Windoware/WINDOWARE_1_6.iso/misctext/pcdg9185/pcdg9185

Text File | 1991-04-11 | 28KB | 703 lines

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Date: Fri,  5 Apr 91 20:59:25 GMT+1
From: "Info-IBMPC Digest" <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Info-IBMPC Digest V91 #85
To: "Info-IBMPC Distribution": ;

Info-IBMPC Digest           Fri,  5 Apr 91       Volume 91 : Issue  85

Today's Editor:
         Gregory Hicks - Rota Spain <[e-mail]>

Today's Topics:
                    comments on postscript printing
                             cr/lf problems
                              DD/HD/holes
                        Disabling Control Break
                    Memory Board Settings (V91 #73)
                         Listing of interrupts
                        Re Listing of interrupts
                     Wuarchive Mirrors Resurrected
                          Re: Missing 1k on PC

Today's Queries:
              Achieve Multi I/O Plus Mistery DIP Switches
                            EMS in VGA ram?
                         hardware compatibility
                 Request for info on VAX/PC/MAC Linkups
                      native vs translation modes
                    Search for information on LAN's
                          Symbolic Integration
                    WANTED: Simple Zmodem Term Prog.
                      Toggeling To/From Turbo Mode

New Upload:
      TCU_32A.ZIP - Turbo C Flexible menus, windows, & Forms Entry

Send Replies or notes for publication to:
<[e-mail]>

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the distribution list, et al) to:
<[e-mail]>

Archives of past issues of the Info-IBMPC Digest are available by FTP
only from WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL in directory PD2:<ARCHIVES.IBMPC>.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 01:49:37 GMT
From: [e-mail] (James D. Freels)
Subject: comments on postscript printing

A note on tradeoffs of buying a PS printer versus using QMS-Ultrascript
to translate PS output to an HP-LJ II.

I have an application that generates large postscript files of lots of
line draws (sort of like Tektronix plot files).  I was interested in
seeing whether I could save any turn-around time by using QMS-USPC to
an HP-LJ II instead of the QMS-810 printer I have been using.  The
example postscript file is about 1.8 Mb.  The computer is a 386-20 Mhz
with 10 Mb memory and coprocesser.  I print in serial mode to a Baytech
data exchanger at 38.4 Kbaud and the Baytech in turn prints in parallel
to the printers (whichever I choose).  The bottle neck is at the
printer not the serial communications so don't give me that argument.

The straight print to the QMS-810 PS printer takes about 31 minutes for
this file (picture) from the time I issue the print command until I get
the page of output.

The PCL file created by QMS-USPC is about 578Kb reduced from the
original 1.8Mb PS file.  Then I print this PCL file to the HP-LJII
printer.  The total turn around time for this is about 19 minutes!
Since QMS-USPC is considerably cheaper than a PS printer, I argue that
for this type of printing, why get a PS printer?

The drawback is that QMS-USPC works best with 4Mb of your extended
memory.  You can tradeoff this memory for disk swap space but it will
not run as fast.

I am convinced that this is the way to go.  I am now seriously thinking
about getting an HP-DeskJet for home to do what little graphics
printing I will do.  Yeah, I know that a 300 dpi image on a desk-jet
will take a very long time.  But they are relatively inexpensive.

Another comment is that I cannot detect any differences in the output
quality.  Furthermore, since a Deskjet is ink based, the quality there
might actually be better than an HPLJII.  Any comments?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 15:23:24 CST
From: "Norman R. Frech CPLS" <[e-mail]>
Subject: cr/lf problems

>>Then I took an hour to discover that unix files use ^J as an line
>>separator, while ms-dos insists on a ^M.  The thing is, I knew this,
>>but didn't realize the very misterious compiler errors were due to this
>>effect.

>>So, beware of the ^J when copying files from an unix system folks!

>In addition to the CRLF programs available to correct this, I have
>found what is a really good solution for me.  I load the file with the
>^Js into Qedit, make a small change (like deleting a single character)
>and save it again.  Voila!  All newlines are now ^Ms.

>The only problem is that I can't get Qedit to edit files bigger than
>the available amount of memory.  Alas.

I typically use perl to fix this problem with something like the
following:

while (<>) {
chop;
print "$_\n";
}

Your files can be as large as you want. Any time I have to convert a
file from one format to another perl usually will do the best job.

