HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Archimedes World disks as bad as ever
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 23:03:48 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:

>I'm not sure how fair it is to blame them for the virus. The Module virus was
>not generally known about at that time, and no major software was available
>to detect it.

Wasn't that the disc that included the "module virus scanner" program?
-- 
_________________  "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)
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 06:03:34 +1200
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

pete@eo11.eoc.com (Peter Cockerell) writes:

> In this thread about ease of using C vs assembler when OS interfaces
> change, someone (Banksie I think) pointed out that C library calls to
> RISC OS are a clumsy veneer on top of the ARM interfaces. Isn't this
> simply because RISC OS is one of the only operating systems known to
> humanity designed for a modern 32-bit processor which specifies its
> interfaces in terms of an underlying machine architecture (ie ARM
> registers, including the flags!) instead of some slightly higher-level
> abstract interface?

Well actually it makes perfect sense... parameters can be passed in
registers *far* faster than they could be pushed onto and pulled off
a stack. Remember that the ARM works best when only it's registers
are involved.

> Actually, that's not strictly fair; it's actually
> defined in terms of the underlying 6502 register interface (R0=A, R1=YX
> etc). Tee hee.

If you are referring to OS_Byte and OS_Word, those interfaces are only held
for backwards compatibility. Virtually their entire functionality is
duplicated by more specific and efficient SWI calls.

--
Question Authority!   WHY?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk (Steve Loft)
ReplyTo: Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: Arc Demos
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.18 $
Organization: home
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 10:52:14 +0000

Many thanks to those who replied to my request for the definitive
Archimedes demo.  The winner, *unanimously* was Transmortal.  And very
nice it looks too, even if I can only see it on a monochrome monitor (as
it does tricky things to the display which my Taxan 875 doesn't like).
My colleague will be running it on a 775,  so I guess he won't have any
problems.

Steve
|  Steve Loft                                  steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk   |
|  Doncaster,                                                             |
|  South Yorks.                                                           |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
Subject: Re: Heia guys: New flame war starting (ok, let's do it civilized...)
Organization: (DESY, Hamburg, Germany)
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 19:14:20 GMT

[I'm redirecting this to c.s.a.advocacy in anticipation :-)]

In article <1992Oct9.115104.11559@cs.tu-berlin.de>, aua@cs.tu-berlin.de (Daniel Tamberg) writes:

[Many wishes *as standard* :-)]

I would disagree with the desire to have all these features *as standard*. Most
users will not want all these things, unless the price is really negligible. I
think Acorn's recent practice of forcing people to take a particular multisync,
disc drive and bundled software is bad - by all means make them options, but
people should be able to choose their own configuration. Acorn used to be
really good at making expandable machines, but they seem to be moving more and
more towards making people buy "packaged" configurations where the only
expansion possible is to buy a new machine. My aged A310 is expanded to nearly
the configuration of an A5000 (no 12MHz memory); will the person who now
purchases an A3010 (or even an A4000) be able to expand it to the specification
of a top end machine in 4 years time? I suspect not.

  Secondly, I would say that the only major hardware improvement that's really
needed is 24-bit graphics (and even that only for a minority of applications).
In particular, I think we don't want anything that involves a major change in
the operating system (e.g. 32-bit addressing, pre-emptive multitasking etc.).
We're now 5 years from the launch of the machine, and only now are we getting
software (Artworks, Pipedream 4) which is beginning to be worthy of it. I would
guess it will be another 5 years before we have a "mature" set of software, as
exists now on the BBC micro, such that the main constraints on improving the
software are the limitations of the machine.

