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 *************************