HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: s047@SAND.SICS.BU.OZ.AU (Jeremy Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: IRC session
Date: 17 Aug 92 02:13:28 GMT


In article <1992Aug13.134058.26472@doc.ic.ac.uk> AlexMC writes:
>
> zoetl@isa.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Gunnar Zoetl) writes:
>>s047@SAND.SICS.BU.OZ.AU (Jeremy Lee) writes:
>>> 
>>> It's surprising.. I've rarely seen anyone from the UK on IRC. Can anyone
>>> suggest why?
>>
>>Maybe because of the 10 Hrs time difference? Just think of it: when you
>>go home at 7.00pm, the folks in england just start to wake up (9.00am).
>>The suggested IRC session starts at 02.00am MEST, but nonetheless,
>>I'll try to be there... (if I manage to get up, that is ;-)

Nope. I am ALWAYS around IRC. 24 hours a day :-). Well, maybe not
continuously, but I keep rather weird hours that are actuall better
matched with other countries than here :)

>I have seen more brits on irc than aussies, so there !

The Americans (of course) make the largest contingent. I've seen
Aussies, Israelies, Dutch, German, Norwiegens, Danes, but to date I have
not seen any British, Scottish, or Irish! So there back! :-P

>>> Could I get some sort of response to the number of people
>>> who have access to IRC. If there is enough interest, I might set up a
>>> bot and make #acorn a semi-permenant channel.
>
>Not many in britain. but the numbers are doubling quickly.
>If you create an irc bot, could you allow posting of notices such 
>as "IRC session on Thursday nn of mmm 199x nn:nn GMT," so that
>we don't clog up the news network.
>
>do you see what I mean.

Not Really. IRC bots just keep the channel open at any time, and
discussions just happen when enough people turn up. I'll set one up
anyway. Can all those interested in being around IRC please mail me with
their nicks and the regular account address they IRC from? I'll put you
in the invite list, (I don't know whether I'll make the channel Invite
only yet, I've found them to be more sedate and well-mannered than
channels that are not.) and the regulars will go into the auto-op list.

If the channel turns into a success, and I get the time, I might even
add a little features like a rumor of the day :) or a local article
service for things like the FAQ. (Hint Acorn, with >300 IRC users AT ANY
ONE TIME, it can be a great place for shameless advertising) I couldn't
make it a very large service without another account though. I've got a
very low quota here.

***********************************************************************
*    . Jeremy Lee s047@sand.sics.bu.oz.au    Student of Everything    *
*   /|            "Where the naked spotless intelect is without       *
*  /_|              center or circumference. Look to the light,       *
* /  |rchimedes      Leland, look to the light" - Dale Cooper         *
***********************************************************************
From: as@prg.ox.ac.uk (Andrew Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Minix/Linux
Date: 16 Aug 92 11:39:42 GMT
Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK

>What are the possibilities of getting Linux running on the Archimedes,
>would anyone that has attempted to port Minix like to comment ?
I'd say Linux would be *very* hard to port to anything.   It was explicitly
written from the ground up for the Intel 386/486 architecture.   It does
lots of things efficiently but non-portably by using features of the
MMU CPU etc etc.    Much better bets would be BSD NET2 (or even 386BSD)
or Mach.

WHo knows one day Acorn might see the light and bring out a sensibly
priced unbundled and no nappy-changing-support version of its BSD port?
After all who really wants X/Desktop Motif (blah blah) + Norcroft
when GCC and X11R5 could serve as well or better and would allow users
to tap into the huge pool of expertise in these things.

Mind you, given the prevalance of 4M Arcs an implementation with
shared libraries would be a huge leap forward and that would
require real (expensive) work on BSD (as far as I know).

