Info-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU.UUCP (07/17/86)
Info-IBMPC Digest Wednesday, July 16, 1986 Volume 5 : Issue 70
This Week's Editor: Richard Gillmann
Today's Topics:
TMS320 Signal Processing Cards
AT->PC Disk Compatibility (2 msgs)
TeX (2 msgs)
WordStar EGA Patches
TEKTERM, PUSHDIR/POPDIR
PUSHDIR/POPDIR Added to Library
GDIR, REMIND, SETTIME, ERROR Added to Library
SCRNCOLR.ASM Added to Library
LEX && YACC
Interactive EasyFlow
Simula
BASIC Compiler File SMALLERR.OBJ
PC Net 1.0 vs PC-DOS 3.2
Today's Queries:
Hard Disk, Plotter Queries
ATACK AT Motherboard Query
Problems with New IBM PC/XT
Display-Write 3 File Recovery
EMS Board Query
Special Multi-Function Card Wanted
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 Jul 1986 19:11:20 PDT
Subject: TMS320 Signal Processing Cards
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@B.ISI.EDU>
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
For the last few years I have been working with several TMS320 based
signal processing cards for the IBM PC.
The TMS320 is a family of high speed signal processor micro processors
capable of a few million multiply/add operations per second. There are
several cards on the market that combine the TMS320 with analog to
digital converters and telephone interfaces allowing software
implementation of modems, telephone control, and speech
recognition/compression. In addition TMS320s can be used for
robotics, image processing, data encryption, fax encoding, or any bit
manipulation or arithmetic intensive operations.
TMS320 based boards for the PC are made by ITT, Natural Microsystems
(Watson), Texas Instruments, and IBM as well as numerous small
companies making versions appropriate for laboratory use. I have had
first hand experience with the Texas Instruments and IBM cards and
thought it worth passing along some observations.
If you are interested in buying a card as a consumer and just using
it in your PC as a modem, answering machine, and telephone dialer,
the Watson card from Natural Microsystems is probably your best bet.
It sells for about 1/3 the cost of the other cards and the user
software is reputed to be pretty good. I haven't had any first hand
experience with Watson as there was no programmer's interface when I
last enquired. Currently Watson does modem, telephone dialing, and speech
play/record. Text to speech and speech recognition could be added
as these can be run mostly in the PC.
As the Texas Instruments and IBM systems cost around $1200-$1500 I
can't see them replacing your $39.95 K-Mart answering machine, but
the Texas Instruments board wins for a clean easy to use out of the
box interface. The TI answering machine and telephone dialer is
combined in one resident program that pops up with a touch of a key.
The IBM answering machine application code expects to run under
Topview. When run in the normal DOS environment it takes over the
entire screen and processor. The phone dialer is a separately priced
program. It stays memory resident like the TI program, but can't
interact with the IBM answering machine.
I have used both the TI and IBM systems as my answering machine. Both
offer more features than a sane man would want and neither have the
user interface I would choose. Both maintain elaborate undocumented
rigid file structures that are impossible to manipulate with any
other program. Unless one is already running Topview or other window
package I prefer the TI system as the lesser of two evils.
I know of no modem software available for the TI system. I would like
for TI or some third party to prove me wrong. IBM provides modem firmware
for their card, but as it does not use the standard serial port
interface, no communications programs are compatible. I wrote
a simple glasstty program that uses the modem firmware to implement a
dumb tty. This application also dials the remote computer and senses
rings and busy signals etc. I have used it to connect to local
bulletin boards. I have placed GLASSMODEM.ASM in the info-ibmpc
lending library. I may write a similar interface to Kermit and give
it to Columbia, but don't hold your breath.
The rest of this article will be from the point of view of an
applications programmer.
Richard Gillmann, Andy Witkowski, and I recently completed a project
called VTMS. VTMS stands for Voice Text Mail System. It consists of an
AT equipped with the Texas Instruments speech card and an Ethernet
interface. It has been sitting in a corner of the machine room at ISI
for the last few months. Subscribers call VTMS from a touch tone
phone. VTMS fetches their text mail from any host on the internet
and uses TI's text to speech algorithm to read them their mail.
Subscribers may also send and receive voice mail. This is just
digitally recorded speech which goes nowhere but can be played out
over the phone. Subscribers may also respond to text mail from non
subscribers by sending them voice mail. The non subscriber will
receive a text message from VTMS something like:
Received: FROM VTMS-01.ISI.EDU BY USC-ISIB.ARPA WITH TCP ;10 Jul 86 23:26:33
Date: 10 Jul 86 22:28:25
From: brackenridge@B.ISI.EDU
To: Info-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: Demo Message
In-Reply-To: (Message from "Info-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU" of 10 Jul 1986 23:16:01 PDT)
In response to your text message of 10th of Jul. 86 Billy Brackenridge
has left a voice message for you. Please dial (213)555-5555. When
prompted for an access code use a Touch Tone phone to enter the access
code 954.