Norm Frech <[e-mail]>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 13:10:49 EST
From: "Bruce H. McIntosh" <[e-mail]>
Subject: DD/HD/holes

The reason that non-PS/2 machines cannot read a DD floppy that was
formatted HD on a PS/2 is that they don't have the HD hole.  Here's how
it goes:

The PS/2 lets you get away with formatting to HD because it hasn't got
the hole sensor; thus, it can't tell that you're using a DD floppy.
When you take a floppy formatted in this manner and attempt to use it
on a machine that HAS the hole sensor (which is just about everybody
else), that machine cannot tell that it's dealing with a HD-formatted
disk.  Its hole sensor is telling it, "This is a DD diskette."  So, it
will attempt to read what it thinks is a DD-formatted diskette,
encounter sectors that are (it thinks) all messed up, and issue the
dreaded "General error reading drive A" message.

So, if you want to get away with using those HD-formatted DD diskettes
on a non-PS/2 machine, you're most likely going to have to punch holes
in them.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 09:20:00 CST
From: Mark Parr <[e-mail]>
Subject: Disabling Control Break

Someone asked a question about disabling the Contrl-C/Break:

I have a couple device drivers that will do that for you -- both work
fine.

One is called NOBRK.SYS and the other is BRK.DRV

With the BRK.DRV, you are able to turn Control-C/Break checking on or
off as needed (default is off).

Send me your address and I will send you UUENCODE .ZIP files to you if
you are interested.

               |-- [e-mail]  --  [e-mail]
   Mark Parr --|-- University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa

[How about sending Keith Petersen a note and asking to upload for the
rest of us as well?  gph]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 16:44:00 CST
From: [e-mail] (David J. Camp)
Subject: Memory Board Settings (V91 #73)

In Reply to this Note From: <Info-IBMPC Digest>
[text deleted]

>Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 18:27 EST
>From: [e-mail]

>I have a 16 bit IBM PC memory board called a RAM Parity Card with no
[text deleted]

Greg,  Notice that there are two Subject: lines in the header lines
above.  This confuses my 'digest' program (included below), so that
appropriate identifier.  I am trying to keep the digest program simple,
especially because it is possible to make it an incredible monstrosity
to handle all of the weird formats.  I was just hoping that it was
possible for you to modify the generation of the digest so that this
message took another form.  For example, you could contrive an RFC822
header for that purpose, such as "Subject-Group:".  This should be
ignored by mail systems, so it should not cause any problems.

I would appreciate hearing your response.  -David-

# [e-mail]             ^     Mr. David J. Camp            #
# [e-mail]    < * >   [phone]              #
# ...!uunet!wugate!wubios!david      v     "God loves material things." #
# abs (investment#1 - investment#2) << abs (anyinvestment - anydebt)    #

----- cut here -----
#! /usr/bin/perl
#
#    This is 'digest' a program to run elm on a digest as a folder.
#    Copyright (C) 1990  David J. Camp
#
#    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
#    any later version.
#
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
#    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
#
# [e-mail]             ^     Mr. David J. Camp
# [e-mail]    < * >   [phone]
# ...!uunet!wugate!wubios!david      v     "God loves material things."
#
# from the elm menu, type |digest<return>
#
$| = 1;
open (FOLDER, ">/tmp/dig$$");
while (<>)
    {
    if (/(^\([0-9]*\)
 |^--)----(\n|-----------------------(\n|-(\n|-------------------------(\n|-----
 ----------\n))))/)
        {
        print FOLDER "From dummy Wed Feb  29 12:12:12 1990\n";
        do
            {
            $_ = <>;
            }
            until (eof() || /[\041-\177]/);
        }
    print FOLDER $_;
    }
close (FOLDER);
exec ("elm -f /tmp/dig$$ <&2 ; /bin/rm -f /tmp/dig$$");
----- cut here -----

------------------------------

Date: 2  Apr 91  8:39
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Listing of interrupts

Dr.Guenther W.Himmelmann asks

>In 1989 there was an excellent listing of interrupts - who knows, where
>to find it ( or an update ) ? We had it printed, but the printout was
>lost when we had to change to a new location...  Thank You!
>gwh

I think you mean Ralf Brown's Interrupt List. You can find it on
SIMTEL20 in <MSDOS.INFO>INTER590.ZIP

 BTW, - excuse me I'm a novice reader of the digest and curious - who's
that wizard that is hiding behind the abbreviation "gph" ?  His answers
are enclosed in square brackets

Martin Timann

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 08:34:21 MST
From: Gregory Hicks <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re Listing of interrupts

Martin:

>...Who's that wizard that is hiding behind the abbreviation "gph"?
> His answers are enclosed in square brackets

[Not sure what you mean by 'wizard' since I don't consider myself in
that category...  I'm the editor for the Digest.  (Take a look at the
"masthead".)  By putting the answers in the individual message, I can
save 'message space' for other topics.  The digestify program has a
limit (built in by me) of 20 messages or 30K bytes of text (whichever
comes first) so that most mailers will accept the mail...

