rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Edwin Meese) (03/28/91)
Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 24 Wed Mar 27 10:23:58 CST 1991
Today's Topics:
Seagate 1144A
Re: ZOO - where!!?!
cnews and smail
Zoo Sources
A Final Reminder
badscan problems
badscan problems / floppy operations
re: badscan problems
RE: smail & cnews
Administrivia:
The Coherent Digest is a forum for discussion of the MWC Coherent 3.x
operating system. Send submissions to "coherent@cs.wisc.edu" and
administrivia to "coherent-reqeust@cs.wisc.edu". Previous issues are
archived for anonymous FTP access on piggy.ucsb.edu in the directory
"pub/coherent/mail-list".
[Astute clock-watching Coherent adherents will note that today is the
final day for comp.os.coherent ballotting. Yow! -Ed. ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:41:31 CST
From: Federico Periera <rose>
To: coherent
Subject: Seagate 1144A
- ------- Forwarded Message
Date: 22 Mar 91 09:54:18
From: doug@htrails.mwc.com (Douglas W. Peterson)
To: maillist@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: SeaGate 1144A Drives
Who out there has installed COHERENT on this model SeaGate Drive?
Please contact me at mwc!support and let me know what you did to
install.
- ------- End of Forwarded Message
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 11:04:45 -0600
From: lark@greylock.tivoli.com (Lar Kaufman)
To: coherent, gt1342a@prism.gatech.edu
Subject: Re: ZOO - where!!?!
Joachim continues to have hardware problems and will
be delayed a week or so in posting to piggy. Please
be patient. If you are in a hurry, this is what
he said to me in email:
The porting of zoo (I have version 2.01) is easy.
If you change IN_BUF_SIZE and OUT_BUF_SIZE to a
lower value, it won't coredump.
Perhaps someone else could run the necessary experiments
and put a working Coherent zoo on piggy?
- -lar
Lar Kaufman I would feel more optimistic about a bright future
(voice) 512-794-9070 for man if he spent less time proving that he can
(fax) 512-794-0623 outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness
lark@tivoli.com and respecting her seniority. - E.B. White
------------------------------
Date: Sat Mar 23 08:25:13 1991
From: zoo.toronto.edu!utdoe!contact!rrwood%rutgers.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (roy wood)
To: coherent@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Subject: cnews and smail
I suspect that this question has been asked before, but here goes again...
Has anyone ported cnews and smail to Coherent? And if so, where can obtain
a copy?
I'd also like to hear from anyone who's using this software-- especially as
to the problems/success you've had with it. I'm probably not alone in my
curiousity, so it would probaly be worth posting replies to this group.
Oh-- I'm having trouble contacting the server at farfel.sceard.com, so that
puts a damper on that source of software. Is anyone else having trouble
getting through? Any alternatives?
Thanks...
- -Roy Wood (rrwood@contact.uucp)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 12:26:04 MET
From: Ralph Meyer <Ralph.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
To: coherent (Coherent Mailing List)
Subject: Zoo Sources
Hi,
anyone is looking for the zoo sources?
I have put Joachim's working Coherent zoo on piggy in pub/incoming.
By the way, please be patient while waiting for sources from Germany,
because is not possible to get a good ftp connection on weekdays.
These silly TIMEZONES get on my nerves.
MfG
Ralph (Coherent User since version 0.7.3)
Ralph Meyer Voice: +49 441 54567
Otto-Suhr-Str.22-3/303 D 2900 Oldenburg
INTERNET: Ralph.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de
BITNET : rmeyer%arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de@DOLUNI1
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 05:50:41 CST
From: Scott Rose <rose>
To: coherent
Subject: A Final Reminder
This is probably too late to be useful... hopefully, it won't matter, anyway,
and by sending this I can pretend to be a conscientious list administrator.
From: tale@rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups
Subject: Current Status of Votes on Newsgroups
Date: 25 Mar 91 03:41:33 GMT
The following votes are currently active, according to postings sent to
news.announce.newgroups....
LAST DAY
PROPOSAL RFD CFV TO VOTE
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
comp.os.coherent 3 Feb 28 Feb 27 Mar
All votes to: lark@tivoli.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 6:02:10 PST
From: @cca.ucsf.EDU:wet!abe (Dave Abercrombie)
To: coherent
Subject: badscan problems
I have been having trouble with several Coherent 3.1.0 utilities
involving my floppy drives. MWC says that the floppy driver
is probably incompatible, and my hardware dealer says that the
software is to blame! Is anyone else having these problems?
How did you solve them? I do not yet know which floppy driver
I have installed (I would need to open the case).
1. badscan gets only partially finished before it looks up
the machine (although it works fine on hard drive).
2. dos choked when it had a couple of files to read from
floppy from a script running in background. The machine locked
up and upon rebooting, the file sysytem was damaged (I had to
re-install Coherent).
3. fdformat has also locked up the machine when in background, but
at least the file sytem was not damaged).
The badscan problem happens on both 5.25 and 3.5 drives. I have not
been brave enough to explore the extent of the other two problems
(I simply avoid them).
