[net.micro.mac] Delphi Mac Digest V2 #12

shulman@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Jeff Shulman) (03/31/86)

Delphi Mac- Digest          Tuesday, 1 Apr 1986      Volume 2 : Issue 12

Today's Topics:
     More Mac Battery Strangeness
     Volumes 0.5
     Re: WordPro Tools -- Does Anyone Know ?? Can Anyone Help ??
     RE: PostScript (Re: Msg 6755)
     Re: Usable Mac-800K disk configurations
     Re: Kermit and Megamax editor, a bug ...
     Re: SCSI Speculation
     Re: Usable Mac-800K disk configurations
     MDS Edit anomaly
     Re: System 3.1.1
     Re: System 3.1.1
     TeX
     file fragmentation and performance
     Jonathon
     MacWrite/Imagewriter II
     RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6876)
     Re: scale drawings in MacPaint?
     Re: scale drawings in MacPaint? & MacPascal Upgrades at dealers
     RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6878)
     RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6908)
     Re: LaserWriter Plus (is terrible!)
     Serious System 3.0 Bug.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: MOUSEKETEER (6801)
Subject: More Mac Battery Strangeness
Date: 1-APR 90:39 Mousing Around
  
    After over sixteen months of fine service, my 512K Macintosh finally lost
it's sense of time, i.e. my batter died.  Checking all my local sources turned
up nothing in the way of replacements, so I called Apple's Cupertino offices
directly.  The Customer Service person passed me to Technical Support (for a
battery???)  Luckily for me, this particular Tech was in a fine mood, and gave
help in sharing a mail-order source having fresh batteries, quick delivery, and
very low prices (see below for address).  With this excellent opportunity so
close at hand, I then asked him why the Mac, on loss of battery power, reverts
to the year 1904.  Turning suddenly very taciturn, he mumbled something about
"bloody H.G. Wells and his Time Machine" and hung up.  Curious, I checked the
encyclopedia in the campus library ... AMAZING!
 
 
Battery Source:  J.E.S. Battery Supply
                 12345 N.W. Southeast Drive
                 SanJuakiddin, CA 98765
 
 
------------------------------

From: MACLAIRD (6735)
Subject: Volumes 0.5
Date: 23-MAR 06:40 MUGS Online
 
I've hooked up the "Volumes 0.5" program/desk accessory to my Mac 512 and
XL(1MB), and I'd like to post this report for those interested.  To whom-
ever it may concern, feel free to repost this message, as it's serious,
at least for now.
 
First, this is a marvellous program for anyone who desires to share data
on the AppleTalk bus but who doesn't desire to pay for XL/Serve (or the
others; there must be others).  Unfortunately, as the documentation file
points out, it still isn't totally well-tuned, and one or another of the
machines will go down in certain situations or occasionally out of the
blue (while you're using Volumes).
 
In general, as long as the applications in question are temperate and
well-behaved, so is the interface.  No specific problems occur when the
host is processing as well as serving, except to slow down such functions
as printing, for instance.  I did not attempt to open, say, more than a
dozen files, or to open one file in multiple machines to observe the
arbitration process.
 
Things that _don't_ work, in my configuration at least, are: first and
foremost, _Launching the Finder from both machines at once(that is, to
select Quit in one computer and then the other without waiting for the
first to settle down).
 
Next, MDS seems to have problems (a pity as my desire was not to have to
flip floppies between machines), especially in the Linker.  Running Link
on the Mac off the XL's hard disk (in a 'pass-through' mode) fails to
finish as often as not, with the symptom being that after extreme activity
on the XL's disk, then having to re-boot the Mac, Volumes can not access
the XL's hard disk, although it reports it available on AppleTalk.  This
will continue under all combinations of removing/reinstalling Volumes,
until rebooting the XL(which fortunately is easy with MacsBug installed).
I suspect a munged System heap, which makes me feel unhappy.
 
When running Linker from the host, very unusual "Link error" messages are
uncovered.  Again, the problem is repeatable, and only correctable by the
last-ditch step of re-booting.  I wasn't exactly giving the NMI key a real
workout, but it did come in handy.  The messages displayed by Link were
much like garbage (i.e. mis-handled strings), repeatable upon successive
executions, but did change when linking different modules.
 