  If we got the machine requested in this post it would either run Un*x, in
which case it would be "just another" Un*x box, or some radically changed
version of RISCOS. In the latter case we'd have to go through the same cycle
as with Beeb to Arc, i.e. several years with a wonderful machine but no
software!

e----><----p | Stephen Burke           | Internet: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
 H   H   1   | Gruppe FH1T (Liverpool) | DECnet:   vxdesy::burke (13313::burke)
 H   H  11   | DESY, Notkestrasse 85   | BITNET:   BURKE@DESYVAX or SB2@UKACRL
 HHHHH   1   | 2000 Hamburg 52         | JANET:    sb2@uk.ac.rl.ib
 H   H   1   | Germany                 | Phone:    + 49 40 8998 2282
 H   H 11111 | HERA, the world's largest electron microscope!
From: arcturus@spuddy.uucp (Geoff Riley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Sonamara
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:39:51 GMT
Organization: Spuddy's Public Usenet Domain

In article <1992Oct5.181842.10476@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>Could anyone explain the "SONAMARA" scheme advertised in the last two issues
>of BBC Acorn User magazine? I read the bit in the editorial, but it wasn't
>exactly clear.

Well, out of interest, I wrote in; and a couple of days ago, I got a reply.

'Dear Geoff,

'We have received your completed coupon in response to our recent advert in
BBC Acorn User, and we are pleased to accept your application for membership
of the "Sonamara Computer Club". Your Club membership number is xxxxxxx
which you should quote on all correspondence.'

>What do you receive if you send off the form, and what are the benefits of
>being a "founder member"?

'As a founder member of the newly-established and only Computer Club in the
Acorn market, you will be able to benefit in many ways from your membership.

'Sonamara Computer Club plans to produce a regular catalogue which will
contain many innovative products and at prices you should find attractive.
It will bring together important software and hardware items in an easy-to-
understand manner, and such that you should find it convenient and helpful
to use for many of your purchases.'

And on it waffles for quite a while - so it's like a book club, but you don't
appear to have to purchase something every month...  Example prices?  2MB
RAM upgrade for an A5000 - 77 quid;  30MB IDE internal for A3000 - 217 quid
(I didn't know they did 30MB IDEs?)....  Software wise?  Vector - 82 quid;
Impression II - 135 quid...

The letter was addressed from Peter Turnbull.... I'm sure I've heard that
name somewhere else (no, it's not the editor of Acorn Computing - that's
Steve Turnbull...)...

Anyone else know any more?

>Thanks for any information.

I'd be interested in hearing any more ;-)
-- 
Cheerio,
        |~~~      (uucp address: arcturus@spuddy.uucp)
        |__|eoff  (Fidonet address: 2:250/208)

 * Meeeow ! Call Spuddy on (0203) 638780/638693 for FREE mail & Usenet access *
From: mcg@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: !Equasor Modifications by CC ?
Date: 13 Oct 92 21:24:51 +1300
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Does anyone have any information on CC's upgrade of !Equasor (improvements are 
apparently going to include matricies ...); like when it might be available?

 Last I heard, they were deferring alterations on !Equasor until they had 
finshed another application that was a new release.....

Thanks in advance....

		From Martin Glanvill	(mcg@waikato.ac.nz)

   -----------*********======| Have a nice day |======*********-----------
							              ######## 
	 			    ^				      #####/|#
University of Waikato		    0  				      ####/.|#
Hamilton			   -|-	 			      ###/__|#
New Zealand			    ^				      ##/   |#
				  _/ \_				      ########
                      
----------------****=====| A quote to make your day |======****-----------------
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial
 tax cut save you thirty cents?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: pete@eo11.eoc.com (Peter Cockerell)
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
Organization: EO, Inc.
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 18:26:14 GMT

In article <2OLsSej025n@bridge.welly.gen.nz> wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:
>pete@eo11.eoc.com (Peter Cockerell) writes:
>
>> In this thread about ease of using C vs assembler when OS interfaces
>> change, someone (Banksie I think) pointed out that C library calls to
>> RISC OS are a clumsy veneer on top of the ARM interfaces. Isn't this
>> simply because RISC OS is one of the only operating systems known to
>> humanity designed for a modern 32-bit processor which specifies its
>> interfaces in terms of an underlying machine architecture (ie ARM
>> registers, including the flags!) instead of some slightly higher-level
>> abstract interface?
>
>Well actually it makes perfect sense... parameters can be passed in
>registers *far* faster than they could be pushed onto and pulled off
>a stack. Remember that the ARM works best when only it's registers
>are involved.

