c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (Warner Young (WHY)) (12/08/87)
[Wokka wokka wokka wokka...] [GULP!] Once again, the Safety Seal strikes. Yes, this means that pc-Ditto v 3.0 has arrived! The immediate consequence is a mini-review: PCD (as I will call it) v3 comes with two sheets of paper about the bug fixes and enhancements in it, so I'll make it easy on myself and just list these (with comments): 1) PCD v2 used to have (very rarely) problems booting an MS-DOS disk. Sometimes it couldn't format a disk correctly, and copying with *.* sometimes corrupted the files or the disk. [I've never yet run into these problems on either version.] 2) PCD v2 failed on trying to access any hard disk partition above D:. This has now been fixed. [Without my hard disk, I cannot verify this.] 3) PCD v3 now runs correctly with the Mega's. 4) Under PCD v2, self-booting disks would not autoboot. Fixed. 5) RS-232 use sometimes locked up ST on old version. Fixed. 6) PCD v3 NOW WORKS WITH MONOCHROME! You can "simulate" either IBM mono or color on the Atari mono screen. It looks to me like the text font used for color is used here, but stretched out vertically, so that there are blank lines interleaved in the text. 7) When you run PCD now, it will capture the time and date from TOS, so you don't HAVE to set it. 8) And now, the mouse is supported. Either of two mouse modes can be chosen: Microsoft or Generic. (Or it can be turned off.) The Generic mouse merely generates cursor keystrokes when you move the mouse, and each button can be assigned to a character, so a button- click generates that. The Microsoft mode requires a mouse driver (provided), and will allow the use of things like GEM and Windows now (though I have real doubts about running things like that at the speed PCD provides). Overall, I like it. The revision was free, and mailed promptly. There were README files on the disk which also cleared up problems such as how to format 80-track single-sided disks. And the pc_ddrv file allows reading GEMDOS format disks (82-track, 10 sectors, too). The one big problem with pc-Ditto right now is speed. I bought it for a specific purpose (I needed to run some IBM programs to do homework in a class), but aside from that, I'm not positive what benefits it provides over the ST, especially now that the range of software has expanded so much for the ST. It's up to you, though. If you need it, it works well. Disclaimer: I'm not associated with \ /\ /arner the latest revision of SANITY. \/ \_/ Address: ucbvax!dorothy!c9c-eh |oung c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU \__| Warp 10: it's not just a good idea, it's the LAW!
engst@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst) (12/09/87)
What should I do if I am a registered owner and all that and I haven't even
gotten Version 2 yet? Does Avant-Garde still read the netnews (I remember
them saying that they were going to check it every now and then)?
Adam Engst
engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.eduschuster@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Schuster) (12/10/87)
In article <3125@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst) writes: > >What should I do if I am a registered owner and all that and I haven't even >gotten Version 2 yet? Does Avant-Garde still read the netnews (I remember >them saying that they were going to check it every now and then)? If you're a registered owner, you MUST have Version 2. That is the only version ever offered for sale!!!! Version 1.0 was never released to anyone, according to the author. Check your bootup screen! As for the net - I don't think I've ever seen Bill here. He frequents GEnie and CompuServe. ---- -- l\ /l' _ Mike Schuster {sun!hoptoad,cmcl2!phri}!dasys1!schuster l \/ lll/(_ Big Electric Cat schuster@dasys1.UUCP l lll\(_ New York, NY USA DELPHI,GEnie:MSCHUSTER CIS:70346,1745
john@viper.Lynx.MN.Org (John Stanley) (12/13/87)
In article <2195@dasys1.UUCP> schuster@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Schuster) writes: >In article <3125@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> > engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst) writes: >> >>What should I do if I am a registered owner and all that and I haven't even >>gotten Version 2 yet? Does Avant-Garde still read the netnews (I remember >>them saying that they were going to check it every now and then)? If, as I suspect, you mean you haven't received the recient update, I would recommend you contact Avant-Garde. Not being a prior owner, I'm not sure what their update policy is, but knowing the people who work there, I suspect at worst, they'll ask you for mailing costs and the price of the disk... >If you're a registered owner, you MUST have Version 2. That is the only >version ever offered for sale!!!! Version 1.0 was never released to anyone, >according to the author. Check your bootup screen! That's funny Mike, I have version 3.0 (the newest version). Does that mean I'm not a registered owner...? :^) >l\ /l' _ Mike Schuster {sun!hoptoad,cmcl2!phri}!dasys1!schuster >l \/ lll/(_ Big Electric Cat schuster@dasys1.UUCP >l lll\(_ New York, NY USA DELPHI,GEnie:MSCHUSTER CIS:70346,1745 --- John Stanley (john@viper.UUCP) Software Consultant - DynaSoft Systems UUCP: ...{amdahl,ihnp4,rutgers}!meccts!viper!john