TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (02/14/90)
Gee I feel good tonight. All you folks who have been annoyed at having
your PC Transporter enabled slow the finder down to a crawl whilst it
polls the PCT's drive take heart. I got what seemed too good an idea to
be true, but, I'll be darned, it worked. Set the slots up with the
PCT's slot disabled. Write a little program that does the following two
things: a) sets the bit at location $C02D for the slot your PCT is in
(mine's in six, so it sets bit 6 = 64) b) does a ProDos/GSOS quit
starting up AEPC.SYSTEM. Works like a charm. I first tried doing it in
Basic under PRODOS8, but got some kind of memory manager error ("can't
allocate block"). Wrote a ten line TML Pascal program under GSOS and it
worked first time. 'Tis a shame that the PCT's RAM isn't available as a
RAM disk with this scheme, but then, as a few of us have noted, even
with the PCT's slot enabled its RAM is a might flakey for unknown
reasons.
TMPLee@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
p.s. -- oh yes, I should point out that when you exit from the PCT the
GS seems to do a lukewarm boot and resets the slots from the control
panel settings so that the PCT slot gets turned off, which is exactly
what you want. Now if only I could figure out a clean way of exiting
the PCT other than shift, capslock, capslock, 5, <CR>. (I guess that
isn't much longer than typing GSOS <CR> would be, but it surely doesn't
fall as trippingly off the fingers ...)mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) (02/19/90)
In article <900214073421.889632@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL> TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes: >I got what seemed too good an idea to >be true, but, I'll be darned, it worked. Set the slots up with the >PCT's slot disabled. Write a little program that does the following two >things: a) sets the bit at location $C02D for the slot your PCT is in >(mine's in six, so it sets bit 6 = 64) b) does a ProDos/GSOS quit >starting up AEPC.SYSTEM. Works like a charm. Please, PLEASE DO NOT TWIDDLE $C02D UNDER GS/OS. I will not take any form of responsibility for the Device Manager attempting to call driver shutdown routines that directly access hardware that's been swapped out - or for the same happening in interrupt routines or notification procedures that get called before the QUIT call can shut down GS/OS. Just because it works for you now doesn't mean that a) it will work if any of your hardware changes or b) if any of your software changes. This is a really dangerous thing, and I can't even imagine not warning you about it. If you're absolutely out to twiddle $C02D for your personal convenience, you're going to be much better off doing it from ProDOS 8. Write a SYS program instead of an S16 program. Here's what to do in it: 1) Look in the P8 device list for any devices in the slot that will hold the PC Transporter. Remove them as described in the P8 Technical Reference Manual. 2) Twiddle $C02D. 3) Launch AEPCT.SYSTEM. If you're always on a IIgs having booted GS/OS, you can do this with an enhanced QUIT call specifying the pathname. If not, you'll have to launch it yourself. (You can make your program always exit gracefully by first checking that it's a IIgs (necessary for $C02D), and then checking OS_BOOT to make sure it's GS/OS.) Some of this checking is definitely overkill if it's a program for your own personal use, but it's some nice peace of mind for some people. And if anyone is even considering writing software that does this and distributing it, I *will* sit on your head. >TMPLee@dockmaster.ncsc.mil > -- ============================================================================ Matt Deatherage, Apple Computer, Inc. | "The opinions represented here are Developer Technical Support, Apple II | not necessarily those of Apple Group. Personal mail only, please. | Computer, Inc. Remember that." ============================================================================