Info-IBMPC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Info-IBMPC Digest") (10/28/90)
Info-IBMPC Digest Sun, 28 Oct 90 Volume 90 : Issue 168
Today's Editor:
Gregory Hicks - Rota Spain <GHICKS@WSMR-Simtel20.Army.Mil>
Today's Topics:
graphics/wordstar/wordperfect/etc.
Ottawa PI Board gives 56 kbs I/O capability to PC
Today's Queries:
Bar Code Reader?
Light-pens
Multiple (interacting!) applications under DOS
SLOW memory check
WP 5.0/5.1 document format
New Uploads:
Anti-virus uploads to SIMTEL20
Batch file compiler BAT2EX13.ZIP
DOTS151.ZIP GLOBE103.ZIP WORLD10.ZIP uploaded to SIMTEL20
EDBIN04 and MOUSEDRW uploaded to SIMTEL20
TSGMED10.ZIP - Fourth package of educational games
TSLIN32.ZIP - Linear programming and linear goal programming
VINDEX11.ZIP - Automatic Ventura index code generator, v1.1
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 90 08:59 EDT
From: Navin Ganeshan <NGANESHA%UDCVAX.BITNET@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: graphics/wordstar/wordperfect/etc.
>4. I am using a Hercules Graphics card in my PC, but I can't get it to
>work with BASICA. What should be done to activate it?
>
>Any help with these questions will be much appreciated.
>
>Thank you.
>Dody Bautista
>
On my machine with MS-DOS 3.2 BASIC, the Hercules graphics mode is 3.
Thus it can be activated by the statement
SCREEN 3
Try it out...but first make sure that your card is either an original
Hercules or a close compatible.
Navin S. Ganeshan
Academic Computing
Univ of DC, Wash DC
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 1990 13:17 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: Ottawa PI Board gives 56 kbs I/O capability to PC
The following article is of interest to anyone who has explored the
idea of using a PC at very high baud rates, not just for Amateur Radio
but for other applications as well.
Keith
[---forwarded message---]
|Date: Wednesday, 10 October 1990 11:59-MDT
|From: barry@dgbt.doc.ca (Barry McLarnon DGBT/DIP)
|To: packet-radio@ucsd.edu, tcp-group@ucsd.edu
|Re: Announcement: The Ottawa PI Board
The WA4DSY 56 kbs modem has been available for about three years, and
yet only a small number of them seem to be actually in use. One thing
that has held it back is that it is not a "plug 'n play" solution - you
have to build it up from a kit, and also provide external up- and
down-converters between 28 MHz and the band(s) you want to use. This
is really not very difficult, but there is another stumbling block:
there has been no suitable hardware available for interfacing the modem
to a PC/XT/AT. Most DSY users have hacked up a TNC-2 and installed a
special version of KISS which allows the HDLC port to talk to the modem
at 56 kbs, but the best the RS-232 port can do is 19.2 kbps (and some
have even found it necessary to drop down to 9600 bps), so the
capabilities of the modem are wasted. The DRSI card has also been used
with the modem, in which case you can actually run at the full 56 kbs,
but only by disabling interrupts and using programmed I/O to handle the
56 kbs packets. This means you can't service any other ports at the
same time, which is not too useful for most situations.
Now there's a better solution available. The members of the Packet
Working Group of the Ottawa Amateur Radio Club have been enthusiastic
proponents of the DSY modem since we first put some on the air back in
1988. In January of this year, we installed the first 56 kbs
full-duplex repeater. As part of our group's ongoing commitment to
promote the use of this modem in packet networking, we have developed
an I/O board which overcomes the bottleneck mentioned above. Dubbed
the PI board, it uses the standard ISA bus interface and DMA to provide
full 56 kbs throughput, while still allowing other low- and
medium-speed async ports to function without dropping characters. Used
with NOS, this board has achieved FTP transfer rates of up to 5600
bytes/s [That's 44.8 Kb!] over a 56 kbs half-duplex RF link. The
board also includes a non-DMA low-speed port. A working prototype was
demonstrated at the recent Computer Networking Conference in London.