The initials 'gph' stand for Gregory Paul Hicks (me).  Here's a short
blurb on me...

    I'm a Lieutenant Commander on Active Duty with the US Navy.  I'm
currently stationed at the Naval Base in Rota, Spain where my real job
is to manage the port of Rota for US and Spanish Navy (Port Captain if
you will).  During the years from 85-89, I was stationed at the Joint
US Military Advisory Group-Korea (Seoul and Chinhae) as a R&D Liaison
Officer.  Following my stint in Seoul, I was stationed at the Fleet
Activity, Chinhae Korea where I took care of US Navy (and US Naval,
there IS a difference) ships visiting Korea.

    Professionally, my college degree is in Computer Science from the
University of Utah.  However, I started programming in '64 just out of
High School on an IBM 1610.  I worked for a while with a computer
service bureau in Los Angeles, at the Math Department at UCLA, moved to
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working for Bendix Field Engineering
Corporation in Pasadena in '66 at the Space Flight Operations Facility
(or SFOF) ans was there during the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor space shots.
I left JPL in October '67 to join the Navy in '68 (I almost was drafted).
I was trained by the Navy as a Data Systems Technician.  While in
school at Vallejo California, I applied for a commission (as an officer), and,
 during my tour of duty aboard the USS MIDWAY (then CVA-41, now CV-41)
was accepted into the program and
sent to the University of Utah to get a degree in Computer Science.  I
have programmed in such languages as FORTRAN, FORTRAN II, FORTRAN IV,
JOVIAL, LISP, RPG, RPG-II, various assembler languages (mostly IBM, but
also some Univac machines), ...  There are more, but I'd have to get
out a computer language 'history' book to look up the rest of them...

    Personally, I'm the oldest child of 14 (8 boys, 6 girls).  My
father was in the Navy as a Supply Corps Officer.  He retired as a
Commander in 1061 while stationed in Los Angeles California.  They
currently reside in Ventura California.  12 of the 14 children live
within two hours travel time of Ventura.

Hope that helps.  gph]

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 0:25:05 CST
From: [e-mail] (David J. Camp)
Subject: Wuarchive Mirrors Resurrected

The wuarchive mirrors disk is now again operational.  Most of the
mirrors have already been restored, but alas, the simtel20 portion is
the slowest.  We have tweaked the timeout parameters to hasten the
restoration of files.  Meanwhile you may find your favorite programs
unavailable.  Please bear with us.  Thanks,  -David-

# [e-mail]             ^     Mr. David J. Camp            #
# [e-mail]    < * >   [phone]              #
# ...!uunet!wugate!wubios!david      v     "God loves material things." #
# abs (investment#1 - investment#2) << abs (anyinvestment - anydebt)    #

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 08:19:36 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Missing 1k on PC

  I had replied earlier that the Ping-Pong virus might cause your
system to "lose" 2K.  The Stoned virus reduces the total memory by 1k.

  However, I've also found that some peripherals may reduce the *total*
RAM size.  The Omnibridge Sysgen floppy controller reduces the overall
size of memory by 1k.  (This is a disk controller that can co-exist
with a second floppy controller.)  Even though you install OMNIBRG.SYS
like a device driver, the controller has a built-in BIOS and apparently
uses the main RAM in an unorthodox way.

  I suppose that anything that tampers with the BIOS report of
available RAM, which is at address 0000:0413h, *before* DOS comes up
would change the apparent total size of your system RAM.  I have not
seen a system where the hard disk controller's built-in partitioning
program was used to make more than one DOS volume, but I suspect these
schemes steal RAM in the same way.  Because DOS versions 3.30 and later
provide for partitioning multiple volumes (and therefore, do not
require the controller's own partitioning), this may be why different
DOS versions "see" different amounts of RAM.  The version of DOS used
does not and should not affect the total size reported for RAM, since
this is assessed by the BIOS on power-up.

  Moy Wong
  Dept. of Psychology
  New York University

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 01:00:54 AST
From: Filipe Santos <[e-mail]>
Subject: Achieve Multi I/O Plus Mistery DIP Switches

  Hi netfolks,

  Once more I need this kind of help from you all, as somebody again
handed us a IBM PC interface card, without documentation, as usual.
It's an Achieve Multi I/O Plus card, with one parallel, two serial and
a game port, standard PClone fodder. There are two DIP switch blocks (4
and 8 switches), colored light blue that blends handsomely with the
green PC board bellow. It's all very well, but I haven't been able to
figure out which switch combinations configure what ! It's true I
haven't done a thorough and painstaking research, but I was counting on
a kind soul among you to avoid that.