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 15:06:09 EST
From: sje@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Steven J. Edwards)
To: abe%@cca.ucsf.EDU:wet
Cc: coherent
Subject: badscan problems / floppy operations
Without seeing the source code to fdformat, badscan, or mkfs,
I would think that either you have faulty hardware or there are some
timing problems with your system. Also, you must run fdformat before
badscan (but you knew that, I'm sure), which must be run prior to
mkfs.
I would not be surprised if non-standard floppy interleave or
skew factors contributed to timing problems.
One trick to try is to do all of the fdformat, badscan, and
mkfs floppy operations in single user mode (no backround processes).
This will minimize the posibility of timing problems with slow
hardware. You might want to format whole sets of floppies at one time
and keep them for later use.
Problems with dos may be best handled by booting with the
MS-DOS partition and copying the dos files onto the MS-DOS partition
of the hard drive at that time. After rebooting with Coherent, dos
can be used to pick the files directly from the hard drive. This is
what I do and it seems to work okay.
== Steven J. Edwards Bull HN Information Systems Inc. ==
== (508) 294-3484 300 Concord Road MS 820A ==
== sje@bubba.ma30.bull.com Billerica, MA 01821 USA ==
"That Government which Governs the Least, Governs Best." -- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------
Date: 25 Mar 91 11:50:04
From: norm@mwc.com (Norman Bartek)
To: cohmail@uunet.UU.NET
Cc: support@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: re: badscan problems
>> I have been having trouble with several Coherent 3.1.0 utilities
>> involving my floppy drives. MWC says that the floppy driver
>> is probably incompatible, and my hardware dealer says that the
>> software is to blame! Is anyone else having these problems?
>> How did you solve them? I do not yet know which floppy driver
>> I have installed (I would need to open the case).
>>
>> 1. badscan gets only partially finished before it looks up
>> the machine (although it works fine on hard drive).
>>
>> 2. dos choked when it had a couple of files to read from
>> floppy from a script running in background. The machine locked
>> up and upon rebooting, the file sysytem was damaged (I had to
>> re-install Coherent).
>>
>> 3. fdformat has also locked up the machine when in background, but
>> at least the file sytem was not damaged).
Your problems sound more like motherboard incompatibilities than simply
a floppy controller problem or a device driver problem. The floppy device
driver uses DMA channel 2 and interrupt IRQ6 for all transfers. If something
on your motherboard is incompatible in terms of the DMA or interrupt
controller used, this would explain your problems. This class of problem
includes buggy DMA controllers that don't support simultaneous DMA, or
interrupt controllers that are not really Intel 8259 compatible (you didn't
mention which motherboard or floppy controller your system uses).
If at all possible, try running COHERENT on another system that uses a
different manufacturer of motherboard. If this test works, then switch the
floppy controller card to determine if your present controller is at fault.
It's rare to find an incompatible floppy controller. However, the various
custom motherboard chipsets that manufacturers use are not above suspicion.
For example, the Suntac 286 chipset seems to be incompatible with COHERENT.
------------------------------
Date: 26 Mar 91 23:51:46
From: citrus!root@csusac.ecs.csus.edu (Joel M. Baldwin)
To: coherent@csusac.ecs.csus.edu
Subject: RE: smail & cnews
>
> Has anyone ported cnews and smail to Coherent? And if so, where can obtain
> a copy?
>
From root Tue Mar 26 05:55:28 1991 PST
From cs.wisc.edu!zoo.toronto.edu!utdoe!contact!rrwood%rutgers.UUCP Tue Mar 26 05:55:25 1991 remote from csusac
Received: by citrus (mail v 2.29)
id AA416; 26 Mar 91 05:55:28
Received: by citrus.UUCP (smail2.5)
id AA00414; 26 Mar 91 05:55:25
As you can see from this header ( which came with your message from
the coherent mailing list message ) I have smail running on my system.
Smail is on the Mark Williams bbs, mwcbbs. You should have information
about connecting to mwcbbs in you coherent documentation ( at least I
got it in my 3.1.0 UPDATE packet, I don't know for sure if its in the
normal 3.1.0 packet ). I think it is also on piggy if you have
ftp access.
> I'd also like to hear from anyone who's using this software-- especially as
> to the problems/success you've had with it. I'm probably not alone in my
> curiousity, so it would probaly be worth posting replies to this group.
>
I have three observations on smail.
1.) You get double headers on incoming mail, since both smail and
coherent's mail insert their own header.
2.) smail's default set up calls lmail for local mail delivery which
which is incompatiable with coherent's mail which has to be called
as rmail. You have to change the #define LMAIL in defs.h to call
coherent's mail as rmail, but since smail installs a link between
/bin/smail and /bin/rmail, the LMAIL rmail has to be in a different
directory.
3.) I haven't been able to get smail bounch 'undeliverable' or
'unknown user', or whatever the error message is, back to
the sender when an error happens. Has anyone on the list been
able to get this to work?
I don't really see much advance to using smail, but I've gone ahead
and left it installed on my system. mwc has a mail system based on
smail in the works for a future release of coherent.
Joel M. Baldwin H ( 916 ) 383-9470
N6NPL W " 452-1481
uunet!csusac.ecs.csus.edu!citrus!root Sacramento CA. /\../\
------------------------------
End of Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 24
****************************************
--
Scott Rose
rose@cs.wisc.edu
(608) 238-3801