mss@dartvax.UUCP (Mark Sherman) (05/28/85)
We just got a Thunderscan. According to a brief note in the package, Thunderscan has difficulties on a Macintosh which has been used on Appletalk. Apparently Appletalk leaves some information in nonvolatile memory (I guess the parameter ram/clock chip) which Thunderscan relies on in some way. The suggested "work around" is to turn off the Macintosh, remove the battery for the clock, wait thirty seconds for the charges to trickle away and then put everything back together. Although Thunderscan claims to be coming out with a version of their software which will interact properly with Appletalk, I thought an easy patch in the mean time would be to write a program that flips those magic bits to something benign -- it appeals to me more than taking the battery out of machine. A quick call to Thunderscan (supposedly a technical support person) revealed no information: all he knew was that there was a problem with the interactions between Appletalk and Thunderscan but he had no idea what a parameter ram was nor what could be stored there. My suspicion is that some of the "reserved for future use" bits have been used, but rather than performing experiments, I'm asking if someone else has already solved the problem (or at least knows the technical info that I need to write the program). -Mark
howard@amdahl.UUCP (Howard C. Simonson) (06/06/85)
> > We just got a Thunderscan. According to a brief note in the package, > Thunderscan has difficulties on a Macintosh which has been used on > Appletalk. Apparently Appletalk leaves some information in nonvolatile > memory (I guess the parameter ram/clock chip) which Thunderscan relies > on in some way. The suggested "work around" is to turn off the > Macintosh, remove the battery for the clock, wait thirty seconds for > the charges to trickle away and then put everything back together. > Although Thunderscan claims to be coming out with a version of their > software which will interact properly with Appletalk, I thought an easy > patch in the mean time would be to write a program that flips those > magic bits to something benign -- it appeals to me more than taking the Now there is the idea for a very useful peace of software to write. Essentially it is the battery-changer application. All it does is write parameter ram into a file, you change the battery, and you run it to restore the locations from the file. Then this little problem could be solved by saving P-ram before using appletalk and restoring it after. A nice option would be to ignore clock bytes so the time doesn't get futzed. Any takers? I'm on vacation... -- Time for a new catchy phrase in my Howard C. Simonson .signature, now if I could only ...{dragon,hplabs,ihnp4,nsc}!amdahl!howard think of one... [ Opinion? What opinion. I think you have the wrong guy... ]