One more note:  it was necessary to boot the XL once from floppy (on my
shared hard disk system) when I tried some foolishness with trying to fix
a problem from within MacsBug.  I guess the moral is, Volumes is a program
for the timid at heart - used lightly, it will serve you well; heavy use,
on the other hand, will overburden it.
 
I think this is an effort well worth supporting, for those of us with
more than one Mac.  I myself hope the above problems can be corrected,
as I like the concepts involved with file sharing using AppleTalk.
 
-Laird

------------------------------

From: BMUG (6749)
Subject: Re: WordPro Tools -- Does Anyone Know ?? Can Anyone Help ??
Date: 24-MAR 01:42 MUGS Online
 
MacIndexer from Boston Software Publishers looks really good at generating,
filtering, and merging indexes of write or word documents.  We will be using
it to produce the Spring, 1986 BMUG Newsletter, and I'll report on it after
we do.
 
-- Raines Cohen
BMUG Operation Manager

------------------------------

From: PEABO (6759)
Subject: RE: PostScript (Re: Msg 6755)
Date: 24-MAR 23:25 Programming
 
I've been wondering if anyone is working on a PS interpreter for the
Imagewriter!  Since not everyone can afford a Laserwriter, it would seem like a
pretty neat thing for debugging special purpose PostSCript programs.  On the
other hand, perhaps the argument is that everyone who would be writing such
things has easy access to a LW?
 
peter

------------------------------

From: PEABO (6772)
Subject: Re: Usable Mac-800K disk configurations
Date: 25-MAR 23:13 MUGS Online
 
According to the cover sheet of the March 86 edition of the December
85 Software Supplement, the version of System on the Printer
Installation disk is 3.1 ... on the System Installer disk, it is
3.1.1.  The memo from Apple quoted in that post does not mention this.
 
peter
 
------------------------------

From: PEABO (6773)
Subject: Re: Kermit and Megamax editor, a bug ...
Date: 25-MAR 23:20 MUGS Online
 
sounds like Kermit did not release its input buffer when it transferred (it *
should* have) and therefore received characters continued to spill into memory.
Programs using the serial driver *must* shut down cleanly, or the next program
running will encounter unpredictible and often unpleasant corruption of its
memory.
 
peter
 
------------------------------

From: BRECHER (6777)
Subject: Re: SCSI Speculation
Date: 26-MAR 00:36 MUGS Online
 
> The only thing that he did not do was make the driver handle serial input
> from the modem port during disk I/O (like the floppy driver does).
 
The Sony driver disable interrupts, and while they're disabled, services the
modem port.  There's no reason for a SCSI disk driver to disable interrupts, so
it needn't worry about the modem port.
 
------------------------------

From: BCSMAC (6788)
Subject: Re: Usable Mac-800K disk configurations
Date: 26-MAR 18:18 MUGS Online
 
Apple told us the other day that System 3.1.1 is the curent official release
final no-more-changes this-is-it all done no more for now System.
 
Yup.
 
*** Jack Hodgson
 
------------------------------

From: PEABO (6775)
Subject: MDS Edit anomaly
Date: 25-MAR 23:58 Bugs & Features
 
I just had an interesting experince with MDS Edit.  I was stripping
4700 linefeeds out of a 170K file, and it all seemed to go well, but
when I was done, the file was about the same size.  COme to find out
that Edit left behind large gobs of binary zeros in the file (probably
it didn't garbage collect the file quite right, although it succeeded
in compacting most of the text from where the linefeeds had been
pulled out).
 
This was with MDS Edit 2.0.  I note that none of the other odd screen
display problems have been fixed in this release, but since they never
seem to be associated with corruption of a file, I have come to take
them for granted; just scroll the mess off the screen and come back to
it, and it looks OK.
 
peter

------------------------------

From: SPERRAZZA (6804)
Subject: Re: System 3.1.1
Date: 27-MAR 02:34 MUGS Online
 
I suppose everyone knows that 3.1.1 won't work with the
Installer. I wish Apple would pause and reflect a bit before shipping.
 
------------------------------

From: CHRISALLEN (6814)
Subject: Re: System 3.1.1
Date: 27-MAR 17:26 MUGS Online
 
Use resedit to change the "insc" resource in the script.  Wait 30 seconds, and
in the second scroll page down there is a field called "creation date for file
system".  Change the date from 9A740CF6 to 9A8B6777.  You might also wish to
change the script name to show that it has been patched for 3.1.1.  When you
quite resedit, run the installer as usual.
 