Lest I anger the net-gods, I hasten to add that the OARC is a
non-profit organization, and that any proceeds from the sale of boards
will be applied to improving the Amateur packet network. Nevertheless,
this is all the sales pitch I plan to do via the Internet mailing
lists. If you would like further details on the PI board and how to
get it, please send *mail* to me:
barry@dgbt.doc.ca
Barry VE3JF
------------------------------
Date: 11 Oct 90 10:28:26 GMT
From: perretg@cernvax.cern.ch (denis perret-gallix)
Subject: Bar Code Reader ?
I am looking for a Code Bar Reader to be connected to a PS2/30 and
interfaced to common databases.
Any Hints
Thank's
Denis Perret-Gallix
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 90 11:44:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lili Velez <lv08+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Light-pens
Does anyone out there use a light pen, or some tracking ball set-up
which is more like a pen than a mouse? I am debating whether to use
purchase a mouse or a pen-type interface for my new Compaq. I will be
doing a lot of document design/layout work, and my previous experience
with mice is that it's rather like trying to draw with a bar of soap.
A secondary concern is product reliablility; I know of many mice dying
on duty, and would like to know if pen-type devices are more reliable.
Please email!
Lili Fox Velez
Dept of English/Dept. Biological Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
lv08@andrew.cmu.edu lv08@andrew.cmu.edu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: 11 Oct 90 07:51:43 GMT
From: siegeert@cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Geert Adriaens)
Subject: Multiple (interacting!) applications under DOS
Keywords: multitasking, text processing integration
Hello,
We are facing a problem that we think is very common to developers
writing software packages to run on DOS-PCs. Suppose you want to
activate a program from within an editor (say WordPerfect), in such a
way that
- the editor stays resident in memory
- even more: you would want to be able to use parts of the editor
buffer in the application ran on top of it
As we see it, if you have no access to the sources of the editor, we
can forget this (how do you know where the buffer is kept in memory?
could you ever add an extra option to a pulldown menu treating a region
that you mark -- say, to check it for grammar errors? could you ever
extend a sentence of a text and still get the whole file right?)
The other thing we are thinking of now would cause us fewer problems,
viz. running the 2 programs together (say, in different windows, as in
Unix), and go back to the editor to make the necessary changes manually
after the other application has given some output that you can use to
do this. The question then is: what is the "best" way to do this under
DOS (given that you have PCs with 2 to 5 Mb memory): how can you nicely
"simulate" multitasking?
The particular application we are developing, is a program that checks
an English text to see if it is "controlled" in the sense that it
conforms to a predefined vocabulary and a limited set of syntactic
structures. We would run this beside an editor where the text is, take
the saved text as input, and give some advice on changing the text. So,
we won't try to intervene in the editor buffer, but take the saved text
as input (warn users to save their text before using the application,
make sure that we can convert say WP to ASCII for input to the
application, etc. -- note that we don't have to convert back, since
the WP-enriched text remains in the buffer!).
I guess someone wanting to load a dictionary and have it interact with
the text, or any other NLP-like application would have similar
questions.
Thanks,
Geert Adriaens (SIEMENS-METAL Project)
Maria Theresiastraat 21 siegeert@kulcs.uucp or
B-3000 Leuven siegeert@blekul60.bitnet or
tel: ..32 16 285091 siegeert@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 08:14:19 EDT
From: Paul Andrews <DID1290%NRCVM01.bitnet@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Subject: SLOW memory check
Hi,
I have a strange problem that I hope someone on the net could explain.
I am running a Gateway 2000-20 MHz, 80386 machine with an AMI BIOS
dated 1989, 4 meg memory, 65 meg drive, 3 1/2" and 5 1/4" floppies,
512K ATI VGA card with an NEC 3D monitor. Last week I had to unplug
the computer for about 4 days, and when I started it up again two days
ago two things happened. (1) the "Tick" sound one hears when the
memory is checked is VVVEEERRRYYY SSLLOOWWWW. Normally, the ticks are
extremely rapid but now it takes almost 1 min to check through the 4
meg of memory I have. (2) I then received an "XCMOS CHECKSUM " error
after the POST. I fixed this XCMOS error.. somehow one of the chips
had defaulted to a factory spec.. and this was changed using Gateway's
chip utility.
