HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: amsh1@ukc.ac.uk (Brian May#2)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: ARM3 instructions.
Date: 3 Sep 92 14:36:21 GMT
Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.


  I don't have an Archie myself but have used them quite a lot in the past.
I was recently mucking about with a friend's A5000, trying to find the new
instructions that turned the cache on and off. I found them, they were
co-processor instructions with the processor itself as (I think) number 0.

  Anyway, as I was disassembling away I found a new instruction (well, I had
never come across it before). It was 'SWP' and I imagine it swaps registers
with registers, maybe with memory as well? I can't remember. If it does
reg<->mem as well, and is uninterruptable, perhaps it is for use as a
semaphore in multi-processor systems?

  I worked out how it fitted into the instruction set, it is where an
illegal instruction was previously. I think it might have been due to only
four bits for a register shift, five bits for an immediate - hence an extra
bit which would have to be 0 for a normal instruction. I can't really
explain this very coherently but someone will know what I mean!

  I then wrote a program to generate all possible versions of this
instruction, but I didn't print them out... Anyway, it didn't help me work
out what they actually did (if I had my own A5000 I would spend some more
time on it, but I haven't and I'm just interested)

  Of course I won't be the first person to notice this so I wondered, could
someone post some info on this, and also on the co-processor instructions
relevant to the CPU itself?

  Another thing - RiscOs (being quite well designed as it is) has certain
ways of doing things which leads me to ask the question: When I do ...
  *memoryi 03800000 (Is it *memoryi? Is 03800000 ROM? Do I need my own
Archie?)

  ... and a coprocessor instruction is found, which module decodes it? Now
if I wrote Risc-Os, I would get the ARM3 support module to decode the
instructions, and I would get a floating point emulator to decode the FPU
instructions. That way, it's nicely modular and extensible.

  Now, I didn't write Risc-Os, and as I remember, the FPU decoding is done
in the debugger. I looked through the ARM3 support module and found some
text relating to the cache instructions, but not all of them. I couldn't
find any in the debugger.

  If I sound a little vague, please understand that I didn't have all day
to sort this out, and it was two months ago!

Andrew.

ps. Nothing to do with my post, but just to pour petrol on the flames, I'm
gonna buy a 486 PC cos I can get more power for less money, and the screen
doesn't blank when I access the disk drive :-) So if Acorn are listening
(and I think they are!) I think you have a well-defined problem on your
hands. I wonder if someone could write RiscOs for a PC? Or an Archimedes
emulator, now that would be amusing...
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
Subject: CallAfter bug?
Organization: (DESY, Hamburg, Germany)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 19:06:32 GMT

My question about disk space got a good response (thanks everyone), so let's
try something even more arcane. 

  I've used CallAfter and CallEvery before, but never for an accurately-timed
delay. I've just been testing this, and it seems that they both run about 10%
slow. Specifically, if I ask to be called after 100 ticks (1 second) I actually
get called after something between 109 and 110 ticks. The average number is
quite stable, but doesn't appear to be an integer. I'm measuring the slippage
relative to the monotonic time, which does seem to be accurate. I find this
odd, as I had assumed that they were clocked off the same interrupt. Does
anyone know what the problem is? Can I rely on it being 10% slow? What is there
that happens at slightly more than 9Hz??? I wasn't trying it on a "virgin
machine"; is it possible that a rogue module is messing it up?

  BTW, this is another area where the PRM is deficient; it doesn't say what the
entry and exit conditions for the called routine are, other than "treat it as
an interrupt routine". Do I have to preserve registers? And is the processor in
IRQ mode? It would be nice to have an OS_CallBackAfter, since whenever I use
CallAfter I always seem to need a CallBack as well. Not in RISC OS 3 by any
chance? :-)

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!
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Message number allocation...
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 00:35:54 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

I will soon want to get about 4 WIMP message numbers allocated from Acorn
(for DSEdit II), and I was just wondering what the best way to go about this
would be... The last time I requested anything from Acorn, it took 3 months
before I even got a letter back, and all that said was "We are considering..."
- it was another couple of weeks before I got the proper reply!

Bearing this in mind, I don't want to wait for 3 months before I get some
message numbers that I can use, so I was wondering if I can short-circuit
some of the delays (2 weeks just for snailmail to start with) by emailing
my request direct to somebody in a position of power...

[BTW, I am not, despite how it looks, criticising Acorn for this: it's just
that the more bureaucratic red-tape I can avoid, the better my chances of
getting an allocation within a useful time frame]

Thanks in advance.
-- 
_________________  "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: jjh91r@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Jon. Hallett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: How *does* one write a good text editor?
Date: 28 Aug 92 13:59:16 GMT
Organization: Southampton University Computer Science
In-reply-to: jamesh@castle.ed.ac.uk's message of 27 Aug 92 15:34:01 GMT

In article <25258@castle.ed.ac.uk> jamesh@castle.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton) writes:

[...]
>What you do is you have the text split in two(this is where the cursor
>currently is) with one block of text at one end of the array and the
>other at the opposite end of the array:
[...]

