loosemo2@utah-gr.UUCP (06/19/83)
I've recently had an opportunity to experiment with the new ps300 firmware release (P5.01), and it seems to be a tremendous improvement over previous releases as far as performance is concerned. In particular, two of the worst problems seem to have been fixed: extensive use of the INCLUDE command no longer brings interactive response to its knees, and BEGIN_STRUCTURE/END_STRUCTURE doesn't seem to cause nearly as much flicker as it used to. Some new functions have also been added in this release. The way functions work has been changed as well; it used to be that when a function was triggered, it would do its thing once and then go back to sleep. Now, the functions will fire as long as there is input in the active input queues before going to sleep. This means that without the overhead of waking up the functions all the time, networks will generally run faster. On the negative side, P5 produces an annoying number of mostly useless warning messages. (It tells you if you haven't connected anything to the output of a function, etc.) Fortunately, you can turn them off. I've heard rumours that there is a completely new set of documentation for the ps300 in the works, but nothing definite. In the meantime, some of the errors in the existing manuals have been fixed in the P5 updates. Sandra Loosemore