INFO-MAC@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP (01/15/87)
INFO-MAC Digest Wednesday, 14 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 39
Today's Topics:
Technical questions about Appletalk
submission re Mac+ DTR & pinouts
MacWorld Expo Adventures
Re: MacWorld Expo
Re: MacWorld Expo
Disk drives for Mac
Re: document for iconhacker
Cricket Draw experience
Mouse freezing
APDA and MacUser offers
Re: Sharp's X68000
Laserwriter
The tax man cometh!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 08:57:09 est
From: ves@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Sovinsky)
Subject: Technical questions about Appletalk
I hope I addressed this question to the right place. I have recently begun
investigating methods for talking upper layer DoD protocols from an Appletalk
to an Ethernet network. My first look at messages on the info-mac bulletin
board at Mitre have led me to believe alot of people are looking for/working on
this. However its hard to jump in the middle of these conversations. It
seems there is an appletalk to ethernet gateway offered by Kinetics. Where
do the upper layers come from? and waht exists so far..ftp and telnet? is ther
any SMTP offered? Are there other approaches to this problem. I would
certainly appreciate an update on progress in this area. Thanks in
advance for responses to my question.
[ note from moderator: There is a separate arpa digest which is dedicated
to AppleTalk issues and would be a more likely forum to obtain technical
answers regarding AppleTalk. Contact info-applebus-request@cmu-cs-c.arpa
for more information. DAVEG ]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 20:56:15 EST
From: Ben Cranston <zben@umd5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: submission re Mac+ DTR & pinouts
I hope this is the right way to submit something...
As Emily Letilla would say, "Never mind!". Over the holidays I duplicated
some of my Mac cables for a co-worker. To my horror, shame, chagrin, etc I
found the "DTR" signal wired to pin 19 instead of pin 20. With this error
corrected the Mac+ DTR signal works just fine, and the predicted behaviour
is in fact observed. Those terminal programs that drop DTR upon exit cause
the line to be dropped; those that do not change DTR can be exited and then
subsequently re-entered without losing the modem connection. Please find a
table of such programs at the end of this article.
What about my wild claims that the signal was electrically inverted? Sure
doesn't seem that way now. It's amazing how often we see only what we want
to see, regardless of the realities ("Well, the signal WAS changing, but the
modem kept dropping out anyway, so the signal MUST have been backwards...").
Er, um, 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
I do have a quarrel with Frank da Cruz's DB9 to Din-8 equivalence table,
as published in Info-Mac Digest V5#2 (Monday, 27 Oct 86). I do sympathize
with anyone trying to figure this out - for quite a long time I had backwards
pin numbers too - based on the appendix of the Imagewriter ][ manual. The
fact that the standard Mac to Imagewriter ][ cable is not straight-through
(it's actually a null-modem!) adds yet another layer of complexity. As an
attempt to set the record straight, I adapted this diagram from one found in
Macintosh Technical Note 65 (Mac+ Pinouts):
Macintosh Plus Serial Connectors (Mini DIN-8)
** AS SEEN FROM FEMALE CONNECTOR **
------
/------###------\ 1 HSKo Output Handshake
/ ### \ (Zilog 8530 DTR pin)
/ \ 2 HSKi / Clock Input Handshake or extern clk
/ [|] [|] [|] \ (Depending on 8530 mode)
/ 8 7 6 \ 3 TxD- Transmit data (minus)
| |
| | 4 Ground Signal ground
| === === === |
| 5 4 3 | 5 RxD- Receive data (minus)
| |
| | 6 TxD+ Transmit data (plus)
\----+ === === +----/
\###| 2 1 |###/ 7 N/C (no connection)
\##| |##/
\| |/ 8 RxD+ Receive data (plus)
\------###------/
###
Based on this diagram, and on my own homebrew cables (which DO work) the
updated signal table becomes:
DB-9 DIN-8 SIGNAL
1 4 Frame Ground
2 [was +5 in original MAC]
3 4 Signal Ground
4 6 TxD +
5 3 TxD -
6 1 RTS (Handshake OUT) [was +12 in original MAC]
7 2 CTS (Handshake IN) or external clock
8 8 RxD+
9 5 RxD-
My original cable, with the above error corrected, does work, and the modem
drops out when the Mac is restarted or a terminal program drops DTR:
DIN-8 DB-25 Female
GROUND 4 o-+----o 7 GROUND
|
RxD+ 8 o-+
RxD- 5 o------o 3 RD
TxD- 3 o------o 2 TD
HSout 1 o-+----o 20 DTR
|
HSin 2 o-+
I ended up building this three-wire cable for the co-worker who had already
set his modem up for ignore-DTR operation.
