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Text File | 1992-01-17 | 15.0 KB | 348 lines

STalker™ 3.00 to 3.01 Patch Program This program will upgrade STalker version 3.00 to version 3.01. It will ONLY upgrade version 3.00. This program is copyright © 1991 by Gribnif Software. All rights are reserved. This program may be freely distributed to all legitimate registered users of STalker 3. Any questions or comments, please contact us at: Gribnif Software, P.O. Box 350, Hadley, MA 01035, USA Tel: (413) 584-7887, Fax: (413) 584-2565 GEnie: GRIBNIF What is needed to upgrade ========================= 1. An un-modified, registered, STalker 3 Master Disk, version 3.00. 2. A hard disk or a blank formatted floppy disk (to place the PATCH301.PRG and PATCH301.DAT on). How to upgrade your STalker version 3.00 to version 3.01 ========================================================= 1. Make sure you have made a backup copy of the STalker 3 Master Disk. 2. Place the PATCH301.PRG and PATCH301.DAT on your hard disk or on the blank floppy disk (it may need the extra disk space to write some temporary files, depending on free memory.) 3. Run the PATCH302.PRG and follow the on-screen prompts. 4. Once you have finished upgrading your master disk to version 3.01, make a backup copy of this newer version. ** VERY IMPORTANT STEP, READ CAREFULLY ** 5. To install the newer version on your system, you MUST replace the following STalker 3.00 files in your system with the 3.01 version files from the newly upgraded disk: \STALKER.ACC \STALKER.PRG \STALKER.RSC \BACKTALK\SCRIPTS\PREFIX.BTS \BACKTALK\SCRIPTS\BUF_SIZ.BTS \BACKTALK\SCRIPTS\BUF_SIZ.BTK \BACKTALK\BACKTALK.PRG \BACKTALK\BUF_SIZ.BTK -- Same as the one in SCRIPTS folder \EXTRAS\AUXINIT.PRG You will also find these two files with this upgrade, and they should be copied to your scripts directory: WRITESCR.BTS WRITESCR.BTK Additionally, since the first few copies of STalker sold had a faulty version of INF_CONV.PRG, a corrected one has also been included with the patch program. If you get an error message =========================== If your STalker 3 Master Disk has been modified in any way (including moving files around), the patch program will not be able to perform the upgrade. You will get an error message indicating that this has happened. In this case. you should mail us the disk so that we can upgrade it. To have your disk upgraded by us, you need to: 1. Send in your original, registered, STalker 3.00 Master Disk. 2. Enclose a U.S. check for $5 + $2 shipping & handling ($7 total). 3. Enclose a note with your name, address, and daytime phone number. In return you will receive the upgraded 3.01 Master Disk. Changes for STalker 3.01 - Jan. 15th 1992 ========================================= This version contains the following enhancements: + The efficiency of the transfer protocols (ZModem mainly) was improved by speeding up some of the most common low-level routines. The "Favour concurrency" option was also made a bit more black & white. At 9600 baud or greater with Favor Concurrency off, you won't be able to do much else on the machine since STalker will be aiming for maximum throughput. If you need to abort a high-speed file transfer, use the UNDO key rather than attempting to click on the Abort button. On faster machines, either will probably work, but on a stock 8MHz machine STalker may not process the mouse button. + If the file transfer window is currently on the screen, the INSERT key will allow you to alternate between the STalker window and the transfer window. + STalker will now automatically expand the serial input buffer of a port if it is less than 2K. The output buffer is not changed since it is not as important to proper operation of STalker. In program mode STalker checks the buffer size each time you change ports, so if you use several port in a session, you'll end up giving each a 2K buffer. In accessory mode, it will only expand the port's buffer during initial startup since that is the only time that STalker can safely allocate extra memory from TOS. If your configuration indicates use of port X and you switch to port Y during the session, port Y's buffer will not be expanded. + New versions of AUXINIT and the BUF_SIZE BackTALK script have been included. The new AUXINIT handles TT and Mega STe ports in addition to the ST serial port. You'll need to run a separate copy for each port whose buffer you wish to expand. Simply create as many copies as you need in your AUTO folder and then use the BUF_SIZE BackTALK script to set them up. Please note that if you have TOS 1.4 or newer, you can probably use a buffer size of more than 31k (up to 63k) without a problem. + The Atari-standard clipboard format is now supported. To