Info-IBMPC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Info-IBMPC Digest") (05/26/90)
Info-IBMPC Digest Sat, 26 May 90 Volume 90 : Issue 93 Today's Editor: Gregory Hicks - Chinhae Korea <GHICKS@WSMR-Simtel20.Army.Mil> Today's Topics: BF112.ZIP - Back and Forth v1.12; Task switching program BORLAND's PARADOX DBMS DesqView questions EXPLS122.ZIP - CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA/Herc fireworks/screen saver Read Commodore PET diskette? Hooking up a ST4096 drive to an old IBM-AT IBM->NeXT; COM port monitor LISP wanted Making command.com run different autoexec.bat upon bootup Novell vs PCSA PCFile-DB version 5 dated May 5 UUPC 1.07j - uucp for MS-DOS - now available Send Replies or notes for publication to: <INFO-IBMPC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> Send requests of an administrative nature (addition to, deletion from the distribution list, et al) to: <INFO-IBMPC-REQUEST@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> The Lending Library is available from: WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (see file PD1:<MSDOS.FILEDOCS>AAAREAD.ME details on file directories and descriptions.) Archives of past issues of the Info-IBMPC Digest are available by FTP only from WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL in directory PD2:<ARCHIVES.IBMPC>. WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL can be accessed using LISTSERV commands from BITNET via LISTSERV@NDSUVM1, LISTSERV@RPIECS and in Europe from EARN TRICKLE servers. Send commands to TRICKLE@<host-name> (example: TRICKLE@TREARN). The following TRICKLE servers are presently available: AWIWUW11 (Austria), BANUFS11 (Belgium), DKTC11 (Denmark), DB0FUB11 or DTUZDV1 (Germany), IMIPOLI (Italy), EB0UB011 (Spain), TAUNIVM (Israel), and TREARN (Turkey). SIMTEL20 is not accessable on the first Wednesday of each month from 6-8pm Eastern Standard Time. If you are unable to access SIMTEL20 via Internet FTP or through one of the BITNET/EARN file servers, most MSDOS SIMTEL20 files, including the PC-Blue collection, are available for downloading on the Detroit Download Central network at 313-885-3956. DDC is a networked system with multiple lines that support 300, 1200, 2400, and 9600 bps (HST). This system is a subscription system with an average hourly cost of 17 cents per hour. It is also accessable on Telenet via PC Pursuit and on Tymnet via StarLink outdial. New files uploaded to WSMR-SIMTEL20 are usually available on DDC within 24 hours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 May 1990 18:57 MDT From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> Subject: BF112.ZIP - Back and Forth v1.12; Task switching program The ShareWare program Back and Forth has been recently updated on SIMTEL20. Directory PD1:<MSDOS.SYSUTL> Filename Type Length Date Description ============================================== BF112.ZIP B 244848 900505 Back and Forth v1.12; Task switching program This program is not a multitasker. It is a task switcher. Up to nine tasks may be loaded, subject to the limitations of available memory for swap file storage which can be EMS memory, RAM disk or a hard disk. See PC Magazine, volume 9, number 9, page 49, for a description and review of this package. 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: Mon, 14 May 90 14:51:54 EDT From: kit@cbnewsc.att.com (Shailesh Bhobe) Subject: BORLAND's PARADOX DBMS Keywords: PARADOX BORLAND DBMS I am trying to develop an application on a 386SX machine under DOS using BORLAND's PARADOX DBMS. Because of lack of any book on PAL programming, I am running into problems and would therefore like to get in touch with someone who has done some programming in PAL. My address is: Any help sicerely appreciated. Shailesh Bhobe EMAIL : att!golfer!smb VOICE : (708)968-7238 USMAIL : S. M. Bhobe 2500, Cabot Drive CL II/U08 Lisle, IL 60532 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 90 10:42:18 SET From: Nigel Head <NHEAD%ESOC.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Subject: DesqView questions Having installed and played with DesqView for a while I have a couple of questions which I would appreciate your collective opinions about: 1) One sees a lot of programs (on SIMTEL for example) where it is claimed that xyzzy.com only requires 8K to run and that it should thus be put in an 8k DesqView partition. How can this be?? Surely ALL .com's must require 64K of memory for at least the first few instructions (until they can reset their stack pointer)?? Have I missed something obvious here ?? Is it not the case that only .exe's can control the setting of their registers so that they can be absolutely sure about their memory usage ?? 