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MegaDisc 45 (1996-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 1 of 2)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 45 (1996-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 1 of 2)[WB].adf
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Readers_Letters
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Readers_Letters
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1996-01-11
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461 lines
READERS' LETTERS, VIEWS, OPINIONS, MOANS, SUGGESTIONS
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Dear Tim,
First, congratulations on continuing to support Amiga users with
a truly informative and useful resource. Especially for country users -
I don't even know of any other Amiga users in my area, so gleaning
information can really test your 'detective' skills. (If truth be told
this can be half the fun and most of the satisfaction of computing - most
of the time you can try new ideas without any real fear of damage. )
However, the same can not be said for hardware hacks! Which brings me
to the reason for my letter.
Greg Hand was wondering (MD-43) if it was possible to fit a 2.04
ROM to a rev5 A500 with 1MEG of chip ram. As it happens I have such a
machine or very close to it, i.e. rev5 A500 with 8375b - 2meg Agnus but
only 1meg of chip ram ( it works and fits with the same mods as the 8372a
1meg Agnus and Sysinfo reports it as 1meg ECS Agnus). I also run WB2.1
with a 2.05 ROM which I was assured when I bought it was the same as a
2.04 but was made for the A600 and has PCMCIA support (Great news for A500
owners! ). It would seem that the 2.04/5 ROM needs a jumper from pin 1 to
pin 31 for satisfactory operation, something I only found out after fitting
it unmodified and being presented with a machine which would not boot! Oh,
that sinking feeling. So, Greg, dont despair, it can be done. My rev5
A500 has been running a 2meg Agnus with 1meg of chip ram and WB2.1 with a
jumpered 2.05 ROM reliably for over a year now with no apparent problems.
Greg's letter also mentioned that he had broken a leg off his 3.1 ROM and
had to buy a new one. I have salvaged chips before with broken off legs
after a bit of careful surgery. The actual chip is often only a small
part of the plastic package it comes in - the actual pinouts for the chip
dictating the size of the device. A 40 pin D.I.L. ROM being quite a big
package with a relatively small chip in it.
By very carefully cutting in on either side of the broken off leg
with a jewellers saw, or very fine fret saw, and chipping away the plastic
above and below the broken stub, enough of the metal leg can be exposed
to solder a wire to, thus saving the chip. Desperate stuff, but it can
work with a bit of care.
Another tip for the anxious amoungst us that break out in a sweat
at the thought of soldering to a chip that is part of a $185 upgrade.
Use a nice high quality machined pin socket of the appropriate size and
carefully solder your jumpers (wire from ribbon cable is easy to work
with) to the legs on the underside using fine hookup wire. This socket
is then fitted in the machine and the ROM fitted in the jumpered socket
( this worked for my 2.05 ROM).
I hope this info is of help to anyone thinking of changing ROMs
but is wary of soldering directly to them.
Just a quick 'thankyou' to Greg Hand for his idea in MD-41.
His Mega-startup-sequence. I now use his method of renaming STATRAM as
RAM and having fully recoverable RAM after a warm boot, pity it doesn't
survive a powerdown! I guess some people are just hard to please.
While on the subject of hardware hacks and hookups, D.B.Moore's
article on problems with connecting a hard drive to a scram500 controller
rekindled some memories of the same problems I had encountered attempting
to do the same. My disk and cable setup has been working reliably for over
a year now, so I can be reasonably confident of its soundness. It has the
added benefit of simplicity and tidyness compared to Mr. Moore's. I
initially used my scram500 board as just a ram expansion, but with an eye
to fitting a hard drive if I could pick one up cheap enough. I eventually
bought a 42meg Fujitsu secondhand from M.V.B. computers for $150.
Bargain price at the time.
On enquiry I was told that full fitting instructions and pinouts
would be supplied. To my dismay the drive arrived in the post in an
anti-static wrap and securely boxed but with absolutely no indication of
what the bewildering array of pinouts, jumpers, and switches on its
underside were meant to be set to. After a frantic phone call, I was
told that bare hard drives were usually sold to technicians who knew how
to fit them ( apparently this knowledge must be born into them, while us
ordinary folk need to read manuals to gain such knowledge). At this
stage I had never even seen a hard drive before let alone installed one.