VTMS operator.
This way someone can respond to text mail without using a terminal.
IBM has a similar system they use on VNET called TAOS which is
based on their speech card. The first such system of this nature was
built by the MIT Architecture Machine Group and since then they have
done many innovative speech applications. This is a whole new area that is
just becoming practical, and one where people with imagination might
be able to make their fame and fortune or at least have some fun.
I hope others will write some speech applications and perhaps even
donate something to our library! To this end a little technical
discussion of the differences between the TI and IBM speech cards is
in order as these are the two candidate cards one might use.
Both cards feature the TMS32010. As these microprocessors are Harvard
architectures, memory is divided into program and data RAM. IBM has a
bit more program RAM and TI has more data RAM. I think IBM made the
better choice here as their larger program RAM allows them to run an
operating system on the TMS320 which allows context switching between
up to four separate tasks. If you are interested in speech
recognition, TI's choice of a larger data RAM allows room for more
vocabulary templates. It's all engineering trade offs. The TMS32010
requires use of fast static RAMS, AS and ALS logic which are very
expensive. The cost of the board rises as the size and sophistication
of the memory increases. The Watson board is cheaper as it has far
less memory available to the microprocessor.
The next generation of boards use the TMS32020 microprocessor
which can run with slower dynamic RAMS. This could drive the cost
down and functionality up, but there doesn't appear to be enough
demand for these cards to spur management to produce the cards
currently running in the laboratory.
All of these boards feature telephone interfaces and A/D converters.
IBM is the big winner here! IBM has two pairs of A/D D/A converters
that do DMA access to circular buffers directly in memory without
microprocessor intervention. Although none of their software supports
it, the IBM card is capable of servicing two lines at the same time.
The IBM card also features dual sampling rates. It can sample at 8000
or 9600 samples per second. This portion of the card is a very clever
design.
The TI card uses a CODEC for A/D conversion. This means the
microprocessor must convert linear values to log and visa versa. This
is a bother and complication, but the real problem is that 8 bits log
(equivalent to 12 bits linear) is not enough dynamic range to handle a
phone line. CODECs work fairly well in telephone central offices as
the signal levels of the phone line can be regulated by technicians.
At the subscriber end there is nothing you can do if your phone
voltage is too high or low. While IBMs linear converters are only 12
bits wide, they have added a programmable amplifier that adds another
four bits to the dynamic range of incoming signal.
This added dynamic range is very important when recording incoming
speech from long distance phone lines. Experience with VTMS has shown
that the TI system degrades when recording voice over long distance
phone lines. This isn't quite as important for the telephone
answering machine where the owner of the machine is the only one who
hears the messages, but in the VTMS application we have found that
people get a bad impression of the system if they are using it for
the first time and the voice quality is not up to par.
Another big difference between the two boards is how the various
companies do touch tone detection. IBM uses digital filtering on the
TMS320 to do it in software, and TI uses a real lousy touch tone
decoder chip. It works most of the time, and I wish I could characterize
when it doesn't work, but it fails enough to make life miserable. In
VTMS we were able to work around this hardware deficiency by timing
out and assuming a default key for the user. By careful arrangement
of the command set one can live with flaky touch tone detection, but
there is no excuse for bad hardware design like that.
I haven't had much experience with IBM's algorithm, but I have worked
with my own and as it was entirely written in software it could
always be adjusted to work in all situations.
Aside from the hardware limitations of voice record and play, Texas
Instruments is clearly superior to IBM and Watson in their speech
compression algorithms. TI can record at 2400, 9600 and 32000 bits
per second where IBM records at 14,400, 19,200 and 28,800 bits per
second. TI has done a great job in achieving high quality at low bit
rates, however, the IBM algorithms have a better AGC. You
can shout or whisper into the telephone and your recorded voice comes
out at the same level. While this may not be appropriate for all
applications, it should solve the problems we have with long
distance phone calls in VTMS.
Neither group has been able to master the art of silence detection.
See Merritt below for a reference on how to do this.
Both TI and IBM use the text to speech algorithm from Speech Plus.
IBM's version appears to be about a year's more refined than TI's.
IBM also integrated text to speech into their operating system better
than TI did. A major portion of text to speech code must run in the
PC. IBM is able to dynamically load it and then free up the space.
