Info-Atari16 Digest Wed, 27 Nov 91 Volume 91 : Issue 621 Today's Topics: Administrativa, volume 1 #1 Atari Sys 5 Unix- any owners out there? Binkley ST ? DBase III+ clones ? Dhrystone Lattice C / Dhrystone PureC !! Formatting REAL SCSI drives. High rez boards for STEs How good is Hippo C ???? How is Atari doing in Europe now? HP DESKJET 500 Color : Experiences wanted Mint does not work with minix filesystem (3 msgs) MiNT library pl 16 ST Applications tos 1.2 TT is NOT expensive ZIP for the ST Welcome to the Info-Atari16 Digest. The configuration for the automatic cross-posting to/from Usenet is getting closer, but still getting thrashed out. Please send notifications about broken digests or bogus messages to Info-Atari16-Request@NAUCSE.CSE.NAU.EDU. Please send requests for un/subscription and other administrivia to Info-Atari16-Request, *NOT* Info-Atari16. Requests that go to the list instead of the moderators are likely to be lost or ignored. If you want to unsubscribe, and you're receiving the digest indirectly from someplace (usually a BITNET host) that redistributes it, please contact the redistributor, not us. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Nov 91 07:33:45 GMT From: noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!ox.com!umich!terminator!ter minator.cc.umich.edu!weiner@arizona.edu (Jeff Weiner) Subject: Administrativa, volume 1 #1 To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Howdy y'all....consider this a substitute monthly posting from atari.archive until I can revamp the regular format..... Interesting things to note: 1. I have finished cleaning out new. Thanks to all those who uploaded files, and a sorry that I couldn't get to them sooner. I have been ridiculously busy lately. 2. I have not had a chance to get to the stuff in my mailbox. Please be patient. I'm going home for Thanksgiving and will not think about thouching any of it until Sunday. Thanks. 3. Many people have been asking why they are not allowed ftp access. The situation is this: the archive's host machine attemts to map a name to an ip# before it will allow an anonymous ftp connection. If it cannot perform this, it will nuke your connection. How to fix it? Ask your sys-admin to properly register your machine's name. After this is done, the problem will resolve itself the next tiem your nameserver refreshes itself. 4. Gnustuff is under reconstruction (still). Please check the file gnustuff/Index and gnustuff/ls-lR before asking me where the files are. Graham is working on it, but he too is ridiculously busy. We are aware of what needs to be done here, we will get to it in good time. Thanks for patience and cooperation. 5. No, bart is not down. Reread the help file. 6. Ed Krimen: My mail to you keeps bouncing for no good reason. I got the uploads and will take care of them this weekend. Thanks. 7. I have no connection to comp.{binaries, sources}.atari.st. I do not moderate them, nor do I have any connection to them. Uploading something to atari.archive is not the same as having them sent to the newsgroups. I do not and will not forward them. 8. For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, make it a good one. :) Greetings from Ann Arbor, weiner -- Jeff Weiner --- weiner@atari.archive.umich.edu --- Umich atari posse Corner of Packard and State, 2nd house from Blue Front on Arbor 718 Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI 48104, +1 313 998 0892, near the Univ. of Michigan ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 19:10:28 GMT From: cadence!cadence.com!bammi@uunet.uu.net (Jwahar R. Bammi) Subject: Atari Sys 5 Unix- any owners out there? To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Warning: Flames ahead: i usually dont flame but this one got my goat :-) In article <9939@cactus.org> covert@cactus.org (Richard Covert) writes: > > I have developed under a half dozen different UNIX machines in the lasst ten years. All the way back to the original AT&T 3B2 when I worked at Bell Labs. My condolences, the old 3B2 is about the worst unix system i have ever had the misfortune to be on. > First, the TT is a bit underpowered seeing as how it is basically just > a 16MHz 68030. Oh I know the CPU is running at 32MHz but the I/O buss > is still 16MHz and UNIX is VERY I/O intensive (can you say disk swapping?). This is complete BS. Have you ever heard of caches (both processor and disk), What figures do you have to substantiate this, or are you just blowing hot air and wasting net bandwidth. > Also, their UNIX X Windows pack requires the $1,000 monochrome monitor > as the native TT color resolutions aren't high enough to support decent > X Windows. have you ever heard of virtal desktops?? I am running ST80 on a lowly 640x400 mono with a large virtual desktop, and it is extemely crisp and usable thank