Anyone have an idea why I still have the SLOW memory check?... The
day/date is fine,..the rest of the CMOS setup is as it should be.. Is
it just a low battery?.. I bought it in Feb, 1990. Thanks...
Paul Andrews. DID1290@VM.NRC.CA
Health and Welfare Canada,
Bureau of Drug Research
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
1-613-957-3506
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 90 19:04 H
From: <TAYBENGH%NUSDISCS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: WP 5.0/5.1 document format
Hi, does anybody know what is the file format of Wordperfect 5.0/5.1
document file format? Please direct your mail to me since I am not a
frequent reader of this list.
Thanks a lot.
p/s: using a WP file as an example will be the best.
- beng hang (email: taybengh@nusdiscs)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 1990 23:14 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: Anti-virus uploads to SIMTEL20
I have uploaded the following anti-virus programs to SIMTEL20:
pd1:<msdos.trojan-pro>
CLEANP67.ZIP Universal virus disinfector, heals/removes
NETSCN67.ZIP Network compatible - scan for 143 viruses, v67
SCANV67.ZIP VirusScan, scans disk files for 144 viruses
VALIDATE.CRC From McAfee BBS; CRC validation list of pgms
VSHLD67.ZIP Resident virus infection prevention program
VSUM9010.ZIP Pat Hoffman's virus info summary list, 901005
Keith
- - -
Keith Petersen
Maintainer of SIMTEL20's MSDOS, MISC & CP/M archives [IP address 26.2.0.74]
Internet: w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil, w8sdz@brl.mil BITNET: w8sdz@NDSUVM1
Uucp: {ames,decwrl,harvard,rutgers,ucbvax,uunet}!wsmr-simtel20.army.mil!w8sdz
------------------------------
Date: 9 Oct 90 22:29:49 GMT
From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
Subject: Batch file compiler BAT2EX13.ZIP
Now available from SIMTEL20:
pd2:<msdos2.pcmag>
BAT2EX13.ZIP PcMag update: Speed BATs by compiling to EXEs
PC-Magazine Vol 9 Num 14 published a potentially very useful batch to
com file compiler bat2exec.com by Douglas Boling. I recently tested
version 1.2 of this compiler and found it too buggy to be really
operative yet.
Now an updated version 1.3 has been published, and this looks very
promising. Definitely worth a closer look. I had to do some mild
hacking to put together a package bat2ex13.zip, because I found updated
parts scattered around in different files in a BBS. I took the liberty
of creating the bat2ex13.zip package myself from the constituents I
found. The documentation is from version 1.2, but as far as I can see
this shouldn't cause any problems. The assembler source and the .com
file in the created package are version 1.3 files.
Prof. Timo Salmi (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 90 09:27:30 EDT
From: Jim Van Zandt <jrv@mbunix.mitre.org>
Subject: DOTS151.ZIP GLOBE103.ZIP WORLD10.ZIP uploaded to SIMTEL20
I have uploaded a revised version of DOTS. DOTS has several small
improvements and fixes for some bug (including one that interfered with
PostScript output).
I have also uploaded GLOBE, which displays 3D vector graphics like
DOTS, but also displays a unit sphere and removes all the lines hidden
by it. GLOBE is particularly appropriate for displaying geographical
information and the locations of near-Earth satellites. In this case,
it is helpful to display world coastlines as a background.