With TI, once you have loaded text to speech, you can never get the
120K bytes back without rebooting. Unfortunately the Speech Plus
algorithm uses a resonator model of the vocal tract. This can eat up
75% of the TMS320's cycles and limit the rate at which the card can
speak. In IBM's case this means you can't run touch tone detection and
text to speech at the same time. While IBM has provided limited touch
tone detection algorithm which only recognizes the * tone, all this is
bad engineering. If they had used a lattice filter representation of
the vocal tract model such as Berkeley Speech Technology uses, they
would only need about 15% of the TMS320 cycles, and the IBM card would
be able to run two channels of text to speech as well as full touch
tone detection on both channels.
I can't say much about the relative merits of the speech recognition
algorithms on the two cards, as I have done little more than play with
the demos. TI uses their own dynamic time warp LPC template matching
algorithm which runs almost entirely on the TMS320. IBM uses Dragon
Systems' Markov process time domain stuff which runs mostly on the PC.
Both systems have their good points, and anyone planning a project using
speech recognition should investigate both systems and make their
choice on criteria appropriate to their specific application.
IBM really shines when it comes to documenting what they produce. TI
has been pretty good in sending me internal documents so I can
program their beast, but IBM hasn't had to. The Options and Adapters
manual even includes schematics for the board.
Suppose you want to write an application using the existing play,
record, text to speech, phone dialing and call progression, and touch
tone detection features of the two boards. If you have a simple
application you want to get running quickly, TI is your best bet as
there are well documented high level language interfaces that will get
you running quickly, but lord help you if you don't want your
interface exactly the way TI wrote it. They have some pretty demented
ideas about how they think people ought to program. Also forget it if
you want to run in a multi tasking environment. For VTMS we had to
throw away all TI's code and interface directly to the hardware and
firmware. I spent a month or so rooting around with the Codesmith
debugger in TI's code, and it is disgusting. TI ought to learn to hire
programmers not engineers.
At first glance IBM's code is a little bizarre in that one is faced
with a lot of IBMspeak. The documentation reads like an MVS program
logic manual, but the code is a work of art. Everything is reentrant
and asynchronous. IBM has correctly recognized that speech
applications are well suited to multi tasking windowed environments
and that a resource such as the speech card is best shared between
several applications. While it takes a little longer to get started
with the IBM programmer's interface, the richness of their low level
command set is well worth the extra effort. When coupled with the
superiority of their hardware phone interface, IBM is the only
sensible choice for telephone based applications.
All of these cards have been a dismal failure in the market place. I
understand from PC Week that IBM is dropping further development in
this field. As usual PC Week had their opinions mixed with facts and
both were confused. It is unfortunate as IBM was on the right track
from a technical point of view, but marketing support for this product
was nonexistent.
Clearly speech and signal processing applications are going to be
increasingly important in the next decades. It seems stupid to drop
the whole effort because the first generation card was badly marketed.
I will conclude with a few ideas for applications that could be
developed on this generation of board:
I'd like to see a simple memory resident phone dialer for DOS that
would read phone numbers from the screen from any program such as
VDTE, Dbase or Epsilon. Specialized programs which insist on keeping
phone numbers in weird file structures seem pretty silly to me. The
program should be able to parse phone numbers in a variety of formats
adding dialing prefixes and area codes as necessary. Danny Cohen
wrote such a program on a 68000 and connected to a serial port on his
HP terminal several years ago. I assume he still uses it with his PC
when running the VDTE terminal emulator. I haven't spoken with Danny
in several months so I don't know if he still has a PC or has moved
to the brave new world of SUNs and unix.
Nobody has written a Windows application for the IBM card. One could
combine the phone dialer I mentioned above with a icon interface. I
might even run my copy of Windows if there was such an application.
Chris Schmandt and his colleagues at the MIT Architecture Machine
Group have done some fun applications experimenting in human computer
interaction. Their "phone slave" combines speech play and record,
speaker identification, voice recognition, and a graphics interface
in a manner that is really exciting. Three years ago this system
required a dedicated super-mini computer and lots of extra hardware,
but today it could be done on a PC. I understand a version of the
phone slave is marketed by a company called Active Voice in Seattle.
FAX and image processing is an area rarely touched on. Here at ISI
there are two systems using TMS320s for image compression over the
INTERNET.
An interesting application is combining the software modem
capabilities of the 320 with FAX encoding/decoding. The TMS320 is really
spiffy at bit testing and inserting as it has a barrel shifter which
makes FAX go really fast. FAX modems (at least outside of Japan) are
expensive as they are specific to FAX only. The current generation of
boards would be cost effective for this, but the market is limited.