------------------------------

From: MOUSEKETEER (6801)
Subject: TeX
Date: 1-APR 80:39 Mousing Around
 
I've just spent some time with the final release of TeX for the Mac, and am
pleased to report the following:
    1) A seldom noticed bug has been fixed at last!  In earlier releases, the
two words "YOU" and "ALL", if appearing in that order at the beginning of a
sentence would be strangely contracted.
 
    2) Miscoding of word breaks has been corrected to properly reflect that the
words "THERE", "WHERE", "FAIR" and "DANCE", among others, contain only a single
syllable.  You should no longer find the word "HAIR" hyphenated as "HA- IR" at
the end of a line.
 
    3) It is now possible to refer to the Judeo-Christian diety without the
previously mandatory reference to a water reservoir immediately following.
 
While I personally find these fixes to offer new-found abilities to the user,
a tall, rather ungainly contingent of Southwesterners are reportedly quite
upset at the modifications.  "Why, son, dadgummit, cain't you see they done
took the "big T" right outa TeX?"
 
------------------------------

From: RICFORD (6811)
Subject: file fragmentation and performance
Date: 27-MAR 09:01 Developer's Corner
 
 
There is a black-box aspect to hard disks -- even to floppy disks --
that hasn't been discussed at length as far as I know.  I'd like to
get some feedback on it, especially from you folks working on hard
disk drivers...
 
The problem is fragmentation of files, where a logical file is spread out all
over the disk in various pieces chained together by pointers in the disk
directory.  This is probably most typical of the most crucial file: the System
file, which is usually modified frequently by adding DAs and fonts. If the file
grows in the process, and the disk is fairly full, isn't it likely that part of
the file will be stuck out in a free disk block somewhere far from the first
block of the file?
 
1)  How likely is this in various disk drivers?  Or are they pretty much all
the same because of Apple's standard directory format?
 
2)  How much of a performance problem is it likely to cause if it does occur?
 
3)  What are the dangers to file system robustness?
 
And, finally, what are the industry-standard methods of dealing with the
problem, and what are the Mac-standard methods of dealing with the problem (if
any)?
 
I'll volunteer to summarize the results of this inquiry, but, hey, that's my
job...
 
Ric Ford
 
"MacInTouch"

------------------------------

From: SJOBS (6801)
Subject: Jonathon
Date: 1-APR 98:39 Mousing Around
 
The following is information gathered after examining a working prototype of
Apple's yet-to-be-released "Jonathon":
 
Internal RAM : 11 Meg!
Internal ROM : 512K!  Switcher, Servant, and an ultranew secret "Discipline"
               program are now ROM resident!
Internal 30 Meg Hard Disk!
14" Diagonal, vertically oriented COLOR screen!  Height requires that the
basic unit be approx. 6 inches taller than the current Mac design, yet it
is only 2 inches wider, making room for a new "mini-34-circular connector"
on the far left hand side.
HOT!  A new System called APple Reduced Instruction Language/Fast, Optimized
Operating Level!
 
Since the previous codename, Jonathon, has now been registered to an add-on
board company, and in keeping with Apple's desire to stress overall machine
compatibility, the new unit will be sold (and was labelled) Giant Mac. Sadly,
the tentative price I heard is $12,950!  Given this high ticket, however, the
folks at Cupertino have forseen the need for a credit line for customers more
powerful than the current AppleCredit.  Along with release of the unit, Apple
will also unveil G-MAC Financing.

------------------------------

From: SBOAG (6857)
Subject: MacWrite/Imagewriter II
Date: 28-MAR 19:25 Mousing Around
 
A client of mine is using MacWrite 4.1 (or whatever) and is having a
problem with setting headers and having the text-header relationship
get weard.  I tried some experements and found that the text being
printed was not the same height as on the screen. Remember that this
is ImageWriter II.  I had the first line of the next page being pushed
into the header.  This is very strange. The font is Geneva 10 or 12
(or whatever). I don't ever use MacWrite.  Can anyone help???????
-==Thanks - Scott Boag -

------------------------------

From: RICFORD (6878)
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6876)
Date: 29-MAR 20:31 MUGS Online
 
 
Regarding the question about Excel, we have a review of it in the
November '85 issue of "MacInTouch."  We have been using it ourselves
for both simple and complex tasks, and have found it to be one of the
best, most useful applications available for the Mac.  Rumors are,
however, that Ashton Tate's new product (unannounced) will be as good
or better.
 