DIN-8 DB-25 Female
GROUND 4 o-+----o 7 GROUND
|
RxD+ 8 o-+
RxD- 5 o------o 3 RD
TxD- 3 o------o 2 TD
This is the simplest Mac+ serial cable I have seen, and it seems to work.
Looks like the HSKin to HSKout strap isn't even needed. Some modems might
need additional strapping at the DB-25 end.
WHEW! As previously mentioned, it is far better to set your modem to ignore
the DTR signal. That stuff is there to make sure the phone gets hung up when
the equipment is turned off. We professionals should be smart enough to do
without that particular bit of user-friendliness. If the modem cannot be set
to ignore DTR, one can try connecting DTR to some source of "true" at the
DB-25 connector. The DSR (Data SET ready) would be a good first guess. An
RS-232 breakout box is a wonderful tool for solving this sort of problem.
Should you be:
A. Using a Macintosh Plus
B. Using a cable that connects HSKout to DTR
C. Using a modem that cares about DTR
Then exiting from these virtual terminal programs will drop your line:
Red Ryder 9.4 MacTerminal 2.0 Fasterm 3
These programs allow exit and reentry without dropping the modem line:
Kermit 0.8(34) Unix Window 3.4a
Does anybody remember the "RS232 Expert System" that was supposed to solve
this sort of problem... :-)
[ note from moderator: VersaTerm 3.0 now allows you to select whether you
wish to drop DTR on exit. Here you have a choice! DAVEG ]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 14:05:56 PST
From: PUGH%CCC.MFENET@nmfecc.arpa
Subject: MacWorld Expo Adventures
Well, always being one to expound on any subject I will briefly describe the
experience of 2 days of the MacWorld expo in SF for all of you unfortunate
enough to be unable to attend. However, I must warn you that I freely make
pitches for friends.
I got to meet our wonderful moderator, David Gelphman at the VersaTerm booth
along with Lonnie Abelbeck (my apologies to everyone who's name I massacre).
Remember, Dave does a lot of work to bring this drivel to you. Please stand
and give him a great big hand.
The winner of the Most Booths award has to go to Omnis. They must have had at
least 6 booths with their name dangling from the ceiling. That still didn't
get me to stop though.
Best Giveaway goes to Hewlett Packard for the Blue Chip Solution pure chocolate
peripheral.
Best Output goes to Kory Kolors, who have a transfer process that puts colors
onto your laserwriter output. They were giving demos of silver foil output on
a black background. Beautiful stuff. Krishna Copies in Berkeley is already
looking at buying a couple of these $900 devices. Place a sheet of colored
stock (or several pieces over different areas for multiple colors) and run it
through the thermal device to create beautiful logos, report covers, or
advertisements.
Best Magazine goes to Mac User for printing my Tip. They paid my subscription
back too! See the Feburary issue for details.
Best Paint job went to BMUG. They had some guy there painting Macs. Pink is
a very ugly color for a Mac, but the black and the gray looked good. SuperMac
was trying to cut a deal to do all theirs. The guy only deals in volume.
Best Hacked Up Mac went to DynaMac for their very nice product. It is a $5000
portable Mac+ with built in 1200 baud modem, an amber flat screen display, and
100/200 volt 50/60 Hertz power adaptor. For another $1500 you can have an
interal 40M disk or 4M of RAM. All in all a very nice looking and feeling
machine. It is featured on the cover of MacUser Feb 87.
Best Smut went to that guy running MacPlaymate. Maxie sure is a shameless
girl. I have a very tame demo if anyone is interested. In case you haven't
seen or heard of it, Mike Saenz, who did the Shatter comic and Videoworks
demo, has hooked up the Videoworks drivers to create a girl that does all
kinds of truly perverted things at your command. MacUnderground is
distributing it. Computers were never like this before!
Scanners were big, as were "Solutions". The BMUG Fall 86 newsletter is out
and like they say in it, it just keeps getting bigger and later. It is the
size of the Lightspeed manuals (a medium sized phone book) and perfect bound
like them. It has an article by my friend Paul Daley on Labview and MacAdios,
which he is using to control a fiber optic CO2 (and other compounds) sensing
device.
All the memory upgrade companies have megabyte chips for the Plus. Costs are
running about $700 for two megabytes and $1500 for 4.
There were a number of sooped up boards. Bech-Tech has a 68020 board that
seems to hum. Someone else has a 68000 running at 16 MHz that has fewer
compatibility problems (or so they claim). Once again I think we are better
off waiting for the new machines.