Why did IBM neglect the wider modem market and Texas Instruments
ignore it entirely? Currently IBM has implemented only the 300 and
1200 baud modems. I am surprised that they never got to the 2400 baud
or 4800 baud half duplex modems used for talking to IBM mainframes.
If it talked to IBM mainframes, IBM sales people might get behind
selling the Voice Communications Option.
If I ever find the time, I plan to adapt the IBM card to amateur
radio. Currently there are between twenty to thirty thousand packet
radio nodes in the United States. With a one watt radio, one can use
digipeaters to forward packets over a range greater than is possible
with direct transmission. Three years ago I wrote a sub thousand bit
per second LPC vocoder that ran on a TMS320 board Paul Mockapetris and
I built for the PC. The idea is to send speech digitally in packets,
but as the bandwidth of the packet net is pretty low one must do a
radical encoding of voice. The quality of speech isn't much, but it is
better than the single side band amateurs are currently used to.
Such a system could be used with Tymnet's "PC Pursuit" offer of
unlimited after hour data calls for $25 a month to provide unlimited
voice calls for the same price. The quality would be adequate for
multi user interactive computer games where voice could be mixed with
data. Maze wars with voice anyone??
The whole idea of voice games hasn't been exploited much. I think
there are possibilities to start a whole new industry here. Dick
Gillmann wrote "Richard's Telephone Matchbox" last summer. It is a
voice/touchtone dating service. Subscribers can send voice mail to
one another, post public messages, and match to other users to meet
people with similar interests. The program is still running at
(213)676-7764. Crude rip-offs of this idea are running on some of the
976 numbers. (213)97-NITES will cost you 95 cents plus toll charges
to meet the girl or boy of your dreams.
These cards are finding use in the handicapped market. There are
better speech recognition devices on the market, but none of them do
text to speech. It seems to me the flexibility of a generalized
signal processor connected to a microphone/speaker offers a lot more
potential than a rigid hardware approach to speech recognition for
the handicapped.
Suggestions for further reading:
Volume 4 issue 121 and 124 of INFO-IBMPC: Text of IBM announcement of
Voice Communications Option and my comments.
Volume 3 number 5 IBM Personal Computer Seminar Proceedings: Voice
Communications Option
IBM Voice Communications Application Program Interface Reference
IBM Part No. 6280743 0743
IBM Technical Reference Options & Adapters: Voice Communications
Adapter; 55X8864 October 11, 1985
TI-Speech Applications Toolkit TI Part No. 2249821-0001
Providing Telephone Line Access to a Packet Voice Network Ian H Merritt
University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute,
February 1983 ISI/RR-83-107
Summary Proceedings of the UCLA-NSF workshop on Personal Communications
Izhak Rubin Editor UCLA-ENG-85-29 Richard Gillmann (Richard's Telephone
Matchbox) p.353
Chris Schmandt (geek@nedia-lab.mit.edu) can be contacted for further
information about the phone slave and other projects done at the
Architecture Machine Group.
[GLASSMODEM.ASM has been placed in the lending library -wab]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 11:58:56 SET
To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA
From: ESC1111%DDAESA10.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA
Subject: AT->PC Disk Compatibility
A while back I asked about AT->PC disk transfers. All the answers have
convinced me that the 'naive' approach should have worked and that one
or other of the disk drives must be misaligned. I know how to checkout
PC (360K) drives (various firms sell calibration disks) but I've never
seen the same thing for AT (High density) drives. Any Ideas ?
snail : N. Head,
European Space Operations Centre
RobertBoschstr. 5
6100 Darmstadt
Federal Rep. Germany
bitnet/earn : ESC1111 at DDAESA10
BIX : nhead
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 08:54:48 EDT
From: SAROFF%UMass.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (MATTHEW G. SAROFF)
Subject: AT->PC Disk Compatibility
To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA
I have talked to two people who are knowledgable about IBM PCs about
the 1.2 meg 5.25" floppies available. They said:
1) "There is not a problem. People are using cheap disks, and with the
data packed in so tight, you get REAL problems with cheap disks.",
AND
2) "There are some real problems. For the 1.2 meg format, it is only 60%
likely that another drive will be able to read the disks, and if you use the
360K format, this goes down to less than 30%."
Needless to say, this child is downright confused. What are individuals'
experiences with ther 1.2meg drives?
Matthew Saroff
------------------------------
Date: 150786 11.00.00
To: <INFO-IBMPC-REQUEST@USC-ISIB>
From: <ACSKATJ%HUTRUU0.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TeX
In Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Volume 33, No. 1, Jan.
1986) an article about Technical Word Processors was published.
In that article a number of TWP's are compared and also some TEX-
implementations for PC's are described.
Jan van Kats
Academic Computer Center Utrecht
State University of Utrecht
Budapestlaan 6, "de Uithof"
Utrecht, the Netherlands
EARN: ACSKATJ@HUTRUU0
UUCP: MCVAX!ACCUMV!ACSKATJ
------------------------------
Date: Tue 15 Jul 86 11:28:31-PDT
From: David R. Fuchs <FUCHS@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TeX
To: INFO-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU
To correct some mis-information in the last posting about TeX:
(1) The MicroTeX base price is $295; with an Epson driver, $395. This has
been true for the better part of a year now.
(2) LaTeX runs fine under MicroTeX. The LaTeX manual is included in the
LaTeX box that is optionally available.
(3) The MicroTeX Epson driver runs faster than the PC-TeX one, when running
at the same quality settings. MicroTeX's Epson driver also has more
speed-vs.-quality options.
(4) The MicroTeX LaserWriter driver runs just the same speed as the PC-TeX
one (since it's actually the same program, licensed from Textset, Inc.).
Even more importantly, MicroTeX 1.5 is significantly faster and
smaller than PC-TeX. The speed has been measured at 25% to 33%
faster, depending on the job. The small size, in conjunction with the
internal "poor-man's virtual memory" scheme means that MicroTeX can
handle much larger and complex TeX jobs. You get more room for
macros, fonts, pages, etc. This is especially important when running
macro packages like LaTeX.
The only space-hogging aspect of either version is the font-image
storage. If you are only using a few fonts, you can get by with well
under 1Meg of disk space (indeed, MicroTeX even runs on a dual-floppy
system).
Finally, the Tex Users Group yearly meeting is July 21-23 (at Tufts
Univ.), and A-W will be demonstrating some major new functionality in
MicroTeX that I will be glad to report on the following week.
-david (who decidedly has an interest in MicroTeX)
------------------------------
Date: Tue 15 Jul 86 11:56:44-PDT
From: Liquid Len <Asbed@USC-ECLC.ARPA>
Subject: WordStar EGA Patches
To: D.Buerger%SCU%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA
ReSent-To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA
I'm not officially on the net, so I'm sending this to you
directly instead of to the bulletin board. I also don't
have an EGA, so I'm not sure whether the following patch works.
According to the 12/15/85 issue of "PC," you can create
a file called SCRIPT with the WordStar document mode. The file
should contain the following lines (note the EXTRA blank line
in two spots):
N WS.COM
L
N WSEGA.COM
E 248 2B
A 2A4
JMP 2E0
NOP
JMP 302
NOP
A 2E0
MOV AH,03
MOV BL,00
INT 10
MOV [0308],CX
MOV AX,0003
INT 10
MOV AX,1112
MOV BL,00
INT 10
MOV AX,1200
MOV BL,20
INT 10
MOV CX,0007
JMP 030A
MOV AX,0003
INT 10
MOV CX,0000
MOV AH,01
INT 10
RET
W
Q
This setup is for color monitors. If you have a mono system,
change the two MOV AX,0003 lines to MOV AX,0007.
Then, with a copy of DEBUG (version 2.0 or above), WS.COM, and
SCRIPT in the same directory, type DEBUG < SCRIPT. This creates
the new version of WordStar, called WSEGA.COM.
I hope that this works. If it does, would you please pass it
on to the net? Unfortunately, I don't have a patch for a
bigger column setup.
Best wishes.
Vincent Alfieri, Ph.D.
(213) 257-9866
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 13:07 AST
From: <IUS%DACTH51.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA> (Eberhard W. Lisse)
Subject: Re: TEKTERM, PUSHDIR/POPDIR
To: Info-IBMPC@B.ISI.EDU
>From: Edward_Vielmetti%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
>I have found a Tektronics emulator called TEKTERM. It was developed
>at Virginia Tech (anyone listening from there?) and written by
>Greg Sherman. It seems to work, but I think I have a damaged copy.
>I'd suggest that you get in touch with Va. Tech; I can't point you
>to any bulletin boards or anything because I've only seen it on
>the board where it was bad.
Greg Sherman's user id is LEONARDRG@VTVAX5.BITNET.
I have a working copy here and will send it later this week to
GKN3M2@IRISHMVS. I am also willing to send it as HEX file (I use HC.ASM
which I can also mail) to anybody on ARPA who then can post it to USC.