you. > And Atari is shipping the GNU compilers, which while excellent are NOT > commerically supported compilers. Try getting technical support if the > compiler breaks and you don't have access to USENET. Do you want to spend > your precious development time debugging your development tools or > writing your project? Thats why you need professional, commerically How many times have you tried to get support for a C compiler from a commercial vendor (especially a workstation vendor). You obviously have not (we port our simulator to 22 different platforms and believe me we know!). Besides, Gnu C for the m68k is about the most stable, and higest quality compiler you are going to find out there. Compare it with any 68K commercial compiler you care to. > system would cost. I would rather pay the same bucks and buy a Mac IIFX > with Apple's A/UX. At least I know Apple will be around for awhile!! boy you must enjoy getting ripped off .... there are much more reasonable alternatives out there, even if you are averse to atari. richard, quit wasting bandwidth. -- -- bang: uunet!cadence!bammi jwahar r. bammi domain: bammi@cadence.com GEnie: J.Bammi CIS: 71515,155 ------------------------------ Date: 26 Nov 91 07:49:36 GMT From: mcsun!unido!horga!ruhr.de!sunnies!nathan.do.open.de!ue@uunet.uu.net (Udo Erdelhoff) Subject: Binkley ST ? To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu In <5357@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>, Warwick Allison writes: >I have heard Binkley ST (apparently it's a BBS program) is PD. Binkley or better BinkleyTerm/ST is not a BBS program, but a mailer for Fidonet. Something like out Usenet's uucico... /s/ -- Udo Erdelhoff ue@nathan.do.open.de Fido: Udo Erdelhoff on 2:245/52.1 ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 08:33:32 GMT From: mcsun!sun4nl!eur.nl!bihack@uunet.uu.net (Floris J. Hack) Subject: DBase III+ clones ? To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Hi there, In the near future I may have to do some extensive programming with DBase III+. At the moment I am using the (german) DBase III+ clone STandard Base version 2.1, dated 1987, from Format Software. Has there been a recent update of this package ? (Or better said, are the makers still in business ?) I have worked a little with this program and it seems quite compatible, but not 100%. Are there also any other DBase III+ clones available for the Atari ST ? Any experience with one of them ? Thanks ---- Floris Hack bihack@cs.few.eur.nl ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 13:38:40 GMT From: mcsun!unido!urmel!hathi!michaels@uunet.uu.net (Michael Schwingen) Subject: Dhrystone Lattice C / Dhrystone PureC !! To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura) writes: >1991/11/15 >'Stoning the Lattice C > It's not true that I thrive on benchmarking. But I get curious. >While grabbing a file that had immediate importance to me, I found >this Dhrystone package and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen any >stats on the Lattice C 5.06.02 compiler posted yet. So I thought >I'd take some time and do some testing. >-O (Global optimizer) 18,262 bytes >100,000 recursions gave 1,190 Dhry/sec (840 microseconds) > and 1,162 Dhry/sec (860 microseconds) >All values verified. >(Note that this indicates that the automatic 'register' >declarations is at least as good as the registers declared in >the Dhrystone program, so there doesn't seem to be any point >in testing the "-mr" switch further.) I have come across the Dhrystone 2.1 sources last week (a complete version with docs) and decided to try them on my new Pure-C compiler (which is the new version of Turbo-C). The results were surprising (I give the results in the form of the supplied report form): DHRYSTONE 2.1 BENCHMARK REPORTING FORM MANUF: Atari Corp. MODEL: 1040STF PROC: 68000 CLOCK: 8MHz OS: Atari TOS OVERSION: 1.4 COMPILER: PureC CVERSION: 20Sep91 OPTIONS: -DMSC_CLOCK NOREG: 1719 REG: 1715 NOTES: Compiler uses registers for function arguments, int = 16 bits DATE: 11/20/91 SUBMITTER: michaels@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de MAILTO: uunet!pcrat!dry2 DHRYSTONE 2.1 BENCHMARK REPORTING FORM MANUF: Atari Corp. MODEL: 1040STF PROC: 68000 CLOCK: 8MHz OS: Atari TOS OVERSION: 1.4 COMPILER: PureC CVERSION: 20Sep91 OPTIONS: -DMSC_CLOCK NOREG: 1468 REG: 1468 NOTES: Compiler uses registers for function arguments, int = 32 bits DATE: 11/20/91 SUBMITTER: michaels@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de MAILTO: uunet!pcrat!dry2 DHRYSTONE 2.1 BENCHMARK REPORTING FORM MANUF: Atari Corp. MODEL: 1040STF PROC: 68000 CLOCK: 8MHz OS: Atari TOS OVERSION: 1.4 COMPILER: PureC CVERSION: 20Sep91 OPTIONS: -DMSC_CLOCK -Z -R NOREG: 1019 REG: ---- NOTES: Register-Optimization turned off, int = 32 bits DATE: 11/20/91 