A week or so later a short note arrived in the mail with a photocopy of
a GVP 50 pin box header and power supply pinouts. I had a length of 50
way ribbon cable and a length of 25 core shielded computer cable. After
looking at the db25 plug at the scram500 end and the IDC 50 way header
at the disk end, I decided that the shielded cable would make a neater
fit. I soldered the cable at the db25 end then carefuly checked each
pin with a multimeter for continuity as I pushed it into the IDC
connector at the other end. The ground wires, I just placed evenly along
the bottom row of the box header and snapped the back on the connector.
After double checking for correct connections and shorts, my cable was
complete! This cable has proven to be totally reliable at transfer
rates up to 529k/sec... Sysinfo. It joins the mass of other cables
protruding from the back of the machine and rests on the power supply
box, so the shielding must be effective.
For those people on limited budgets another tip which I have used
is to house the hard drive in a plastic jiffy box ( from Dick Smiths) the
UB2 size 60x113x196 fits a 3.5" drive perfectly. It screws to the lid,
then the case screws on top. I also fitted a double pole switch into the
+12v and +5v power supply lines and ran an L.E.D. as an indicator next
to the switch at the front of the box. It can then be left off when the
kids are playing games off floppies. Total cost of the box - about $10.
I have seen scsi boxes advertised for $150.
I realise this letter is getting a bit long and rambling, so I will
finish up by asking... "does anyone know how to get ProNet up and running?"
I have double checked my cable (db25 with ribbon this time! ) installed
the various handlers, libs and C: commands, but it just freezes the machine
if I try to access a drive on the server machine even though it has been
mounted on the main machine. Interestingly the server machine's CLI window
only appears to become active if the the main machine is rebooted, however
its disk drive still cant be accessed by the main machine - it just freezes
as if awaiting a transfer that for some reason it cant make. Any ideas,
anyone. I'm stumped by it. No life and death stuff, I just want to get
it going for the heck of it.
MD protocol seems to require a brief bioPic so here goes.
47 years old. Married. 3 kids. Registered Nurse. Living on 40 acres in
idyllic surroundings. Worked in any kind of job you like to name. Started
as a computer operator for ICL (anyone remember them! )1968 on a machine
called a LEO 3.... valves, magnetic core memory- 16k!!!!! tape drives, I
dont think disks had been invented. This machine was way ahead of its time
(multitasking) but IBM put it out of business. How times change!
Now I play with my computer just to keep my brain in gear and marvel
at the great public domain and shareware programs put out by the brilliant
young programmers in the Amiga community.
Sam Blinkhorn
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Keep going!
I hope you are able to keep Megadisc going. From what little I've
seen in the way of news and advertising lately, there seems to be some
encouragement for the notion that Amigas will soon be selling here
again: even though there may not be much in the way of new hardware for
a while, if at all.
I'd like to be able to get improved graphics performance from the
A3000 (after all, 16 colours at high-res is pretty much old hat, and any
lesser resolution is just too crude.) What I'd like to see in MD is
some more information on graphics upgrades with the likes of Picasso,
Piccolo, etc -- performance, comparison, prices, sources. Now and then
I see a second-hand board advertised, but I don't know enough to make an
informed judgment.
With regards,
(L. A. JONES)
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Tim,
Here, are a couple of articles for inclusion for the next Megadisc. The
articles are:
Numbase - A simple program for number conversion (short and sweet.)
This was written in HiSoft Basic 2
17 Bit - The Fifth Dimension - Volume 5 of the 17 bit series
Also on this disk is an ad for the classifieds section in a big sell off
of all of my AMOS Software (including extensions, books and more.)
Next issue, i would like to do a comparison between AMOS, Hi-Soft Basic
2 and the GameSmith package. However, i'll leave this for the next to
next issue.
With regards,
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Oh yeah, sure......the right to reply.