  Do anyone has the manual/docs for this thing ? If so, I'd like to ask
just for a mail msg describing the DIP switch settings.

  Thanks in advance for any help,!

   Filipe "JunkBin" Santos
 [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 11:38:11 EST
From: Paco Rosich <[e-mail]>
Subject: EMS in VGA ram?

Does anybody know of a utility to simulate expanded memory or ram-disk
using the free ram in a VGA card?

I have an XT with a monochrome VGA monitor and a Paradise VGA 256K
card. I'm trying to put Windows to work in it. With a 640K XT, you can
play 'sol' or 'reversi' but it's unreasonable to use any "hard" windows
application. As a first attempt to speed execution, I choose displaying
in 640x480 monochrome mode instead of grey scale. This restriction
suggest another improvement: in this mode there is about 200K free in
the VGA, so .. why not use it as expanded memory?

By the way, this hypothetical expanded memory manager have to be
specifically designed to manage memory banks in the VGA, not just use a
linearly addressable region in ram.

Any idea welcome. If finally no such thing exists, I'll build my own.

Paco Rosich
Internet: [e-mail]
Bitnet:   [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Tue,  2 Apr 91 11:22:43 -0500 (EST)
From: "H. Scott Matthews" <[e-mail]>
Subject: hardware compatibility

A friend of mine has a PC and an apple IIGS.

Some questions:

    Can he use his  apple imagewriter 2 with the IBM, and if so, how?

    Can he use his IIgs monitor with his PC?

He has the PC at work, and the GS at home.  He wants to be able to just
get a PC CPU at home and use the old monitor and printer...

scott

|H. Scott Matthews     | Carnegie Mellon University |
|Junior
|Comp.E/EPP
|[phone]

------------------------------

Date: 2 Apr 91 09:01:00 EST
From: "V70NL::CODE2111" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Request for info on VAX/PC/MAC Linkups

Ours is a medium-size firm, with about 1000 engineers & scientists. Our
group has about 30 people, consisting of about 15 analyst/engineers, 7
programmers (our particular team), plus managers and secretaries.

Our team's main job is creating/modifying FORTRAN programs to do
scientific calculation & plotting. The programming is done on a VAX,
using 286 PC's as text-terminals. This arrangement has been in force
for maybe 8 years - ever since our group first used PC's to connect to
the company's UNIVAC.

We run our applications on request by one of our group's analysts. This
requires a large number of parameters to be properly set to yield the
correct results; right now that is accomplished via a long, ill-defined
(for the occaisonal user) set of NAMELIST inputs to each program. If an
analyst has an unusual request (and often they do), it requires a fair
amount of run/ review/rerun cycles before the output is just what they
want.  Also, if an app is being revised, the only person who knows how
to run it is the coder, since the revision has no doubt new or changed
inputs parameters that only they know about.

The main reasons we stay with the VAX, even tho it costs us in connect
and storage charges are: large disk space -we maintain about a dozen
large applications and several large (>10 MB) data files; virtual
memory - these apps use many large data arrays that can take up to 10
MB of memory; multi-user makes the source code available to all users
in common; graphics library; spooled printing to a local laser; lack of
portability between VAX and PC FORTRAN implementations; lack of
experience with other languages; and last but not least, inertia - "if
it ain't broke, don't fix it".

We have been looking at changing this relationship, and have some
workstations on order, with an to using them (somehow) to make our job
easier. We are also considering rewriting our old apps to give them a
better interface - perhaps a GUI to make the input setup easier than
the current NAMELIST method. I attended a demo last week showing a DEC
w/s running X-WINDOWS, with a nicely-done GUI that acted as a front end
to one of our typical text-based FORTRAN apps. Very nice, easy to use.

So what are our NEEDS for any new system lashup ?

* applications development using FORTRAN

* transfer of our current apps to new system, intact

* good execution speed (run times now in minutes)

* plenty of disk space

* hi-res graphics to printer

* make the job of system management easy (eg disk backups,etc)

And our GOALS ?

     * reduce net costs: VAX useage vs new systems + new system mgr

     * make our apps easier to run- easy enough for an analyst

     * re-engineer apps for better coding, better documentation

     * source code control - version control - config. management

     * make apps easier to create

QUESTIONS :
     1. suggested alternatives to present dumb terminal/multi-user
mainframe configuration ?

     2. what forms of PC/VAX linkup are there (eg- X-WIN;
CLIENT/SERVER, etc.) ?

