========================================================================= INFO-ATARI16 Digest Thu, 7 Dec 89 Volume 89 : Issue 771 Today's Topics: ATARI sales .. going up? FORM, nice but... hard disks and Minix ST Late-breaking Atari news! Shareware MAC THE MAC LAPTOP and STacey Wanted: Nethack 3 Word Writer format company ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 7 Dec 89 19:54:19 GMT From: shlump.nac.dec.com!harpo.enet.dec.com!powers@decuac.dec.com (Bill Powers) Subject: ATARI sales .. going up? Message-ID: <6698@shlump.nac.dec.com> In article <4748f7bc.14a1f@force.UUCP>, covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) writes: > Has *ANYONE* out there in NEtland SEEN a Real Live AD for the ST, either > on TV or in print? > Yes, in "Keyboard" magazine, and "Electronic Musician" magazine. Bill Powers ---- Digital Equipment Corp. - Advanced Service Delivery Systems - Stow MA The opinions expressed above are my own, not my employers, so there. TELEPHONE - (508) 496 - 8725 E-MAIL - powers@harpo.enet.dec.com - ...!decwrl!harpo!powers ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 19:31:54 GMT From: cs.yale.edu!fischer-michael@CS.YALE.EDU (Michael Fischer) Subject: FORM, nice but... Message-ID: <7851@cs.yale.edu> In article <34894@grapevine.uucp> koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com (Steven Grimm) writes: >>On a (sort of) related subject, does anybody else find the shar'ed source >>code in comp.sources.atari.st to be a constant source of trouble? >>UUDecoding a .ZOO file >>is *so* much simpler. > >When I started moderating comp.sources.atari.st, I put all the sources in >uuencoded arcfiles (check the early volume 1 entries on panarthea). I got >about twenty complaints from people at various sites, demanding that I >use shar instead for various reasons. Since that seemed to be what the >public wanted, I switched over. Frankly, shar is often more of a pain for >me, too, as (posting rules notwithstanding) sources are frequently sent to >me as arc or zoo files, which I have to repack as sharfiles. (Such sources >tend to sit in my queue for a while.) > >What do people think? Should I switch back to uue'd sources? I'd much rather have a UUD encoded .arc or .zoo file. They're much easier to decode, and I can do the decoding reliably on my ST, whereas I generally decode shar files on a Unix machine. Also, I am another person that goes through the nuisance of pulling the sources off comp.sources.atari.st, the binaries off of comp.binaries.atari.st, decodes them both, and finally combines the result into a single .arc or .zoo file. It would be nice if this process could be streamlined. ================================================== | Michael Fischer | | Arpanet: | | Bitnet: | | UUCP: | ================================================== ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 18:32:54 GMT From: phoenix!mpsimon@princeton.edu (M. Patrick Simon) Subject: hard disks and Minix ST Message-ID: <12032@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> In article <17411@rpp386.cactus.org> you (mark@rpp386.UUCP) write: >... >I just got Minix yesterday. The ST documentation talks about certain >drive partitions "/dev/hd?" (where ? stands for 1-3). My problem is that >I do not have that type of partition information in the Supra Format >Utitlity. Could someone tell me what I would need to do to give MINIX a >10Mb partition on my hard drive? At the current time, I am unfamiliar >on how to dedicate a disk partition in such a way that MINIX can use it. > >Also, a good source told me that I will have problems getting MINIX to >use my Supra drive because of sector sizes. Does anyone know of a fix >for this. Thanks a lot. I have a hard disk from Toad Computers, which uses an ICD interface and ICD software, hooked up to my ST, so I am not sure how much of my experience will apply to your case. Assuming your hard disk is SCSI device 0, controller 0, you should be able to get Minix to work without recompiling the sources. You need to know what partition you want to devote to Minix. If you don't know, and none of the Supra utilities will tell you how your hard disk is partitioned, I suggest getting the January, 1989 issue of STart Magazine, which has a partition lookup program by David Small and/or Dan Moore. This program runs under GEM, and saved me alot of grief when I was trying to hook up my hd to minix because the documentation that came with my hd was incorrect about which SCSI device my drive was set up as. Once your hard disk is formatted, and you know what partition you want to use, you need to "mkfs /dev/hd? NNNN", where NNNN is the number of sectors in that partition divided by 2 (assumes 512 byte sectors), e.g. NNNN = length of partition in kbytes (1 kbyte = 1024 bytes), and hd? is hd1,2,3,or4 depending on whether you want to dedicate partition 1,2,3,or4. The ICD formatting software automatically created 512 byte sectors (I would assume this is standard for Atari ST hd's, but I could be wrong), and this worked fine with Minix. If mkfs says it can't do what you ask, it probably means that your hard disk is not SCSI device 0, but you should already know whether that's true before you get to this stage (when you find out the partition info, you should also find out what SCSI device and controller). If your hd is not SCSI device 0, controller 0, then you will have to re-compile the Minix sources to allow for multiple