Info-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA (Info-IBMPC Digest) (03/16/86)
Info-IBMPC Digest Saturday, 15 March 86 Volume 5: Issue 34 This Week's Editor: Phyllis O'Neil Today's Topics: Norton SYSINFO Genius VHR Display Re: Top 25 Utilities TECO EDITOR Clearing the Screen Re: Installing Xenix on Compaq Query DOS 3.1 ASMB (Another Silly Microsoft Bug) [2 messages] MASM 4.0-- ASMB (Another Silly Micrsoft Bug) WINDOWS and Hayes 2400 interface to videodisk player More PC/BLUE Volumes Available Re: Sector Size Re: INTERRUPT HANDLERS IN TURBO Re: IRMA Boards Re: C ISPF-like Dialog Management Program Wanted Today's Queries: Textile Design Grammatik and Rightwriter Living C Wishlist / MAX (EMACS-like Public Domain Editor) & SCR PC Implementations of TeX Microsoft Fortran Turbo Pascal DMA transfers on a PC XENIX, nroff, neqn & Epson Printers Wang PC Problems WD Hard Disk Condition Code 40 Turbo Pascal Screen Clearing DOS 3.0 and Old COMPAQs IBM BASIC Compiler 2.0 Query -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dewar@nyu-acf2.arpa Received: by nyu-acf2.arpa; Wed, 12 Mar 86 21:27:17 est To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: Norton SYSINFO This information has appeared before, but undoubtedly needs repeating every now and then (and I hope editors of PC, PC Week, PC World etc. are listening). The Norton SYSINFO test is a particularly bad choice of benchmark, clearly based on insufficient familiarity with the chip family. It is heavily biased by the multiply/divide time, which is (a) easy to speed up substantially (as is done on the NEC chips and 80286 and (b) not particularly relevant for real world tests. In general SYSINFO can only be used in a valid manner to compare two implementations of the same chip. Results in other cases are likely to be misleading. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 21:35:37 est From: dewar@nyu-acf2.arpa To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: Genius VHR Display I have one of these displays and I am very pleased with it. I get 66 lines by 80 characters of very sharp text (better than the IBM Monochrome) on a pleasing blank on white presentation. I do find that the attribute 0F (high intensity) is more suitable than 07 (normal) for general use. The comment which appeared here about insufficient contrast probably results from using the 07 attribute. I have had no trouble with heat (and my AT is very full - SMD Disk controller, Atron Probe, PC Network card (a hot card itself!), tape backup card, 4Meg memory board ..) I have the windows driver and it works nicely, although the typical fonts used by Windows Write are a little small to read with comfort. I can confirm that there is a glitch which sometimes causes a transitory incorrect screen display, always cleared by any keystroke at all, and not happening enough to be annoying. I have no problems with the BIOS, although I have only rarely used IBM compatibility (25 line) mode. The only slight glitch in the BIOS is that the bell is not sounded when the BEL character is written with write TTY. All in all an excellent product. I cannot imagine putting up with a 25 line screen ever again! I do wish that more products knew about 66 lines (A Pox on IBM for not putting in a BIOS call to get the number of lines -- the only way I know to do it is to write line feeds until the screeen scrolls). The really nice thing about this display, which makes it far superior to the high res displays on many workstations such as Sun etc, is that it has a character generator for normal use (ther 750 x 1000 pixel graphics is or'ed with the character generator display for maximum flexibility). This character generator is completely compatible with the normal IBM mono interface except that more lines are present. It took me all of 15 minutes to modify the editor of my utilities package so that it properly supports 66 line mode when run on this monitor. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 12 Mar 86 22:59:38-PST From: Jackie <Burhans%ECLD@USC-ECL.ARPA> Subject: Re: Top 25 Utilities To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA Some obvious ones: 1. The NORTON Utilities: best categorized as disk managers{_; my favorite and most used ones a) unerase files b) allow me to look at files in hex mode (even in EBCDIC!) c) sort my directories, d) find files on my hard disk and e) tell me the size of my files and whether I have enough room on a diskette to copy these files. 2. Sidekick--or it would be one of my favorites if it didn't interfere with my other software--maybe when they develop a standard for resident programs... 3. Sideways--prints files (especially) spreadsheets sideways on a dot-matrix printer. 4. BAC--a public domain program for copying modified files to backup diskettes. 5. ARC--for archiving files; I really like this one--it squeezes files and saves multiple files in one archive file. Great for long-term backups and saving space on diskettes which I pay for out of my own pocket. ------------------------------ Date: 13 MAR 86 09:51-N From: DOMMELEN%HWALHW5.