Yep, this is the scheme that emacs uses (and TECO before it if the
comments in the emacs source are to be believed).  See the files
emacs-18.58/src/insdel.c and emacs-18.58/src/buffer.h in the emacs
distribution for the code itself.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: nas20@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nick Smith)
Subject: Reading from the CMOS clock
Reply-To: nas20@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nick Smith)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 10:41:48 GMT

I'm having a little trouble with some code I'm writing at the moment:

For various essential reasons, I have to turn off interrupts for upto
several minutes at a time. What I *want* to do, is preserve the real time
clock (I know how long I will have interrupts disabled exactly)

I know that the soft copy of the realtime clock will halt during this period,
but I felt sure that the CMOS (hardware) clock, which after all works when
the machine is switched off, would continue happily with no interrupts ...

I am using OS_Word,14,1 which claims to read the real time from CMOS clock in
BCD (ug) format. Thing is, it contains the same value before & after the
code with no ints. has been called.

So what am I doing wrong ???!
--
Nick Smith, Churchill College, Cambridge, UK.  %$%  Email: nas20@uk.ac.cam.phx
sig quote wanted - must be under guarantee.   $%$  --- Usual disclaimer. ---
From: bdb@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Brunswick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: RISCix/RISCOS partitions on R260
Date: 28 Aug 92 08:58:09 GMT
Reply-To: bdb@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Brunswick)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

In article <1992Aug27.130934.29591@lut.ac.uk> N.D.Moss2@lut.ac.uk (AnonyMoss) writes:
>Hello all.
>Is it possible to claw back some of the space (around 15MB) allocated to
>RISC-IX for RISC-OS to use, using the SCSIDM program, but without
>trashing what is already on the disk? There is approximately 50MB of

Well this is partially what I produced my "partitions" thing to do.
You still have to trash the existing data if your riscix space is all
one partition, but what it lets you do is divide up the disc into
smaller bits, and you can then switch them between riscos and riscix.
Obtain from newcastle.  One thing to beware of when using the scsidm
partition command is that it writes the partition map after the end of
each partition - this is the cause of the 1 sector gap between them.
If you are trying to repartition a disc while preserving old ones,
this is dangerous. (as you will need to do to change the names for my
partitions thing(I never said it was elegant!))

One gain that you can make even without trashing your data is to use the
riscix swap partition as termporary scratch space for riscos. Of course,
it will need to be re"formatted" each time after running riscix, but this
can be automated and is still useful.

Of course, the alternative if you have two machines is just to use nfs onto
the riscix machine as a server - this gives you a sensable filing system as
well.

Brian.Brunswick@cl.cam.ac.uk  Disclaimer.  Short sig rules!
From: alex@winx06.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Alexander Jung)
Subject: FPA and Memory Pinout?
Organization: University of Wuerzburg, Germany
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 15:21:03 GMT


Hello,
due to my ongoing thesis in astrophysics where I have to do a great deal of
floating point simulation I'm desperately looking into means to improve the
floating point speed of my A310 (4Mb, Arm 3, OAK SCSI...)

One intermediate solution would be a replacement for the FPE-module that
would use my Cyrix 387sx on the Aleph One PCboard (quite similar to the
DT Softwares 287 copro). I already phoned Aleph One on this but the did
not seem interested in writing such a module. While this can only be the
first step as the DT's copro claims 3-5-fold speed increase compared to an
ARM3, I would be really interested in some help on this program.

The real solution would be a combined Arm3/Copro hardware. As it seems that
Acorn will finally release a decent and payable Copro I'd be very interested
to hear of companies that sell Arm3 upgrades with coprocessor sockets.

Another possibility would be a do-it-yourself thingy that would have basically
an Arm3 and an empty socket. In order to keep it expandable I'd like to put
one or two memory upgrade sockets (like on the A540) on the board too.

So can a kind soul provide me with suitable info on the pinouts and connections
of the copro and the memory upgrades? 

hopefully
Alexander Jung

Grad. physics student at                    Snail mail: Alexander Jung 
State University of Bavaria at Wuerzburg                Kopernikusstrasse 19
                                                        D-8708 Gerbrunn
Email: alex@winx06.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de          Germany
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: N.D.Moss2@lut.ac.uk (AnonyMoss) 
Subject: RISCix/RISCOS partitions on R260
Reply-To: N.D.Moss2@lut.ac.uk (AnonyMoss)
Organization: Loughborough University, UK.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 13:09:34 GMT

Hello all.

We have here an R260, with 120MB SCSI drive, sectioned so that about
7.5MB is available to RISC-OS, the rest to RISC-iX. 