SUBMITTER: michaels@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de MAILTO: uunet!pcrat!dry2 When using my Hypercache 16MHz-speeder board, the best result was 3030 Dhrystones for the 16-bit-int-version. I think it is especially interesting that none of the machines listed in the >100K report file which had a 68000 with up to 10 MHz had results of more than about 1000 Dhrystones. It seems that the PureC-optimizer does a good task when optimizing the register allocations and when passing function arguments in registers. On the other hand, it could be that this benchmark is not suitable for a compiler with that type of optimizations :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Schwingen, Ahornstrasse 36, W-5100 Aachen, Germany +49 0241 876165 michaels@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (michaels@tolkien.imsd.rwth-aachen.de) IRC: ms on +atari or Errol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 09:39:53 GMT From: Dave Wade Subject: Formatting REAL SCSI drives. To: info-atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Hi folks, I am trying to get my "home brew" hard drive working. I have an ST125N and a BBDP Electronics DMA <=> SCSI board. I think my problem is that the ST125N may have been re-formatted with 1K blocks at some point in time. I have tried using both the ATARI software and the BBDP stuff, and they both find and identify the disk correctly, but then object to the format. The ATARI software suggests that I re-format the disk, but both the ATARI and BBDP formatters only work for drives on an ST506 adaptor card, not real SCSI drives. Does any one have any software to re-run the low-level format on a "real" scsi drive. If I ever get it going which software should I use to run the drive. If its other than the ATARI or BBDP software how do I get a copy. Also I seem to remember a recent posting about a version of TAR which would talk to SCSI tape drive but I can't seem to find it any where. Can someone point me in the right direction. +------------------------------------------------------------+ | VM Sysprogs do it virtually all of the time !!!!! | | Reply To:- | | Janet:- DAVEW@UK.CO.SSS.D | | Bitnet:-DAVEW@D.SSS.CO.UK (Also most places outside UK) | +------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 09:47:57 GMT From: mcsun!sun4nl!alchemy!piet@uunet.uu.net (Piet van Oostrum) Subject: High rez boards for STEs To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu I have seen an announcement of ODIN, a VGA board for ALL Atari's. It is from a Swiss company called Marvin or so (Zurich, I think). I don't know if you can buy it in the USA. The special thing about this one is that it must not be built into the Atari, but it goes between the monitor plug and the monitor!! In fact it uses the standard video exit as a high speed serial link to send the info to the card. -- Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands. Telephone: +31 30 531806 Uucp: uunet!mcsun!ruuinf!piet Telefax: +31 30 513791 Internet: piet@cs.ruu.nl (*`Pete') ------------------------------ Date: 26 Nov 91 18:06:30 GMT From: noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!att!mcdchg!tellab5!chinet!saj@arizo na.edu (Stephen Jacobs) Subject: How good is Hippo C ???? To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu In article <9938@cactus.org> covert@cactus.org (Richard Covert) writes: > >In fact the only ST book still in >print is Clayton Walthum's excellent book. > This must come as a terrible surprise to Ralph Turner, who just published his third book on the ST. So it's not on internals. Have you priced a set of Inside Macintosh lately? The price of developer registration doesn't look out of line in comparison. I wouldn't recommend the Apple docs for light reading any more than I'd recommend the Atari docs. They get the job done. Steve saj@chinet.chi.il.us ------------------------------ Date: 22 Nov 91 12:30:28 GMT From: psinntp!tfd!afp!gna!linn!Marco.Fris@uunet.uu.net (Marco Fris) Subject: How is Atari doing in Europe now? To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu In a message of <01 Nov 91 04:16:37>, aa399@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (2:320/100.1) writes: > I have also heard that ALL new software for the ST takes advantage of > the STe features. First time I heard that. My understanding is that there is hardly anything but demo's for the STE features, with the notable exception of some sound stuff. BTW: does anyone on the *nix side of this area actually read this? I _never_ get any replies ... - Marco - --- And now ... number one ... The Larch. Marco.Fris@p11.f202.n281.z2.fidonet.org or Marco.Fris@p11.f202.n281.z2.linn.gna.tfd.