Andrew
        Andrew Stevens               INTERNET: Andrew.Stevens@uk.ac.oxford.prg
      Programmming Research Group       JANET: Andrew.Stevens@uk.ac.oxford.prg
     11 Keble Road, Oxford, England     UUCP:  ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!ox-prg!as
     OX1 3QD   +44 0865 272563
From: andyf@yama.uk.sun.com (Andrew Fox - Sun UK - Answer centre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: New machines from Acorn.
Date: 12 Aug 92 16:35:23 GMT
Reply-To: andyf@yama.uk.sun.com
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: yama.uk.sun.com



	***************
	** NEWSFLASH **
	***************

	Acorn have this week revealed two new machines to developers........
	
	1) A new budget home 'games' machine weighing in at around 400 pounds
	   (provisionally called the A1000).

	and
	
	2) A new colour portable is already being designed that will use
 	   an active matrix display system and will probably contain the new
           ARM610 chip.



	Specifications for A1000
	========================

	12Mhz ARM2 CPU (running at approx 7 MIPS)
	2Mb 12 Mhz ram (upgradeable to 4Mb)
	1.6Mb Floppy drive
	RISC OS 3.10
	Two 9-pin D standard joystick ports
	RCA outputs for stereo sound

	Optional 40 or 80 Mb IDE internal hard drive.

	Plus all the usual ports found on the A3000.
	
	NOTE:
	There are no internal expansion capabilities.	
	The internal mini podule slot has been removed from the machine.
	
	The price has been set at around 400 pounds.
	
	Acorn do not anticipate that this machine will replace the A3000 in 
	education and so the A3000 will continue production for the
	'forseeable' future. It has also been said that the A3000 may take 
	a further price cut.

	Acorn further announced its intention to produce a more powerful
	colour portable computer aimed for release fourth quarter 1993.

	Also discussed were new versions of the RISC Ix drivers to enable 
	the new hardware platforms to support Unix.

	Rumours also abound of a new super Unix/RISC OS based workstation
	(the A7000 perhaps?) sporting full 24 bit graphics, 32Mb ram and
	yet another version of RISC OS.

	Also discussed was the final release date of RISC OS 3.10 for 
	current RISC OS 2.00 users and any further bug fixes that need to 
	be incorporated. Acorn anticipate that shipping of RISC OS 3.10 will
	conincide with the first volume shipments of the A4 in September.


	Hope this information enlightens those who were still in the dark.

	Cheers for now,

	Andy Fox.

P.S.	Acorn will probably deny the truth of all this text (given a chance).
	So it helps to remember this, Computer companies deny everything.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  The opinions expressed above in no way represent those of Sun Microsystems.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gpcec@sun.pcl.ac.uk (Tom Kirby-Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Reading mode variables
Date: 15 Aug 92 18:08:17 GMT
Organization: Polytechnic of Central London


Folks,
        A quick question...
         I'm using the OS_ReadModeV SWI to get the screen pixel
res. Placing 4 and 5 in R1 for the horizontal and vertical
res, with R2 containing the result which is interpreted as follows

        R1 = 4 ( horizontal )
                code    max pixels
        R2 ==   0       1280
                1       640
                2       320
                3       160
        R1 = 5 ( vertical )
        R2 ==   1       512
                2       256

        Now this is al very well, but I have RISC OS 3 and C v4. Can
someone ( Acorn? ) give me the return codes and their values for the
"new" modes RISC OS 3 provides ? Does C v4 cover this or do I need a
up grade. I'm currently using "old" ( but fairly good ) Dabs Press
books until the v3.1 PRMs appear ( ho ho ), but *really* need this 
info now!
        
        P.S. Anyone managed screen switching in C? I'm using OS_Byte
112 + 113 but they don't seem to do anything - yes, I set the screen
size to at least twice using "screensize" in my !Run file. Any ideas?