*Its* registers. Anyway, you miss my point. I'm saying that the RISC OS
interfaces should have been defined at a higher level of abstraction
than they were, to obviate the need for the current layer of software
which converts between the HLL-calling standard and the RISC OS one. As
you surely know, the first four args in the PCS are passed in registers
anyway, which would have led to a reasonable compromise between speed
and consistency between RISC OS and the HLLs which use it.

>
>> Actually, that's not strictly fair; it's actually
>> defined in terms of the underlying 6502 register interface (R0=A, R1=YX
>> etc). Tee hee.
>
>If you are referring to OS_Byte and OS_Word, those interfaces are only held
>for backwards compatibility. Virtually their entire functionality is
>duplicated by more specific and efficient SWI calls.
>

Well, slightly more than just those two calls, actually. I mean, talk
about your clumsy veneers: what was RISC OS (ne' Arthur) but a thin
veneer on top of the BBC MOS calling conventions? It was great for the
early ARM 2nd processors and for writing BBC emulators, but hardly
formed the basis of an elegant 32-bit operating system interface. As
you say, RISC OS is just filled with multiple ways of doing things. Not
just between the non-MOS and MOS interfaces, but between old and new
RISC OS calls. There's an excellent principal called orthogonality
which can be applied to APIs and makes programmers' jobs much nicer.

Pete
From: ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Archimedes World disks as bad as ever
Date: 12 Oct 1992 10:28:56 +0100
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
NNTP-Posting-Host: oak6.doc.ic.ac.uk

In article <1992Oct11.112446.25844@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>In article <BvxE9B.1B1@ibmpcug.co.uk> gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
>>
>>Bought an AW this month to see if it had got any better (I'd stopped
>>buying them when they sent out a disk with a virus...) - the current
>>program is no better than they ever used to be in the A&B days: didn't
>>work on a Multisynch monitor.  Hung with a blank screen.  Worked OK
>>when I fished out an old monitor.
>>
>AW certainly seems to have a knack of messing up most programs submitted to
>it for publication. 
>

They obviously take as much trouble testing the disc as they do proof
reading (and even spell checking) the magazine :-)

What really annoyed me about the latest magazine (using the term
loosly) was the feedback page (which as usual mostly contained letters
about problems with the disc) with a letter about their Droughts game
on the September disc - you know the one that works well on a
multiscan monitor (at least on an A5000).

The letter, although not totally correct in it's complaint, stated
that it messed up the system font on his A5000 (actually what happens
is that the font is, from that point on, displayed half height
(multiscan modes)). The reply states, rather condisendingly, that it
worked on all the machines THEY tried it on - pitty they didn't try it
on the machine the complainant STATED that it did not work on.

The complainant also made a comment about my favourite application of
all time - 'waiter' (you know that shitty, non RISC-OS like front end
piece of trash AW insist on putting on their disc - the one that
insists on redefining STANDARD wimp icons (eg. directory) and even on
the September disc redefines the 'switcher' icon to the old 'A' rather
than the new (and differently sized) Acorn.

Oh well the November issue does at least contain one good article,
good for a laugh. AW complaining (well sort of) about bad spelling and
grammar in magazines, etc. Talk about the pot calling the kettle
black. Made me laugh anyway :-)

That's the thing I do like about AW - it's always good for a good old
giggle. It's problem is that it takes itself so seriously, and they
think they are so wonderful - and yet they are just so crap (even
worse than Acorn Computing, and that's saying something - even after
the total restyling which totally failed to be noticable after the
name change (except you get to see pictures of the people who wrote
the articles, not necessarily a good idea :-) )).