enable the Atari-format clipboard, set the "Clipboard drive" in the Preferences dialog to "Z". Any other drive will cause STalker to use the old method which is compatible with older STalker/STeno programs. STeno 2.00 uses the "old" format; later versions will use the new one. Note that the Atari method requires scanning of a directory in order to determine if a scrap is available, so to avoid a lot of extra physical disk I/O, use a program such as CACHEXXX.PRG that caches directory entries. + Support has been added for specifying scripts to invoke at startup via the command-line. This allows you to "Install" STALKER.PRG as the application for files of type .BTK. STalker will attempt to execute each file specified on the command line in turn, after it first executes the normal startup scripts. If a qualified filename is given, i.e., something like C:\GO.BTK, STalker will attempt to access the file exactly as specified. If just a filename is given, ex. "GO.BTK", STalker will look in the default directory. + A new BackTALK command, "exit_program()" was added. It returns nothing and takes no parameters. If STalker is operating in program mode, it will cause STalker to terminate immediately. In accessory mode the call does nothing and returns immediately; you can use this fact to take whatever actions are appropriate in accessory mode by placing statements after the exit_program() call. For example: ... exit_program(); // If the script gets here, we must be in ACC mode. exit(0); // (or whatever is appropriate) + There is now a "write_script()" BackTALK command. This function watches data from the host and the user and builds a script containing a sequence of wait_for() / port_send() commands. Included is the file WRITESCR.BTS, which is a small script that does the necessary stuff before calling write_script(). Pressing Control-Z will terminate WRITESCR.BTK. Please note that scripts which are generated by this command are fairly basic. Some tweaking may be necessary, and things such as file downloading are not recorded. Function keys are referenced by their number, which means that if a script relies on the F1 key and you change the assignment of F1, the script may cease to work as expected. For documentation on the actual format of write_script(), see the file WRITESCR.BTS. + A set_time() BackTALK function was added. This is the converse of the get_time() call, and takes one parameter which should have the desired date and time packed into it in the same format returned by get_time(). Internally, this function sets both the XBIOS and GEMDOS time and date. + NOTE: SCRIPTS COMPILED WITH THIS VERSION MAY NOT WORK PROPERLY UNDER STALKER 3.00!! This is due to the AND/OR enhancement described below. If your script does not use the keywords AND, OR, or their && and || equivalents, and does not call write_script(), exit_program(), or set_time() you will be fine. If you use AND/OR you'll get an "Illegal Instruction" error under 3.00. Similarly, if you use write_script(), exit_program(), or set_time() you will get an "Unknown function number" error. + The IF/THEN/ELSE/ENDIF construct now recognizes an ELSEIF statement. The syntax is now: IF expression THEN statements; [ELSEIF expression THEN statements;] [ELSE statements;] ENDIF You can use as many ELSEIF's as you like, i.e., you are not limited to just one. This makes situations like the following much easier to code and read: IF user_choice == 'A' THEN ; ELSEIF user_choice == 'B' THEN ; ELSEIF user_choice == 'C' THEN ; ELSE ; ENDIF Note that the code generated for handling ELSEIF is compatible with STalker 3.00. Only AND, OR, write_script(), and exit_program() cause incompatibilities. + The "Save configuration as..." command is now allowed when STalker is "Disabled". This makes it easier to create a .INF file that starts STalker in the disabled state. + The "Dial selected entries" command is now disabled if DCD is enabled and active, to prevent the effects of accidentally pressing Shift-Alt-A while online. + STalker now displays a message and exits if no VDI workstations are available at startup. + A problem with capture mode getting disabled at startup has been fixed. + Problems with Capture and Printing being turned off incorrectly should now be fixed. + ZModem comparison now works with the DOS DSZ program, and the statistics in the transfer status window are now correct even if the comparison isn't successful. + An incoming ZModem download request with the mode set to ZCRESUM (rare) used to skip the file if the lengths were the same. Now it proceeds with the transfer. This is mainly an issue in conjunction with ZModem comparison, since DSZ and Unix SZ sets the mode to ZCRESUM when doing a comparison. + ZModem sends used to