        Ok - that was 2 questions. Thanks anyway. :-)

  /------------------| The Polytechnic Of Central London |-------------------\
  \     Name  : Tom Kirby-Green       /---\ / /    /--\ /\  \ /--\ /--\     /
   \    EMail : gpcec@sun.pcl.ac.uk   \---\ | |    \--  | \ | |    \--     /
    \   Serving : NCC-1701-D          \---/ / \--/ /--/ \  \/ \--/ /--/   /
     \----------| "Acorn Archimedes - A RISC Worth Taking!" |------------/
-- 
  /------------------| The Polytechnic Of Central London |-------------------\
  \     Name  : Tom Kirby-Green       /---\ / /    /--\ /\  \ /--\ /--\     /
   \    EMail : gpcec@sun.pcl.ac.uk   \---\ | |    \--  | \ | |    \--     /
    \   Serving : NCC-1701-D          \---/ / \--/ /--/ \  \/ \--/ /--/   /
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: wykim@mozart.kaist.ac.kr (Kim won Young)
Subject: Parallel printer interface with 2030...
Organization: KAIST
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 92 07:26:55 GMT


Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: k2@bl.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Klaus Steinberger)
Subject: Re: rdump parameters for use with DAT?
Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 17:42:01 GMT

cczdao@mips.nott.ac.uk (David Osborne) writes:

>We do have an HP 2000 DAT drive on another system, and I've checked I
>can write to it ok using rdump.ffs on our Mips, so I'd like to use DAT
>for doing our Mips backups.  What parameters for density and length of
>the tape would be suitable for telling rdump to use?  DAT tapes of 60m
>length seem to be most commonly used here.

I use the followinf parameters:

density: 54000
size:    4000

Sincerely,
Klaus Steinberger
--
Klaus Steinberger               Beschleunigerlabor der TU und LMU Muenchen
Phone: (+49 89)3209 4287        Hochschulgelaende
FAX:   (+49 89)3209 4280        D-8046 Garching, Germany
Internet: Klaus.Steinberger@Physik.Uni-Muenchen.DE
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: peter@merlin.acadiau.ca (Peter Steele)
Subject: Is there a login limit?
Organization: Acadia University
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:26:56 GMT

Our Oracle team wanted to do some performance tests and proceeded
to log on multiple sessions to a special account the runs an
Oracle application directly. They had planned to open up 30
sessions, but after 25, no more connections would be accepted.
It would take the username/password but then would report
"connection closed". Is there a kernel limit for the number
of logins to an account? I did a quick look but didn't see
anything...
--
Peter Steele        Unix Services Manager            peter.steele@acadiau.ca 
Acadia Univ., Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P 1X0  902-542-2201  Fax: 902-542-4364
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: dan@gordian.com (Dan Lambright)
Subject: weird compiling on a RISC 5.0
Keywords: mips 5.0 , compiling
Organization: Gordian; Costa Mesa, CA
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 00:10:07 GMT


       cc -g -N -T 0 -EL test.c -c
       ld -g -N -m -EL -T 00000000 test.o -o test.mon

I am not able to use utilities such as "dbx" and "nm" when compiling
a one line program using the above options on the new RISC 5.0 machines.  
I have not had that problem when I compile using a 4.52.  I've traced
the problem to the symbol tables.

I compared the "test.mon" generated by the 5.0 compiler with
the one compiled on 4.52.  There was a difference in the 
file header.  The f_nscns element from struct filehdr was 5 on our
5.0 machine, and 4 when compiled on the 4.52 machine.  

Dissasembling the symbol tables, I found that for both the 4.52
and 5.0 compilers generated .text, .sdata, .sbss, and .bss sections,
in that order.  The 5.0 compiler, however,  produced a 5th
section: ".comment".   Say what?!?  

My question is: why does the 5.0 compiler create a 5th section called
.comment?  .comment is undoccumented in our manuals.  What is it?

.comment is not produced when I compile in big endian.  