Ian

-- 
                            E-mail : ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
 ___           __       Snail mail : Department of Computing, Huxley Building,
  /  _   _    /_/ _   / _ _   _  _   Imperial College, 180 Queens Gate,
_/_ (_|_| )  /   (_|_(_| ) )_|/_)    London. SW7 2BZ. England.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal)
Subject: Archimedes World disks as bad as ever
Organization: The IBM PC User Group, UK.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 21:55:49 GMT


Bought an AW this month to see if it had got any better (I'd stopped
buying them when they sent out a disk with a virus...) - the current
program is no better than they ever used to be in the A&B days: didn't
work on a Multisynch monitor.  Hung with a blank screen.  Worked OK
when I fished out an old monitor.

And they don't run directly off a floppy any more - I was lucky I
had enough Ram to copy to a ram disk first.  Bleh.

G
--
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 23:40:54 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

pete@eo11.eoc.com (Peter Cockerell) writes:

>[...]
>you say, RISC OS is just filled with multiple ways of doing things. Not
>just between the non-MOS and MOS interfaces, but between old and new
>RISC OS calls. There's an excellent principal called orthogonality
>which can be applied to APIs and makes programmers' jobs much nicer.

This is a very valid point. However, on the other hand, I find the RISC OS
programming interface *far* more pleasant to program than anything else
I've ever come into contact with, despite occasionally bumping into some
really awful-to-use stuff... *Most* of the SWIs provided are very well
designed and exceptionally easy to use.

Heck, I can even look in the header of a module to find the names of its
SWIs, determine roughly what they do (in many cases) from the sensibly-
chosen names, and then find out how they work just by trying a few numbers
in and seeing what comes out! Try that on the command-line of your PC,
Amiga, Atari (I would say Mac but they don't even have a CLI), or UNIX
box...

This is one of the things I find most annoying about RISC OS Lib: It provides
an interface veneer between C and the OS SWIs, but completely redefines the
interface rather than sticking to the already well designed SWI interface.
If you try replacing a call to (say) wimp_close_wind() with a SWI "Wimp_
CloseWindow", your program crashes...(or at least, mine did when I tried it)
If SWI calls are simply replaced in C by a small (3 or 4 instructions
typically) assembler interface, then you can use SWIs from C in a very nice
manner, with *minimal* extra overhead...
-- 
_________________  "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.advocacy
From: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
Subject: Re: Archimedes World disks as bad as ever
Organization: (DESY, Hamburg, Germany)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 14:51:04 GMT

In article <1bbggoINN6nu@oak6.doc.ic.ac.uk>, ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer) writes:
> They obviously take as much trouble testing the disc as they do proof
> reading (and even spell checking) the magazine :-)

Can anyone explain why the spelling is so awful? Impression has a spelling
checker, hasn't it? Do they turn it off? If I were CC I'd sue! At least the
layout got better when they changed to Impression - no more red text on a
yellow background, or bits of articles floating onto different pages. They
still have references to pictures that have vanished, though.

> loosly) was the feedback page (which as usual mostly contained letters
> about problems with the disc) with a letter about their Droughts game
                                                          ^^^^^^^^
What was that about spelling? :-) How many times have they answered the "system
resources can't be found" question in the last few months? I'm not sure if this
indicates a lack of other questions that the editor knows the answer to or the
general intelligence level of the readers (although it must be said that Acorn
didn't exactly excel on user-friendliness in that area :-)

  Actually I do think the magazine got better after its face-lift (apart
from the answers to readers' questions and the "From Little Acorns" column,
which seem to be written by someone who knows nothing about the Arc). The games
on the disc have generally been quite good, as well, although the VAT
calculator, wallpaper calculator et al. are truly pathetic.