Desktop publishing is still hot stuff, with Aldus showing Pagemaker 2.0 and
having a huge crowd mobbing their 10+ Macs in their hands-on demos. A mailing
I received says they are offering an upgrade to registered users for $75.
Word 3.0 was there complete with the Quick Switch option. Boot up Excel and
Word under Switcher, then when you import a chart from Excel into Word and
select it you will switch to Excel to change it before switching back to Word
and automatically pasting it in. All completely undo-able, of course. Pretty
nifty stuff.
No one there (with the exception of Microsoft) was using Excel 1.03 which
arrived in the mail yesterday. Ooops, I lied. GCC was using Excel 1.03 on
their Hyperdrive 2000 because it supports their 68881 and consequently runs
faster. Excel 1.0 sees no such speed ups.
Faralon Computing was doing a booming business in PhoneNet, the Appletalk
compatible network with better specs using only CHEAP phone wire! They can
even use Appletalk over the phone wires WHILE talking on the phone. Good
stuff. Be sure to buy a piece of phone net to AppleTalk cable if you travel
with it though.
Alan Kay, Bruce Horn, Andy Hertzfeld, Chris Espinoza, and Burrall Smith were
on a nice panel about the early days. Alan Kay showed a bunch of stuff he had
from the early days of Xerox, including the demo that was shown to Steve Jobs
and inspired him to build the Mac. A lot of that stuff hasn't even been
implemented for the Mac yet, but a lot of it has been redone better. Very
interesting historical information and a very silly bunch of people.
All in all, it was a good show. Be sure to read PEABO's account of the
keynote speech in <INFO-MAC>DELPHI3-3.ARC even though he did leave out the
part where Gasse described himself as a Corporate A**hole.
Jon
Back off man! I'm a scientist.
- Dr. Harold Binkman
------------------------------
Date: 14 Jan 87 11:11:59 PST
From: starkweather.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: MacWorld Expo
Gosh, I hate to question your data but my poll of several quality
computer "stores" like MicroAge etc. indicate the opposite. The MAC is a
good machine and I think has staying power. The lack of a compatible
operating system like all MS-DOS clones and color still significantly
limit its utility. The MAC is popular (with me too) but has not provided
a lot of users with the power and flexibility needed. JAZZ still does
not have the beauty of 1-2-3, HAL now provides technical folk with more
1-2-3 power etc. Surely the contest is on but if by IBM you mean only
IBM produced machines may be that is true. If by IBM one means generic
PC with 80x86 architectures the answer is that Apple is moving rapidly
and decisivly but is way back on the power curve yet. If they introduce
color, emulate MS-DOS etc. then things will be different. As an
alternative it will be the smaller of the two. The are so many systems
and imaging accessories for PC's the list is quite long. For the MAC the
list is very short. Maybe that will change. If flexibility were the
watchword the PC wins. I am not saying the the MAC does not have
significant things to offer but as yet it is inadequate to the PC in
most areas. If not, what are they? GEM has PostScript output for
LaserWriters and is comparible to MACDraw. Ventura Publisher is superior
to Aldus etc. MAC is good but not yet capable of victory. I think the
biggest disk you can get is 20MB for example. PC's can be gotten with
30,40 and 60 MB and the Compaq 386 with up to 130MB. Well time will
tell. But 80x86 machines are walking away from the others currently. In
the future, who knows?
Cheers, Gary
[ note from moderator: Contrary to the above information, there are MANY
hard disks larger than 20 MB now available for the Mac. At the Expo there
were lots of DataFrame 40 XPs being used. Other companies have 30, 40,
80, ~150MB disks available. When the Mac+ was announced about a year
ago, AST offered a 74MB hard disk w/60 MB tape backup. DAVEG ]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 09:57:39 PST
From: chuq@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Re: MacWorld Expo
> Before the MAC takes OVER the office from the PC it has to get INTO the
> office.
Well, the latest Business Week says that about 20% of micros sold to the
fortune 1000 are Mac's. That is 1 out of five. The percentage is higher
in smaller companies, too. The Mac significantly outsells IBM these days,
although it is still outsold by PC clones overall.
If that isn't IN the office, I don't know what is.
>As a user of both machines, MAC is glitzy the PC useful.
Editorial comment, bordering on sour grapes. Doesn't match with the
facts -- look at Pagemaker, look at Excel, look at Word (and the upcoming
Wordperfect), look at Microplanner and DBase. If you can tell me a major
business market segment where the Mac doesn't have an equivalent program
to the PC, I'll be rather surprised...