hd's (change NR_DRIVES in kernel/stwini.c) to be >= number of drives (each SCSI device counts as 2 drives because it can have 2 controllers). There is also a note in the ST Minix manual which modifies what I said about NNNN slightly, so please check there before attempting mkfs. >I hope I don't sound like a fool. You don't. I had even more fun than you are going to because I needed to recompile Minix from floppy to look for multiple hard disk drives. In addition to the modification to stwini.c above, I also modified kernel/stdma.c to have all the dmaxxxx subroutines' arguments explicitly declared. Other useful changes on a multiple drive hd system include changing fs/main.c constant RAM_IMAGE to your hd drive,controller # and changing subroutine load_ram to default load the ram disk from hard disk. There are also some modifications that need to be made to Makedev in /dev if you have multiple drives or a drive other than SCSI 0, but these are fairly obvious from the current entries in Makedev and the stwini.c source. >Mark Lehmann Good luck, --Patrick Simon mpsimon@phoenix.princeton.edu 12-7-89 # Standard disclaimer applies ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 18:47:00 GMT From: apollo!rehrauer@eddie.mit.edu (Steve Rehrauer) Subject: Late-breaking Atari news! Message-ID: <4749a8d5.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Just in case some of you haven't heard yet, Richard Covert sold his SLM804 Atari laser printer. He replaced it with a Panasonic KXP4450 laser printer. He likes the latter much better. There, can we PLEASE drop the laser-war? I believe we're all sufficiently educated on the issue by now to make our own decisions intelligently. -- >>"Aaiiyeeee! Death from above!"<< | Steve Rehrauer, rehrauer@apollo.hp.com "Flee, lest we be trod upon!" | The Apollo System Division of H.P. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 20:16:10 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!jhunix!esp_05@tut.cis. ohio-state.edu (Stdnt 05) Subject: Shareware MAC Message-ID: <3566@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> Although Apple's DOS is really (IMHO) messed up, you have to hand it to them for doing a really, really nice job with their graphics and user interface routines. Anyone who suggests that creating an Apple clone would be like creating an IBM clone, do-able by a small group of hackers in their spare time, probably hasn't programmed a Mac. Once you program a Mac, you can really appreciate the time put into that part of their OS when you realize that maintaining windows on the screen in virtually EFFORTLESS. I find myself quite impressed by many aspects of the toolbox, and I realize why the original low-powered Macs were awkward to use and am surprised why it took them so long to implement their OS on a better machine, the Mac II. If I were writing a clone of the MAC OS, I wouldn't know where to begin. Eric Ruck ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 17:37:06 GMT From: philmtl!atha!rwa@uunet.uu.net (Ross Alexander) Subject: THE MAC LAPTOP and STacey Message-ID: <1297@atha.AthabascaU.CA> Larry Rymal, Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes: (speaking of the laptop Mac) >that the laptop uses the same plastic as that of motorcyle helmets. Maybe >so, but I could flex the case. It creaked and would squeak. It did not As a motorcyclist of long standing, I would have to say that this claim is nonsense. Many, many different plastics are used in mc helmets, with varying degrees of flexibility, strength, shatter resistance, hysteresis, and what have you. If they meant lexan, or one of the engineering thermosetting compounds, then my reaction is "Ho Hum". That's what your description sounds like. They are used in bottom-of-the-line stuff. Middle-of-the-line is usually fibreglass/expoxy; top-of-the-line is generally kevlar/expoxy, and can be very expensive (I paid $440 for my kevlar/epoxy full coverage hat). Ross ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 89 20:54:34 GMT From: brunix!pgs@uunet.uu.net Subject: Wanted: Nethack 3 Message-ID: <22411@brunix.UUCP> I would very much appreciate an executable copy of Nethack 3. I have had lousy luck assembling the binaries posted to the net. If someone has an assembled, ARC'ed version of the game lying around, I'd REALLY appreciate a copy. Failing that, I'd be willing to foot the long distance bill and download the files from someone directly. Thanks in advance. =============================================================================== Peter Sarrett | PO Box 439 | "So much time and so little to pgs@cs.brown.edu | Brown University | do. Stop. Strike that. uunet!brunix!pgs | Providence, RI 02912 | Reverse it." pgs@browncs.bitnet | (401)863-6977 | - W. Wonka ------------------------------ Date: 6 Dec 89 21:29:13 GMT From: trwrb!gibson@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Greg Gibson) Subject: Word Writer format company Message-ID: <227@trwrb.UUCP> I use Word Writer because it has a spell check and thesaurus. However, I can not get the paragraph format command to work. Does any know how to make the Word Writer paragraph format command to work? I think anyone selling a word processor without a properly working format command should be jailed for fraud. Thank You, Gregory Gibson ------------------------------ End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #771 *****************************************