HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Best buy ARM 3 for old A440/RO3.10
Date: 24 Jan 93 17:10:22 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Nottingham University

In article <1993Jan22.121139.8140@infodev.cam.ac.uk> JNA10@phx.cam.ac.uk writes:
>Does anyone have any opinions as to where to get an ARM3/MEMC1a at
>a *really low price*? :-) I don't really care how slowly it runs
>in comparison to other highly-clocked upgrades - anything's got to
>be quicker than what I've got at the moment...

The ordinary Ground Control ARM3 (25MHz) is one of the cheapest, but is
sturdily constructed. It does use a 25MHz crystal rather than time divided
50MHz oscillator, but I never had any problems with it. They will also
supply a MEMC1a quite cheaply.

I'm not yet convinced about the worth of these more expensive ARM3 upgrades
which come with a socket for the forthcoming FPA. I'm told (anyone confirm
this?) that these upgrades were designed around the preliminary spec for
the FPA, and the pinouts have now changed - in this case a carrier board
will be needed, which could be a problem given the proximity of the ARM
chip to the disc drive.

Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk (Hugo Fiennes)
Subject: Re: That 1000 pound sampling card 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Serial Port
Reply-To: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 11:57:16 +0000

In article <1jvbkhINNc7v@lily.csv.warwick.ac.uk> maupb@csv.warwick.ac.uk writes:

>I remember a while ago reading about a 16 bit sampling card for the Arc
>costing about 1000 pounds. Does anyone have any idea how much one would cost
>these days? I'm interested because in BYTE I've seen a news item about the BSR
>MediaMaster 16 bit sound board that can sample and play back sound at 44.1
>kHz. It also includes vector-based processing with 128 built-in digitized
>instruments and sound effects. All this for 199 dollars!
>
>Do you think that maybe makers of Arc peripherals are ripping us off? I know
>for a fact that buying a SCSI disk drive from a supplier of Arc SCSI cards can
>be several hundred pounds more expensive than buying from a normal computer
>peripheral supplier.
>
>Comments?
>
>Jason
The point is: (a) At the time a 16-bit sampler was something new, there
wasn't much choice for 16-bit sampler chips (now they practically grow
on trees). It was a *full* double width podule with lots of expensive
looking high-end audio stuff (gold connectors, sheilding etc), there
were extra fifos, etc, MIDI port, ... and it came with some software which
made it a viable alternative to (eg) an Akai s-900 MIDI sampler box.
I doubt they ever sold more than 50 of them, hence the expense.

The PC card no doubt uses a highly integrated chipset and the software is
probably nowhere near as good (from what i've seen of bundled software with
PC audio cards...)

SCSI disk drives from arc suppliers aren't that much more expensive (not 
100's usually). They make their money on the tested and working combination
of interface and drive. If people want it cheaper, they buy the card and take
their chances.

Hugo

>
>Disclaimer: I do not work for either BYTE or BSR.
>-- 
>                       Jason L Saunders [ RouE ]       
>                     email: maupb@csv.warwick.ac.uk
>snail: Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
>
>

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     "Did I say that? My lips didn't move..."
Hugo Fiennes - The Serial Port                      altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
                                                or altman@cix.compulink.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ssudavss@csug.cs.reading.ac.uk (Captain_Kwok)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Joining scanned images together to get a bigger one!
Date: 26 Jan 93 13:47:37 GMT
Organization: University of Reading

I was (un)fortunate enough at the weekend to be able to play with a
Logitech (I think) 24 Bit hand scanner for the PC. It was running on a
486/33 with 4Mb of memory. 

Quite surprisingly the images were GOOD! Unfortunately when scanning in
colour the maximum scan length was about 1". The PC had about 6 Meg free
on the hard drive (for VM) and no other progs running except windows. Now thats
what I call a usable system!

Anyway, I don't want to talk about PCs.

One nice feature was the ability to 'merge' a number of scans together
using an 'autostitch' routine. Although this took a little while, the results 
were EXCELLENT (ie join was undetectable).

