ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/UTILITY/SYSTEM/TSUTLD18.ZIP/TSUTLD.NWS

Text File | 1990-09-09 | 8.0 KB | 141 lines

University of Vaasa, Finland, Sun 4, (chyde.uwasa.fi) has a large
collection of PD and shareware PC programs available by anonymous
ftp. The file /pc/ts/0news-ts contains news about the TS-programs in
the /pc/ts directory (in reverse order). This text, which you now
have, is an extract from the 0news-ts file.
...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi        (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: [e-mail] Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
...................................................................

Sat 8-Sep-90: I have updated the fourth of my utility packages to be
(/pc/ts/)tsutld18.arc. It contains three new utilities WARMBOOT,
PUSHSCR(een), and POPSCR(een). The names should tell what they are
are about. FILES is one of the old programs in the collection. It
gives a summary statistics of the different types of files you have
on your harddisk (or floppy). It now also gives the percentages of
the different file types of the total when sorted by size or count.

Sat 21-Jul-90: When a key is held down there is a default delay
before it starts repeating, and then the key repeats at a default
rate. KEYRATE is a program that resets both the delay, and the
repeat rate. The facility is useful e.g. when you want to speed up
the cursor movement by incresing the repeat rate. Or if you have a
faulty keyboard striking ddoouubble, you can try a temporary remedy
by increasing the delay. The facilities used in this program do not
work for XTs and older ATs. KEYRATE recognizes the type of your
processor chip and ROM BIOS version and informs whether the program
is likely to have an effect or not. KEYRATE is part of my fourth
utility package which has been updated to be /pc/ts/tsutld17.arc.

Thu 19-Jul-90: Caps.exe is a utility to report the status of the
keyboard toggles (NumLock, CapsLock, and ScrollLock), and to turn on
or off these toggles. This is useful in special situations such as
in batch files when the state of these toggles need to be
controlled, or if there are no keyboard leds (many laptops lack
these), or if there is something wrong with the keyboard keys or
leds. Caps.exe is contained in the update /pc/ts/tsutld16.arc of my
fourth set of utilities. Available from chyde.uwasa.fi, Vaasa,
Finland, by anonymous ftp as usual.
   By the way, the pascal routines to test, and to turn on or off
NumLock, CapsLock, and ScrollLock will be included (among the other
new routines) in my Turbo Pascal units collection, when I update it
to be tspas20.arc. At the moment of writing this, the Turbo Pascal
units upgrade version 2.0 is still being written, and I shall
announce it separately in due time.

Tue 3-Jul-90: I have updated my fourth utilities collection to be
/pc/ts/tsutld15.arc by adding a setprt.exe utility to set the
PrintScreen key retry times. On computers not recognizing a
printer's offline status immediately, this utility will save you
annoying waits when you hit the PrintScreen key inadvertently.
   Although the tsutld collection is for any type of PC, it is
somewhat inclined toward utilities with a laptop flavor. For axample
it contains (unchanged) two utilities for changing the cursor size.
   One request, which has been posed very often in the InterNet
comp.sys.laptops newsgroup is for a utility making the cursor better
visible on laptops. Bigcurs.exe and bigncurs.exe will take care of
this problem.

Sat 16-Jun-90: Especially on laptops with cramped keyboads, it is
useful to be able to turn off your PrintScreen key to avoid
accidental printing of the screen. I have programmed a small utility
PSK.EXE for this purpose. Used repeatedly (as a toggle), it
alternatively disables or enables your PrintScreen key. I have made
it part of my consequently updated fourth utility collection
/pc/ts/tsutld14.arc.

Wed 6-12-89: I have updated my programs BIGCURS and BIGNCURS
altering the cursor into a block to make it better visible. Handy
for laptops. The programs now can take a numerical parameter to
adjust the starting scanline. This makes the program better
adjustable to different video adapters. Furthermore, Erik Jacobsen
([e-mail]) from the Computer Science Department of Aarhus
University pointed out to me that BIGCURS may interfere with other
resident programs by stealing the timer interrupt, and kindly
provided me with a solution to avoid this snag. Thanks Erik.
   I have also programmed FILES.EXE giving file statistics of a
device in the following type of format (this is for my ramdisk):
  Type       Count        Size  Allocation  Efficiency
                 1         419         512       81.84
   COM           4       13473       13696       98.37
   EXE           3      106212      106368       99.85
   TPU           1       15536       15616       99.49
  Total D:       9      135640      136192       99.59
The information can be sorted by any of the fields.
   These programs are included in my fourth utilities collection
upgraded now to be /pc/ts/tsutld13.arc.

Sun 26-Nov-89: In our series of completely useless programs please
meet switchar for Unix freaks. Switchar toggles the MsDos switchar
between the slash (/) and the hyphen (-). When the switchar is the
hyphen, the slash can be used in path names instead of the backslash
(\).  Have fun.  Included in the update /pc/ts/tsutld12.arc.

Fri 24-Nov-89: Some time ago there was a discussion on the InterNet
news on the problem caused by the fact that the ordinary "underline"
cursor shows too weakly on certain laptops. There were requests for
a utility changing the cursor into a block. I do know that there is
a nice blockcur.zoo utility that was distributed through the UseNet
Binaries, that is comp.binaries.ibm.pc. Nevertheless, making the
cursor a block involves interesting programming problems, and I
wanted to look at those myself.
   To be effective and permanent, a cursor size changing program
must be made resident, and this one is a text-book problem for
trying out writing a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program. The
result of my experiments is a BIGCURS.EXE program. It is a resident
program that keeps altering the cursor to a block even in cases
where the program you are running keeps altering the cursor size. I
also wrote a similar BIGNCURS.EXE program, which is not resident,
and its effect is thus transient. I also included a ADJCURS.BAT
batch file as an optional user interface to these programs.
   Writing a TSR utility is a tricky business, and I cannot
guarantee, that BIGCURS.EXE will be well-behaved under all
circumstances.
   I have made these new utilities part of my fourth utility package
and upgraded it to be tsutld11.arc.

Thu 26-Oct-89: I have a private mailing list for emailing these
update news. Especially, if you have my programs downloadable at
your site or your BBS you are welcome to ask for inclusion on this
list.

Mon 16-Oct-89: Released a new utilities package tsutld10.arc and
update tsutlc16.arc of my third set of PC utilities:
  In managing and backing up the harddisk I have noticed a need for
a utility that would scan the disk for files that are dated today
(or a given number of days back from today).  I have written a new
utility TODAY.EXE which performs this task.  This program starts my
fourth utility collection /pc/ts/tsutld10.arc.  The new package is
available by anonymous ftp in the usual manner.
   While I am at it, let me take up a request for those of you who
may have found my programs useful.  As I am not asking for any
registration fees for the PD versions, would you do me a reciprocal
favor by uploading at least some of my packages to, say eg one local
bulletin board (BBS), and thus contribute to disseminating the
*latest* versions of these packages.  And, if you distribute these
packages, would you PLEASE distribute an entire package, not
individual programs from within any package.  This is a request that
all of us share who write PD programs.