     3. is it feasible create a front-end to run on a PC or MAC, which
would drive the app on the VAX ? (this is called a CLIENT-BASED app ?)

     4. or is it preferable to run the entire app on a local machine
(eg multiuser w/s) ?

     5. current available products to create these front ends (Oracle,
Blyth/OMNIS, who ?)

     6. how best use the workstations that we'll get (eventually) ?

     7. pitfalls in converting/downsizing ?

     8. recommendations on using outside consultants ?

ANY SUGGESTIONS OR POINTERS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
Scott Daniels

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 11:15:09 GMT
From: Jacek Holeczek <[e-mail]>
Subject: native vs translation modes

I re-read my query that was in a recent Info-IBMPC Digest and decided
I needed to describe the problem more accurately.

First some theory!  Many (or even all) of Seagate IDE drives have two
modes of "work".  Those modes define how the drive is recognized by the
host computer.  There are two modes - one called "Native" and one
called "Translation".  In native mode the host computer sees the
"physical" geometry of the drive,  and in translation mode it sees
"translated" geometry of the drive. Here is an example : ST157A

                    translation     native
sectors/track       17              26
read/write heads    7               6
cylinders           733             560
guaranteed sectors  87,227          87,360
And now its time for the story.

Once upon a time (not very far from here and not very long ago) there
was a pretty small AT computer operating at 16MHz with IDE (AT-bus)
interface on board (with 1:1 interleave).

There was also a ST157AT-1 HDD in it. In the beginning this drive was
preformatted in its native mode, and the average seek time was 28
miliseconds, and track-track seek time was (about) 10 miliseconds. But
the owner decided to prefor- mat this HDD once more, this time in its
translation mode. And the results were: average seek time 28
miliseconds (not changed), and track-track seek time 1.1 miliseconds
(10 times better!)  In both cases preformating was done by DISK MANAGER
V4.3 with 1:1 interleave (I am sure in the first case, but not in the
second).

Question - why in the native mode was track-track seek time so bad?
(Translation should take time?) Half of the kingdom for someone who
solves this problem !

Bye,
Jacek Holeczek [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 22:08:05 MET
From: Ben Salemans <[e-mail]>
Subject: Search for information on LAN's

I would like to buy a LAN)network which must offer the following
possibilities:

1. both DOS-pc's and Apple Mac's can be connected to the LAN

2. the LAN can be connected to the campus wide Ethernet network (with
IBM-mainframes and DEC-VAX-computers)

3. the LAN can be connected to the Internet network

Do you know what kind of LAN offers these three possibilities?

Yours truly,
Ben Salemans

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1991 16:45 EST
From: "James D. Burnell, WVU Student" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Symbolic Integration

Hello,

My honors calculus class recently discussed integration techniques
(i.e.  integration by parts, trigonometric substitution, etc.) and my
teacher mentioned that he would be very interested in the source code
to Macsyma, a marketed math package that can apply such techniques to
symbolically solve indefinite integrals.

We are fairly certain that the source code for Macsyma is under wraps
(understandably).  Our question: does anyone know where we could get
source code in any language (preferably even pseudocode) that would
supply an algorithm to do this?  Code for specific integration
techniques is also welcome.  I checked SIMIBM.IDX and couldn't find
anything.

Please send responses to me and I will summarize for the net.

Thank you.
James D. Burnell      [e-mail]      UN034251@WVNVMS

------------------------------

Date: 2 Apr 91 17:41:54 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Scott K Wood)
Subject: WANTED : Simple Zmodem Term Prog.

     I am currently looking for a simple, no-frills, terminal program
for the IBM that supports ZModem and baud rates up to 9600.  If someone
could send me the file or tell me where to find it, I would appreciate
it.  Thanks in advance..

           Scott
  BITNET : [e-mail]
INTERNET : [e-mail]
           [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 18:51:44 PST
From: Ya'[e-mail]
Subject: Toggeling To/From Turbo Mode

I have a turbo Phoenix bios which switches speeds by toggling the
control alt + keys.  Internally, this must be translated to some kind
of OUT instructions - one to speed the machine up, and one to slow the
machine down.  Can someone please post the value of the OUT
instructions, and their arguments.

Y.N. Miles,
<[e-mail]>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 16:19:05 CET
From: Karl Keyte <[e-mail]>
Subject: TCU_32A.ZIP - Turbo C Flexible menus, windows, & Forms Entry

New upload:

  <MSDOS.TURBO-C>
TCU_32A.ZIP

TCU 3.2, form entry, menus, windows, etc. for TC, TC++, BC++

Karl

------------------------------

End of Info-IBMPC Digest V91 #85
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