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: TECO EDITOR Dear Ya'akov_Miles, I'm interested in your teco project, being a stucked teco-user on DEC mainframes and cursing MS for not providing a good editor. I would like to try/test etc. your preliminary version, but..... I'm not able to download the files I need. We're connected to BITNET, if you see any chance to send me e.g. the C source file, I would be most grateful. I will report bugs, problems, suggestions or fixes as soon as possible. MS-C is available. Wim van Dommelen, Computer Centre Agricultural University, Wageningen Holland. DOMMELEN@HWALHW5.BITNET I'm sending this to INFO-IBMPC after 10 tries mailing it to you directly and recieving everything back from the Mailnet-Master at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA I tried YA-AKOV_MILES, YAAKOV_MILES etc., none worked. It's the accent which is filtered out somewhere. Do you have an alternative adress ? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 01:25:05 PST From: dgb%DEImos.Caltech.Edu@Hamlet.Caltech.Edu Subject: Clearing the Screen To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA To the person who was concerned with clearing the screen via a scroll, to my mind that is indeed the easiest way to go. Be warned, however, that the display attributes are replicated from the bottom line all up the screen. (I can't remember if it will make vertical attribute stripes or not, or simply force the entire screen to say, the last characters attributes. You'll have to experiment and see.) I'm far away from my references at the moment, but I can't remember a good implementation independant way of determining screen size. I guess that you just have to drive a table lookup off of the video mode, which you can get from the BIOS. This isn't bombproof, but should work for most reasonably close compatables. ------------------------------ From: Herm Fischer <hermix!fischer@rand-unix.ARPA> To: frank@db.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Installing Xenix on Compaq Query Cc: info-ibmpc@isib.arpa Date: Wed Mar 12 23:46:08 1986 Dan Frank writes that ``IBM Xenix has the nifty limitatin that it only installs on 20 MB IBM hard disks.'' I, and most other Xenix users I know of, are using Xenix on different disks. Most folks are using disks between 70 and 85 MB. There was an update by IBM (5/85) to make these disks work properly. There were also instructions on the net on how to patch unupdated IBM Xenix... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 10:03:44 est From: dewar@nyu-acf2.arpa To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: DOS 3.1 ASMB (Another Silly Microsoft Bug) (except they think this one is a feature!) The trace flag (TF) is used in some debuggers for single stepping. There are cases in DOS 3.1 (this is a new bug, DOS 3.0 worked fine), where DOS turns off the trace flag on returning from INT 21H. You certainly might suppose that preserving the control flags is the expected behaviour, but Microsoft in response to a question on this subject claims they have never promised to preserve the TF setting. Since Microsoft has also never promised to preserve the IF setting, it seems that to be safe we should perhaps do STI after every INT 21H call, because if the Kat is right, DOS 3.2 is arriving on 3/16, and who knows? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 09:53:40 est From: dewar@nyu-acf2.arpa To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: DOS 3.1 ASMB (Another Silly Microsoft Bug) The /E option of the linker should generate an EXE file which is logically equivalent to the uncompressed EXE file. The current version however results in AX being clobbered. AX on entry to an EXE file has a definite meaning (it indicates drive validity for the parameteres), thus it should be passed through to the uncompressed image. Given this one very obvious violation of the interface rules, there may be others, I have not bothered to investigate further (I was looking to see why /E files blew up in a particular case). Disclaimer: I certainly have **NO** connection with Microsoft, but I did write the Realia SpaceMaker program which does a similar sort of thing to the EXEPACK option (but needless to say does not have this particular ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 09:59:12 est From: dewar@nyu-acf2.arpa To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: MASM 4.0-- ASMB (Another Silly Micrsoft Bug) MASM Version 4.0 is still pretty much of a mess semantically and has many bugs, some of which are new with this version. The Intel assembler has rediculously complicated semantics (especially with respect to GROUPS, frame/target reloc- ation etc.), and many people do not understand these semantics, as is clear from messages in this forum previously. The combination of these complex semantics plus an incomplete understanding of them reflected in the MASM implementation is plain diabolical! Well end of flame, now here is a particular bug which cost another few hours the other day: A EQU WORD PTR [BP+4] ; typical definition for variable in stack frame . . MOV AX,OFFSET A This instruction generates no error message, but the OFFSET is ignored and a move from memory (instead of a move immediate) is generated. There is no simple way around this, except some cludge like: OFFSET_A EQU 4 A EQU WORD PTR [BP+OFFSET_A] . MOV AX,OFFSET_A AARCGH! [This same bug has been mentioned here a few times before. I've personally quit using the OFFSET operator -- it's just not reliable. Instead of MOV AX,OFFSET A use LEA AX,A which so far hasn't failed me. -rag] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 18:56:52 est From: morrell@mitre.ARPA (James Morrell) To: INFO-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: WINDOWS and Hayes 2400 Microsoft acknowledges that there is a problem with the WINDOWS TERMINAL dialing out with a HAYES 2400. They offer a fix, but they caution that it may not work and it doesn't. They suspect (as do I) that the problem is with TERMINAL.EXE software, not just Hayes 2400 setup. They said that when they can get their hands on a 2400, they will fix the problem. This should be "soon", they say. ------------------------------ Date: 13 March 86 23:05-PST From: PHMWJ%SLACVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: interface to videodisk player My thanks to everyone who provided information in response to my earlier query (about Feb. 23). It appears that enabling a PC to control a videodisk player will be easier than I thought. Apparently 'industrial strength' players all have built-in serial ports or separate controller boxes with serial ports, so I need only provide serial output from the PC. Several Pioneer players were mentioned, the model LD-6000 several times, and so were players from Sony, Hitachi, and Panasonic. The programming problem will thus reduce to figuring out the command set of the target player and providing a set of routines (callable by the program which handles the database queries) to send them out via the serial port. Anyone want to bet that videodisk player documentation is no better than computer documentation? Pat McAllister on BITNET: PHMWJ@SLACVM on ARPANET: PHMWJ%SLACVM.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1986 00:49 MST From: "Frank J. Wancho" <WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA> To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA, INFO-HZ100@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA Cc: INFO-CPM@AMSAA.ARPA, INFO-MICRO@BRL.ARPA Subject: More PC/BLUE Volumes Available Another batch of PC/BLUE volumes arrived yesterday and are now available in PD:<PC-BLUE.VOL176> through PD:<PC-BLUE.VOL187>, plus a new PD:<PC-BLUE.VOL000>, which includes a new PCBLUE.CAT in reverse order, all on SIMTEL20, of course. All of our so-called "public domain" collections are provided as-is and made available to the entire Internet community with access to DDN via ANONYMOUS FTP. --Frank ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Mar 86 09:40 PST From: GEORGEBURKITT.ES@Xerox.COM Subject: Re: Sector Size To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA >MS-DOS determines the size of the largest sector it will have to deal >with during boot time by examing the sector sizes in use by the disk >driver in IO.SYS. For most PCs, this is 512 bytes. Unless there is something I missed, the problem of too-large sectors can be cured by re-formatting the "weird" drive. This requires the expensive version of the Diagnostics ($150); or a call to your local dealer/service man. ------------------------------ To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa, mcvax!ukc!jmh@seismo.css.gov Subject: Re: INTERRUPT HANDLERS IN TURBO (V5 #20) Date: 14 Mar 86 02:30:39 PST (Fri) From: Alastair Milne <milne@ICSE.UCI.EDU> Your message was by no means old cobblers to me. I congratulate you on the extent of your knowledge. I certainly wasn't able to find out as much. > push bp ; Save old frame pointer > mov bp,sp ; Mark start of new one > push bp ; save new frame pointer > jmp L1 ; jump around space for local > ; typed constants > L1: <start of your code> I'm afraid I don't see from your paragraph #1 how it's possible to install a Turbo routine directly as an interrupt servicer. The fact that one at least of the registers is changed before any of them are preserved is enough to prevent its being an interrupt servicer, since the code executing at the time of the interrupt would have bp and sp changed behind its back, which is easily enough to destroy its functioning completely. That, at least, is how it seems to me. Am I overlooking something? (There is actually something I can think of, but I am not convinced, and I'll keep it to myself until I am). > 2. It is only necessary to inform the 8259 of interrupts you wish > to receive *which are generated by external hardware*. I don't suppose you would know what the appropriate mask values for it are, or, more generally, where one would find a reference on programming it? > ...I believe there may be INT instructions from within > MSDOS that e.g. call screen print routines (INT 5 for IBM PCs). I'm