Reading MD_44 front to back, I come across the lone letter in
'Readers Letters' from Sam Blinkhorn, who insinuates that my SCSI-cable
is, well, 'un-tidy'. He doesn't know the half of it!! I actually owe
Sam a favour for services rendered, he will no doubt have noted that in
MD_44 anyhow, so here I go...
Firstly, I dunno ?how? he ascertained my sex as being male.
The Mr. bit's a little formal for my liking, but couldn't D.B. Moore
have been female too?? Doesn't matter, I do that signature for a
reason... to trip-up the computers of companies. I write to all sorts
of businesses, simply signing the correspondence D.B. Moore. They
reply [usually], and the replies are invariably headed;
Dear Moore,
Blah blah blah, blablah....
I have this thing about wishing to know whether it's a >person<
answering me, or just a form-letter.....it's the only sure-fire way I
could come up with, and it works. Sam doesn't earn any points here
though, he had better than 9.75 in 10 chances of guessing my sex as
male, because that's about the ratio of male computer-users to female
users. [without prejudice, all you lovely girls] I see the government
is holding an inquiry to determine why this ratio is so biased towards
the male of the species. I wonder what they'll come up with?? [bet you
dime for a dollar, the word supposition gets mentioned at least 17
times]
Onto less important matters. Sam mentions he's having dramas
with Pronet:, and wonders if anyone can help. Seeing as he hasn't
mentioned what his <other> machine is, or what else he has dangling
outta the various ports of both, I can't help.....but I could ask the
obvious; Why not use Parnet:, seeing as you're only trying to link a
pair of machines? I've been using Parnet: for over a year now without
any problems, and that's notwithstanding the fact that I have a
null_modem link between the 2 boards as well...[for 'Stunt Car Racer'].
I dunno if there's a newer release of Parnet: than the one I use, but
the one I DO use can be sourced from Megadisc [of course
8^]....err...disk UT_359 to be exact, and if you've got a CD-ROM drive
especially, [though you should use this anyhow], there's a
software_patch for Parnet that fixes a couple of bugs. It's called
'netpatch', [now that's imaginative!], and it's on AmigOz_79...once
again, in the MD-PD library.
Parnet: has no problem with my setup, and that's
4 diskdrives, two h'drives, a CD-ROM drive, 4Meg fast on the SCRAM, 2Meg
fast on the AX-4, across the ugliest 5metre cable between Meegee [Rev.7
A500 with FPU, 2.04ROM & 1Meg chip, running @ 15.56Mhz], and Meagan
[Rev.5 A500, 1.2 and 1.3 ROMS, 1Meg chip and stock speed-wise]. It
works like a charm... [don't ask me about the 15.56Mhz speed
thang....that's what SysInfo keeps telling me, so ask Nic...]
I reckon you could make that SCSI-cable I wrote about look quite
neat, if you wanted to. Certainly, I suggest ways to achieve that end.
You oughtta see the end of my SCRAM though, it's a mess!! With now
another h'drive, and latterly, the inclusion of the CD-ROM, the
*physical* logistics of my system necessitates 3 cables from the DB25
connector on the SCRAM to the various drives, all are unshielded, all
are ribbon cable, there's a 80mm patch of 25 |single| wires in one bit
[to get around a corner], and no backing-shells anywhere. It performs
faultlessly, and the only drawback is that NO-ONE is allowed anywhere
near this end of things. A 'daddy-longlegs' has set up shop amidst all
the cabling, but that's kewl, it keeps the potter-wasps from trying to
build in the Seagate. I love things this way....it looks absolutely
atrocious, but works perfectly. I get a kick out of seeing people's
faces...they who own all these lovely, neat, pristine computer-systems
[mainly peeseize], that can't do anything as fun as an Amiga makes
computing seem....even if the system looks like a pile of old
telephone_exchanges.
