INFO-ATARI16 Digest Thu, 2 Nov 89 Volume 89 : Issue 596 Today's Topics: question SPECTRE GCR (2 msgs) Sound on an ST TOS, Zoo, or Zen? TOS 1.4 Incompatibility TOS 1.6 && TOS 1.4 UNIX UNIX -- ATW Speed (2 msgs) unix on the TT WordPerfect for the Atari ST XFormer 2.55 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 2 Nov 89 00:16:16 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Dave_Ninjajr_Flory@uunet.uu.net Subject: question SPECTRE GCR >Does anyone know anything about floppy compatibility between ATARI-1040ST >with SPECTRE GCR and Macintosh II. I mean: can I port data from ST to Mac >(vice versa) by means of a floppy? Do I need special hardware? Yes you can run the same floppy in both machines, assuming that the Mac II uses the same disks as the plus, 800K DS disks and has a compatible format. I exchange data with macs all over the dept, from my Mega 4. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 23:46:27 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Xorg@uunet.uu.net (Peter Ted Szymonik) Subject: question SPECTRE GCR Spectre GCR allows you to pop a MAC disk into the ST drive and emulate a real MAC. MAC and ST format disks are *very* different, when you use GCR you are always in MAC mode - not ST mode. If you put an ST disk in a MAC you will get nothing. If your asking whether you can DL a file (MAC file) to an ST disk and then run it under GCR, the answer is no. Niether would you be able to DL an ST program to a MAC disk and run it on an ST. There IS a program included with Specter GCR called TRANSVERTER which does allow you to move files between the two different disk formats however. Peter Szymonik Xorg@cup.portal.com ------------------------------ Date: 2 Nov 89 02:45:46 GMT From: cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!novavax!hrshcx!wink!bob@ tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Gray) Subject: Sound on an ST The other day I decided to write a small program to read a text file and send Morse Code to the speaker. I hacked together the driver but was unable to get the Giaccess routine to work. I was able to read the chip registers but unable to write to them. My Giaccess documentation is poor and my sound chip documentation is worse. Should I be using Dosound? I am using Mark Williams C on a 520ST. Anyone got a code fragment that does this? As always... Thanks in advance. bob -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Gray Email : ...!novavax!hrshcx!wink!bob Voice : 407-994-6408 Boca Raton FL ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 22:18:51 GMT From: imagen!atari!kbad@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken Badertscher) Subject: TOS, Zoo, or Zen? achowe@tiger.waterloo.edu (anthony howe) writes: | So the problem is that both versions of zoo will not generate sound | archives under TOS 1.4 - 89.4.6 for some reason. Yet under the developer | release of TOS 1.4 - 88.8.8 everything is hunky-dorey. It is possible that it is due to Zoo mishandling DTA management. GEMDOS DTA handling (in the internal* part of the DTA) was changed, possibly in the time between the developer release and the final TOS release. Another problem is that GEMDOS _uses_ the DTA differently in the final Rainbow TOS version than previous TOS versions... to wit: if you don't save out DTA information between Fsfirst/next calls, when the last call fails (with file not found), the DTA _will_ contain garbage. Or maybe it's just bad fairies in your computer. -- ||| Ken Badertscher (ames!atari!kbad) ||| Atari R&D System Software Engine / | \ #include ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 22:22:31 GMT From: imagen!atari!apratt@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Allan Pratt) Subject: TOS 1.4 Incompatibility neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) writes: >The speed of the TT means that lots of software will really fly! I would just >love to see all those games get all their work done in under a frame... As you know, games are the worst offenders in terms of doing things which aren't portable and defeat our efforts at compatible upgrades. The fact is, it is NON-game software which you can expect to work, and games which are more likely to fail. (As it happens, a number of games DON'T fail, notably Air Warrior on GEnie and SubLogic's FS2(!). SideWinder also works, and it *does* get its work done in one frame. (And now for the standard disclaimer before people rag on me about things I didn't say...) Don't take this as a comprehensive list of what works and what doesn't. It's just some games which I happen to know work. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt ------------------------------ Date: 2 Nov 89 02:07:45 GMT From: imagen!atari!towns@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (John Townsend) Subject: TOS 1.6 && TOS 1.4 in article <4280003@hpgnd.HP.COM>, alex@hpgnd.HP.COM (Alexis MERMET-GRANDFILLES) says: > > My question is quite simple ,... > Does TOS 1.6 gives the same new functions that TOS 1.4 ? > Are they compatible ? > > In fact , Is TOS 1.6 an enhancement of TOS 1.4 ? or are they > two different branches of TOS 1.2 enhancement ? ... TOS 1.6 is essentially TOS 1.4 with the support for the new features of the STE. It does give the same new functions as TOS 1.4. They are NOT two different versions of the TOS 1.2 "enhancement." -- John Townsend ames!atari!towns Atari Corporation ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 11:19:18 GMT From: eru!luth!sunic!tut!ra!chyde!mcsun!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!hase@bloom-beacon.mit .edu (Hartmut Semken) Subject: UNIX In article <4212@blake.acs.washington.edu> themod@blake.acs.washington.edu (Chris Hinton) writes: > This is in response to a request for information on the Atari Transputer >Workstation (ATW). There is an article in the November STart. > > Here are some of the highlights : > > RISC (reduced instruction set computer) running at 50 mHz RISC: Not really true. Ther T800 Transputer is a "processor" that is said to be a RISC processor, but the instruction set ist a lot larger and nicer than 6502 :-) Almost nobody will do serious programming on this machine in assembler. The multiple opcode instructions always drive me crazy :-) > With all 4 boards, that is 13 transputers, the machine > runs at 10 MIP (= 1/5 Cray) MIPS: Most Insane measurment for Processor Speed. MIPS: Marketing Instrument for Pushing Sales. MIPS won't tell You, how fast the machine will do Your job. Transputers work fast when pushed to the limits. The network layout (the Transputers have "links" - high speed (5, 10 or 20 MBit per second) serial interfaces with DMA - to exchange data and code among each other) is a critical factor as ist parallelism of the program. There is an optimal network; one for each given task :-) > Helios OS (UNIX-like) with both CLI and Graphic interface HELIOS is - or will be? - POSIX compatible; it's very much Unix but it's different, of course: Transputers are different. Multitasking was introduced to have all that expensive equipment (processor, I/o, disk, card reader/puncher, hardcopy terminal) busy - doing work - all the time; to have the processor doing another job, while the editor is waiting for You to press the "ANY" key. Multi-processor systems do not just make multitasking faster. A four processor computer can be faster than for single processor machines. The ATW HELIOS comes with csh-like command line interface and X-Windows for graphics. HELIOS is not ATW-specific. One of the development team showed a version that booted on an AT-clone equipped with an Inmos B004-clone (the B004 was one of the first Transputer evaluation board from Inmos; the clone is the TEK4/8, the building instructions were published in the german magazine c't) A T414, T425 ot T800 will not run Unix faster than a - say - 68030 or 80386 at compareble clock frequencies. It will to a better job on programs, that have independent tasks running simultaniously. The Transputers do the basic multitasking in hardware (!). Inter process communication (for multiprocessing) and multitasking are very much supported by the hardware. Virtual memory is not. hase -- Hartmut Semken, Lupsteiner Weg 67, 1000 Berlin 37 hase@netmbx.UUCP Dennis had stepped up into the top seat whet its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. (Douglas Adams; the long dark teatime...) ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 12:03:14 GMT From: eru!luth!sunic!tut!ra!chyde!mcsun!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!hase@bloom-beacon.mit .edu (Hartmut Semken) Subject: UNIX -- ATW Speed In article <5188@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> wolf@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (thomas.wolf,ho,) writes: >These claims are very misleading in that they imply that a system with 13 >transputers will actually run a program 1/5th as fast as a Cray (I'm assuming >the above MIPS figures are correct.) _Each_ T800 has a processing power >of 10 MIPS (the upper limit at which instructions can be processed.) So Well, The T800 interger and floating point unit are running independently and parallel... MIPS do not say anything. >if you have a calculation-intensive application, say one that does ray-tracing, >you can expect that peek to be reached. If you ran this same program on >a 13-transputer based ATW, I doubt whether you will see significant increases >in performance, since that application will be run on a single T800 (unless >it was specifically written with parallelism in mind - using OCCAM(I guess that >is the T800 assembly language?) - I don't think there are compilers smart >enough to take conventional C programs and parallelize them.) True. Well, OCCAM is not the "transputer assembly language", but it's the language everybody uses for a start... OCCAM ist very much compareble to C: it's a high level language that is pretty close to the processor. OCCAM and the T's were made for each other; OCCAM has high level language contructs, that can be directly mapped to hardware funtions. For Example there is the construct PAR SER procedure1(foo) procedure2(foo) procedure4(foo) output(foo) ENDSER SER f1(foobar) f3(huhu) f1(huhu) ENDSER ENDPAR This will run procedure[124] after each other *while* running f1(huhu) after f3(huhu) after f1(foobar). The multitasking is done by the T's hardware (microcode counts as hardware to me if it is burned to the microcode ROM, not booted off disk). Another contruct is the "channel". Channels are - kind of - pipes where a taks puts in some stuff to be received by another task. The sending task is held until the message is received by the receiver. This can be used for task synchronizing and inter process communication. If the receiver task runs on the same Transputer (chip) (well, it's probably not running but "sleeping for input"), the channel is mapped to a memory location, probably a location in the T's on-chip-fast-nowait-RAM. If the receiver ist running (sleeping) on another Transputer, the channel will be mapped to the one of the four (eight in case of T222 or so) "links"; thel ink connected to the other T. The links are used to connect Transputers with each other. In an advanced Transputer system there will probably be some link switch chips (there are availeble from SGS Thomson/Inmos). These are kind of crosspoint switches (like the ones used in telecommunication). With these, the network of Transputers can be reconfigured by the system software, while the system is up and running. Well, face it: the softies just cannot handle systems like this at this time. It's much to different from classic computer systems. To me, parallel programming is a more new way of thinking (like object oriented programming) than just programming a new machine. hase -- Hartmut Semken, Lupsteiner Weg 67, 1000 Berlin 37 hase@netmbx.UUCP Dennis had stepped up into the top seat whet its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. (Douglas Adams; the long dark teatime...) ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 22:34:53 GMT From: imagen!atari!kbad@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken Badertscher) Subject: UNIX -- ATW Speed wolf@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (thomas.wolf) writes: | >>> 4 megabytes of RAM, upgradable to 120 meg | >>> With all 4 boards, that is 13 transputers, the machine | >>> runs at 10 MIP (= 1/5 Cray) | >>I guess this should be at least 100 Mips, because ONE T800 can run at 10 | >>Mips. | ...speed improvements (if 100MIPS = 1/5 Cray, I guess the program would run | at 500 MIPS?) MIPS == Meaningless Indications of Processor Speed -- ||| Ken Badertscher (ames!atari!kbad) ||| Atari R&D System Software Engine / | \ #include ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 22:37:23 GMT From: imagen!atari!kbad@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Ken Badertscher) Subject: unix on the TT depeche@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Sam Alan EZUST) writes: [ read in a magazine... ] | THE DESKTOP MODEL WILL NEVER WORK WITH UNIX | only the TOWER will.... | if this is true, WHY????? Because the magazines don't know what they're talking about. -- ||| Ken Badertscher (ames!atari!kbad) ||| Atari R&D System Software Engine / | \ #include ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 89 23:38:37 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Xorg@uunet.uu.net (Peter Ted Szymonik) Subject: WordPerfect for the Atari ST I can verify the fact that WP still supports the ST 100%, I just ordered my upgrade yesterday with no problems and the operator knew exactly what I was talking about and listed all the new features for me over the phone. A company that truely sets the standard for software support! Peter Szymonik Xorg@cup.portal.com ------------------------------ Date: 2 Nov 89 03:43:07 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!Vaprak@uunet.uu.net (John C Foy) Subject: XFormer 2.55 Well, I am baffled... I have spent two days working with Xformer 2.55 with no sucess. I seem to be missing the boat as I can not get any of my 8 bit files into the proper format for the XFormer. I have the parallel cable, the lastest ARC of STXF255 and can not get the two to interact. When I load DOS 2.5 as a Context, I have tried numerous variations of the 'A' - Directory command to get the 1050 to kick in and with no luck. All I get is an Error 138. Has anyone had any experience with this combination? Vaprak@Cup.Portal.Com Sun!Cup.Portal.Com!Vaprak ------------------------------ End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #596 ***************************************** =========================================================================