I myself have a 256 grey scale scanner from CC and wondered if anybody has
written/in their possesion/knows of a way of doing the similar on images
(scanned or otherwise) on the Arc, as the 4" or so scan width of the hand
scanner can be so annoying at times!

I know that it would be possible to chuck all the sprites into draw, align
them manually and then take a screen snapshot - but thats far too easy and
unprofessional!

Anyone got any comments?

Steve
ssudavss@uk.ac.reading
From: maupb@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr J L Saunders)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn v Research Machines
Date: 23 Jan 1993 17:33:00 -0000
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
NNTP-Posting-Host: clover.csv.warwick.ac.uk

In article <C1B9C4.F06@dcs.ed.ac.uk> smp@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Samuel Penn) writes:

%When I got my Arch, I naturally did some speed tests to compare it with my
%BBC Master. One simple one was a simple FOR..NEXT loop for 1 to 1000000
%(I think - it may have been 100000, I'm not sure). Anyway:
%
%A3000 : about 4 seconds
%Master : about 40 seconds
%RM Nimbus : Since RM BASIC doesn't have a time function like BBC BASIC does,
%            I used a stop watch. I got bored and wandered away after 2 minutes.
%            this was on a Nimbus 186 (?)
%And these are meant to be 16 bit computers?

I think you'll find that the A3000 is 32 bit.
-- 
                       Jason L Saunders [ RouE ]       
                     email: maupb@csv.warwick.ac.uk
snail: Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
From: Phil Emery
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Gods Passwords (where ?)
Date: 28 Jan 93 15:27:38 GMT
Organization: The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
NNTP-Posting-Host: ibm3090.bham.ac.uk

Gary Bartlett writes,


>WARNING!!!!  IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE PASSWORD FOR LEVEL 1 OF GODS
>GO NO FURTHER WITH THIS ARTICLE!  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
>

I believe each copy of Gods generates its own set of passwords, so swapping
them isn't going to help much.

Phil Emery
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mik Davis)
Subject: Re: ACORN RESPONSE TO !3DICONS
Organization: Aston University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL241235]
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 12:06:09 GMT

Paul R Hedderly - H601/92 (u2prh@ohm.york.ac.uk) wrote:
: From article <1993Jan21.152836.7705@unix.brighton.ac.uk>, by rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk (Titch):
: 
: > In due time I expect Acorn will release an "official" set of 3D tool-
: > sprites (which may differ from what you have, in any case).  But it
: > hasn't happened yet, and when it does, there will be a well-defined
: > distribution mechanism.  Please do not give anyone else a copy of what
: 
: I'm sorry - mayby I missed the point but why can't these sprites - which
: may or may not be the real beta sprites - be passed around? Is there a
: problem with letting ppl have them and then giving them a proper
: replacement set?
: 

  I think the problem is that if various early releases get passed around, then
the real ones come out, no-one will know which version is the release version
and which is not. There may also be some problem with the early ones which is
solved later (befire release) and so if the pre-release set has been passed
around a lot, loads of people start ringing Acorn and saying "My xxxx doesn't
work, why not?"

  Also, how would you ensure that the people who had the pre-release set also
got the new set later on if the original set had been distributed "ad hoc" by
just anyone?

   This applies to anything, be it software, hardware or bits and pieces like
sprites


--
___________________________________________.
 Mik Davis at Aston University, Birmingham |   .  .  __          .
                                           |   |\/|  | \  _,_  _  _
E-Mail: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk           |   |  |. |_/ |_| \/ |/_'
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: mickd@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Mick Dunford)
Subject: Re: Dongles affecting
Organization: University of Sussex
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 23:51:36 GMT


>>I don't think that the problem lies with the dongle, though.
>>It would appear that the A5000 or maybe RO3.1, just doesn't know about
>>the printer, unless it is switched on when you power up the A5000.