I have also uploaded WORLD, which has a binary database of world
coastline points, plus a program for producing ASCII files at various
resolutions. (Note that this is different from
pd1:<msdos.worldmap>world.arc.)
pd1:<msdos.graph>
DOTS151.ZIP Interactive 3D vector graphics
GLOBE103.ZIP Interactive 3D vector graphics with sphere
WORLD10.ZIP World coastline database
- Jim Van Zandt (jrv@mbunix.mitre.org)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 90 14:28:39 EDT
From: stst@cs.albany.edu (Stefan Strack)
Subject: EDBIN04 and MOUSEDRW uploaded to SIMTEL20
I have uploaded two files to SIMTEL20:
pd1:<msdos.filutl>
EDBIN04.ZIP EDLIN-like string editor for binary files V0.4
pd1:<msdos.mouse>
MOUSEDRW.ZIP .DEF Mouse drivers for extended-char drawing
Edbin (shareware): is a line-oriented string-editor for binary files.
It can also be used to extract strings to a file for editing; the
modified strings can then be written back into the binary file. Edbin
can also append, chop, encrypt/decrypt files and convert between binary
and hexacecimal or binary and ASCII formats.
MouseDraw/MouseChar (freeware): two .DEF (source) drivers for MS or
Logitech mice. MouseDraw assigns line-drawing characters to the left
mouse button for drawing menus, boxes, etc.. MouseChar allows pop-up
access to foreign and special characters.
- Stefan
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 90 12:47:10 GMT
From: Timo Salmi <ts@uwasa.fi>
Subject: TSGMED10.ZIP - Fourth package of educational games
Now available from SIMTEL20:
pd1:<msdos.education>
TSGMED10.ZIP T.Salmi: Fourth package of educational games
I have introduced a fourth package of educational game-like programs
and called it tsgmed10.zip. It contains a quiz of national flags. It
also contains (based on the same flags) a (familiar) memory game of
turning pairs cards to try to find pairs. Both programs use and
require EGA compatible graphics. Writing these programs was an
interesting exercise of Turbo Pascal graphics programming.
TSGMED10.ZIP Educational games IV, T.Salmi
Filename Comment Date Time
-------- -------------------------------- ---- ----
FLAGGAME.EXE Memory game with flags 10-07-90 23:01:52
FLAGQUIZ.EXE Learn national flags by a quizz 10-07-90 07:47:56
TSGMED.INF Document 10-07-90 23:21:46
TSGMED.NWS News concerning this package 10-07-90 23:20:22
TSPROG.INF List of PD programs by T.Salmi 09-29-90 08:26:58
---- ------ ------ -----
0005 151493 89495 41%
Prof. Timo Salmi (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 90 16:26:16 GMT
From: Timo Salmi <ts@uwasa.fi>
Subject: TSLIN32.ZIP - Linear programming and linear goal programming
Now available from SIMTEL20:
pd1:<msdos.education>
TSLIN32.ZIP Linear programming and linear goal programming
Filename Comment Date Time CRC
-------- -------------------------------- ---- ---- ---
DEMO.MPS Mps-input-format demodata 09-06-89 21:00:46 064E
DEMOGOAL.DAT Linear goal programming demodata 08-01-89 14:59:26 36A3
DEMOLP.DAT Linear programming demodata 07-31-89 16:11:38 90E4
DEMOLP2.DAT Linear programming 2nd demodata 07-31-89 16:42:36 6A10
LINSOLVE.EXE Linear (and goal) programming 10-08-90 15:16:10 C425
LINSOLVE.LIS Document 10-08-90 15:19:10 8741
MPS2EQU.EXE Mps input to equation format 03-29-90 10:54:04 EA51
MPS2EQU.INF Document on MPS2EQU conversion 03-29-90 10:57:48 FE3E
TSPROG.INF List of PD programs from T.Salmi 09-29-90 08:26:58 7A53
VAASA.INF Info: Finland, Vaasa, U of Vaasa 02-02-90 11:52:54 F6C0
---- ------ ------ -----
0010 147617 93015 37%
Prof. Timo Salmi (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 1990 23:12 MDT
From: "Frank J. Wancho" <WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: VINDEX11.ZIP - Automatic Ventura index code generator, v1.1
I have uploaded to SIMTEL20:
pd1:<msdos.ventura>
VINDEX11.ZIP Automatic Ventura index code generator, v1.1
This shareware package was downloaded from the Ventura Professional BBS.
--Frank
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End of Info-IBMPC Digest V90 #168
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