> The complainant also made a comment about my favourite application of
> all time - 'waiter' (you know that shitty, non RISC-OS like front end

Agreed - but you don't need to use it, it's easy enough to open up the
"Goodies" (sic) directory and drag everything out.

e----><----p | Stephen Burke           | Internet: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
 H   H   1   | Gruppe FH1T (Liverpool) | DECnet:   vxdesy::burke (13313::burke)
 H   H  11   | DESY, Notkestrasse 85   | BITNET:   BURKE@DESYVAX or SB2@UKACRL
 HHHHH   1   | 2000 Hamburg 52         | JANET:    sb2@uk.ac.rl.ib
 H   H   1   | Germany                 | Phone:    + 49 40 8998 2282
 H   H 11111 | HERA, the world's largest electron microscope!
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Warning: Risc Developments
Date: 13 Oct 92 10:55:18 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

In article <1be4rcINNnfo@oak5.doc.ic.ac.uk> ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer) writes:
>I was basing my posting on an assumption that the non-confrontational
>approach had been tried, and failed - this I based on the fact that an
>unresonable return cost of #170 had been stated by RD. 

How about this then? My LaserDirect printer recently decided to stop printing
half way through each print, and flashed up an error number (E9) which is not
documented in the manual. I consulted Computer Concepts, who said that they
couldn't do anything about this, and put me in touch with the printer
manufacturer (Qume).

Qume refused to tell me what the problem was, but recommended that I would
probably be saving money if I opted for a fixed fee repair. Being in desparate
need of the printer (in the few weeks leading up to the BAU SHow), I could
do nothing but send in the printer for repair. The charge was #337 - the 
printer now works properly, but for all I know, they just reset some
switch in the printer (labelled "Make us lots of money switch") and 
charged me #337 for the privilege.

Simon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Subject: Re: Archimedes World disks as bad as ever
Organization: Nottingham University
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 11:24:46 GMT

In article <BvxE9B.1B1@ibmpcug.co.uk> gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
>
>Bought an AW this month to see if it had got any better (I'd stopped
>buying them when they sent out a disk with a virus...) - the current
>program is no better than they ever used to be in the A&B days: didn't
>work on a Multisynch monitor.  Hung with a blank screen.  Worked OK
>when I fished out an old monitor.
>
>And they don't run directly off a floppy any more - I was lucky I
>had enough Ram to copy to a ram disk first.  Bleh.

Did you know that the disks [sic] are compiled by someone at Watford
Electronics?

AW certainly seems to have a knack of messing up most programs submitted to
it for publication. 

I'm not sure how fair it is to blame them for the virus. The Module virus was
not generally known about at that time, and no major software was available
to detect it. Furthermore, it concealed itself far more successfully than
any previously existing viruses. Don't forget that Micro User, Archive and
Syracuse magazines have all distributed viruses in their time, and I suspect
it is just luck that the others haven't (until now, when we have two virus
killers which are kept up-to-date, namely Killer (1.37X) by Alan Glover 
(Pineapple), and Scanner (1.50) by Tor Houghton (torh@cogs.susx.ac.uk)).

Simon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: ericl@cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Eric Lafortune)
Subject: Re: Arc Demos
Organization: Dept. Computerwetenschappen K.U.Leuven
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 08:50:52 GMT

I am posting this reply on behalf of John Tytgat because his News poster is
still malfunctioning. Although I wouldn't exactly use the same wording of his
article I basically agree with his conclusions (the c.b.a demo is amazing).
Please send any reactions to John's e-mail address tytgat@esat.kuleuven.ac.be.

Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk (Steve Loft) writes:
> Many thanks to those who replied to my request for the definitive
> Archimedes demo.  The winner, *unanimously* was Transmortal.  And very
> nice it looks too, even if I can only see it on a monochrome monitor (as

Oh noooo !!! That demo suffers badly from defects in its 3D routines.  Very
embarrassing ! Have a look at the joints of the two square "rings" that form
a cube (it's one of the rotating objects)...

It's a shame that the authors of 'Transmortal' have dared to release it.

And the sound play routines suck too... They are probably using Hugo's
play routines, beurgh ! 

Sorry, I can't propose a better demo, or... perhaps I can: may I
suggest the 3D demo's which are now being posted in the c.b.a ?
But they are probably not the kind of demos which you are looking for:
no scroll-text, no music, no greetings, etc. only blindingly fast 3D
routines with dithering.  That's what I call a stunning demo...

But I am sure that not everybody will agree with this.

John
BASS
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy