Info-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU (Info-IBMPC Digest) (08/25/86)
Info-IBMPC Digest Monday, August 25, 1986 Volume 5 : Issue 79
Today's Editor: Richard Gillmann
Today's Topics:
PC's Limited AT
CMU MIDI Toolkit Software Available
Phoenix drops Plink86, retains Plink86+
UULINK Information
3Comm 3+ and SUN NFS Networks (2 msgs)
From Compuserver Bug list for MASM 4.0
Kermit Address
WP 4.1
More on Asynch Adapter Problem
Apple Imagewriter Device Driver Wanted
Keyboard Buffer Problem
Token ring/Novell Netware Problem
Disk Partitioning Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 86 22:03:10 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: PC's Limited AT
To: TEAM1@STAR.STANFORD.EDU
cc: KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU, info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
I ordered a a PC's Limited AT in March, and got it six weeks later
in April.
On the whole I am mostly pleased with it. It does show some signs of
cheap construction, for instance the knobs on the rear of the monitor
are pieces of cable insulation, the LEDs on the front are free to move
inwards if you touch them, the name plate on the keyboard isn't quite
flat because it is slightly longer than the indentation it goes into,
the machine is fairly noisy, and the plastic insert where the second
floppy drive would go is on crooked. The screen is quite susceptible
to glare.
Setting the clock is a real pain. It requires getting into DEBUG
and then answering questions about how many disk drives, and of what
type, you have.
The monochrome graphics (Video-7 board) are higher resolution than
IBM graphics, but are not compatible. It took me a week to figure out
how to do graphics, and I still haven't figured out how to mix text
with graphics.
My most serious complaints are the nearly total lack of documentation
and the fact that the bottom third of the screen (Princeton amber
monitor with a 9-pin connector) is noticably brighter than the rest of
the screen whenever the machine has been on more than a few minutes,
and the text is too blurred to read easily when in normal video mode
(low video works fine).
The serial ports are 9 pin IBM-AT style, even though the
documentation says 25 pin connectors are used. I have never used the
second serial port or the parallel port. The 40 meg hard disk and the
1.2 meg floppy disk drive work well. I am not convinced that 1.2 meg
floppies are a real improvement, since they seem to cost the same per
bit as the 360k floppies (which the floppy drive can also write - there
is a warning that 360k floppies written on the high density floppy
drive cannot be reliably read by 360k drives, but I have had no problem
with that or with reading 360k floppies written on another drive).
The machine comes with a program which turns the 40 meg disk into two
logical 20 meg disk (I think you can partition it in different
proportions). Please note that the hard disk does not come standard,
nor does the monitor, the video card, or the 80287 math chip. You have
to request those at extra cost. If you order them, they are installed
and tested before delivery, though. Shipping is at no extra cost.
The heads on the hard disk retract when the machine is turned off.
One thing I really like is the keyboard (AT style) has a switch on
the bottom which puts the ESC key back where it belongs. Another
switch allows the AT keyboard to emulate a PC keyboard. I haven't
tried that.
The 8 Mhz upgrade consists of a 16 MHz crystal in a baggie with a
warning that if you use it they make no guarantees. After finding
the 14 MHz crystal in the machine (no directions were given as to where
to find it or how to replace it) and replacing it, the machine does
run faster and I have had no problems.
The monitor can plug into a power outlet in the back of the machine,
so the machine's power switch can shut off the monitor as well, and so
the machine only needs one wall outlet.
What else can I say? On the whole I'm pretty satisfied. If I could
make the choice over I would do it the same, only I would wait a few
weeks until they dropped the price. :-)
...Keith
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 86 14:12 EDT
From: Roger.Dannenberg@A.CS.CMU.EDU (C410RD60)
To: INFO-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU
Subject: CMU MIDI Toolkit Software Available
The CMU MIDI Toolkit (CMT) is a collection of programs for experimental
computer music using MIDI. CMT consists of Adagio, a text-oriented
score language and translator, programs for recording Adagio scores
from live performances, and utilities for saving and restoring
synthesizer programs. CMT supports non-equal temperament tunings,
polyrhythms, and includes a real-time programming environment. The
present version includes source code and runs on IBM-PC, AT, and
compatible computers with a Roland MPU-401 or compatible MIDI
interface. The real-time programming environment requires a Lattice C
Compiler. CMT versions for other machines, interfaces, and compilers
are in progress. Two disks and an 80-page manual are available for
$20.00 (to cover costs) from the Center for Art & Technology, Carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2890, USA.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1986 16:32 EDT
From: James H. Coombs <JAZBO%BROWNVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Phoenix drops Plink86, retains Plink86+
To: <INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
Phoenix just announced on BIX that Plink86 is being dropped (as of 10/1).