The facts show the Mac is here. It is outselling the PC. It is driving
into the office. The PC has a LARGE installed user base, but current sales
have definitely turned towards the Mac.
chuq
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 09:20:08 AST
From: PAUL%Acadia.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU (Paul Steele - Acadia
Subject: Disk drives for Mac
I tried to send this message directly to jfm@mcnc.org concerning his
request for information on hard disks, but the network would accept
the address. Im sending it to INFO-MAC instead and hope he will see
it. Pardon the missing quotes in this message. My quote key is not
working...
I nocticed you INFO-MAC message on hard disks and thought Id give you
some info. I went through the same thing just before Xmas and eventaully
ended up with the new jasmine Direct Drive 20. I chose this one mainly
because of price and the fact that they were using the 20-Meg Seagate
disk in the unit. Seagate has been around a long time and their drives
are pretty reliable. The Seagate disk is a SCSI disk as well, so Jasmine
didnt have to add any conversion hardware, just power supply and fan).
The unit is very small height wise, and sits very nicely under the MAC.
The thing I like about it is that it has two power outlets that you can
plug your Mac and Imagewriter into. All you have to do is turn on the
hard disk, and both the Mac and Imagewriter will turn on too (if you
leave their power switches in the ON position). This is nice since
you normally have to turn on the SCSI disk before turning on the MAC.
Another nice feature is that the disk comes with Megs of PD software.
They advertise it as coming with 17Megs, but mine only came with 9megs.
I didnt care since it took me the beeter part of an afternoon just to
go through 9Megs. 17Megs would have been hard to bear. As it was,
I deleted over half of the PD stuff without saving it. Junk. Thats
typical with public domain software. But there was some good stuff on
it and it was well organized using HFS folders.
As for getting something mail order, I was also hesitant since I
live in Nova Scotia Canada. Thats about as far from California as
you can get without ending up in Europe. Anyway, I had them send
it by Purolator for extra cost and it arrived in about 10 days and
worked fine. No shipping damage that I can see. Not packed as
good as I would have liked, but adequately.
For $599 US, I think its a good bargin and probably as good as any
of the other 20Meg disks out there. I would have like 30 or 40 Megs
(its over half full already!), but 20 will have to do. I would
give you their address but its in another file and I cant get at
it while Im typing this message. Their number is (415) 621-4339.
If you chose something else, Im sure youll be satisfied. My only
word of caution is for Mirror Techonolgies drives. I tried two
of their 30Meg drives and sent them both back. THey caused an
unacceptable amount of RF interference. Every radio and TV in
the house got zapped whenever I turned the disk on. Poor design...
Good luck. By the way, I couldnt decide on a tape back up unit.
Theyre all too pricy...
==> Paul@Acadia.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 21:17:00 EST
From: Ben Cranston <zben@umd5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: document for iconhacker
The signature is messed up. Change it from TEXT MACA to WORD MACA and
it will get all better. You might have to close the folder and open it
again so the Finder will notice. I used the SetFile DA to do the dirty
deed. I also had no problems running the application...
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 23:23:46 PST
From: morgan%ji.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Robert Morgan)
Subject: Cricket Draw experience
Bouyed by the excitement and glitz of the MacWorld Expo (I think somebody
could even sell me the infamous Word Mangler if they demo'd it on one of
those big screens), I ran out and bought Cricket Draw. I've been waiting
so long for a "next-generation" MacDraw, and CD seems to exceed my
expectations so greatly, I guess it's worth the $190. I should wait and
do a proper review, I guess, but I'm puzzled by what seems to be a big,
nasty bug in one of its most-touted features, binding text along a path.
This is where you can lay text along an arbitrary open-ended curve.
I drew a nice Bezier curve, typed some fancy text, and did the "bind text"
operation. The screen display seemed to be what was promised (diagonal
lines, not bendy text, since the Mac can't generate that in a reasonable
time). But when I went to print it on the LaserWriter, I got not even a
blank piece of paper. When I used CD's PostScript features to turn on the
LW's error reporting, I got messages about "undefined command" and "syntax
error." Then, when I tried an even simpler binding test with a horizontal
line and one word of Helvetica text, the screen display got bizarre and
showed the diagonal lines representing the text dangling off the end of
the horizontal line at a funny angle. Once again this would not print.
Has anybody else tried this program and run into the same behavior?
I guess it's just the hazards of version 1.0 software. It still looks like
a great program to me. More later.
