COMSAT@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (Communications Satellite) (03/20/88)
FAILED: TETHER at MITLNS.MIT.EDU; Funny reply from foreign host after sending message. Last reply was: {554 Unable to deliver mail to given recipient(s)} Failed message follows: ------- Received: from OZ.AI.MIT.EDU by MC.LCS.MIT.EDU via Chaosnet; 20 MAR 88 03:47:13 EST Received: from XX.LCS.MIT.EDU by OZ.AI.MIT.EDU with Chaos/SMTP; Sun 20 Mar 88 03:46:19-EST Received: from Score.Stanford.EDU by XX.LCS.MIT.EDU with TCP/SMTP; Sun 20 Mar 88 03:47:11-EST Date: Sat 19 Mar 88 23:45:23 PST Subject: Info-Atari16 Digest V88 #126 From: Info-Atari16 Digest <Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.EDU> Sender: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Errors-to: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU Maint-Path: Info-Atari16-request@Score.Stanford.EDU To: Info-Atari16 Distribution List: ; Reply-to: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu Info-Atari16 Digest Saturday, March 19, 1988 Volume 88 : Issue 126 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Re: fsel_input Re: fsel_input Atari Forth question Re: Video interrupts: using or disabling More information of software color upgrade Re: A cure looking for a disease? (I hope) Re: DESKTOP.INF some corrections Re: More info on software color upgrade micro-RTX price Re: UniTerm 2.1a wishlist/Broken ST problem... Re: A cure looking for a disease? (I hope) Clearing out used software! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Mar 88 11:06:35 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!fireplace@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: fsel_input To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In a previous article, braner@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu writes: >For one thing, the "*.*" should be the default, without the need to type it. To my knowledge, if you click on the bar at the top of the directory list (instead of in the list), it automatically defaults to "*.*". It's one of those nifty "hidden" features. I could of been dreaming this. 8-) You mean you really still like the ATARI 8-bit? <----- fireplace@cup.portal.com <------------------------------------------ sun!portal!cup.portal.com!fireplace ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 11:33:14 GMT From: portal!cup.portal.com!fireplace@uunet.uu.net Subject: Re: fsel_input To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Remember, there is a wonderful replacement file selector called the "Universal File Selector". You simply put in in the AUTO folder and forget about it. It adds a click-on drive selector plus Format, Create Folder, Move, Copy, Rename, Delete, Disk Info, Print Directory, Protect and Unprotect. It is well worth it's outrageous price of $15 - I suggest you check it out. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 19:49:49 GMT From: pacbell!att-ih!alberta!mnetor!utzoo!yunexus!maccs!leb@AMES.ARC.NASA.GOV (Anthony Hurst) Subject: Atari Forth question To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu One of my students is interested in writing some of his own video games using his Atari ST. I suggested that Forth would be my choice, but he doesn't know if it is available for the 68000-based ST. Does anyone out there have a version of Forth (preferably F83) that will run on the ST ? Thanks in advance. ...adh -- seismo!mnetor!{genat,lsuc}!maccs!leb Anthony Hurst McMaster Dept. of Comp. Sci. & Systems (416)-525-9140 x4030 Will there be cigarettes in heaven? ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 23:48:47 GMT From: tektronix!tekig!tekig5!wayneck@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne Knapp) Subject: Re: Video interrupts: using or disabling To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <3379@chinet.UUCP>, saj@chinet.UUCP (Stephen Jacobs) writes: > I am curious about the horizontal and vertical blank interrupts. How much > code can one safely put in a horizontal blank routine? How many micro Horizontal blank is hard to use and the interrupt occurs every 64.5 usec. > seconds does each call of the default vertical blank handler take? There No idea, but there is time for lots of code during a vertical blank, at least a millisecond's worth of code. > appears to be a flag telling the default vertical blank handler to cut its > operation short: what awful thing (if any) would happen if the interrupt > threshold was simply set above the vertical blank level? And finally, how Ugh! You would very quickly get a stack overflow, crash, burn, ugly stuff. > do I try playing with these things (I've never done anything with privileged > instructions on the 68000, so those interrupt levels and first 1 K of memory > flags are new territory). I have Mark Williams C (with their assembler > included), a few Abacus books and some 68000 documentation. Use your best > judgement about whether to mail or post replies. When playing around with the interrupts you will get many surprizes. Video interrupts can be very trickly. If you only have a small routine I run just add it to the vertical blank routine. I spent a lot of time playing with the horizontal interrupts and finally gave up. Just too much overhead to try and handle a iterrupt every 64.5 usec. Doing stuff with video interrupt can give great results but it is very easy to burn up most of the cpu cycles on just the