(There is no source, though).
I use Kermit v 2.29 and run TEK.EXE from it whenever I need to look at
graphics. That works good enough. We have also Coefficient Systems
VT100/4010 emulator, which is a bit better but does not work with the
german keyboard layout.
>From: Brent W Baccala <baccala@USNA.ARPA>
>In PC Magazine, Vol. 5 Num. 10 (May 27, 1986), John Friend presents
>his PUSHDIR/POPDIR programs ("Programming Utilities: Stacking up
>Subdirectories", p. 243). These programs maintain a stack of directory
>names, and function as their names imply. They are written in assembly
>code for DOS 2.0 and later and feature a default stack holding 6
>directories, but this can be changed. The best part of all is that
>they are FREE.
>
>There are a number of ways to get the goodies. The most preferable is
>to download them from PC's Interactive Reader Service at (212)696-0360,
>which supports Xmodem protocol. Two BASIC programs to create the COM
>files are also provided, in case you can't download the binary and don't
>have an assembler. Second, you could type in the source from the
>article (Ugg!) and assemble it. Finally (if all else fails), drop me a
>line explaining your problem and we'll arrange a solution.
Pete Galvin (CC.GALVIN@R20.UTEXAS.EDU) has mentioned he has PC-Outline in
his public directory. The ARC file includes PUSHDIR and POPDIR (no
sources). FTP it from there. On BITNET I can send it.
I use them a lot.
el
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 15:23:23 EDT
From: Brent W Baccala <baccala@USNA.ARPA>
To: brackenridge@usc-isib.ARPA
Subject: PUSHDIR/POPDIR
ReSent-To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
PUSHDIR.ASM PUSHDIR will push the current drive and working
directory onto a stack capable of holding 6
directories (this can be expanded by changing the
source and re-compiling). POPDIR will pop the
last directory pushed by PUSHDIR. It checks first
to see if PUSHDIR has been run, and if not, gives
an error message. John Friend, PC Magazine,
Vol.5 Num.10, p.243
Brent W Baccala <baccala@USNA.ARPA> 7/15/86
[PUSHDIR.ASM (which contains source for both PUSHDIR and POPDIR) has
been added to the library. -wab]
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jul 1986 19:37:25 PDT
Subject: GDIR, REMIND, SETTIME, ERROR Added to Library
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@B.ISI.EDU>
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
Last month Robert Lenoil sent the info-ibmpc library several programs.
I put the programs in the library and updated program-library.list, but
forgot to announce the programs in the digest. Sorry about that. We value
the contributions we get.
Here are the abstracts from the program library:
GDIR.C Gdir is an enhancement over DOS's dir command. It
includes file attributes in its display, allows
you to perform directories of hidden and system
files, and also allows you to recursively check
all of a directory's subdirectories as well.
Robert S. Lenoil <LENOIL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> 6/12/86
REMIND.ASM is a program that can pop up a small reminder on line
25 of your screen at a given time. It displays
messages via the ROM BIOS, and thus will work on any
IBM BIOS-compatible machine with any display hardware
in any graphics mode. The syntax is: REMIND time
message, where time is one or two hour digits
followed by a colon and two minute digits. REMIND
can also be entered without any arguments, in which
case the pending, or if none, the previous message is shown.
Program requires SETTIME.ASM.
Robert S. Lenoil <LENOIL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> 6/12/86
SETTIME.ASM is a program to set the BIOS timer to the correct
time of day. It is useful mostly for programs like
REMIND.COM, which require the BIOS timer to
accurately reflect the time, even though DOS may be
getting the time directly from a clock card, via the
clock.sys device driver. The syntax is: SETTIME.
SETTIME gets the time from DOS, and writes it to the
BIOS timer.
Robert S. Lenoil <LENOIL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> 6/12/86
From <info-ibmpc.eel>eelcode.list
ERROR.MAC The macros place the error message output by the
compiler or assembler in a one-line window at the
top of the screen, and then position the cursor to
the offending line in the source-code window. It
seems that these macros will not work with Epsilon
3.x, as the macros use the PROMPT command from
Epsilon 2.x, and this doesn't seem to be present
in Epsilon 3.x (probably an oversight by Lugaru).
Robert S. Lenoil <LENOIL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> 6/12/86
------------------------------
Date: Wed 16 Jul 86 15:41:15-EDT
From: Frank da Cruz <SY.FDC@CU20B.COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: SCRNCOLR.ASM Added to Library
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
Here's a version of SCRNCOLR.ASM that, unlike the version in your library,
will assemble and run.
SCRNCOLR - Change display screen from white to color attrib.
Adapted from "SCREEN.ASM" by H. Fischer - HFischer@eclb 12/83
SCREEN was Typed in by Glass - gjg@cmu-cs-cad from Byte Nov. 1983
[The new SCRNCOLR.ASM has been added to the library. -rag]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1986 17:34 EDT
From: James H. Coombs <JAZBO%BROWNVM.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: LEX && YACC
To: <INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
There are at least two versions of YACC for the PC and one of LEX.
You can get them from the IEEE bulletin board in Rhode Island (401)
849-0529. Someone in Texas is also offering YACC and LEX for $25 each
(I have vague memories of "Austin" and "Code Works"--there is a note on
BIX in the LATTICE/UTILITIES conference). Vernon Buerg also has a
version of YACC--(415) 994-2944.
Actually, I am surprised that these are not in the INFO-IBMPC library.
Since IEEE has source for YACC and LEX, they could be submitted. I
would be happy to do it unless someone else has two or three free hours
before I do. (There are a lot of files involved unless ARCs are
acceptable).
Some YACC/LEX combination was written for DeSmet C. There has been some
brief discussion of this on BOSS, and I believe that someone has a
version for Lattice (BOSS is (201) 568-7293--CLANG conference).
--Jim
Acknowledge-To: James H. Coombs <JAZBO@BROWNVM>
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1986 17:57 EDT
From: James H. Coombs <JAZBO%BROWNVM.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: Interactive EasyFlow
To: <INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
HavenTree has an "Interactive EasyFlow" for developing flow charts and
organizational charts. Works with CGA and Hercules. Features 40
predefined shapes and automatic line routing. Facilities for drawing
your own lines makes the program useful for data modelling as well
(although one would not want to say that the program actually supports
data modelling). The program works as advertised, and I have seen no
signs of bugs. The manual could use some work, but all of the necessary
information is there.
I cannot make a direct comparison with MS Chart and the like, but
EasyFlow is only about $150 and probably better suited for flow charts.
If anyone knows of anything affordable that supports data modelling, I
would like to hear about it.
--Jim
Acknowledge-To: James H. Coombs <JAZBO@BROWNVM>
[You should also check out the block diagram editor "Boxes & Arrows",
available from Inner Loop Software 213-822-2800. But since this is my
company, I can't claim to be unbiased. -rag]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 11:21:23 cet
To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA
From: FAFKH%NOBERGEN.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA
Subject: Simula
Simula will be available for MS-DOS October 1 1986, see Simula Newsletter no 2,
May 1986. The price will be Nkr. 10.000, Nkr. 5.000 to universities. Simula
will need a 8087 or 80287. Information about the configuration that is needed
to run the system is not given, but it will run on a "large" system.
Contact: Simula a.s.
Dag Hammarskjoldsvei 35
N-0585 Oslo 5
Norway
Tel. +47 2 152900, telex 77458 simx-n
Knut.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 04:31:34 PDT
From: Ya'akov_Miles%UBC.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: BASIC Compiler File SMALLERR.OBJ
If you explicitly link to the SMALLERR.OBJ file, you will get a smaller
compiled program, without the ASCII text of the error messages...
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 17:34:53 PDT
From: gts%ucbviolet@BERKELEY.EDU (Greg Small)
To: info-ibmpc@b.isi.edu
Subject: PC Net 1.0 vs PC-DOS 3.2
The PC Network 1.0 server can be run on DOS 3.2. Just be sure to use the
SHARE.EXE from DOS 3.2 not the one that came with PC Network 1.0. SHARE.EXE
and NETBIOS.COM abort if they are used on the "wrong" version of DOS.
Greg Small (415)642-5979
Personal Computer Networking & Communications gts@ucbopal.Berkeley.EDU
214 Evans Hall CFC ucbvax!ucbjade!ucbopal!gts
University of California SPGGTS@UCBCMSA.BITNET
Berkeley, Ca 94720
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 22:27:18 PDT
From: WU%TOM@ames-io.ARPA
Subject: Hard Disk, Plotter Queries
To: IOinfo-ibmpc-request@isib
1. I recently purchased a Seagate 4051 40 MB Hard Disk for an IBM AT Clone.
Unfortunately the Western Digital Controller only recognizes 854 of 977
tracks (Type 11 Disk) for a total of 36 MB. Is there anyway to use the rest
of this disk?
2. The Epson HI-80 Plotter was highly recommended in a recent PC Magazine.
The disposable pens supplied by Epson seem to last for about 10 plots.
Epson does not supply refillable pens. Does anyone know of any third
party suppliers of pens for the HI-80?