IT DOES. I have an A540, no Impression and an ArtWorks dongle. With the
dongle on I find I sometimes cannot print from other applications
(TechWriter, Edit, Draw ...). If I remove the dongle the problem goes
away.

In some circumstances the dongle disrupts the checking of the parallel
port that RISC-OS 3.1 carries out when the machine boots up. Computer
Concepts said that they would send me a new - a more recent - dongle, 
but that the newer design would
not necessarily cure the problem. The person I spoke to tried to blame
Acorn for not putting code into the OS to allow the presence of their
dongles. (Quite why they should escapes me).

There is a solution. If you load ArtWorks FIRST, it will restore the
parallel port to its correct state. (I was told I could also load
Impression, but I don't use it).

I also find that the dongle causes spurious paper feeds, and to encourage
the waste of paper causes three-quarters of a line of hieroglyphics to
be printed about an inch down from the top.

There also seems to be a conflict between Acorn and CC over what should
happen if software is run on a machine that differs from the one for
which it has been registered. In Acorn's case there will just be a
warning message. In the case of CC the program will terminate.


Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mik Davis)
Subject: Re: Acorn v Research Machines
Organization: Aston University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL241235]
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 12:38:31 GMT

  Our school just bought a RM PC. It is a proper 386-based PC (runs DOS 5 and
Windows 3.1). They bought it to run a CD-ROM system. It was cheaper than the 
recommended ICL 386 PC

  The figures for "sales to education" can be fiddled in another way too.
do you count all the machines sold to School Administration people? or just
those used for teaching kids on. 

--
___________________________________________.
 Mik Davis at Aston University, Birmingham |   .  .  __          .
                                           |   |\/|  | \  _,_  _  _
E-Mail: davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk           |   |  |. |_/ |_| \/ |/_'
From: mrp@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Customising RISC_OSLib, Impulse
Date: 26 Jan 93 09:39:00 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England

Ian Palmer (ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <C19445.6J0@cen.ex.ac.uk> py92djm@cen.ex.ac.uk writes:
: >I want to use Computer Concept's Impulse system in a C program.  Unfortunately,
: >it requires that you call an Impulse SWI after certain returns from Wimp_Poll.
: >As Wimp_Poll is called from within the wimp library, this is proving difficult.
: >
: >Has anyone found a way of doing this?
: >
: >Thanks for any help in advance.
: 
: It can be done, but you need a window open (well that's how I got it
: to work, there might be different ways). 

And there are.  The neatest way I found was using an unknown event
handler which was passed all the impulse stuff (and more) and
was able to recognise and deal with all the impulse messages.

I mailed py92djm@cen.ex.ac.uk  about this but mayby that didnt get
through.

I'll be putting an application on the net soon (when I finish the
thing) written in C which uses impulse and acts as a fortune cookie
type program.  Other impulse tasks request quotes from it and the
program sends out random quotes from its database.  The source will be
there too.

martin.
From: schade@vanessa.fmi.uni-passau.de (Oliver Schade)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Modula3 for RISCiX
Date: 28 Jan 1993 11:03:43 GMT
Organization: University of Passau, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: vanessa.fmi.uni-passau.de

In article <1993Jan27.111739.16545@csd.uwe.ac.uk>, r_voisey@kiwi.uwe.ac.uk (R Voisey) writes:
> In article <1993Jan22.151506.7700@unix.brighton.ac.uk>, rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk (Titch) writes:
> 
> |> A C++ compiler, in whatever form, would be absolutely terrific. Since Acorn
> |> (when I asked them) said they had no plans for such a compiler, I would
> |> assume that whoever did bring one out would become very popular.
> 
  the german main distributor of Acorn, GMA Hamburg, told me in automn of
  1992 that Norcroft is developing a c++-compiler. But they wait for new
  (ANSI ? ;-( ) standard....