interrupt code. I've had much better luck with using timers. Also rememger you can get burned on the vertical blank since it can be 50, 60, or 70hz. Wayne Knapp ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 19:04:39 GMT From: tektronix!tekig!tekig5!wayneck@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne Knapp) Subject: More information of software color upgrade To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Yesterday I had a couple of misstakes in my posting of how to do a software graphics upgrade on the ST. Last night I did some more work on a spy program I have to determine the timing of things in the ST. Basically I rewrote the part that was doing the spying into assembly. Then I looked at the screen pointer. Here is what I found. There are 80 increments by 2 spaced 4 cycles apart, then there is a horizontal retrace time of 188 cycles. This means that each scan line takes 508 cycles total or 64.5 microseconds. I believe these figures to be pretty close to true. Using the computer to spy on it's self worked out really well. Much easier than trying to use a logic anailizer or an oscilloscope. The other misstate was that I didn't realize that the movq only give you 8 bits of data. So now it would that I limited my choices on how to update the color registers. I'm still thinking some combination of movm and move using the address registers will be best. Also I still believe that the only way to sync up the system is have limited colors on the first scan line. Since the update is four cycles per update and nop's are 4 cycles long it may be possible to use a code sequence like the following to get started. (numbers in comments are the cycle count. interrupts turned off and all registers except for A7 saved, giving 15 registers to work with waitv tst.b $FF8209 # 4 the video counter always starts at zero beq waitv # 12 wait until not zero move.b $FF8209,A0 # 28 get the current count jmp PC@(0,A0) # 42 do a relative jump based on the video addr nop # video address of 2 nop # video address of 4 nop # video address of 6 nop # video address of 8 nop # video address of 10 nop # video address of 12 nop # video address of 14 nop # video address of 16 nop # video address of 18 nop # video address of 20 nop # video address of 22 nop # video address of 24 nop # video address of 26 nop # video address of 28 nop # video address of 30 260 cycle to hor. retrace - at this point the system should be with in a window of +/- 2 cycles. which means that as long as we keep a window of 4 pixcel before a color change we should be safe. Actually since a move (a0)+,(a1)+ takes 20 cycles I think it would be best to wait 24 cycles before using a new color. If one could used a movm to load some registers a move d0,(a1)+ take 14 cycles. Anyway I'm open to ideas. Some things I toying around with is not changing all the color registers during the scan line. Maybe all at first then only some later. Also all the moves will be long so that all the registers will change is pairs. Anyway I want this to be good and useful so input is welcome. If you didn't follow the above, in simple terms, changing the color registers in 20 cycles means two new colors every 10 pixels in 320X200 16 color mode. Thanks, Wayne Knapp ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 88 00:37:52 GMT From: phoenix!mpsimon@princeton.edu (M. Patrick Simon) Subject: Re: A cure looking for a disease? (I hope) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <8803081650.AA29358@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> 051332@UOTTAWA.BITNET (John Turnbull) writes: > >A program called VDU_2_0.PRG has been posted to the FILESERVers at >CANADA01 and UHUPVM1. It is claimed that it will cure the 'Boot sector' >virus and immunize the disk from future infection with this virus. > >Does anybody have any information about this virus, its mode of >infection, mechanism, symptoms or how wide-spread it may have become? > >Please post replies to the net. Most people will be interested. /JT > >John Turnbull, NetNorth: 051332@uottawa The magazine ST Applications warned of a virus being spread around via "disks from W. Germany". They did not give any information on how the virus is spreading (ie part of a larger program?), but the disk for this issue is supposed to have a virus detecting program on it. No info as to exactly what damage the virus is capable of doing either. --Patrick Simon mpsimon@phoenix.princeton.edu 3/9/88 ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 14:57:19 GMT From: mnetor!utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!orchid!achowe@uunet.uu.net (CrackerJack) Subject: Re: DESKTOP.INF some corrections To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu >9) #D #F #G #P - File Icons [...] >#D function most likely stands for DIRECTORY not DISK while the first >#F probably stands for FILE rather than FOLDER. Based on what I say >for the rest of the examples maybe someone can figure out what these >first two lines do. I was right about #D for DIRECTORY. But I not sure what useful tricks you can do with it. eg. #D 01 01 GAMES@ *.