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1991 09:15 GMT +0100 From: "Axel Wagner,Inst.f.Kernphysik,Becherweg 45,6500 Mainz,Tel.:06131-395841, FAX: 06131-392964, WAGNER@VKPMZA.KPH.Uni-Mainz.de" Subject: HP DESKJET 500 Color : Experiences wanted To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Hello out there, has someone of you any experiences with the HP DESKJET 500 COLOR Printer ? Any informations and experiences are highly recommended! Thanks in advance, Axel --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Axel Wagner wagner@vkpmza.kph.uni-mainz.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 08:38:58 GMT From: mcsun!sun4nl!alchemy!ruunfs!ruunfs!muts@uunet.uu.net (Peter Mutsaers) Subject: Mint does not work with minix filesystem To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu I tried mint 0.9 or 0.91 with a minix partition that I created once with minit.ttp (in mint/minix) and once with mkfs from minix (1.1!). My harddisk software is hdx 3.01 etc. In minixfs.doc there were some comments about difficulties with minix filesystems, but I could not track down what the problem is here. Could anyone help me? Thanks in advance, -- _________________________________________________________________________ Peter Mutsaers. RUU physics dept. Heidelberglaan 5, Utrecht, Nederland muts@fysap.fys.ruu.nl |================================================ tel: (+31)-(0)30-533880 | Memento Mori ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 13:15:51 GMT From: mcsun!uknet!bcc.ac.uk!ucacmsu@uunet.uu.net (Mr Stephen R Usher) Subject: Mint does not work with minix filesystem To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu The problems you are having are caused partly due to AHDI and partly due to older versions of minit and Minix. Minix and older versions of minit produce partitions with zeroed out fields in the BPB. ICD and other hard disk drivers handle this gracefully, AHDI, however, does not and refuses to access the partition. I had this problem, luckily I've also got an ICD drive and a new version of minit. This allowed me to use minit's -p option to correct the BPB's on my Minix partitions, now I can read them from MiNT under AHDI 4.XX on my TT. I hope this is of some help. Steve -- Addresses:- JANET:- ucacmsu@uk.ac.ucl or susher@uk.ac.csm Internet:- ucacmsu@ucl.ac.uk or susher@csm.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 16:01:55 GMT From: mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!isis.cs.du.edu!shenson@uunet.uu.net (Stephen Norman Henson) Subject: Mint does not work with minix filesystem To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu This is an AHDI problem. You need a fairly valid boot sector for your minix partitions to be readable by AHDI. UNfortunately if you have used mkfs from minix 1.1 the boot sector may have been wiped. I have a fix for the AHDI problems and I will distribute it with version 0.53 of the filesystem, which is currently under test. A temporary solution to the problem is to copy a boot sector from a GEM partition used by TOS , preferably the same size as the minix partition. You will have have to do this under minix with a command like : dd if=/dev/hd1 of=/dev/hd3 count=1 where hd1 is the TOS partition and hd3 the minix one. This should work , but beware : if you try to write to this partition under TOS , without MiNT and minixfs running you will trash the partition, this is fixed in 0.53 as well. If anyone else has any problems with the minix filesystem for MiNT, please use email, as I could well miss a posting or two. I'll send version 0.53 to atari.archive when its been tested a bit more thoroughly (about a week or so). ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 07:02:06 GMT From: noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!think.com!rpi!news-server.c sri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!julian!uwovax.uwo.ca!7103_2622@arizo na.edu (Eric Smith) Subject: MiNT library pl 16 To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu Patchlevel 16 of the MiNT libraries is now available for anonymous FTP from atari.archive.umich.edu. This version contains a number of enhancements, particularly in the TOS compatibility code, some bug fixes, and some changes to header files that should make porting to other compilers a bit easier. The relevant files are: mint/mntlib16.zoo (library source code), mint/mntinc16.zoo (header files), and mint/mntolb16.zoo (compiled libraries). There's also a mint/libup16.zoo that contains just the differences from patchlevel 15. -- Eric R. Smith email: Dept. of Mathematics eric.smith@uwo.ca University of Western Ontario 7103_2622@uwovax.