Only Plink86+ will be available, and they are developing a new version
(to support overlay caching in LIM and EEMS). Those who find bugs in
Plink86 will be given free upgrades to Plink86+. No mention was made of
other upgrade policies. Sounds like a good idea to avoid Plink86 unless
retailers come up with some exceptional discounts. Oh, yes, they say
that they will continue to support Plink86, although that support is
bound to fade. --Jim
------------------------------
Date: 23 Aug 1986 19:26:53 PDT
Subject: UULINK Information
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
From: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
For those who are interested, a detailed information blurb about
Lauren Weinstein's UULINK program may be found in the file
<INFO-IBMPC>UULINK.INFO, which is available for FTPing.
The third-party messages posted in the last digest (both of which were
fairly old) referred to UULINK 1.0. The current distribution is
UULINK 1.1 and it is UULINK 1.1 which the blurb is describing.
------------------------------
From: lotto%lhasa.UUCP@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
Date: 24 Aug 86 10:12 EDT
To: endor!info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa
Subject: 3Comm 3+ and SUN NFS Networks
>The bad news is that 3+ is a memory pig. My operating system takes
>more than 260K now. The SUN network file system provides the same
>functionality as the 3Comm code in about 100K less code. Also 3Comm
>masks off interrupts for longer than a 9600 baud character time. As
>all the PCs in the institute are used as terminal emulators to talk
>to time sharing systems this rules out using 3Comm 3+ for all but
>experimental purposes.
Thanks for the follow-up. I do have a couple of questions about the
previous paragraph.
First, What SUN NFS are you referring to? If it is the IBM
implementation, the same functionality is NOT there. SUN NFS for PC's is
a client only implementation - unless there is another version about
which I know nothing. If, on the other hand, you are referring to the
UNIX side - did you add the (significant fraction of the) kernel to the
n-100K estimate?
Also, interrupt masking is a serious problem, but you did not mention
the specifics of the machine. Is this a 4.77 Mhz PC or a 8+ Mhz 286 box?
Is the masking problem on the machine running server, name server, user
or combinations thereof? Regardless, I see how this can be a critical
limitation... unless of course 3-Comm releases an XNS telnet lookalike.
There is an XNS daemon in Berkeley 4.3 which we are currently using with
Xerox workstations. Personally, I would rather see a TCP/IP
implementation which (unlike Novell) uses the DOS filesystem so we can
abandon XNS entirely.
In the meantime, we are bringing up 3+ now, and I am having difficulties
with the Bernoulli box in this environment. Aside from the fact that 3+
will not allow you to network a non-fixed disk media (read media
descriptor byte not "fixed"), the drivers seem to collide when I bring
up the name service. Well, no-one asked IOMEGA to use a timeslice
algorithm in the first place. I am afraid that resolution of the problem
will involve sacrificing one of these items (net or box).
Gerald Lotto - Harvard Chemistry Dept.
UUCP: {seismo,harpo,ihnp4,linus,allegra,ut-sally}!harvard!endor!lhasa!lotto
ARPA: lotto@harvard.ARPA
CSNET: lotto%harvard@csnet-relay
------------------------------
Date: 24 Aug 1986 16:45:49 PDT
Subject: Re: 3Comm 3+ and SUN NFS Networks
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@B.ISI.EDU>
To: lotto%lhasa.UUCP@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU
cc: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
The interrupt masking problem only shows up on 4.77 Mhz PCs and it is
only on the user side. I am told an AT or 3C505 card will fix this
problem.
Yes SUN only sells the client side of the Network File System for PCs.
It will be interesting to compare performance between a 3Comm AT file
server and a SUN 6820 VME bus file server.
This brings up another interesting issue. The AT bus is becoming a
standard for all sorts of special purpose processors. I think this
will greatly prolong the life and utility of the PC family.
We have been using US Designs hard disks for our AT based file
servers. The old model we were using had a 32K buffer, but their newer
disks have 512K of RAM buffer memory as well as a microprocessor in
the disk controller. They offer up to 1.2 giga bytes of memory in a desk
top box and claim to have solved the DOS disk size problems. The
microprocessor will keep statistics on read and write patterns so that
performance can be optomised.