Send replies to wu@ames-aero. Thanks.
Alex.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 15 Jul 86 11:10:22-CDT
From: Pete Galvin <CC.GALVIN@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: ATACK AT Motherboard Query
To: info-ibmpc@B.ISI.EDU
Has anyone tried to build an AT by starting from scratch with the
ATACK motherboard? for $99, you buy the board and supply all your own
chips and support hardware. I was wondering how compatible the board was
(wouldn't it be a drag if you built the whole thing and found it couldn't run
your favorite program?)
--Pete
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 12:17 EDT
From: Manasseh Katz <MKATZ%UMDD.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: Problems with New IBM PC/XT
To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA
I have had problems with Framework, and now with DESQview on a new IBM PC/XT.
In Framework, the Scroll Lock key does not function - it works fine in
SideKick (I can't think of anything else that uses it). In DESQview, the
ALT key does not work, which makes DESQview almost useless. The ALT key
does work for calling up SideKick (Ctrl-Alt) and within a DESQview application
(e.g. ALT+numeric keypad to produce graphics characters in any application),
but it doesn't work in DESQview to call up the DESQview menu. Both of these
problems occur on two new XTs. DESQview works fine on an AT and on an older
XT. Framework works fine on older XTs. The problem is not the keyboard - the
new XTs came with old keyboards, and just in case IBM had changed the old
keyboard too, I tried a keyboard from an older XT and the problem didn't
disappear. I am using DOS 2.1. If someone out there has the same problem
or doesn't have the problem or has a solution to the problem, please send
me mail.
Manasseh Katz
MKATZ@UMDD.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 16:23:32 edt
From: Mike Ciaraldi <ciaraldi@rochester.arpa>
To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa
Subject: Display-Write 3 File Recovery
A coworker using Display-Write 3 has developed a problem with an
important document, and I am trying to help recover it.
She was editing the document (about 100 pages), making a lot of
changes to it. Then she exited DW3 without saving.
Now when she tries to edit the document with DW3, it gives
the message "Disk Error" and won't let her open the document.
DW3 does not give any more detail than that, and there is no DOS message.
I have checked the disk--there are no bad sectors, crossed
links, or anything like that. I can copy the file with no
problems. But DW3 will not accept the file, with either
the Revise command from the main menu or the Recover command from
the Utilities menu.
She realizes that her latest edits are gone, but is there any
way to recover the old version of the file? Even part of it
would be useful, to minimize retyping.
Things I already tried: Looking at the file with Ultra-Utilities.
It just looks like garbage. Considering DW3 stores its text in
EBCDIC, this is not surprising.
Converting the file from EBCDIC to ASCII. This produces sections
of the original text, interspersed with garbage (mainly control
characters). However, some sections of text are repeated, and
the various sections that appear are not in the same order
as they appear in the original text.
Our local IBM office's answer was, "Use your backup copy."
Naturally, she had never made one.
So, I am hoping someone out in netland can tell me how to recover the
document from this file, how to trick DW3 into taking it, or whether
there are some programs that might help recover it. Info on the
internal structure of DW3 files might help, too. Thanks.
Mike Ciaraldi
ciaraldi@rochester
seismo!rochester!ciaraldi
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 86 11:33 EST
To:info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa
From: GKN3M2%IRISHMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA
Subject: EMS Board Query
Are there any clone owners who have successfully installed EMS boards
in their PC? What about unsuccessfully? Which are the boards to
avoid? Does MS Windows use EMS memory in any way other than just a
big RAMdisk?
As the release date for DOS 5.0 draws nearer, those of us without
80286 chips may want to install accelerator cards. What about
compatibility with any EMS/EEMS boards?
Thanks in advance.
Evan Bauman
University of Notre Dame
gkn3m2@irishmvs (BITNET)
gkn3m2%irishmvs.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu (ARPANET)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 86 14:01:27 PDT
From: hunt%pavepaws@BERKELEY.EDU (Jim Hunt)
To: zen!B.ISI.EDU!Info-IBMPC
Subject: Special Multi-Function Card Wanted
I have a clone (eagle PC2, I have the roms) with 512 but only three
slots and have reached the point where I can no linger put off adding
a hard disk. Xebec's floppy/hard controller will save me a slot.
Leaving the other two for video and modem. What I am looking for is a
way to get a clock calendar in the same effort. Does anyone make a
dual floppy/dual hard controller with a CLOCK too, or how about a
video board with a clock? Modem?
jim hunt seismo!ucbvax!pavepaws!hunt
------------------------------
End of Info-IBMPC Digest
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