cause unpredicatable results if you aborted them right at the beginning, before STalker finished the initial handshake with the remote system. This has been fixed. + If the host system sent a timestamp along with a Y/Zmodem transfer, it would end up getting used on a subsequent XModem transfer. This has been fixed. + The XModem upload code didn't used to treat a timeout as an error, so it would not abort if you got 10 timeouts in a row. + A bug was fixed which cropped up if a configuration file saved in ST medium resolution was used on a mono system - the file transfer status window would only be half of the required height, preventing the total errors, checksum, error messages, and abort button from being displayed. + A minor bug in the file transfer status code was fixed. It caused the elapsed time display to be reset to zero when a zmodem upload error occurred. + VT52 "ESC b colour" and "ESC f" / "ESC e" sequences are fixed. + Some problems with the hide/show terminal cursor were fixed as part of the VT52 "ESC f" fix. One symptom used to be that the cursor would disappear if a clear-screen request was recieved when STalker's window was not on top. + Handling of scrolling regions was changed slightly. STalker used to work around a fault in the CBix code (CB simulator on Bix) where it issued the sequence "ESC [ 1 ; 24 r" to reset the scrolling region. CBix's method only works for 24 line terminals, so STalker used to treat a request for lines 1-24 as a request to reset the region. This messed up properly functioning programs such as Gnu Emacs which use the scrolling region properly (in particular when you tell the host you have, say, an 80x40 terminal window). The correct way to reset the scrolling region is to send "ESC [ r" or "ESC [ 0 ; 0 r". An Alt-ESC keystroke will also reset the scrolling region. + If your clipboard was empty (ex. right after booting) and you copied text into it, the Paste command would stay disabled. This has been fixed. + A few clipboard-related problems were fixed, in particular, the bug that prevented clipboard data from being recognized the first time you selected something. + STalker would keep track of the filename used in an "Open configuration file" command even if the file was invalid. This could cause you to overwrite the wrong file on a subsequent "Save configuration" command. This has been fixed - STalker only remembers the name of the loaded file now if the operation is successful. + Redraws of the autodialer dialog when selecting the Load... and Save... buttons is now better. + The TT Serial 2 port really does support DTR. STalker now realizes this and allows DTR to be used to hang up the modem. + The Communication Port and BackTALK Script Settings dialogs used to sometimes run off the end of a TT med-res screen, causing a crash. This has been fixed. + It used to be possible to temporarily "lose" the mouse pointer. If you typed something and hence caused STalker to turn off the pointer, then "topped" another window without using Alt-Tab or without moving the mouse (ex. type Alt-Insert to simulate a left button click), the pointer would remain invisible until STalker's window was topped. This has been fixed. Other Changes to BackTALK: ------------------------- + A bug with string constants that spanned lines was fixed. The compiler used to miss a \ at the beginning of a continuation line. + Some error situations are now reported more accurately. + The compiler now does what is known as "short-circuit" evaluation of AND/OR expressions. This is taken for granted in modern C compilers, and allows for more efficient code to be written. For example, under the old compiler, code such as: IF expression_1 AND expression_2 AND expression_3 THEN ... ENDIF would be compiled such that all three expressions were evaluated at runtime. The new compiler generates code which only evaluates as much of the expression as necessary. For example, if 'expression_1' were FALSE (0), the code would jump straight to the ENDIF. This allows you to write expressions like: IF string_pointer != NULL AND string_pointer[0] == 'A' THEN ... ENDIF Under the old compiler, the (string_pointer[0] == 'A') portion would be evaluated even if string_pointer was NULL, resulting in a run-time error. A minor side-effect of the new code generation is that an expression using AND / OR may not evaluate to either 1 or 0 as before. For example, the code: a = 42 OR 13; would cause 1 (TRUE) to be stored in 'a' under the old compiler. Now 'a' will end up containing 42. This is only a problem if you subsequently use code such as: if a == TRUE then ... Instead, use: if a then ... which is faster and smaller anyway. If you must have 1 or 0 in a boolean variable, use: a = (42 OR 13) != FALSE;