an
'040 instead of an '030 is not as easy as some may think.

***************************************
*        Uwe Seimet                   *
*        seimet@rhrk.uni-kl.de        *
*        seimet@chemie.uni-kl.de      *
*-------------------------------------*
* I really hate this damned machine,  *
*     I wish that they would sell it. *
* It never does that what I mean      *
*     but only what I tell it.        *
***************************************
From: lingnau@math.uni-frankfurt.de (Anselm Lingnau)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Gem program control of mouse and cursor
Date: 29 Jul 92 09:05:55 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Frankfurt/Main, Dept. of Mathematics

In article <1992Jul14.080634.3111@donau.et.tudelft.nl>,
reeuwijk@dutentb.et.tudelft.nl (C. van Reeuwijk) writes:
> In <1992Jul10.143247.22602@newshost.lanl.gov> hutch@bellman.lanl.gov
> (John Hutchinson) writes:
> 
> >> [don't warp the mouse pointer]
>
> >SO?  What's wrong with Tim's idea?
> 
> Personally I hate programs that do things like that. [...]

I agree with C. Tim, if you must warp the mouse in your application, then
please add an option to turn this off from a configuration file.

Heuer's Law: Any feature that cannot be turned off is a bug.

Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau, Buchenweg 1, 6239 Eppstein| You see things, and you say `Why?'
lingnau@math.uni-frankfurt.de      Germany| But I dream things that never were,
University of Frankfurt, CompSci and Maths| and say `Why not?'  --- G. B. Shaw
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: mack@deci.cs.umn.edu (Dan Mack)
Subject: Networking with DMA?
Summary: Can you network two or more STs using the DMA port?
Keywords: network, DMA
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 22:15:35 GMT

Is it possible to network two STs together using the DMA port?  For
example, if I wrote a bit of machine code that sent a byte out the DMA
port, could another machine read it in on its DMA port?

Just curious,

Thanks,

Dan
--
-- -- -- --- --- --- ---- ----  ___  ---- ----- ----- ----- ------ ------ -----
Dan Mack (mack@cray.com)       / | \   	  "We're not hitchiking anymore... ..
Sun/SGI Resource Group         \/_\/           We're riding!"  -Commander Hoek
Cray Research, Eagan MN   ----- ----- ----- ---- ---- ---- --- --- --- -- -- --
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: wisner@netcom.com (Bill Wisner)
Subject: Dear Mr. Very Competent Technical Person
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 03:53:19 GMT
Organization: Trailing Edge Technologies, Mountain View, CA

I recently pulled my 1040STfm out of storage after moving and have a
few questions about this aging beast that hopefully you, Mr. VCTP,
can answer.

First, the keyboard needs a good cleaning.  This is nothing new, and
I've done it before.  But does anyone have any particularly effective
cleaning methods to recommend?  How much does an entire replacement
keyboard generally run?  I certainly wouldn't mind a fix for my
mushy space bar.

My SM124 monitor is very flaky.  After it's been on for about 20 minutes,
the screen simply blacks out.  There are no problems before this and the
monitor still has power (LED/sound), it just goes.  From the behaviour,
I've started thinking it might be overheating in some way.  Now, my
strictly limited technical prowess doesn't extend to monitors, so can
someone who really knows what he's talking about perhaps help me?

Finally, I'd appreciate recommendations for good Atari service people
here in the San Francisco Bay area, perferably Santa Clara Valley.  If
you're not local, pretend I didn't write this paragraph.

Yours,
Depreciating in Mountain View
From: kgr@incoherent.isr.alaska.edu (Ken G Richards)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Help, my monitor died.
Date: 23 Jul 92 22:29:39 GMT
Organization: Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, AK

My sm124 montior has died on me. I still have power (the speaker still
works) but the screen is completely dark. Any ideas if this is
fixable?

For a few days before it died the monitor was acting strangely. The
image would swim and change size for a few seconds and then go back to
normal. 

Thanks,
-- 
Ken Richards				Box 900935 UAF
kgr@incoherent.isr.alaska.edu           Fairbanks AK
ftkgr@acad3.alaska.edu                  99775-1040
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: carl@syscon.rn.com (Carl Kreider)
Subject: Re: DTP troubles
Organization: Syscon Corporate Headquarters - South Bend, IN USA
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 22:33:39 GMT

sheppard_r@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:

>In article <1992Jul21.130026.7418@syscon.rn.com>, carl@syscon.rn.com (Carl Kreider) writes:
>>I could sure use help with two problems.  My wife is using Timeworks DTP
>>to do a little project.  It won't print right on the NX2420.  The GDOS
>>printer driver is the Epson LQ, which should work.  But it seems that
>>lines of graphics data that are 512 bytes long don't get printed.  You
>>get space instead.  But the data can be seen using the hex dump debug
>>mode on the Star.  Has anyone seen this?  Is there a fix?

>Have you updated to the version 2.0 of TW. DTP, it does pay to..

No.  Didn't think that would help with this, though.  I guess she is
getting good enough I should consider it.

>Also and there could be a new driver in the new FONTGDOS that is posted
>on GEnie, but is Copyrighted there..