certain of it. Try using DEBUG to follow a few of the pointers in the interrupt vector, then disassemble the routines they point to. I think you'll find they include a few INT instructions. Besides, what if hardware events occur while DOS routines are executing? This is a ghastly problem indeed. In other words, any interrupt servicer which does not create for itself a nice roomy stack elsewhere in memory may be inviting disaster if its interrupt is raised during a call to take a crack at amending the servicer's initialisation code to use Thanks a lot, Alastair Milne ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Mar 86 18:27:00 est From: Mark D. Freeman <mdf@ohio-state.ARPA> Subject: Re: IRMA Boards To: info-ibmpc-request@usc-isib.arpa Before sinking money into IRMA Boards, I strongly suggest you look at CXI's products. They are reputed to be better, faster, smaller, cheaper, etc. and add features to IRMA's offerings. They sell hardware and software, and they even started selling thier software to IRMA owners, so that IRMA boards can have some of the extras CXI offers, such as supporting local printers as 327X IBM emulators, etc. One supplier I know of that sells to end users is: AK Technology (soon to be a net site, if I can get their Columbus, OH Convergent VMiniFrame running) (614) 764-0 I do have sregards to CXI products. (Teresa is their CXI expert.) Happy hunting! ------------------------------ From: <dual!gatech!akgua!opus!ki4pv!tanner@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> To: Info-IBMPC@usc-isib.arpa Date: Tue Mar 11 12:00:56 1986 Subject: Re: C In response to the question about starting new programme without retaining current programme in memory: (1) the C compiler routines generally known collectively as "exec" will do what you want in various flavours. (2) routines known as "spawn" appears to invoke dos function x4B and take a flag of 0, 1, or 2 to wait for child to finish, overlay parent ("exec") or run concurrently. Note that the option to run both concurrently is not actually implemented! spawn family names are spawnv, spawnl, &c. as in execv &c. This information is from ms-c and ms-dos manuals. The name of the "spawn" family will likely vary if you use other C compilers. The routines seem to work, retaining parent as requested. Obviously the concurrent operation flag is .RFE until there is a multi-tasking ms-dos. tanner andrews, systems compudata south, deland ...{ihnp4!hropus decvax!ucf-cs}!ki4pv!tanner ------------------------------ From: mcvax!dutesta!robvh@seismo.CSS.GOV ( ) To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa Subject: ISPF-like Dialog Management Program Wanted As an (addicted) user of ISPF (Interactive System Productivity Facility) running under IBM MVS/TSO and VM/CMS, I have grown fond of the facilities offered by the dialog management functions of this program. These functions include: - Screen handling: Menus, Selection panels, Data entry panels, - Variable handling: Conversion, Communication between panels and programs, Validity tests and error messages during data entry, Profile of variables between sessions, - Tables: A linear array of linear structures, best compared to SAS datasets, each row in a tables may be accessed individually and within each row separate variables are available, With a table display one ore more rows may be selected for processing, - File tailoring: Generation of an output file, in which variables are substituted, lines can be generated depending on a condition, and tabels may be processed with simple loop control, - Debugging: traces and brakepoints available on function call or on variable access, - Language support: Functions can be invoked from programming languages like FORTRAN, PL/1, Pascal, Assembler, and from command languages like CLIST, EXEC and REXX (comparable with shell scripts or .COM files) with similar conventions and facilities. Has anyone run across an IBM-PC version of ISPF that supports the dialog management functions? I've had a brief look at PC/SPF, but this one "only" implements the outward appearance (editor, utilities, command entry) and not the dialog interface (your own program calling ISPF functions). Even in the UNIX world I have not found a program with facilities comparable to those offered by ISPF, and I would heartily recommend that anyone designing a dialog manager would first have a look at ISPF. Rob van Hoboken Delft University of Technology dept. of Electrical Engineering Mekelweg 4, room 9.23 PO Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft Netherlands telephone: +31 15 786251 UUCP: ..!mcvax!dutesta!robvh ------------------------------ Date: Wed 12 Mar 86 22:35:33-PST From: Jackie <Burhans%ECLD@USC-ECL.ARPA> Subject: Query: Textile Design To: info-pc@USC-ISIB.ARPA cc: burhans%ECLD@USC-ECL.ARPA I am asking this for a non-networked friend: I have a friend in the textile industry who is looking for computer software/hardware combination to do textile/clothing design work. She would like to be able to design and possibly print textile patterns easily and to "freehand" draw clothing patterns (possibly using a Koala pad type interface). She is not a computer person and would like something with a friendly interface, somewhat along the lines of MacPaint--but in color. The question then: does anyone know of specialized software designed specifically for this kind of task and/or can anyone suggest possible choices of hardware and software to achieve this? Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 11:12:05 EST From: Ih@louie.udel.EDU To: lyonsn@usc-isib.ARPA, info-ibmpc@usc-isib.ARPA Subject: Grammatik and Rightwriter Query I am interested in the C routtines for combining these two programs. I have used the Rightwriter a couple times and found it very mechanical. Where can I buy the Grammatik and how much? Thanks for your help. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 12:40:25 est From: phunter@nswc-wo.ARPA To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: Living C Query Cc: jcavall, phunter To any helful soul on the net: Can anyone direct me to a US supplier of the Living C interpreter from a British company called Living Software? Their ad in February's Byte impressed me, but the company in Florida listed in the ad either doesn't exist or dosen't handle it. Either way, the 800 number in the ad got me nowhere. I need a US supplier because I work for the government and foreign suppliers are frowned upon. As an aside, does anyone have any experience with this product and care to comment on it? For that matter, is there another product that is better as a learning tools? Thanks Paul Hunter (phunter@nswc-wo) ------------------------------ Date: Thu 13 Mar 86 11:19:59-CST From: Ivo Welch <W1.WELCH@CHIP.UChicago> Subject: Wishlist / MAX (EMACS-like Public Domain Editor) & SCR To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA I have just managed to regain access to INFO-IBMPC. So I have missed quite a number of messages. I am now trying to find two programs: - One is on top of my MSC wishlist: a good C source code debugger. Does anyone have recommendations? - The second refers to one of my recent acquisitions of a Hercules Graphics Card lookalike (which seems to work perfectly). Is there some (public-domain?) program that intercepts (IBM color card) graphics accesses and translates them into Hercules equivalents? Furthermore, I have just submitted Jens' and my Public-Domain EMACS-clone MAX (which is still faster than anything else), and a version of a SCRIBE-look-alike--both with source--for inclusion into the INFO-IBMPC library. Anyone please feel free to ... [Just got the copy of MAX/SCR. Turns out it's NOT public domain. It is copyrighted and comes with a license agreement and a request for funds -- so it is in fact freeware/shareware. "Public domain" is a legal term meaning "not copyrighted". -rag] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 14:55 PST To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa From: Don Worth (213) 825-7408 or 825-9445 <CSMIDDW@UCLA-CCN.ARPA> Subject: PC implementations of TeX Query I'd be interested in someone who has used TeX on micros and minis comment on the trade-offs of speed. I'm currently using TeX on a Sun mini, and i like it reasonably well, but it's no jackrabbit performer in that environment either. Does anybody have experience with both environments, so they could give a relative assessment of the speed of operation? Sean Boisen, boisen!beaune@locus.ucla.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu Mar 13 16:42:34 1986 From: jperry@sri-unix To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib Subject: Microsoft Fortran Query Does anyone know if Microsoft Fortran (most recent version) is a FULL or PARTIAL implementation of FORTRAN '77? If it is partial, I would appreciate a list of the items omitted from the full standard. A reply ASAP would be greatly appreciated. John Perry SRI International ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 20:15:09 cet To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA From: CHADM1%UCONNVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: Turbo Pascal Query Could someone tell me how to get a directory listing from a running (compiled) TURBO PASCAL program on the IBM PC? Is there an assembler routine that can be imbedded in the source code? Is there a DOS routine one can hook to? Thanks. Carl David ------------------------------ Date: 13 Mar 86 10:51:24 PST (Thursday) Subject: DMA transfers on a PC From: Wax.OsbuSouth@Xerox.COM To: Info-IBMPC-request@usc-isib.Arpa Has anyone any pointers/code that allows a program to do DMA tranfers on the PC. My main use for this is to read or write to disk while doing other computing. DOS forces you to wait for the I/O completion before returning. Allan Wax ARPA: Wax.OsbuSouth@Xerox.COM ------------------------------ Date: Thu 13 Mar 86 17:44:41-PST From: D.SMOLARSKI%SCU%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Subject: XENIX, nroff, neqn & Epson Printers Query To: info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB.ARPA cc: unix-wizards@BRL.ARPA Recently some code from Tom Tkacik (Univ Virginia) appeared on net.sources along with code from Bruce Townsend to compile an NROFF/EQN table for an EPSON (compatible) printer enabling someone to utilize the math word processing capability of UNIX with a small printer. Has anyone gotten this code to work with the standard IBM (Microsoft) XENIX? If so, how? When I try, the resulting table (TABEPSON) in /usr/lib/term is unlike the Microsoft supplied tables, and is rejected at run-time by nroff. Microsoft seemingly strips the headers from the compiled modules, leaving a file which is a "data" file (when the file is checked with the Berkeley UNIX "file" command). Does anyone know of any other code available (free or commercial) which will enable someone to use the Unix/XENIX nroff/eqn/tbl math text formatting system with an Epson (compatible) printer? I been hacking and asking questions for nearly 6 months, but so far no luck. Please reply directly. Thanks in advance. Dennis Smolarski SJ Santa Clara University (D.SMOLARSKI%SCU%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA) ------------------------------ Date: 14 MAR 86 08:40-N From: INFOEARN%HLERUL5.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA Subject: Wang PC Problems Does anyone know why the WANG PC doesn't run "normal" packages like MS DOS 3.1, Turbo Pascal, Wordstar, The IBM Personal Editor (just to name a few packages I tried). I always get an error "Invalid/Unrecognized Interrupt" or the PC just freezes up. Any suggestions are welcome. Marc Chang Sing Pang BITNET: SINGPANG@HLERUL5 ARPANET: SINGPANG%HLERUL5.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA [The Wang PC never claimed to be IBM PC compatible as far as I know. -rag] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Mar 86 01:28:36 est From: Glenn Jordan <ecsvax!trent%mcnc.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: WD Hard Disk Condition Code 40 Query To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.ARPA Help. I recently purchased an NEC 20-meg hard disk with a Western Digital controller card for my XT clone. I set it up and formatted it using the WD lowlevel format program on the card's ROM, and then created a DOS partition with FDISK, and then Formatted it for DOS using FORMAT.... All this worked fine. I used it like this for a week, and then one evening it refused to boot from disk and went into ROM basic instead.... I proceeded to try to reformat it from the card's ROM again, but got an "error ------- condition code 40" returned. Bad system tracks or some other major disk failure, I guessed, blindly. Anyway, I got a new Hard Disk, and tried to format it last night, but the exact same error showed, and still no C: drive.... I guess the WD controller card is dead in some way, and will receive another Friday, but could someone tell me what the error #40 is trying to tell me....? This is a WX2 rom copywrite 1985, entered from C800:5 Thanks, Glenn (trent@ecsvax) ------------------------------ Date: Fri 14 Mar 1986 09:18:29 EST From: <SS@LL.ARPA> Subject: XT/370 Speedup Query To: info-ibmpc@usc-isib.arpa Does anyone have any information as to if an IBM XT/370 can be run with a clock faster then 4.77MHz ( and if such a speed up would work in 8088 mode, 370 mode, or both) (In particular would the Micospeed Fast88 product described in the March 11 PC Week work?) ----- please Thanks in advance S. Scharf SS@LL ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 15:59 MST From: Jameson@UNCA-MULTICS.MAILNET Subject: Turbo Pascal Screen Clearing Query To: <@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA:info-ibmpc@USC-ISIB> Does anyone know of a patch which will stop Turbo Pascal programs from clearing the screen before they run, and possibly from leaving the cursor at the bottom of the screen afterward? Many thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Mar 86 15:49:13 EST From: "Steven T. Kirsch" <SK@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: DOS 3.0 and Old COMPAQs Query To: INFO-IBMPC@USC-ISIB.ARPA When doing DOS copy operations or other floppy operations, the original COMPAQ portables sometimes hang (requiring a power-cycle). I have noticed this problem on all our original portables, but not on the PC or the Deskpro. Have other people had these problems? We are also running a 3COM ethernet, but we even have the problem without the ethernet software. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Mar 86 20:04:34 est From: Mark D. Freeman <mdf@ohio-state.ARPA> Subject: IBM BASIC Compiler 2.0 Query To: info-ibmpc-request@usc-isib.arpa I am interested in finding out what the differences are between the first 2.0 and the patched version available through it's dealers. It seems that they fixed some things and broke others. A personal aside: I have tried mailing to Mr. Video (brown@nicmad) and never got a reply, nor any indication that the mail system didn't send properly. He has mailed to me in response to my postings, so I know we are connected somehow. If you are reading this, please drop me a line. End of Info-IBMPC Digest ************************ -------