kevin@harvard.ARPA (Kevin Crowston) (06/03/85)
I now have a working version of Mazewars without AppleTalk (on a 512K
and 128K Mac). This letter describes what I did, so others needn't
worry about the same things.
There are three things I needed to get Mazewars running: a cable, a
system and a little programme, given to me by Peter DiCamillo.
1) The cable. As originally announced, you need a cable like the one
that comes with the MAC Development System. This is a 3 conductor
cable with two 9 pin connectors. You want to connect pin 3 to 3,
pin 5 to 9 and pin 9 to 5. All the rest are not connected (in
particular, you don't need to connect pin 7 to 7 as shown in the
Mac Development System Manual). This line connects the two printer
ports of the two macs.
2) A system. You need to get a system that comes with the AppleTalk
resources, for example, the system with the LaserWriter configuration
stuff. I got a copy by asking a dealer to let me copy his. There
are three resources I know you need: two drivers, named .mpp and
.atp (I think) and INIT #6. (There maybe more, but these are the
3 that were mentioned in the earlier letter.) Once I figure out
how to upload resources and assuming no one tells me that the drivers
are proprietary (the dealer thought they weren't) and there is
demand, I'll send these to the net.
3) A little programme. It turns out that the version of Mazewars posted
to the net does not properly start up AppleTalk if you just run it,
because of something stored in the parameter RAM or something like
that. There are many solutions, apparently. The easiest is to take
the battery out and put it back in, which reset the parameter RAM.
I haven't actually tried this, however, so I don't know that it works.
Other people do things with the "Select Printer DA", but this didn't
work for me on the 128K mac, since the "Connect to AppleTalk" buttons
were greyed out. The method that I know works, because it's what I do,
is to run a little programme that I was given by Peter DiCamillo.
This programme (I think) opens up the AppleTalk driver and then
launches mazewars. Note that the way it's set up, you have to
call your programme "MW" or it doesn't find it. I find that
you also have to boot off the disk with the AppleTalk system or the
programme bombs. I am including the assembler source for the programme;
I will also try to upload the application sometime in the future.
How to run the programme:
Apparently each Mac chooses its AppleTalk id number when it's powered up.
Therefore, it is said to be important to:
1) Power off each mac.
2) Connect the cable to the printer ports.
3) Turn on each mac.
4) Run mazewars. I do this by launching the little programme mentioned
above, which in turn runs Mazewars. (In fact, this is the startup
application on the Mazewar's disk.) Note that with this programme
you don't need to do anything with the Select Printer DA.
I'd like to thank everyone who answered my questions and offered
advice including:
roy@nlm-vax (Roy Standing), brian@ut-sally.ARPA (Brian H. Powell),
DICK@BROWNVM.BITNET (Dick Damon), CMSMAINT@BROWNVM.BITNET (Peter DiCamillo),
chavez%ucbcory@Berkeley (Steve Costa) and Steve Hana.
Any errors in the above description are mine; I'd appreciate feedback
from anyone trying to follow these instructions.
Kevin Crowston
Assembler source:
main sub #50,SP
MOVE.L SP,A0
CLR.B $1B(A0)
LEA MPPName,A1
MOVE.L A1,$12(A0)
CLR.W $16(A0)
DC.W $A000
ADD #50,SP
SUB #6,SP
MOVE.L SP,A0
LEA PGMNAME,A1
MOVE.L A1,0(A0)
CLR.W 4(A0)
DC.W $A9F3
MPPName DC.B 4, '.MPP'
PGMNAME DC.B 2, 'MW'
end
--
Kevin Crowston UUCP: {seismo,ut-sally}!harvard!kevin
MIT Sloan School of Management ARPA: kevin@harvard.ARPA