Could be the GDOS driver on the SLM804.  Don't know.

I *do* have an answer (not a solution) on the NX2420 problem.  It drops
any line of graphics composed of 256 * n bytes (or triplets).  Sounds
like someone hosed a test in the roms.  Fix?  Change the pattern you
are trying to print B^{
-- 
Carl Kreider       Usenet   ....!nstar!syscon!carl
CIS  71076,76      Internet  carl@syscon.rn.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: u882453@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (Andrew King)
Subject: Does the STe REALLY have 8 channel DMA sound ?!
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 11:56:46 GMT

I have just read in a recent issue of 'ST Format' stating that the
STe has 8 channel DMA sound. Atari have also advertised this fact...

Is this complete bollox ?? 

I assume that they do not imply the Yamaha soundchip channels or by using
software techniques such as 'sample averaging'.
 
Andrew
From: boblu@tekgen.bv.tek.com (Robert Luneski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Continuing 1.44 Drive Woes
Date: 31 Jul 92 20:10:47 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc.

In article <92213.130759JJL101@psuvm.psu.edu> JJL101@psuvm.psu.edu (J.J. Lehett) writes:
>
>    Well, having bought a Tos 2.05 MSTe 4/50 with a 1.44 drive in it, that
>was not working, I have now upgraded it to TOS 2.06, and installed a newer ajax
>chip.  However still no luck.  From the desktop the machines ALWAYS fails a
>format of a HD disk somewhere very soon after the 40th track.

The problems you are experiencing may be due to noise from the power supply
corrupting the data traveling trough the floppy drive flat cabling.  The
higher frequency of the high density data trsnsmission makes it more
susceptible to this noise. The offical Atari installation documentation
includes explicit instructions from the routing of the flat cabling to avoid
the power supply induced noise.  It also explicitly describes the formatting
problems you are having as an indication of improper cable routing.  

You can also have the cables routed correctly and still experience the
problem.  Early(there is no clear definition of this) units were shipped with
an additional center grounding screw within the power supply housing.  It was
found that removing this screw reduced the noise level and the high density
drive problmes went away.  Models currently shipping have this screw removed
at the factory.  This is not-trivial to remove and if you do not know what
your doing do not attempt to open the power supply housing. This is provided
for information only.

Another possibility if you did the installation yourself is the reversal of
the data ribbon cable into the floppy drive.  Pin 1 is reversed on the high
density drives from the position that it is in for a double density one.
Easy to miss that one, although you would probably have more sever problems.

I hope this helps,

 ____                                                                    ____
/\/\/\  Bob Luneski  Diamond Back II and Diamond Edge Support           /\/\/\
\/\/\/  Oregon Research Associates              boblu@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM \/\/\/
 \/\/   16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy., Suite 162      Genie: B.LUNESKI1        \/\/
  \/    Tigard, OR 97224  Phone: (503) 620-4919 FAX:(503) 639-6182        \/
From: jvt@its.bt.co.uk (John Trickey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Problems with ARGV
Date: 30 Jul 92 17:11:18 GMT
Organization: BT Group Computing Unix Support, Birmingham, UK

In article <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.  

Yes and no. I don't see the point of duplicating the information.

>  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.)
>
>  Thoughts?

Am I missing something? It seems all too easy for me. Why not pass ARGC ?

so in the above example:

ARGC="3"

(assuming the cli does not interpret the *.c) and

ARGV="grep\0\0*.c\0"

(yes there are 2 \0 's on the end --- remember a str is terminated by \0)

then the startup code mimics
	tmp = argc = atoi(getenv("ARGC"));
	while (--tmp) {
		. argv processing
		.
	}
	. argv tidy up
	main(argc, argv);

and you can pass null strings, binary data (as long as it does not
contain \0) as much as you like.

-- 
John Trickey <jvt@its.bt.co.uk>
       Voice: +44 21 524 8200     Fax: +44 21 553 6120
(Home) <john@its.bt.co.uk> || <john@g4rev.ampr.org> || G4REV @ GB7FLG
       +44 21 308 8892
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: bartjan@cs.kun.nl (Bart-Jan Bouwers)
Subject: reset, reset, reset, down...
Summary: dead ST because of looping resets
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 10:17:55 GMT

Hi,

Anyone had this problem? My ST keeps resetting itself when I boot it (from
diskette). It does read the prg's in the auto-folder as well as the acc's
but as soon as the desktop comes up, it resets. This sequence then repeats
and repeats and repeats until I'm fed up. So, I've put it far away in a
cupboard... Who knows what could be the cause of this and what needs to be
repaired? Tell me!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bart-Jan J. Bouwers       | phone:    +31-80652551      |   |\  |\
Dept. of Computer Science | internet: bartjan@cs.kun.nl |   |/_.|/
University of Nijmegen    | bitnet:   U055025@HNYKUN11  |   |\ ||\
The Netherlands           |                             |   |/ ||/
                                                              /
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 "Quit dreaming this is real life baby,                       
 Real life is the only life what's it all about" - Simple Minds
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech

Has anybody used BASH (the MiNT-aware version) to run one of the configuration
scripts supplied for the recent versions of various GNU utilities (fileutils,
grep, ...) ?
Whatever I try, BASH tells me that there are syntax errors in the script.
If I run the script via 'bash configure', I get one specific error; if I run
it from BASH by '. configure' or 'source configure', I get a different one.
Needless to say, if I isolate part of the script and run BASH on it, it works
just fine.