Is it possible to claw back some of the space (around 15MB) allocated to
RISC-IX for RISC-OS to use, using the SCSIDM program, but without
trashing what is already on the disk? There is approximately 50MB of
free space within RISC-iX. I am hoping that it is possible to simply 
alter whatever maps and tables exist to achieve this.

Failing that, are there any alternatives, short of reformatting?

Any advice/info gratefully received.
Neil.
-- 
    o__    Bike it!!  : My opinions are : In every life we have some trouble 
   _.>/ _ You'll like :   my own, and   : When you worry, you make it double
  (_) \(_)   it!!     :    not LUT's    : Don't worry.. .. .. .. ..Be happy.
==N.D.Moss2@uk.ac.lut=============================Bobby McFerrin============
From: nas20@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nick Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Reading from the CMOS clock
Date: 1 Sep 92 16:45:14 GMT
Reply-To: nas20@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nick Smith)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

In article <1992Sep1.104148.12279@infodev.cam.ac.uk> nas20@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nick Smith) writes:
>I'm having a little trouble with some code I'm writing at the moment:
>
>For various essential reasons, I have to turn off interrupts for upto
>several minutes at a time. What I *want* to do, is preserve the real time
>clock (I know how long I will have interrupts disabled exactly)
>
Oh yeah, I have tried adding the time delay to the old clock value, then 
writing it, but the time-based SWIs are rather limiting - you can only read
the CMOS clock as BCD (precision 1 sec), and you can only write the CMOS
clock as a string, and while there is a SWI to convet BCD->string a) it has
insufficient precision, and b) it requires that you know how many days are there in each month, and worry about leap years, etc, etc - too much hassle !



--
Nick Smith, Churchill College, Cambridge, UK.  %$%  Email: nas20@uk.ac.cam.phx
sig quote wanted - must be under guarantee.   $%$  --- Usual disclaimer. ---
From: bwc@waikato.ac.nz (Ug!)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: How *does* one write a good text editor?
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:00:53 +1200
Organization: Vooniersity fo Kaiwato

Philip Colmer writes:
> If you were writing a text editor which allowed text effects (eg font
> changes, colour changes, etc) to be applied, how would you hold the
> data? My initial thoughts are:

This is a *text* *editor*?  How do you save the effects without having
some sort of formatting information added to the text?

>   * keep the text as one contiguous block of memory
>   * keep a linked list of effects, specifying the effect to be applied
>     and the start and end character offset for the effect
>   * keep a linked list of line start offsets.

Or: embed the effects.  I'd imagine this would be slower.  Perhaps a
combination of the two:

	<effect><text-length><text...>

Then to render it you would simple render what amounts to a list of
effect/text combinations.
							Ug!
From: sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
Date: 28 Aug 92 11:50:07 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.

In article <memo.597624@cix.compulink.co.uk> lorcan@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>What cockup? The Backspace key generates the backspace character and the
>Delete key generates the Delete character. It's up to the applications
>to respond to these ACSII codes as they see fit - it's nothing to do
>with the OS. In this here copy of SrcEdit when I press the Backspace key
>it deletes the character to the left of the caret. QED.

Those who think Unix gets it right talk rubbish - if I use backspace in
many places (usually to a remote machine) then I get ^H and/or ^? depending
on which setup I'm logged on to.  Hardly standardised, or easy to use,
since I can never tell what it's going to be.  At least the machines here
(Sparcstation ELCs) use both keys properly on the console.  BOTH for
delete left, BTW - in vi anyway.

>Lorcan

mad@bike
From: pdenize@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: VIRUS ALERT in New Zealand (Auckland)
Date: 24 Aug 92 09:18:01 +1200
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Sorry guys,

Last night I discovered a virus in New Zealand.  So as not to pat the 
twerp who wrote this virus I will give a small check so that many of us can see
if we and even our colleagues in clubs are free of this nasty.

It disguises itself as a Sprite file called Icon and is really a BASIC file.

Search your disks, if you find "Icon" then do the following avoid running new
applications.  This is how it moves.  Delete all the "Icon" files (keeping
track of the places you delete it from).  When you think you have them all
reset your machine (CTRL RESET) then check again, if you find another then
repeat the process.  When you have them all you may be getting warnings like
File Icon not found.  This is because you have crippled the virus.  Now edit 
the !Boot files and delete the lines 

wimpslot -min 16k -max 16k
BASIC -quit <Obey$Dir>.Icon


Paul Denize

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Denize                                Internet: PDenize@Waikato.ac.nz
Department of Computer Science
University of Waikato                         phone: ++64 7 8562-889
Hamilton                                                          Ext 8743
NEW ZEALAND                                   fax  : ++64 7 8560-135
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: r_voisey@csd.brispoly.ac.uk (R Voisey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: VIRUS (Authorities ?)y
Date: 27 Aug 92 23:34:28 GMT
Organization: Bristol Polytechnic, England