This finesses the DOS busy wait I/O problem. With such an intelligent
controller disk I/O can be close enough to instantanious that the
stupidity of DOS is no longer an issue. One could make a powerful disk
server based on a 3C505 card and one of these intelligent disk
controllers. The cost would be considerably less than a SUN or VAX
file server and probably less than 3Comm's 3Server.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24-Aug-86 11:35:53 EDT
From: David Farber <farber%pcpond.pc.udel.edu@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Subject: From Compuserve: Bug list for MASM 4.0
To: info-ibmpc%b.isi.edu@louie.udel.EDU
MASM 4.0 bug list.
From:
Roger Schlafly
Borland International
Date 04/19/1986, Time 11:18:25.
(1) You cannot redirect the output to save the error messages
in a file.
(2) If you run out of disk space while the assembler is
assembling, the machine hangs.
(3) The /ML option does not work with the /Dsymbol option,
unless the /ML option precedes it.
(4) The instruction
fmul st(1),st(1)
is invalid, but MASM assembles it without reporting an error,
as if the instruction were:
fmul st(1),st(0)
(5) The following file assembles correctly with the command,
>masm bug /r;
but puts a bad opcode in the OBJ file if assembled with the
command:
>masm /ML bug /r;
;*************************************************************
; BUG.ASM
; File to demonstrate one of the bugs in MASM 4.0
s segment
assume cs:s
abCd2 dt 11223344556677889900R
org 20h
x proc near
fld abCd2
mov ax,7
ret
x endp
s ends
end
;*************************************************************
(6) You cannot include a file that has been edited with Wordstar.
The problem is that Wordstar puts end-of-file characters (hex 1A)
at the end of the file, but MASM chokes saying "extra characters"
if it sees more than one.
(7) MASM sometimes incorrectly gives a "value out of range"
error, as in the following:
;*************************************************************
false equ 0
true equ not false
db -1 ; This line is OK.
db true ; MASM 4.0 chokes on this line.
;*************************************************************
(8) This is not a bug, but when I read the ad that said, "define
symbols from the command line," I certainly expected that I would
be able to define the symbols to be something. For example,
/Dxmax=15
on the command line should be equivalent to
xmax equ 15
at the beginning of the file. This is what Microsoft C and a
number of other compilers and asemmblers do. Of course, I could
just put into my file a lot of ifdefs, e.g.,
ifdef xmax12
xmax equ 12
endif
ifdef xmax13
xmax equ 13
endif
ifdef xmax14
xmax equ 14
endif
ifdef xmax15
xmax equ 15
endif
ifdef xmax16
xmax equ 16
endif
ifdef xmax17
xmax equ 17
endif
and then just put /Dxmax15 on the command line if I wanted xmax
to be 15. Is this how the feature is intended to be used?
(9) This is perhaps not a bug either, but I find MASM's treatment
of far labels very strange when they are declared EXTRN inside a
segment. In such a case, MASM attempts to force the label to be
relative to a segment other than the segment it was defined to be
in. It seems to me that a far EXTRN label inside a segment should
be the same as outside the segment.
(10) SYMDEB still misses breakpoints a lot. I don't have a simple
example to prove it, but that bug has been in for a long time so
I assume you know about it.
(11) The new linker (3.05) changed the link map format, thereby
breaking most of the symbolic debuggers on the market. Is this a
deliberate attempt to stifle competition?
(12) MASM still requires a carriage return at the end of the last
line in the file, or it ignores the line. There is a similar bug
in DOS's execution of batch files, so I assume it is intentional.
(13) This bug was reported by
From : JIM BUYENS (ID1358) Date:04-16-1986 18:22:31
It was presumably introduced in 4.0 when Microsoft ported MASM
from Lattice C to Microsoft C. In Lattice C, characters are
unsigned and range from 0 to 255. In MS C, characters are signed
and range from -128 to +127. IBM characters above 127 are thus a
little awkward.
The following statement won't assemble!
HDR_MSG2 DB ':',13,10
Actually, the character in quotes is the double vertical line,
ASCII 186, which I see I can't transmit. The diagnostic I get is
"error 50: Value is out of range". The assembler substitutes a
hex FF in the code, instead of a BA as it should. I got around
the problem by putting 186 in place of the literal.
[Haven't we published this list before or are there additions?? -wab]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 86 07:40:24 cdt
From: moore@ncsc.ARPA (Moore)
To: info-ibmpc-request@usc-isib.ARPA, joe.newcomer@c.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Kermit Address
Unless I misread the question concerning kermit, SET WARNING ON should take
care of the file renaming problem. According to the 2.29 MSKERMIT manual,
"If [SET WARNING is] OFF, the pre-existing file is destroyed, even if the
incoming file does not arrive completely. WARNING is OFF by default."
