========================================================================= INFO-ATARI16 Digest Wed, 11 Apr 90 Volume 90 : Issue 438 Today's Topics: Atari Explorer hub-bub Atari Swap Fest in Illinois Detecting whether GEM has finished loading yet Help with SH204 Host-adapter My experiences with PC-Ditto II Nasty letter from Atari backer! (2 msgs) Need Help with ST520 Memory Problem Quick ST II, GEMINI, Cursor? Splitting comp.sys.atari.st into subgroup(s) Uniterm Univ. of Edinburgh public domain ST software? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Apr 90 16:15:41 GMT From: haven!aplcen!jhunix!ins_bac@purdue.edu (Ajay Choudhri) Subject: Atari Explorer hub-bub Message-ID: <4740@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> Can anyone post a clarification of what is going on with the magazine and Atari itself. CPUrept has something about an Atari Employee doing some stuff, but it wasn't all that clear, what happened, and who they were trying to 'power play' etc. And to anybody who went to WOA, did Atari demo Gauntlet III for the Lynx?? If there's any other news about WOA, please share it with us here on the net. Thanks -Ajay no sig file. no sig file. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 19:07:15 GMT From: att!cbnewsc!kimes@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Kit Kimes) Subject: Atari Swap Fest in Illinois Message-ID: <15038@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> Sorry for a wider distribution than I wanted, but there is no way to distribute it on a State by State basis. I wanted Atari owners in states neighboring on Illinois to know that we are having an all Atari Swap Fest on Sunday, April 22. This is not a full blown Atarifest, just a local swap fest, but there will be some developers there and several dealers. Bob Brodie is even tentatively scheduled to be there. The full announcement follows. Kit Kimes AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, IL ...!att!iwtsa!kimes ===================================================================== Lake County Atari Computer Enthusiasts and MilAtari LTD. have finalized plans for Midwest Atari SwapFest '90 to be held Sunday, April 22, 1990 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The event will be held at The Diplomat, 5572 Grand Avenue (IL 132), 1/4 mile east of I-94. The Diplomat is part of the new Gurnee Days Inn complex near the main entrance to the Great America theme park. The location is approximately 40 mins from both Milwaukee and Chicago via Interstate 94. Expected in attendance will be at least 10 area vendors offering Atari-related Import and Domestic software, Hardware, and accessories. Representatives of the local Atari User Groups; GRACE (Chicago), RACC, (Rockford), SCAT (West Suburban Chicago), and the hosts, MilAtari LTD (Milwaukee) and LCACE (Chicago Northern Suburbs) will be on hand. The groups will have Public Domain software, and used hardware and software for sale. An invitation has been extended to Mr. Bob Brodie, Atari Corp. Coordinator of User Group Activities. Bob plans to give a presentation, and will show "whatever he can get his hands on" in the way of new products from Atari. General admission to Midwest Atari SwapFest '90 will be $2.00 if purchased in advance through one of the above mentioned user groups. Admission the day of the event will be $3.00. The admission includes entrance to all seminars and a chance at door prizes. The latest Fest '90 information will be posted on the LCACE Club BBS (708-680-5105) ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 18:46:31 GMT From: usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!wam!dmb@ap ple.com (David M. Baggett) Subject: Detecting whether GEM has finished loading yet Message-ID: <1990Apr11.184631.487@wam.umd.edu> Is there any reliable, documented way to tell whether or not GEM is fully loaded? I want to run a program from an AUTO folder that replaces the GEM process termination vector at $408. If I set the vector in the AUTO folder, GEM just clobbers it when it comes up. Currently, I install a VBI which waits for a fixed amount of time, and then sets the vector. This works, but is (obviously) not guaranteed to work in the future. Is there an Atari-sanctioned way to pull this off? I notice from the Headstart documentation that Johnson & Eidsvoog do something involving the line F trap. I don't see why one has to resort to such tactics. Ideas? Dave Baggett dmb@cscwam.umd.edu ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 12:54:13 GMT From: att!dptg!lzsc!hcj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (HC Johnson) Subject: Help with SH204 Host-adapter Message-ID: <1585@lzsc.ATT.COM> In article <4862@BODEIS.CINECA.IT>, FALDELLA%BODEIS.CINECA.IT@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU writes: > More on my defective SH204. It turned out that the 16L8 PAL placed in the Host > Adapter is gone. Would someone be kind enough to tell me either a source for a You can buy a replacement for $25 (my memory) from: Berkeley Microsystems PO Box 20119, Oakland, CA 94620, USA Phone: (415) 547-2191 The advantage is they fixed the bug that prevents the SH204 from reporting errors. Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzsc!hcj hcj@lzsc.att.com ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 12:49:32 GMT From: att!dptg!lzsc!hcj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (HC Johnson) Subject: My experiences with PC-Ditto II Message-ID: <1584@lzsc.ATT.COM> In article <2823@isc-br.ISC-BR.COM>, lawrence@isc-br.ISC-BR.COM (Lawrence Kelley) writes: > In article <1990Apr9.125813.635@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> romwa@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Royal Ontario Museum) > writes: > > > >This weekend I happened to notice a new phenomenon: During the first 15 > >minutes of use I can sometimes hang PC-DITTO. I suspect that this has to > >do with the connector/cpu heating up and expanding. > > I have had similar experiences that seems to go away or diminish after the > system's been on for 15 to 30 minutes. By any chance, do you also experience > distortion and jitter on the video. I have experienced severe problems that When things are failing, you cannot define the failure mode. The PC-Ditto II m68000 connector is so flackey by design that any and all screwey results are possible. A row of ribbon connector pins is not stable enough to make a reliable pressure joint. And the shoulders of a M68000 are absolutely not designed to be a conatact point. SOLDER the SOB on and your problems will go away. I did this, and two things happened: 1. PC-Ditto II now works great. 2. Half of my memory is now bad. Howard C. Johnson Two things happen when you touch a soldering iron ATT Bell Labs to a ST. One of them is bad! att!lzsc!hcj hcj@lzsc.att.com ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 21:05:52 GMT From: dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu!david_r_watters@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Subject: Nasty letter from Atari backer! Message-ID: <79126@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Trying to have a fact filled discussion with a hot head is impossible but I will try to clear up some errors. >> Date: Wed, 4 Apr 90 20:47:25 -0400 (EDT) >> From: John Knight >> To: fh007@zeus.unomaha.edu >> Subject: Re: Amiga/Atari help >> >> 1 It'll be a cold day in hell before C= gets a real '030 box w/ UNIX out the >> door. At least Atari has announced a UNIX '030 box. C= is too embarrased >> about their latest "creation" to even show it to the outside world. This is a "foot in mouth" waiting to happen if I ever saw one. CBM has Unix up and going in Europe, and isn't released yet here for a few good reasons including the need to have dealers that are able to support it. From the people that have gotten their hands on it, they have said it is one of the nicest implimentations out there. Certainly better than Apple's. Since the few places I know you can get ST stuff are mail order, do you think any company or College is going to buy a Un*x workstation, which needs constant support, from a Crazy Fredy's mail order house. >> 2. The Amiga chipset is nothing to brag about. When in use, they just bog down >> the CPU with bus contention. In addition, they are *much* slower than the >> equivalent ST chips. The ST blitter, for example, is about 2 times faster >> doing equivalent operations. The ST DMA chip does floppy and HD access from >> 2 to 10 times faster than anything C= an put out. Also, Atari has seperate >> chips, so accessing the HD won't slow down the blitter. This is totally incorrect. My 68030 hums along at 25MHz without any knowledge that there are coprossesors, while they are performing advanced system/graphics/IO processes. This paragraph is nothing but lies. The CPU in an Amiga has NOTHING to do with what the co-processors do. I have heard from CBM and Atari developers that the Amiga Blitter is much more powerful then the Atari, however since I am not 100% learned on them BOTH I will leave that discussion to people who know what they are talking about. >> One last thing, the ST double sided drive can hold 900K, not the lesser 880K >> that Amiga holds. At least get your facts and figures right. Also, you might >> get a more responsive audience on comp.sys.amiga than on comp.sys.atari.st. Sure you can use a hack that dumps raw data onto a floppy and get's 900K on your ST. You can also use the FastFileSystem and others on an Amiga floppy that get almost 1Meg with about a 200% increase in speed. This is not important. What IS important is that all the Original 520ST's had Single Sided drives, so unless developers what to exclude those, they have to release all their software in the SSDD ?360K format. The original Amiga where equipted with the same drives that they are using now. >> Jack Knight >> flames -> /dev/null ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stupid users get flamed no matter what, so you can get rid of this if you want.. and I would strongly suggest you do. I would hope that when The Amiga UN*X Workstations start selling, and you sell all you ST stuff for the most you get get for it in order to pay for part of a $100 internal Floppy drive for YOUR new Amiga, that you would post a note saying how foolish you had been all this time. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 19:50:13 GMT From: cbmvax!daveh@uunet.uu.net (Dave Haynie) Subject: Nasty letter from Atari backer! Message-ID: <10804@cbmvax.commodore.com> In article <5641.261f5612@uwovax.uwo.ca> 4223_5266@uwovax.uwo.ca writes: >> 1. It'll be a cold day in hell .... On the offchance that anyone really believes any of that drivel, I've got some swampland in Florida I've been trying unload. Most of that was so silly I won't even bother correcting it, only to point to the author's own words and repeat: >> At least get your facts and figures right. There's nothing wrong with liking whatever computer you use, especially if it does everything you're after. That even applies to PClones if they make you happy. But bashing anything that you clearly don't have a clue about is only going to make you look like a fool. >> Jack Knight -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" ?uunet|pyramid|rutgers?!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 12:42:52 GMT From: att!dptg!lzsc!hcj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (HC Johnson) Subject: Need Help with ST520 Memory Problem Message-ID: <1583@lzsc.ATT.COM> I have a ST520 expanded to 1 MEG with piggy back chips. When I soldered in the PC-Ditto II, one of the piggy's died. Does anyone know the association between 16 chips and 16 bits. The bad bit is 0x0008 The chips number Left to Right 16-25,28-34,38,42-45. Thanks Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzsc!hcj hcj@lzsc.att.com ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 16:31:36 GMT From: dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!cs325ec@uunet.uu.net Subject: Quick ST II, GEMINI, Cursor? Message-ID: <16000048@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Has anyone tried QuickST II? I tried the demo and found that the cursor finally works in some of the programs where TurboST and QuickST had failed before... Is this true for most? Also: Gemini mentions an incompatibility with <> software blitters, is this because it was written without knowledge of QST II or is it still true? Thanks... -- Greg ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 18:59:39 GMT From: usc!samsung!rex!uflorida!haven!wam!dmb@apple.com (David M. Baggett) Subject: Splitting comp.sys.atari.st into subgroup(s) Message-ID: <1990Apr11.185939.656@wam.umd.edu> Well, so far there are three votes for and two votes against the idea of splitting this newsgroup. The votes in favor seemed to be along the lines of "I'm really sick of reading these flame wars and financial statements" and the votes against were "there's not enough traffic". Obviously, if only five people care either way, it's unlikely we'll get 100 votes in favor of each new group. Would anyone be in favor of at least separating the technical stuff from the general stuff? Before, I was undecided about the whole thing, but now (having taken a peek into comp.sys.amiga.tech) I think a comp.sys.atari.tech group might be a good thing. I think there's enough traffic for it, and it would (I belieive) generate more technical discussion from those people who will read just that group and not comp.sys.atari.st (general). Just my opinion. Dave Baggett dmb@cscwam.umd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed 11 Apr 90 12:45:27-PST From: BODOH%EROSA.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU Subject: Uniterm Help Hello, The help is in case this a server... I didn't know for sure. I recently saw an Info-vax message regarding an Atari package called Uniterm. Could somebody send me a copy of the newest version (2.0e 011?) or tell me where I can find it? Thank you in advance for any HELP you can give me. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + Thomas A Bodoh - EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD, USA 57198 + + (605) 594-6830 FTS 784-7830 + + SPAN; EROSA::BODOH Internet; BODOH@VAXA.NMD.USGS.GOV (192.41.204.12) + + "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!" EL&P + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 90 16:02:02 GMT From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!rodan!rodan.acs.syr.edu!jfbruno@think.com (John F. Bruno) Subject: Univ. of Edinburgh public domain ST software? Message-ID: <2903@rodan.acs.syr.edu> In the March 1990 ST World (the U.K. mag) on page 42 is a letter from Tom Jones, Dept. of Meteorology, Univ. of Edinburgh. The letter states that Edinburgh is maintaining an on-line library of public domain ST software. The addresses given are: PSS: pdsoft@234223519191.JANET.00001040 300096.FTP.MAIN BITNET: pdsoft%uk.ac.lancs.pdsoft@ukacr These addresses are meaningless to me. Our site is on BITNET, but I can't seem to get mail to the above addresses. Is this site reachable via FTP? If so, HOW? Is there a trafficking problem during business hours? Does this site have stuff I can't find at terminator.cc.umich.edu? ---jb ------------------------------ End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #438 *****************************************