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 16:25:29 GMT From: mcsun!uknet!jet!dba@uunet.uu.net (dennis armstrong) Subject: ST Applications To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu In <15269@castle.ed.ac.uk> robin@castle.ed.ac.uk (R C Smith) writes: >Does anyone subscribe to ST Applications (I think that is what it is >called) from the ST Club. If so what do you think? >It cannot be any worse than all the (game) magazines available from the >shops. >Robin Smith I agree with you about the "game" magazines the best one IMHO is ST USER which has got much better since the change in style. The GAMER supplement can now be removed and discarded with little problem. It still is however a USER magazine and not a developer magazine. May I suggest the French ST MAGAZINE subscriptions from: ST MAGAZINE ABONNEMENTS 36, Rue de PICPUS 75012 PARIS The November issue contains technical articles about hardware and software 1. Programmation avancee en GFA BASIC 2. Animation 3D (6th part) 3. La norme XBRA 4. Les interfaces serie du TT (part 2) 5. Les objets "USERDEF" including printed listings for the above in Assembler and GFA basic They do reviews as well 6. NeoDesk v3.02 7. La carte Reflex 8. Type Art And interviews 9. Le petite monde de Dave Small 10 Paris pour Les Jeunes the issue also contained le dossier musique describing the various soundtraker programs availiable (Protracker, Equinox, Noisetracker etc) There is also a disk availiable with the magazine. This magazine is availiable in many small towns in France. I just wonder why a similar magazine with a high technical content is not availiable in Britain?. Perhaps some other European readers of this group may like to describe the magazines availiable in their countries. Is it possible to connect to the French Minitel system (3615 etc..) from the U.K.? Regards Dennis Armstrong -- __. .__________________________. ._____________________________________________ __| |___. .__. ._____. .____| |_____________________________________________ | | | | | | Dennis Armstrong, CODAS division | | | |___. | | Joint European Torus | | | :___| | | Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK | | | | | | Tel 0235 528822 Ex 4871 |%__' : | `---. | | dba@jet.uk %-----% +------+ +--+ - Disclaimer: Please note that the above is a personal view and should not be construed as an official comment from the JET project. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 16:48:26 GMT From: noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!deccr l!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!news.funet.fi!hydra!kreeta!luoto@arizona.edu (Markku Luoto) Subject: tos 1.2 To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu anyone there to sell me the TOS version 1.2 ??? preferably the english speaking version.... yes, on rom's just in case you were thinking of disks !!! thank's for your precious ;-) time >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>> " I'm completely operational & all my cicuits are functioning <<<<<< >>>>>> correctly...correc...corr...co...-! " : HAl9000 <<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1991 09:02:00 -0500 From: CSULLOGG@CRL.AECL.CA Subject: TT is NOT expensive To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu The last few net postings had a number of netters who stated that the TT is expensive. A two meg TT with 50 meg HD costs $CDN 1859 locally. I do not consider this expensive at all. I use my TT for DTP, wordprocessing spreadsheets and database work and I have a TTM195 1280x960 monitor. I make the 386/486 machines in my workplace look like simplistic toys as these users struggle with slow WINDOWs printing, cryptic ZSTEM telecommunications, and small screen (VGA) work. I would not give up my TT for a 386/486 box no matter what Darek and Richard profess!!!! ------------------------------ Date: 27 Nov 91 18:06:01 GMT From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cleveland.Freenet.Edu!al885@ames.arpa (Gerard Pinzone) Subject: ZIP for the ST To: Info-Atari16@naucse.cse.nau.edu In a previous article, atilghma@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Adam Tilghman) says: >In article <50704@cup.portal.com> Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes: >>Gerard Pinzone writes: >>>I need a program that ZIP's files on the ST. Currently, there only exists >>>a beta version of one on atari.archive.umich.edu and it's really buggy. >>I've only seen UNzip programs for the ST, > You might try ST-Zip 0.9, which can compress ZIP files... Or >this might be the buggy beta version :-) [However, I have used >0.9 to compress ZIP files without any problems] > > That's's ther version I'm using, but if the file is over 94k, It fails... -- _______ ________ ________ "Small nose, loose girls, no nipples, (.|.) / ___/ / _____/ / __ / Iczer curls!" -=- Gerard Pinzone ).( / ___/ / /____ / __ / gpinzone@george.poly.edu ( v ) /______/ /_______/ /__/ /__/ Join the ECA Wehrmacht! Kill CM! \|/ ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ******************************