*@ - Seems to allow you only to look at the GAMES directory, while clicking on any other directory cause a warm boot. eg #D 01 04 GAMES@ *.PRG@ - Seems to bomb (2) when you click on a file in that directory. >eg. #G 03 04 GEMCSH.PRG@ *.SH@ - When any .SH file is opened, execute >GEMCSH.PRG passing the specified file name on the command line. Can be done with TOS and TTP files as well. Also it is possible to install more than one file for an application. But you can't do this from the desktop options. eg. #F 03 04 LV.TOS@ *.C@ #F 03 04 LV.TOS@ *.H@ - Clicking on either a .C or .H file will execute LV.TOS with the given file. >So from the above I can only speculate to the following meanings as >I have not tried them. > >eg. #F FF 04 @ *.*@ - What constitutes a none executable, displayable >file. > >eg. #F FF 04 @ *.DOC@ - This to me means that I can "show" any file >with a .DOC extension. This one was right. Any other file simply caused a reboot as the system did not know what to do with it if it was not mark for execution or display. >eg. #D FF 01 @ *.*@ - What files should be listed when a folder is >opened. Wrong. Still don't know what this spec means. >eg. #D 01 01 GAMES@ *.PRG@ - This means to me that when I open a >folder called GAMES, I should only display .PRG files in the directory. Wrong again. ------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony C. Howe achowe@trillium.waterloo.edu achowe@orchid.waterloo.edu "The definition of flying: throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adam's "Life, the Universe and Everything" ------------------------------ Date: 11 Mar 88 06:42:52 GMT From: polya!rokicki@labrea.stanford.edu (Tomas G. Rokicki) Subject: Re: More info on software color upgrade To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Try movem. As in: movem.l (a0)+,a2-a5/d0-d7 movem.l a2-a5/d0-d7,(a1) add.w #48,a1 Much faster than move.l (a0)+,(a1)+ repeated 12 times. -tom ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 88 04:15:55 GMT From: cscosl!tw@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (Thomas Wolf) Subject: micro-RTX price To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Could someone enlighten me as to what the current price for Micro-RTX is? Also, is it automatically included when you buy MT-CShell? If yes, what's a good price on MT-Cshell? I know, I know, I should just read a d*&n magazine ad and find out for myself, but with my luck I would either look up the wrong product OR choose the mail-order place with the most outrageous prices :-) If anyone can help me with any of these quetions, please send me e-mail (David, what are the "official" prices on these products? :-) Thanks again for any information. Tom Wolf ARPA (I think): tw@cscosl.ncsu.edu or wolf@csclea.ncsu.edu ------------------------------ Date: 11 Mar 88 22:07:59 GMT From: dalcs!water!ljdickey@uunet.uu.net (Lee Dickey) Subject: Re: UniTerm 2.1a wishlist/Broken ST problem... To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <24380@felix.UUCP> preston@felix.UUCP (Preston Bannister) writes: > > > [ ... ] Simon Poole has >done us all a service by developing Uniterm, I agree. Let's hear a round of applause for developers of free software everywhere. -- L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. ljdickey@waterloo.edu ljdickey@watdcs.BITNET ljdickey@water.UUCP ...!uunet!water!ljdickey ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 88 18:52:53 GMT From: nunki.usc.edu!sal23.usc.edu!rjung@oberon.usc.edu (Robert Jung) Subject: Re: A cure looking for a disease? (I hope) To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <4235@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> davidli@umn-cs.UUCP (Dave Meile) writes: >In article <8803081650.AA29358@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> 051332@UOTTAWA.BITNET (John Turnbull) writes: >>Does anybody have any information about this virus, its mode of >>infection, mechanism, symptoms or how wide-spread it may have become? > >The program is legitimate. There has been a virus located and dissected >in Europe. I first heard about it a month ago, when I got the back >issues of an informational disk called ST NEWS from Richard Karsmakers from >The Netherlands. He was *quite* furious when the virus was discovered. Can you post a short summary of what is the purpose of the virus (ie, what was it supposed to do)? There's been a lot of (now confirmed) talks about the ST virus, but no one I've met can tell me just what it does. --R.J. B-) What kind of a twisted mind would write such a thing? ______________________________________________________________________________ Bitnet: rjung@castor.usc.edu "Who needs an Amiga?" = == = = == = Power WithOUT the Price = == = ===== == ===== Just because it's 8-bits doesn't make it obsolete. ==== == ==== ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 88 00:09:27 GMT From: dalcs!aucs!870646c@uunet.uu.net (barry comer) Subject: Clearing out used software! To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Hi all, well it is time to clear out some software that I am not using, I have the following for sale, all packages include up to date upgrades, and are orginal disks and packaging, and funds are in Canadian funds, you pay shipping: 1. Timelink $25.00 2. GST-C Ver. 1.3 $30.00(updated by Antic recently) 3. Backup $15.00(Michtron hard disk back-up) 4. Balance of Power $25.00 5. Michtron BBS $25.00 6. Genesis $50.00(Antic's 3D molecular modeler) If you are intereted in any of these packages, send me a reply msg. or even better call me at 1-902-542-2312 weeknights. That's it for now folks. Later Barry ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ************************** -------