INFO-MAC-REQUEST@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (Moderator David Gelphman...) (09/11/86)
INFO-MAC Digest Wednesday, 10 Sep 1986 Volume 4 : Issue 113
Today's Topics:
reformat new hard disks, even if they arrive preformatted!
Black hole effect in the Apple HD 20
NEEDED: BROKEN DISKS
More on Servant
PackIt III posting
Smart Answering Machine Products for Macintosh?
Stella
Reply on editing 100K+ text files
XMODEM transfers for a DEC-20?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed 10 Sep 86 16:26:28-CDT
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: reformat new hard disks, even if they arrive preformatted!
[ from BCS's 86/8 "The Active Window", page 28 ]
DATAFRAME-20 SCSI HARD DISK
....when I started the [new] disk, everything came up peachy-keen. Two days
later, I was building a huge database, and the disk encountered weird problems.
To make a long story short, it turns out that the disk was damaged in transit.
Since it had already been formatted, it wasn;t aware that it had a bad sector
on the disk until it had to write to it. I could have discovered the problem
in the beginning if I had reformatted the disk as the first thing after I got
it ......The nice thing about all this is that it gave me a chance to see how
good their service was. - Their service was great. Two days later, I had a
brand new disk. Granted, I pulled a favor with the local dealer to save a day,
but 3 to 4 days seems about right for replacement time. .....
[note: to quote SuperMac's ad in MacUser 86/8, page 11:
"...and if your hard disk should ever need service, you just unplug
the DataFrame (you can still use your Mac) and get a replacement
IMMEDIATELY from your dealer."
I'd interpret IMMEDIATELY like Right-Now - and when I showed it to a local
dealer and asked him if he was prepared for me wanting service - he just
laughed and said: they didn't give me one for such emergencies and I can't
get them in fast enough to fill the back-log of orders I have ....
I'm not knocking SuperMac, they simply are promising more than they can deliver
in their ads. As far as I am concerned, i applaud them for their good inten-
tions. ---Werner ]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 00:30:31 +0200
From: <CLAK100%BGUNOS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Black hole effect in the Apple HD 20
I Have encountered some very annoying and strange fenomenea in the HD20 from
apple, it seems that all the files in a folder suddenly disapear,when asking
for information about the folder I get a the number of KB which it is supposed
to have.I can not throw the folder into the trush because I get the message
"could not empty the trush- OK". If I put other files into the folder they
disappear as well. Even though , the folder volume increases. I tried to
rebuild the desktop with no apparent effect. I looked at the tracks with Fedit
and the information seems to be still in the disk. It seems that I am losing
the file info somewhere. I tried a different HD20 and the same " black hole
effect occurred after a while. since than I could not repeat the performance .
I am using system 3.2 and finder 5.3 .
any suggestions ?
Rafi Brunner, Ben-Gurion Univ. Dept of computation. CLAK100@BGUNOS.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Wed 10 Sep 86 16:05:56-CDT
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: NEEDED: BROKEN DISKS
[ from BCS's Mac-Newsletter "The Active Window", 86/8, page 5 ]
NEEDED: BROKEN DISKS
Unreadable disks and files which cause mysterious program crashes are needed
to beta test a recovery utility currently being developed. Your disks will
be fixed free of charge. Please include a description of the problem and a
SASE envelope. Send them to:
Jim Sulzen, 15 Westminster Ave., Lexington, MA 02173 (617)862-5935
[ note: this offer may be a little dated; you may want to call first. maybe
someone up in Boston could call Jim and post an update ??!! ---Werner ]
------------------------------
Date: 10 SEP 86 16:31-EDT
From: KURAS%BCVAX3.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: More on Servant
According to Andy Hertzfeld, who spoke on Servant at the Boston Macworld Expo,
the program will be released in SOLID beta test form by the middle of October.
He assured everyone that it would be posted on CompuServe as soon as it was
ready. He also said that version 0.79 was not particularly solid, which suggests
that it should be used with care, particularly on hard disks. Andy said that
indeed the program would not work beyond Halloween and suggested that anyone
who tried to use it past that date would encounter a "pumpkin." Please don't
send Andy bug reports on .79 past the beta release date, of which I'm sure we'll
all be informed.
Pat Kuras
Boston College
<KURAS@BCVAX3.BITNET>
------------------------------
Date: 6 Sep 86 23:45:19 EDT
From: Jeffrey Shulman <SHULMAN@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: PackIt III posting
[ Uploaded from Delphi by Jeff Shulman ]
Name: PACKIT III
Date: 2-SEP-1986 01:00 by CHESLEY
PackIt III file packing, compression, and encryption utility. Fully compatable
with PackIt I and PackIt II.
[ archived as
[SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU]<INFO-MAC>UTILITY-PACKIT3.HQX
DAVEG
]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 86 18:38:29 pdt
From: Bernard Aboba <bernard@ararat>
Subject: Smart Answering Machine Products for Macintosh?
I've been looking for a Smart Answering Machine product that would plug into
the modem port of the Mac, but so far I haven't found a company that make one.
For the PC, I know of two products, both of which are boards: the Smart
Answering Machine by Dialectron, and Watson, by TM Natural Microsystems.
Watson has a 1200 baud modem thrown in as well. Basically, these products
can recognize touch tones, and the difference between speech and data,
and record or play back digital speech, compressed so that it takes up
1K-4K/second, depending on the quality desired.
Does anyone know of such a product for the Macintosh, or of a company that's
working on one? Now that modems are so cheap, a combination modem/smart
answering machine in the $300 range is quite feasible.
The nice thing about these systems is that they can give you the ability to
route messages, have multiple "mailboxes" on your phone, and in general
put together a "Talking BBS." I'll summarize answers (if any) for the
net.
Address: bernard@ararat.stanford.edu
alternate: tp5!aboba@randvax
------------------------------
Subject: Stella
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 86 22:10:48 -0500
From: mex107@mitre.ARPA
Does anyone have first-hand experience with a program called Stella? It does
systems dynamics modelling on the Mac and was recently described in MACazine
(I think). I'd appreciate any comments. Please comment if you've also used
DYNAMO on a mainframe and how they compare. Many thanks.
Mike Leavitt <mex107@mitre.arpa>
------------------------------
Date: 10 SEP 86 16:36-EDT
From: KURAS%BCVAX3.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: Reply on editing 100K+ text files
I have had success editing a 204K ASCII document on a Mac Plus using Apple's
Edit v 2.0D1 (a beta test HFS compatible version). I don't know why you have
had trouble with such files and RAM based editors...
Oh well. Bugs are everywhere.
Pat Kuras
Boston College
<KURAS@BCVAX3.BITNET>
------------------------------
Date: Wed 10 Sep 86 19:53:20-ADT
From: Peter Gergely <GERGELY@DREA-XX.ARPA>
Subject: XMODEM transfers for a DEC-20?
Does anyone have a program to allow XMODEM transfers to and from a
DEC-20. It would be really nice if it could support MACBINARY as well.
- Peter
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End of INFO-MAC Digest
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