   Oliver Schade
   email: schade@eva.fmi.uni-passau.de

Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: andy@laguna.santafe.edu (Andy Mell)
Subject: Re: Dongles affecting Printing
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 18:19:11 GMT
Organization: Santa Fe Institute

In article <1k0kf2INNm5o@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM> andyf@uk.sun.com writes:
>
>+--------------------------------------------------+-------------------------+
>|     /\       Andrew Fox,			   | Disclaimer:	     |
>|    \\ \      Product Support Engineer,	   |			     |
>|   \ \\ /     Sun Microsystems Ltd.,		   | These opinions are mine |
>|  / \/ / /    Citygate, Sale, 		   | assuming I can remember |
>| / /   \//\   Cheshire, M33 1JF.		   | what I've said.	     |
>| \//\   / /    				   +-------------------------+
>|  / / /\ /    Telephone: +44 (0)61-905-4589	   | 			     |
>|   / \\ \   					   | 'Life, don't talk to me | 
>|    \ \\      Internet: andrew.fox@uk.sun.com	   |  about life.'           |
>|     \/       Uknet/JANet: andrew.fox@sun.co.uk   |			     |
>+--------------------------------------------------+-------------------------+
>|									     |
>|    "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something      |
>|     completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete    |
>|     fools."                                                                |
>|                                      - Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless"    |
>|									     |
>+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Jesus, dont you think that this signature is a bit big? If I had an uucp feed
I'd object to downloading this for every article you posted.

Surely a line or thrice suffices.

A
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Mell, Applied Physics Department,  |   andy@santafe.edu
University of Hull, Hull, HU7 6RX       |   amell@nyx.cs.du.edu
England.                                |   torq@gnu.ai.mit.edu
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Acorn Publicity Literature
Date: 21 Jan 93 19:35:01 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

Acorn has released a lot of new publicity literature to coincide with the
BETT '93 Show. The BETT Show is also an opportunity to see some of the
newsletters which Acorn sends out to special interest groups.

There is a *major* error in APP522 Acorn Education Price List. There are
two columns of prices, labelled 'RRP inc VAT' and 'REP ex VAT'. However
the figures in the first column are ex VAT, unless Acorn has drastically
reduced its prices without telling anyone - it makes the Retail prices
look more attractive than the Education prices (when VAT has been taken
into consideration).

Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn,comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: wuerthne@minnie.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Martin Wuerthner)
Subject: Re: Monty Pythons most used sentence
Organization: Informatik, Uni Stuttgart, Germany
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 12:19:30 GMT

In <1k11shINNgps@info2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> zrzs0111@helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (Helmut Springer) writes:


>"And now to something completely different"

>Has someone build a module with a "save, easy useable, not crunshing"
>method to request memory (for RISCOS 2.00)?
>If you request memory with OS_Module, the memory can't given back, if a 
>other module gets loaded.

OS_Module allocation should not be used for large blocks of memory.
Additionally, it can only be used by modules, so it can't be used by
applications unless they run as a module. In this case (i.e. module tasks)
you may as well use application space !

>If you request memory with WIMP_SlotSize, you may run into programs which
>sits already in the memory (cause of BBC 6502 compatibility ?) and twice
>this method has no garbage collection ...

If you request memory using Wimp_SlotSize you *never* get memory which is
already used by another application. RISC OS even has memory protection
(i.e. you may not even access memory which is used by another application).

Would you expect any program to run under RISC OS if your claims were true
(if memory allocation was not safe) ?

Application memory does not need any garbage collection as app memory is
paged (i.e. logical memory). As these pages can be mapped to arbitrary
physical addresses (but that's what RISC OS does for you), you do not need
any garbage collection as there is *no* fragmentation at all. So you can
say there is an implicit, automatic garbage collection which is absolutely
free (it does not take up any CPU time).


What is really annoying is that the Module Area becomes fragmented ...

There is no need to complain about RISC OS aplication memory management.
It only suffers from the lack of virtual memory ...