Just one more thing....2.04ROM and 2.05ROM. True, a 2.05 has
PCMCIA compatability, ....now, does anyone know of anywhere you can get
a kit or circuit_diagram for melding a PCMCIA_port onto a standard ECS
board?? I've checked....they laughed...we talked....and then I started
laughing too!! The compatability offered by the 2.05 is utterly useless
without the hardware to implement the PCMCIA_port....and anyhow, if and
by the time you managed to do it, you'd be better off with an A1200 AGA
machine anyway. Can you dig it? The bit about joining the pins 1 & 31
of a 2.04/5 ROM to get a Rev.5A500 board to run with it, is correct. [I
tried it out] It's not necessary to do that mod on a Rev.7 board...and
I'm told same is so for Rev.6A...., now does anyone out there have a
Rev.8 A500 board?? My Meegee is Rev.7, and supposedly pretty rare, but
I've heard say of a Rev.8 board that got produced in very small
numbers...and was virtually unreleased as such, 'cause the A600 came out
instead...(why?)...anyone >really< seen a Rev.8 board??? I'd be
interested in knowing...and just why ?did? they put 'B52 Rock Lobster'
on the etch for the A500 board?? ('Hello, calling Dave H. Come in
Dave...')
Oh, btw, heaps of thanks to Tim and all at MD for sticking my
various submissions on Megadisc over this past year. It's been good to
be able to share some ideas with other Amigans via the vehicle of
Megadisc, and I can only hope such things continue unabated. I'm
certainly going to keep supporting the Amiga marque, irrespective of the
mounting odds. My hardware may be slow, and now even getting old, but
the Amiga still has one quality that no other platform has... a knack of
captivating the soul of it's user, and making them smile. IMHO, an
Amiga is always a friend, not just another machine.
<DBM>
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Well. you have probably noticed, but I have been in the US for 6
weeks and had to miss consequently a few meetings of ECA both in
Warringah and in Niagara Park. Although I had a couple of pleasant
surprises in the US about which I will tell you I am afraid that the US
is as good as dead as far as the Amiga is concerned.
One evening on my way back from San Francisco on the Bay Area Rapid
Transport (BART) to Concord, end of the line, where my Mother lives (90
years old and still going strong!) I started a conversation with another
passengers. He was in Filming. He was a film producer, film director.
About 35 years of age. He was also on the internet and we exchanged
email addresses. On my question if he used his computer for film making
and what brand of computer that would be, he answered that he used an
Amiga. We were straight away the best of friends.
I also visited, what I consider, one of the largest Computer store
in US in the heart of Silicon Valley, in San Jose. Imagine yourself one
of the largest BBC hardware stores. Now triple that. About 30 check
outs! Anything electrical is available there. It is like a huge Dick
Smith store. Spare parts, resistors, condensers, any type of plug,
lead, socket. TVs, monitors, printers, electric razors, calculators,
you name it. But no Amigas! 80% PCs, 20% MacIntoshes full stop.
Interesting to know that one of my nephews works for NASA; he is the
official Mac installer. Mac support or whatever you call it. With
about 5000 staff at their branch they use about 3500 MacIntoshes and
only about 500 PC. All serious work was done on a Mac. The PCs were
only used for some accounting work; non critical work. You don't send a
man in space using a PC. God forbid. Well if you can't get the best
computer (Amiga) you may as well use the next best in line (Mac).
I went to the San Francisco public library found an old copy of an
Amiga magazine and found two Amiga Clubs in the Bay Area. I wrote to
both of them and got answer from one one week before I was due to leave.
The writer had miscalculated the date of the club meeting, it was the
previous week. There was no other meeting before my departure, however
he was happy to meet me. So we decided to meet at Berkeley University
and he would bring a friend, who was a programmer at one of the Uni's
departments. Both belonged to a different Amiga club. Each club had
about 25 members. I think one was attached to Berkeley University,
because the programmer was a member of that club and his programming on
and for the Amiga were subsidized by a grant from the University. He
demonstrated his program which he called MidiWeb, which was named before
the word Web meant anything in the Computer world. It is a share ware
program which connects different Midi programs together. It looked very
good from my point of view, but then I have only little knowledge about
Midi interphases. An interesting aspect of the programmer was that he
arrived at the point where we had decided to meet on a skate board. His
age: about 60. That is what you call Kool. No wonder he uses an
Amiga. His excuse: "I live only 4 blocks away!" Well it is a cheap
means of transport.