Dan

dan@gordian.com
From: beacker@sgi.com (Bradley Eacker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: Assembler Syntax for R2000 Instruction Set
Date: 13 Aug 92 00:25:08 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, California
NNTP-Posting-Host: dish.mips.com
Originator: beacker@dish.mips.com

In article <1992Aug11.103013.11536@leland.Stanford.EDU> Dwight Joe writes:
>Anyone know what the meaning of "EXPORT" might be?
>
>It appears frequently in the assembly source code of the SGI OS kernels.
>The term usually appears in the following context, for example:
>
>              EXPORT(alpha)
>
>Is "EXPORT" a declaration to make the address of "alpha" available
>to other modules in the source code?

putting aside all the stuff that has been posted about this sequence the
explanation for this resides in /usr/include/sys/asm.h:

	/*
	 * EXPORT -- export definition of symbol
	 */
	#define EXPORT(x)                                       \
	        .globl  x;                                      \
	x:

There are quite a few other defines in there that can be quite helpful in
being able to understand the assembly language that both SGI and Mips use.
Most of the time I believe that there is a "#include <asm.h>" near the top
of the files and this is what includes this magic file.

                 Brad Eacker (beacker@sgi.com)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: cczdao@mips.nott.ac.uk (David Osborne)
Subject: rdump parameters for use with DAT?
Originator: cczdao@mips.nott.ac.uk
Organization: Cripps Computing Centre, University of Nottingham, UK
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 14:50:41 GMT

Up to now, we've been using cartridge tapes for dumping our M/2000.
However, since we recently added two more disks to the system, the
prospect of dumping over 2Gb to lots of cartridges is daunting, to say
the least!

We do have an HP 2000 DAT drive on another system, and I've checked I
can write to it ok using rdump.ffs on our Mips, so I'd like to use DAT
for doing our Mips backups.  What parameters for density and length of
the tape would be suitable for telling rdump to use?  DAT tapes of 60m
length seem to be most commonly used here.

Thanks in advance.
-- 
--David Osborne
  Cripps Computing Centre, University of Nottingham
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Subject: Re: Is there a login limit?
Organization:  Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 92 03:56:51 GMT

In <root.713813216@merlin> peter@merlin.acadiau.ca (Peter Steele) writes:
| Our Oracle team wanted to do some performance tests and proceeded
| to log on multiple sessions to a special account the runs an
| Oracle application directly. They had planned to open up 30
| sessions, but after 25, no more connections would be accepted.
| It would take the username/password but then would report
| "connection closed". Is there a kernel limit for the number
| of logins to an account? I did a quick look but didn't see
| anything...

You are almost certainly running afoul of the number of open files
per process (on the server, although that sounds low), I would imagine,
or if all are being run as the same UID, the per UID max # of processes.

Both should be reconfigurable by changing the kernel config files.
--
Let no one tell me that silence gives consent,  |   Dave Olson
because whoever is silent dissents.             |   Silicon Graphics, Inc.
    Maria Isabel Barreno                        |   olson@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: glee@athena.mit.edu (Gilbert Huppert)
Subject: Wren IX formatting
Followup-To: comp.sys.mips
Keywords: format, 2.0 GB drive, Wren IX
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 21:38:47 GMT


Does anyone know how many sectors to use when setting up the volume
header for a WREN IX drive? Is there an easy way to figure it out?

I already know (from vendor data) that the disk has 15 heads (tracks)
and 2574 cylinders.  It has 2200 unformatted MB, and 1900 formatted MB.
I want to install this on Sunday, so I appreciate timely responses.

I would also appreciate any hints on repartitioning the disk, in terms
of what would be legal/illegal for the new entries.  I would like to 
get something with 3 partitions, one of 1.0 GB, one of 750-800 MB and
one of 200-250 MB.  


Thanks in advance.




--
Gilbert Lee Huppert (glee@athena.mit.edu)
Materials Etching Technology Laboratory
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: k2@bl.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Klaus Steinberger)
Subject: Re: Purpose of /dev/tty ??
Keywords: /dev/tty
Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 07:53:18 GMT

stuart@fawlty.towers.oz.au (Stuart Walker) writes:

>I have just been having some fun and games trying to run multivol from within
>a cron command.  I know that multivol is no longer required for cpio over
>multiple volumes, but, for historical reasons, we must continue with this
>command in the short term.  Anyway...