In article <5896@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> sks@fiveg.icl.co.uk (Steve Smith) writes:
>What if someone were to write an anti-virus virus. (very old)

Yeah, nice idea except:

 1.  It's illegal (as you pointed out)
 2.  It would result in dangerous viruses becoming more sophisticated
 3.  It would get modified in no time at all to do damage

Bob


-- 
Robert J. Voisey  :  r_voisey@csd.brispoly.ac.uk   (Janet)
GUI coders do it     Bob Voisey @ 2:252/106.0      (Fidonet)
on the desktop       Bob Voisey @ 100:104/106.0    (TurboNet)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 07:12:20 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk (Andy Duplain) writes:

>>What cockup? The Backspace key generates the backspace character and the
>>Delete key generates the Delete character. It's up to the applications
>	Good, perhaps I could hack into TWIN to get it to act likewise.

Or do what I did for a friend: it's far easier to hack the keyboard so
it returns a 127 for both keys...

-- 
_________________  "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)
Xref: sparky comp.sys.acorn:8433 comp.sys.acorn.tech:83
From: sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn,comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: GCC for ARM2/3 & pricing info?
Date: 31 Aug 92 12:09:56 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.

In article <1992Aug30.214715.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> smackinla@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
>On another note altogether, can anyone give me any current pricing info on
>both the ARM2 and ARM3 chipsets (including the ARM250 and ARM600 if it's
>actually available yet)?

Acorn user said the ARM610 (ARM600 without copro interface) is US$20 in bulk.

>Pat -- Have a day!

 _ _ _            _    __
' ) ) )        / / \  /  )    /
 / / / __.  __/ / (/ /--<  o /_  _
/ ' (_(_/|_(_/_/\___/___/_<_/ <_</_
sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk             REAL (tm) peeps ride bike :)
From: adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: LPMud gamedriver for 3.0 mudlib
Date: 26 Aug 92 18:13:00 GMT

In <bhotvedt-250892173753@129.240.2.43> bhotvedt@usit.uio.no (Tor Houghton) writes:

>In article <5227@krafla.rhi.hi.is>, adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David) wrote:

>Finally someone's porting LPMUD! How will it support multiple connections?
>Multiple serial port cards and TCP/IP or just one of them?

The main idea is to support a universal socket interface, i.e. any device
which supports socket operations can be used to connect to the mud. Since
the original reason for porting to the Archimedes was to have a local mud
for testing LPC code, the first priority is to get it working in wimp windows
on the same machine. Once that is done, anything else will be possible, for
instance a well equipped machine directly on the internet might even work
well enough for a public mud (16 MB standard memory would be nice). Just don't
do anything on the local end that crashes the machine :-( a lot of applications
do seem to crash easily from what should be recoverable situations. I have
tried 5 terminal programs but not one of them is immune from data abort /
instruction fetch abort which is triggered by line noise at the modem.
I think it would be nice to support econet and serial port connections also,
in addition to ethernet.

--
Adam David. (adamd@rhi.hi.is)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles)
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements
Reply-To: lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles)
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, MA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 17:32:51 GMT

In article <10383@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk>, sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91) writes:
|>>What cockup? The Backspace key generates the backspace character and the
|>>Delete key generates the Delete character. It's up to the applications
|>>to respond to these ACSII codes as they see fit - it's nothing to do
|>>with the OS. In this here copy of SrcEdit when I press the Backspace key
|>>it deletes the character to the left of the caret. QED.
|>
|>Those who think Unix gets it right talk rubbish - if I use backspace in
|>many places (usually to a remote machine) then I get ^H and/or ^? depending
|>on which setup I'm logged on to.  Hardly standardised, or easy to use,
|>since I can never tell what it's going to be.  At least the machines here
|>(Sparcstation ELCs) use both keys properly on the console.  BOTH for
|>delete left, BTW - in vi anyway.

Unix may be showing its age here - you're allowed one "delete" key but
it can be more or less whatever you want, i.e. what is suitable for the
terminal you're using.  We used to have a utility which could determine
your terminal type, so you could use stty to set up the appropriate keys.

Unix has a lot of history, and carries some baggage as a result - look at
the default delete and kill-line keys ("#" and "@")!  Also look at the fact
that you can set delays for the time taken to do a line-feed, a carriage
return and a tab - extremely important for a teletype!  The upside of this
history is that it has an extremely rich and flexible set of utilities and
tools which have improved and developed over time mostly by programmers -
so if you think like a programmer then you'll probably love Unix, but if
you think like a normal person then you'll hate it!  Things like the Mac
and RISC-OS are designed for normal people.

Lezz "Yet another Unix hacker" Giles