RL "Bob" Morgan, morgan@ji.berkeley.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 12:13:42 EST
From: Meredith Lesly <mlesly@labs-b.bbn.com>
Subject: Mouse freezing
I've been having a lot of trouble with my mouse freezing in the finder, both
at work and at home. One hypothesis is that my system or finder is trashed,
although I replaced the finder recently. I'm perfectly willing to think that
it's something horrible I'm doing, although I think it's happening even when
I haven't crashed.
Question 1 is: Could this be a system or finder bug, either trashed or
untrashed. Question 2 is: how do I trap it? I guess the mouse freezing
means something's writing to some hi-mem place. Is there some way of
using TMON to have it interrupt whatever's going on so I can find the
culprit?
Thanks, ya'll.
Meredith Lesly
BBN Labs
"My employer is not responsible for anything I say here. Of course, neither
am I."
------------------------------
Subject: APDA and MacUser offers
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 16:05:28 -0800
From: Kathleen Huddleston <gregory@icse.UCI.EDU>
I have received "the Power Users Manual," thus it's not vaporware. It is
a useful compilation of tips and undocumented features. It's softbound --
like a Magazine rather than a book, but is a nice bonus.
I don't know what's going on with APDA memberships and the books. We called
in mid-November and received an application in early December which I filled
out and sent in on December 20 (the day I received it -- so I guess it was
more like late December.) I just got a packet from them saying they had
"received" it January 2, 1987 --- No book, nor any mention of the book although
I had requested it. I just wrote them a letter asking for the book. If I don't
receive it I plan to ask for a refund of my membership. APDA sounds like a
reasonable organization, and I wish them well, but I think they should be
careful about the way they are handling responses to their offers. Especially,
it's annoying to not be able to join (via credit card) over the phone. If
I could have done that I would have had my membership in in November, well
before their offer expired.
Maybe I'm getting tired of these sorts of delays. I'm one of the many who
got caught by Northeastern Software and am waiting for a substantial
refund as they wind through Chapter 11 in Connecticut. I'm not holding my
breath.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 13 Jan 1987 20:17:16-PST
From: shimono%tkov58.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM (Takao Shimono - Call me
From: Taxi)
Subject: Re: Sharp's X68000
Yes... According to a Japanese magazine, "ASCII", January issue,
X68000's operating system has upper compatibility to MS-DOS 2.11.
Of course, it's not a real MS-DOS. It's developed by Sharp.
Takao "Taxi" shimono@digita.dec-j.junet "dig it alWAYS"
/DEC-Japan/SoftwareServices/AIsystems/studio.h
uucp: {allegra,decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!tkov58.dec.com!shimono
arpa: shimono%tkov58.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 07:45 PST
From: Wahl.ES@Xerox.COM
Subject: Laserwriter
I want to get a Laserwriter printout of a Pagemaker document and I don't
have and can't afford a Laserwriter. I've called a bunch of Mac
computer stores and print places looking for a place that rents
Laserwriter time, but can't find anyone who does or any pointers to any
such place. Does anyone out there:
1) know of Laserwriter for rent in the LA (preferably LA Airport
area--going downtown or to Orange County for this service is, like, not
high on my list of things I'd like to do)?
2) have access to a Laserwriter and might be willing to print it for me
(for a small fee) if I mail a disk?
This is for a non-profit and worthy cause -- the Star Trek
Welcommittee's Directory of Star Trek Organizations.
Thanks in advance.
--Lisa
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 10:14:41 EST
From: Thomas Coradeschi (FSA-E) <tcora@ARDEC.ARPA>
Subject: The tax man cometh!
Hello out there y'all and happy new year!
First off, thanks to all who replied to my query about the full disk directory
problem i was having. It isn't possible to correct it, but now at least i think
it is understood. What it is is this. If your boss has you generate lots of
short memo type paperwork, you can only store so much of it on one disk. Which
should be a good reason for getting a better job with less trivial paperwork,
but that is for another day.
Now to my next question. What happened to the excel tax template archived in
the info-mac files? It was there yesterday (12jan87) and i downloaded it to
my mainframe here in Joisey. The problem is that i screwed up and lost it
while taking it from the vax to the mac (my fault totally), and today i found
that the file was no longer in the archives. What gives? It was archived as
<INFO-MAC>EXCEL-TAXTEMPLATES-1986.HQX.1 and just ain't there anymore.
Regards,
tom c
[ note from moderator: As reported in the last version of info-mac digest,
the original poster of the templates requested that they be removed so they
were. DAVEG ]
------------------------------
End of INFO-MAC Digest
**********************