>The problem is that when run from cron, it is unable to open /dev/tty.
>Now I have managed to get around this by recreating /dev/tty to have the
>same major and minor device numbers as /dev/console.

>Could someone please inform me as to the purpose of /dev/tty, and whether
>my method of getting around the problem is safe ??
No, you will kill off many other software.

>Is /dev/tty left over from the days when a teletype hung off the system
>printing out various messages ??
/dev/tty is the controlling tty of your job. E.g. try "cp somefile /dev/tty"
on your screen. With your workaround, the output goes to the console 
instead of the users screen. That wipes out many many programs.

Sincerely,
Klaus Steinberger
--
Klaus Steinberger               Beschleunigerlabor der TU und LMU Muenchen
Phone: (+49 89)3209 4287        Hochschulgelaende
FAX:   (+49 89)3209 4280        D-8046 Garching, Germany
Internet: Klaus.Steinberger@bl.physik.uni-muenchen.de
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
From: jet@win30.nas.nasa.gov (J. Eric Townsend)
Subject: OSF/1 related question
Organization: Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation, NASA Ames
Date: 12 Aug 92 10:21:06



I'm building some code on a mips-based OSF/1 system (don't ask, it's
too embarrasing to explain :-).  I've run into a problem that I
suspect is based on the fact that the start of text and the start of
data are at a different place in OSF than in the BSD-like operating
system provided by the vendor of our hardware. (Yeesh, did I make that
vague enough for the lawyers?)

Any hints/pointers/clues on where I can find out where the start of
text and the start of data really are?  Any mips/osf gurus out there
who'd like to share email?

thanks...

--
             J. Eric Townsend --  jet@nas.nasa.gov -- 415.604.4311
                              '91 CB750, DoD# 0378
   "It's not his fault that he can't behave, Society's made him go astray..
                                 - Oingo Boingo
From: cliff@shadow.phys.ucalgary.ca (Cliff Marcellus)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: rdump parameters for use with DAT?
Date: 21 Aug 92 18:52:54 GMT
Organization: Institute for Space Research

In article <k2.714418921@woodstock> k2@bl.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Klaus Steinberger) writes:
>cczdao@mips.nott.ac.uk (David Osborne) writes:
>
>>We do have an HP 2000 DAT drive on another system, and I've checked I
>>can write to it ok using rdump.ffs on our Mips, so I'd like to use DAT
>>for doing our Mips backups.  What parameters for density and length of
>>the tape would be suitable for telling rdump to use?  DAT tapes of 60m
>>length seem to be most commonly used here.
>
>I use the followinf parameters:
>
>density: 54000
>size:    4000
>

...and I've been using density = 54000, size = 3900

I would say that's pretty good agreement! {-8




-- 
Cliff Marcellus                       |  Internet : cliff@phys.ucalgary.ca
Department of Physics and Astronomy   |  SPAN     : CANCAL::CLIFF
The University of Calgary             |  Phone    : +1 403 220 7193
OPINIONS EXPRESSED WITHIN ARE MY OWN AND NOT THOSE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
From: bruce@gordian.com (Bruce Hafford)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: R4000 & Mips OS 5.0b = horrid TCP behavior??
Keywords: R4000,TCP/IP
Date: 12 Aug 92 22:30:59 GMT
Organization: Gordian

Well, we finally got our new Mips R4000 station booted and
happy.  Except for having the wrong Xwindows version, but that's
another story.  Anyway, we're seeing some gross TCP/IP behavior
and are wondering if anyone else has noticed this.

There seem to be 3 (possibly interrelated) problems:

1) WAY too many plain TCP ack packets.  If the R4000 is generating
data to a Telnet user, for example, it will follow a slew of data packets
with a slew of ACKs, even though the user did not send anything
that needs acking.  These acks number 10-25 at a time, spaced at
about 700usec - 1.5 msec apart.  disgusting!