Ric Ford

------------------------------

From: MACINTOUCH (6884)
Subject: Re: scale drawings in MacPaint?
Date: 29-MAR 23:20 MUGS Online
 
And regarding the message about MacPaint (AT&T Bell Labs), the MacPaint 'grid'
feature causes objects and characters to be placed in only certain
pre-determined locations on the screen.  For scale drawing, if you are looking
for a rulers type of accessory, one can be found on Silicon Beach's 'Accessory
Pack 1' along with paint cutter and many other great goodies.
 
The big problem you'll have with MacPaint is when you change the size of
objects, they begin to look VERY choppy.  MacDraw is probably your best bet.
Ask your dealer if you can spend an 1/2 hour with it sometime.
 
Josh Wachs - "MacInTouch" newsletter.
 
------------------------------

From: BMUG (6900)
Subject: Re: scale drawings in MacPaint? & MacPascal Upgrades at dealers
Date: 30-MAR 02:59 MUGS Online
 
Here's a bunch of Usenet replies:
To: cb@hlwpc.UUCP (C Blesch)
Subject: scale drawings in MacPaint?
 
I generally recommend MacDraw for anything with scaling... it has very nice,
customizable rulers, and the SIZER and ADJACENCY da's fit into it very
nicely.
 
-- Raines Cohen
SYSOP, BMUG BBS
 
 
To: bhyde@inmet.UUCP
Subject: MacPascal Upgrades at dealers
 
One thing I found out THE HARD WAY: DO NOT JUST DRAG THE MACPASCAL 2.0
UPDATE DISK TO YOURS IN ORDER TO COPY IT... USE the INSTALL / whatever
program on disk #2 of the update.  The docs say they have no copy
protection, but they have these strange, uknexplained invisible files,
without which it just hangs...  -- Raines Cohen SYSOP, BMUG BBS
 
------------------------------

From: BCSMAC (6908)
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6878)
Date: 30-MAR 11:22 MUGS Online
 
I've heard the same rumor about Ashton Tate's new product. It's gonnas have to
be greta to be better than EXCEL.
 
Awhile back I was having dinner across from a relatively High-Up Ashton Tate
development person. I was saying how much I liked EXCEL. He listened intently
then said, "You really like EXCEL." "Yes," I said. "Well," he said quietly,
"don't get too used to it." He refused to elaborate.
 
*** Jack Hodgson
 
------------------------------

From: MACINTOUCH (6917)
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #17 (Re: Msg 6908)
Date: 30-MAR 15:11 MUGS Online
 
Just to put some more logs on the rumor fire...
 
dBase III for the Mac...
 
Stay tuned...
 
------------------------------

From: BMUG (6894)
Subject: Re: LaserWriter Plus (is terrible!)
Date: 30-MAR 02:24 MUGS Online
 
KURAS%BCVAX3.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: LaserWriter Plus (is terrible!)
 
Pat -
sounds like your LaserWriter driver is using Screen fonts!  Are you using the
latest LW driver (NOT the one supplied with the LW!, but rather, the one
that comes with Finder 5.2/System 3.1.1)?  What program are you printing from?
I've seen some really crisp, BIG examples at "Byting your time", a local
LW & computer-use shop.  This was a new LW+, NOT an upgrade.
 
-- Raines Cohen
SYSOP, BMUG BBS
 
------------------------------

From: MCOHEN (6883)
Subject: Serious System 3.0 Bug.
Date: 29-MAR 22:56 Bugs & Features
 
The following message appeared on Maug/Mac developers tonight:
 
#: 22097 S3/Inside Macintosh
29-Mar-86  00:40:59 Sb: #System 3.0 Fm: Mac Tech 76703,3032 To: ALL
 
Please upgrade to System 3.1 or later as soon as you can.  System 3.0 contains
a bug in UpdateResFile that can cause any resource file to be trashed -- and
that includes the system file!!  The bug is fixed in 3.1 and later System Files.
This is an especially pernicious bug, in that it is not immediately obvious that
your system file has been trashed.
 
 
Thanks,
 
 
--Jim P.S.  Please pass this on to your customers!!
 
- Mike

------------------------------

End of Delphi -Mac Digest
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