Collection of Tools & Utilities/Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso/pascal/tspa3360.zip/TSPAS.NWS

Text File | 1993-08-16 | 34KB | 652 lines

News on the TSPAS package by Timo Salmi in reverse order
========================================================

University of Vaasa, Finland, Sun SPARCstation IPX garbo.uwasa.fi
has a large collection of PD and shareware PC programs available by
anonymous ftp and mail server. 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 and the UseNet news.
..................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi      Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating  at  garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives 128.214.87.1
Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa
Internet:  [e-mail]  Bitnet:  salmi@finfun; FI-65101,   Finland
..................................................................

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Appeal: Let me take up a request for those of you who may have │
│ found my programs or units useful.  As I am not asking for a   │
│ registration fee for private 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      │
│ freeware and shareware programs.                               │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Mon 16-Aug-93: Based on some welcome feedback and on my own
observations I have released an update of my Turbo Pascal units
collection. It is now garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa33*.zip where * =
40,50,55,60,70.
Added to unit TSUNTC the reversal of enabling hi-intensity
background
  BLBACK "Cancel HIBACK enabling usage of blinking text"
Added to TSUNTG
  ISRAMFN "Is a drive a probable ramdisk"
Corrected a bug giving occasional random results in TSUNTH
  LASTDRFN "Get last drive of the system, softcoded, not XTs"
If you have used LASTDRFN, you should compile your program anew.
Added to TSUNTJ
  ISDIR3FN "Is a name a directory or not", a slower and surer method
see garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsfaqp*.zip for details of ISDIR3FN.
Reprogrammed in TSUNTENV unit
  SETENV "Set a parent environment variable (variable=value)"
It now accepts equal signs in the 'value'. I also added an example
to TSUNTENV.TST to show how to set several environment variable
values.
Moved to a new TSUNTBOT unit from TSUNTG
  COLDBOOT "Reboot computer, including memory tests"
  WARMBOOT "Warm reboot of the computer (as alt-ctrl-del)"
and added to this new unit
  REBOOT   "Reboot computer with disk closing and cache flushing"

Wed 24-Feb-93: I have updated my Turbo Pascal units collection. It
is now garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa32*.zip where * = 40,50,55,60,70.
   I replaced CHIPFN "Get the type of the processor chip" with
CPUFN. It should detect also a 486 while CHIPFN did not. My thanks
to Duncan Murdoch for his help in this.
   The new routines added are
  ISEGAFN  Is at least an EGA present. No graph unit needed
  NOLABEL  Delete a disk's volume label.
  SCROLLDN Scroll down a window. No Crt unit needed
  SCROLLUP Scroll up a window. No Crt unit needed
  SETLABEL Set a disk's volume label.

Sat 23-Jan-93: As all Turbo Pascal users know to our common chagrin
the different Turbo Pascal version TPUs are not compatible across
the versions. I have made a Turbo Pascal 7.0 real mode compatible
rendition of my Turbo Pascal units garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/
tspa3170.zip.
   Since some users may ask, I am not going to make protected mode
nor TPW compatible versions. Protected mode programming has quirks
of it own, and is thus specialized. As for TPW, I do not use Windows
myself, and have thus no real interest of supporting it.
  The other, non-updated versions are
    garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3140.zip
    garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3150.zip
    garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3155.zip
    garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3160.zip

Sun 8-Nov-92: I have again updated my Turbo Pascal units collection.
It is now garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa31*.zip where * = 40,50,55,60.
The new routines added are
 TSUNTB:
   BBINFN   Convert decimal byte to binary string
   BHEXFN   Convert decimal byte to hexadecimal string
 TSUNTE:
   ARCFILFN Is a file's archive bit set or not
   HIDFILFN Is a file a hidden file or not
   RDOFILFN Is a file a read-only file or not
   SYSFILFN Is a file a system file or not
 TSUNTG:
   ACTDRVFN Which floppy drive is active on a one drive system
   FLOPSTFN Floppy disk status. Is it present and formatted.
   ISUBSTFN Is a drive a substituted drive (MsDos 3.1+)
   MEDIAFN  What kind of a disk media is present in a drive
              returns: $00 : Error
                       $F0 : Floppy of 1.44Mb
                       $F8 : Fixed disk
                       $F9 : Floppy of 1.2Mb
                       $FA : Floppy of 720Kb
                       $FD : Floppy of 360Kb
                       $FF : Floppy of 320Kb
 TSUNTJ
   ISDIR2FN Is a name a directory or not, alternative method

Sun 20-Sep-92: In my Turbo Pascal units there is a number of
editable readln substitutes:
 TSUNTF: (uses Dos, Crt)
  EDRDLN   Readln with line-editing potential (the simplest)
  EDREABLN Edreadln with ctrl-c and break trapping
  EDREADLN Editable Readln with recall, and insert toggle
I have written alternative versions of these routines which can take
a PrefillString as the default input string, so the user has an
option of just pressing enter, and default is selected.
  EDRDEBLN Editable Readln with ctrl-c, break trapping, pre-fill etc
  EDRDEFLN Editable Readln with recall, pre-fill, and insert toggle
The suggestion to make this enhancement came from Darrell Davis
[e-mail]. My thanks to Darrell for his useful
suggestion.
 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3040.zip
 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3050.zip
 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3055.zip
 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa3060.zip

Wed 26-Aug-92: Updated my Turbo Pascal units collection. It is now
 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tspa29*.zip
where * = 40,50,55,60.
   Bug fixed (hopefully) the ISDIRFN "Is a name a directory or not"
function in TSUNTJ unit. My thanks are due to Richard (Ricki) Breuer
[e-mail] for alerting me to the
problem.
   In the process we noticed a rather undesirable feature of DRDOS.
All my units are written for MsDos (command.com). The alternative
command interpreters like DRDOS and 4DOS can cause incompatibilities
since some of Turbo Pascal's routines (like IOResult) utilize the
values the system returns. There is nothing I can do about
incompatibilities like this, and it is a coincidence that we even
noticed, since I do not run 4DOS or DRDOS. Anyway, ISDIRFN eill not
work as expected if you are using DRDOS. I do not know about 4DOS.
   SETENV "Set a parent environment variable (variable=value)" in
the TSUNTENV unit now accepts cases like TARGET=A B C (formerly the
it was cut at the spaces).  Also this suggestion is to to Ricki. Be
careful.  Trailing white spaces and other invisible characters you
might put in there are included. Thus "TARGET=A" and "TARGET=A " are
not the same thing.
   Started a new 4.0+ specific unit TSUNTK. It contains the
following routines.
  BOOTDRFN Get boot device name (MsDos 4.0+)
  GETSERFN Get disk's serial number (MsDos 4.0+)
  GETVOLFN Special get disk volume label (MsDos 4.0+)
  SETSER   Set floppy's serial number (MsDos 4.0+)
The first, that is BOOTDRFN was transferred from the TSUNTH unit.
The others are brand new. I got the idea to get and set the disk
serial number from PC-Magazine (July 1992, Vol. 11, No. 13, p. 496)
which published TP 6.0 specific code for these tasks. Since my own
TP units are more general, that is for all the current MsDos TP
versions starting from TP 4.0, I decide