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