If this doesn't help, try a message to INFO-KERMIT-REQUEST@CU20B. I'm CCing
a copy of this to joe.newcomer, but I'm not sure I can reach his address.
Hope this helps....
Jim Moore
NCSC
------------------------------
Date: Mon 25 Aug 1986 09:29:06 EDT
From: <SS@LL.ARPA>
Subject: Re: WP 4.1 Problems
To: mhg@mitre-bedford
Cc: info-ibmpc@usc-isib
I have had similar problems with WP 4.1 when doing repositioning on a
large file. After some experimentation and slowly going through the
file, I discovered that the system hung after reformatting a
particular section of the document. Examining that section with
"Reveal Codes" active, revealed that WP had gotten an unbalenced set
of delimeters for one of its formatting commands. (i.e. [C] without
[c] or something like that). By carefully editing out the offending
command and reinserting it so WP used balenced delimeters, the
problem was successfully purged from the system.
------------------------------
Date: Sat 23 Aug 86 17:40:42-PDT
From: Liquid Len <Asbed@USC-ECLB.ARPA>
Subject: More on Asynch Adapter Problem
To: info-pc@B.ISI.EDU
I am posting this for a friend:
On the question of vectoring interrupts from the asynch adapter (which was
originally posed by me), please note that the IBM in question is an AT,
although I believe these interrupts should be treated the same way as in the
case of the PC's.
I have tried using both of the memory locations $0000:$0030 and $0000:$002C
to catapult to a user-defined interrupt service routine on reception of a
character from the port. Both these did not work. (Effect: legitimate data
was being received by the asynch port but the service subroutine was not being
run). As checks, I used the same subroutine residing in the same place in mem
to run under a software interrupt. This worked perfectly. Another check was to
use the identical configuration with a program that used a scan loop to verify
the reception of a byte at the asynch port. This method was entirely success-
ful.
I would appreciate further suggestions/comments, and possibly a procedure to
follow to test the interrupt in question.
Asbed Bedrossian
asbed@usc-ecl.arpa
sdrdcf!usc-oberon!asbed
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 86 17:51 EST
From: <BQS%MITLNS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Apple Imagewriter Device Driver Wanted
To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa
I would appreciate access to a driver for the Apple Imagewriter which will
allow, at the least, screen dumps from the monochrome screen containing
IBM graphics characters. I would also like to do screen dumps from a
Hercules graphics board.
Thanks for the help.
Ben Svetitsky
bqs@lnsvax.tn.cornell.edu (ARPANET)
bqs@mitlns (BITNET)
------------------------------
Date: 17 Jul 86 23:39 +0200
From: christer_modin_ics%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
To: "Info-IBMPC Digest" <Info-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
Subject: Keyboard Buffer Problem
I'm writing a resident keyboard macro-processor using Turbo Pascal
on the IBM PC, and I have encountered the following problem:
Some programs (eg. Lotus,Symphony,Turbo Pascal) insists on clearing
the keyboard buffer at startup, and at various locations within
the program. This means that the rest of my macro just disappears.
Is it possible to prevent a program from clearing the keyboard buffer?
Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Christer Modin.
------------------------------
Date: 24 Aug 1986 07:47:36 PDT
Subject: Token ring/Novell Netware Problem
From: Laurence I. Press <SWG.LPRESS@B.ISI.EDU>
To: info-ibmpc-request@B.ISI.EDU
I have been unable to get Novell Netware working with a Token-ring driver.
The server loads the system, displays the usual time/date screen, then blows
up with the message that a register (I forget which) on the token-ring card
is bad. I've tried different token-ring boards with the same result. I've
had no trouble using Netware on the same server with drivers for ethernet
and PC net. I've had no trouble using the token-ring boards with the PC
Net software.
Has anyone gotten netware to run over token-ring? Any suggestions
appreciated.
Larry
------------------------------
Date: Sun 24 Aug 86 12:15:20-PDT
From: William Pearson <PEARSON@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Disk Partitioning Query
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
I recently purchased a new hard disk and now wish to use
a 30Mbyte drive which used to have 20 Mbytes DOS and 10 Mbytes Xenix
100% for DOS. I have succeeded in removing the Xenix partition from
the disk, and would like to set it up with two DOS partitions so that
I do not have to reformat (and backup) the drive. Can this be done?
I have a utility that allows multiple DOS partitions one one drive
from Everex, but it requires that the entire disk be reformatted,
which is what I am trying to avoid.
Bill Pearson
------------------------------
End of Info-IBMPC Digest
************************
-------