Has anybody seen this? Is it a bug in BASH? Am I doing something wrong?

	Thanks in advance,

	Jens.

(Going to try KSH now ...)
--
Internet: jensk@hpbeo82.bbn.hp.com    HPDESK : JENS_KILIAN%XU@HP1200
MausNet:  Jens Kilian @ BB                     KILIAN_JENS/HP1200_XU@hpbbi4
Phone: (0|+49)7031-14-4308            TELNET : 778-4308
Fax  : (0|+49)7031-14-2049
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
From: vspicer@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: TT SCSI woes again...
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:04:54 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

is anyone out there using Klaus Pedersen's SCSI driver code for the TT?
i've modified it slightly to work under Lattice C 5.5 but it's giving
me a hard time. 

the assembly routine that selects the SCSI device always times out, no
matter how long a timeout period i give it. about a year ago i wrote my
own code to drive the SCSI bus in C, but it doesn't do DMA transfer
properly and needs to handshake data across. when we found Klaus' code
we were quite pleased.

the thing that absoulutely killed the speed on my C routines was the
device selection. it had to waste a lot of time just sitting in delay
loops. Klaus' code is much more elegant about this, but it also
appears to not work on our machine. 

any help or comments would be appreciated
	thanks in advance
		vic spicer
From: eker@loria.crin.fr (Steven Eker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Sound Chip:  What are the volume levels?
Date: 23 Jul 92 09:57:46 GMT
Organization: CRIN (CNRS) Nancy - INRIA Lorraine

In article <9466@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>, warwick@cs.uq.oz.au (Warwick Allison) writes:

|> 
|> I tried a guess of sqrt(2)^V, and it seems pretty good - maybe even better
|> than the tables I was using before.
|>

Got it in one! Actually the official docs (or so I'm told) put 15 = 1V,
14 = 0.707V, 13 = 0.5V, ...
 
|> With the program I've written, I can produce "magic tables" of varying
|> characteristics - eg. one to play softer-recorded sounds at increased
|> volume without first doing an information-losing scale-up.

I think some programs implement this. One thing you might try is a
"soft clipping" table for overdrive effects.

|> The Sun Sparc
|> "ulaw" format could be trivially supported by this program too - it should
|> give quite EXCELLENT reproduction of those sampled sounds - probably even
|> better than is possible with the STe/TT DMA sound hardware.

I doubt you'll get better quality than the DMA chip. For one thing the Yamaha
chip is pretty noisy and anyway even an 8bit table is far from perfect.

BTW has anyone managed to get >9 bits of sound out of the DMA chip by fiddling
with the volume control chip in real time (an amiga coding trick) or is
the microwire bus to slow?

Steven
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
From: bammi@acae127.cadence.com (Jwahar R. Bammi)
Subject: Re: Unixmode
Organization: Cadence Design Systems
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1992 05:46:53 GMT

In article <1992Jul20.151854@disuns2.epfl.ch> monnier@disuns2.epfl.ch (Stefan Monnier) writes:
> 
> I just installed Emacs 18.58: this time, I used Unixmode: that's
> much better indeed !
> But a little problem arose: I usually use less1.7 to view files.
> when I want to view a file named ReadMe (for example), I have to
> write 'less ReadMe'; 'less readme' doesn't work (although it is
> under this name that gemdos stores the file)
> 
> How come ?
> Is it normal ?
	yes, unixmode gives you case sensitivity too. to quote
unixmode.doc  (the `c' option):

c       -- Pretend case is significant in file names. If this flag is
           present, then UNIXMODE programs will not translate the case
           of file names in any way, and will assume that case is significant
           to the underlying operating system.
           The "c" flag should *not* be used in present versions of GEMDOS,
           since these are case insensitive. It is provided so that programs
           will work correctly under GEMDOS extenders or future versions of
           the OS.


> In this case I'm quite unhappy cause it is not so easy to remember
	RTFM and be happy :-) :-) !!!!!

> the exact name (as ls shows normal gemdos names).
> Couldn't Unixmode be introduced as another filesystem: this way
> translation would always occur: for ls and all other apps)

	certainly. or you can grab yourself a set of utilities that
are UNIXMODE aware (from A.A). similarly, you can grab yourself a
shell like bash or master that are unixmode aware, and they you can
do completions, regexp matches and so on according to unixmode
settings.

cheers,
--
--
bang:   uunet!cadence!bammi			jwahar r. bammi
domain: bammi@cadence.com
GEnie:	J.Bammi
CIS:    71515,155
From: jensk@hpbbrd.bbn.hp.com (Jens Kilian)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 10:51:40 GMT
Subject: Re: MiNT ptys
Organization: HP Mechanical Design Division