We regard this edition of update as my travel diary. Next edition,
we will get back into the real meaty stuff. Some exiting happenings are
due for reporting in this renamed edition of "The future of the Amiga."
Before I sign off however, I called in at Amadeus Computers and was
pleased to see that they came one level down in the building where they
run their business and consequently went one level up in the computer
retailing world. They now occupy a large groundfloor shop and it even
pleased me more to see on the desk of the owner, Mark King, a A4000/40
even if he sells some PC stuff. He told me my Zip drive is due in very
soon and I hope to give you my opinion about this drive next time.
Tony D.
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Beware! Or: Don't do as I did!
This is a cautionary tale about "PowerPacker", "PP", and "Quarterback" -
where all these programs worked faultlessly, and together produced a
near total disaster - with hardly any human intervention!
To explain:
In spite of the fact that Powerpacker(V.3b) is not the fastest,
best, etc, file compresser, there are several reasons why I have
persisted in using it, particularly for picture files. First, I'm used
to it (sloth), and it's easy to make a script file, telling PowerPacker
to crunch a whole series of files in succession (say, during the night),
so that crunch speed is not all that important. Also, the existence of
a program called "PP" or Powerpacker Patcher by Michael Berg (V1.3 is on
Fish 542). This program, when activated from CLI or Wb, will interpose
itself between a crunched datafile and the application, and de-crunch
the file without any fuss - or even knowledge on the part of the
operator! This is a beaut idea, and it works every time.
However - just because the Patcher is so transparent, it is easy to
forget whether it is in fact activated - particularly if, like me, you
run it through a gadget in Directory Opus ( I use a gadget called
"PPToggle", with function :c/pp (which is where I keep it): clicking
the gadget activates the program; click again, and it is removed).
My HD is only 40 Mb, and a fair bit of juggling takes place to make
the best use of space, deleting or crunching files whenever possible.
After crunching a lot of picture files one day I decided to finally
change my partition sizes (Wb, Work, Play, Graphics) to expand my Play
partition and so took the plunge to reformat parts of the harddisk ...
of course after backing up...
Enter the third player in this Saga: The QuarterBack backup
program. Very reliable, never any problem.
As always, all went perfectly, filechecking was kept 'on' during
backup; the restore proceeded without a hitch; all files were restored
in their proper drawers.
BUT.. when I loaded one of my powerpacked pictures into DPaint
(being careful to activate PP first), a message told me it couldn't load
- Dos I/O error! Clicked on "proceed", and about 70% of the image WAS
loaded, with the wrong colours. BlitzBasic loaded same proportion, with
proper colours, but with the rest of the screen covered with vertical
stripes - not a pretty sight. Loading other 'packed' files, and in
other readers and displayers, all showed similar problems: Obviously,
the last 30% or so of the files had simply disappeared. A bit of a
worry, chaps. Panic really. What could have happened? From the above,
you have probably worked it out already. I still had to piece it all
together. But: AHA! It finally dawned on me what I had done wrong: I
had left "PP" activated WHILE BACKING UP. In retrospect it was obvious
what had then happened: Quarterback first finds the size of all files,
so as to work out how many floppies it needs and where to put each file.
It then just reads them, and stops reading when the length it KNOWS the
file to be, is reached..... Except that "PP" had fooled it: before
Quarterback could read the file, PP had decrunched it so making it
longer.... The backup consisted of decrunched files, truncated at the
length of the crunched files they replaced!
Fortunately, I had an earlier backup which made it possible to
restore most of what had been lost. But it all took a long time. I
won't do that again!
Thanks, Tim, for hanging in there. even if Amiga has been going
through bad times. Megadisc is doing a very worthwhile job - I for one
have found stacks of useful information in it over the years. But as
well, through your encouragement of readers' contributions and the
general tone of the mag I am sure it has done a lot to give us Amigans a
sense of fellowship!
Cheers,
Erik Harting,
Chatswood 2067
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