Martin


Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Subject: Re: Special Offer on A3010
Organization: Nottingham University
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 11:34:14 GMT

In article <930020140016@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk> N.M.Queen@UK.AC.BIRMINGHAM (Queen) writes:
>==============================================================================
>I owe special thanks (#50 worth) to Simon Burrows, who mentioned a few
>weeks ago that Dixons had a special offer for the Acorn A3010 - I was
>lucky to see his posting just before buying one for my children.

Thanks!

RISC Developments have announced a special offer, since Acorn seems to be
offloading its current stock of A5000s.

For only 699 UK pounds plus VAT, you can get an issue three 25Mhz 2Mb
A5000 (no hard disc or monitor), including 200 UK pounds worth of free
software. That is a rather attractive offer, although before taking the
plunge, think about why they are making this offer!

Simon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
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From: sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Cut and Paste... ???
Date: 25 Jan 93 11:16:52 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.

In article <1993Jan22.014120.10508@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA) writes:
>"The movement of text and data between applications is also made quick and
> easy - either via a "cut and paste" method, or by CSV data transfer."
>		     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Hmmm... copy/cut/paste *between* applications?

Yes - a new protocol... hopefully someday Acorn will tell everyone about it
-- 
--Simon Proven sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk
  Health warning: being in a car can damage your health (BMA)
From: flimm@ph-cip.uni-koeln.de (Oliver Flimm)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: TeX with more than 65531 words of memory
Date: 27 Jan 93 10:45:03
Organization: Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, F. R.
	Germany
Distribution: comp
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.ph-cip.uni-koeln.de

Hi,

is it possible to make armatures work with more than its standard 65531
words of memory. Everytime I try to tex a large document armatures exits
after 20 pages with a message like "TeX capacity exeeded, sorry [main
memory size=65531]". And 20 pages (without pictures) aren't very much
on a A310 with 4MB RAM-Upgrage.

BTW is there a newer version of TeX (3.0 or higher) available, either PD or
commercial.

Cheers

Oliver
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Skyfall PD
Date: 27 Jan 93 13:01:47 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

In article <1993Jan27.101622.19498@lut.ac.uk> S.J.Schofield1@lut.ac.uk (Steve) writes:
>I have used Skyfall severall times and I have always had a very quick reply -
>they started about two years ago (I think).  Though as to your problem - I
>have not used them since July and then I had a delay of one week because the
>guy who did it was on holiday.

SkyFall is the PD library which has had a major advertising campaign
recently, even to the extent of having their catalogue included inside
some of the Acorn related magazines, as well as having multiple colour
adverts. This suggests that:

 i) They are raking in money
ii) They hope to rake in lots of money

(I know that one fairly successful PD library has an average turnover of
2500 pounds per month)

Looking through the SkyFall catalogue, there is a lot of very dubious
"PD software", such as samples of TV theme tunes, GIF files etc etc.
Should they really be selling this sort of software? Who could stop
them? Anyone buying discs from commercial PD libraries should be aware
that a lot of their money will be paying for advertising in some cases,
which is one reason for the large discrepancy in the amount which different
PD libraries charge for their discs of software.

Whilst on the subject, some PD libraries don't seem too bothered what they
distribute. A number distribute Acorn's dealer demo programs, ripped off
copies of FormEd and FontEd, !Fonts and !System folders, and even
(reputedly) Acorn's 3dIcons. I ask myself whether this does any real
harm, and the answer is probably 'no', but it would seem to be an
encouragement for the rest of the world to copy anything that goes.

Simon
Disclaimer: All opinions are entirely my own
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
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From: py92djm@cen.ex.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Customising RISC_OSLib, Impulse
Date: 22 Jan 93 10:36:04 GMT
Organization: University of Exeter, UK.

I want to use Computer Concept's Impulse system in a C program.  Unfortunately,
it requires that you call an Impulse SWI after certain returns from Wimp_Poll.
As Wimp_Poll is called from within the wimp library, this is proving difficult.

Has anyone found a way of doing this?

Thanks for any help in advance.