2) Unbuffered data output.  On the above user, the R4000 generates data
packets (~50 bytes each) every ~1msec.  Slower TCP clients get
completely swamped, and quickly fall behind.  Buffering the output
is sorely needed, if only for 2-5 msec.  Or at least dynamic modification
of the output timer intervals?

Between items 1 & 2, the packet ratio ends up with the R4000 sending
about 6-7 times as many packets as the listener.  OS 4.52 on a Magnum 3xxx
end up about 1.5 - 2 times as many, if that.

3) Bogus retransmissions?  We have a couple products here that do
not keep up with the R4000's TCP rate, and thus fall behind and drop
packets.  The R4000 seems to handle retransmissions ok sometimes, 
but several times the session has completely stopped dead because
the 4000 did NOT retransmit the correct packet.  The other TCP node 
continued to ack up to that dropped packet, but the 4000 never
resends it.  Needless to say, incorrect as far as we can tell.

If these things are tunable in the OS, that's fine, but having the
default be "too many packets, dropped retransmits" seems wrong-ish.

So - anyone else out there using the R4000 and new 5.0b Mips OS?
Have you seen anything like this?  email or post - I'll summarize
if people are interested.  And if any Mips engineers happen to
run across this, feel free to contact us!

bruce@gordian.com
From: berstel@mipsmath.math.uqam.ca (Bruno Berstel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Can't stat /dev/6 :-(
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:37:55 GMT
Reply-To: berstel@lacim.uqam.ca (Bruno Berstel)
Organization: Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Hello,

I seem to have encountered a problem in the way the "login" program stores
ptys in utmp. But perhaps am I going to far; here are the facts.

-------------------- Beginning of session --------------------
Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
Bonjour !
(1)% uname -A
mipsmath mipsmath 5.0 RISCos mips m2000-8 ATT_V3_0
(2)% /usr/bsd43/bin/tty
/dev/ttyq6
(3)% /usr/bin/tty
/dev/pts/6
(4)% w berstel
 11:13am  up 4 days, 20:55,  11 users,  load average: 1.06, 1.12, 1.14
User     tty       login@  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
berstel  ttyq1    10:50am     1     28      5  xterm -ls
berstel  ttyq6    11:12am                      w berstel
(5)% login berstel
Password:
Last login: Tue Aug 18 10:56:13 on ttyx1
RISC/os (UMIPS) 5.0 mipsmath
(C) Copyright 1986-1992, MIPS Computer Systems
All Rights Reserved
Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
Bonjour !
(1)% /usr/bsd43/bin/tty
/dev/ttyq6
(2)% /usr/bin/tty
/dev/pts/6
(3)% w berstel
 11:14am  up 4 days, 20:56,  10 users,  load average: 1.07, 1.09, 1.12
User     tty       login@  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
berstel  ttyq1    10:50am     2     28      5  xterm -ls
berstel  6        11:14am     2                -
(4)% finger
finger: Can't stat /dev/6
(5)%
------------------------- End of session ---------------------

This happens either when (as above) I call login from a login shell in an
xterm, when I run "xterm -e login" or when I call "exec login" in a non-login
shell in an xterm. It doesn't happen when I log through /dev/ttyx1 on a vt100.

Now I'm a little bit confused and I would appreciate some (or any) help...

Bruno.
-- 
-----     -----     -----     -----     -----     -----     -----     -----
Bruno Berstel                                         berstel@lacim.uqam.ca
Laboratoire de Combinatoire et d'Informatique Mathematique       L.A.C.I.M.
Universite du Quebec a Montreal                                    U.Q.A.M.
(Tele)phone : (514) 987-8495                           Fax : (514) 987-8477
---------------     ---------------     ---------------     ---------------
                    Noel en hiver, Paques au printemps.