2) It seems like the DesqView XDI (eXternal Driver Interface) would be ideal for providing the basis of a process status display (like the 'ix PS) as it would let one gather all the information about process states, handles etc with almost no trouble. Has anyone done such a thing and would be willing to share it with me ?? PS: Is there a DesqView discussion group somewhere ........ ?? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 1990 16:25 MDT From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> Subject: EXPLS122.ZIP - CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA/Herc fireworks/screen saver [--forwarded message--] From: Chris Hook <hook@staff.ucs.ubc.ca> Re: Explosiv.com version 1.22, the fireworks screen saver I have uploaded an updated explosiv screen saver program to SIMTEL20, as we (Reidar and I) have received numerous requests for the same basic fixes. pd1:<msdos.screen> EXPLS122.ZIP CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA/Herc fireworks/screen saver Explosiv is a screen saving utility which prevents pixel burn-in on your computer video display. Rather than simply turning the screen off while the computer is running, Explosiv displays an always moving fireworks show. As a benefit, you never need wonder as to whether your computer is turned on or off (a typical problem with simple screen blankers), and you may even find the fireworks display to be somewhat enjoyable. This, of course, is a matter of personal taste. This new version of EXPLOSIV.COM now has the added features/bug fixes: 1. Now there is no more contention between EXPLOSIV.COM and a) DOS 4.01 and/or its ANSI.SYS (same goes for DOS 4.0) 2. timer before activation has been extended to 30 minutes. 3. There is now a novid option which will prevent screen saver from contending with other resources such as clocks. i.e., they will both happily work together. We think no.1 is the biggy, as now EXPLOSIV.COM will not be finicky about what order its loaded as a TSR, and won't care if a mouse is loaded with MOUSE.COM, or MOUSE.SYS, and won't be bothered by all thge above plus DOS 4.01's ANSI.SYS. Chris Hook [--end forwarded message--] Thanks, Chris! --Keith ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 90 18:02:10 IST From: "Jacques J. Goldberg" <PHR00JG@TECHNION.bitnet> Subject: Read Commodore PET diskette? Who knows how to read a PET diskette on a PC ? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 90 10:26:55 EDT From: zielke@phy.duke.edu (David Zielke) Subject: Hooking up a ST4096 drive to an old IBM-AT I am trying to hook up an 80meg ST4096 hard drive (9heads, 1024 cylinders) to an original IBM-AT (6mhz without speed limiting roms). The drive tables don't support this type of drive and segate recommends using a type 12 and then diskmanager. The problem is that I can't get the drive to perform a low level format. If I use Seagates [diag] program it returns a `forward seek error' the first time the seek test is run (at around cylinder 390 +/- 5 cylinders) and I can hear the heads rachet across the drive. If I try a seek test again without powering down the drive I get a `recalibration failure' and it refuses to do anything. This same controller has worked fine with a Rodime 20 meg drive and a segate 30meg drive. Is this a drive failure? I just got the drive and it supposidly worked fine before it was shipped. Also interesting is that if I have just turned on the machine it will run the segate surface analysis program. However it comes back with every track on heads 1,2, and 3 as bad, with an occasional track bad elsewhere amoung the nine heads. I have only let it run through to about 30 cylinders as the bad track map starts to get so big! An additional question about using large drives in general, the drive tables in my machine, could I use an eprom programmer and create a modified rom which supports this drive? Does the 6mhz speed limiting roms support this drive? I have an inboard 386/AT in the machine and I don't know how it would respond to non-ibm roms. I would also like to be able to run IBM-OS/2 2.0 when it is available. Thanks for your help... David Zielke zielke@phy.duke.edu zielke@cs.duke.edu Department of Physics Duke University Durham, NC 27706 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 90 15:38:41 CDT From: Rick Troth <TROTH@ricevm1.rice.edu> Subject: IBM->NeXT; COM port monitor On Mon, 30 Apr 90 19:37:54 CST Don Branson said: >I would appreciate any help that someone can offer on transferring >files from an IBM PC to a Next machine. If anybody has done this, could >you contact me? Thanks. I just use Kermit. With some help from Frank da Cruz, I got C-Kermit compiled on the NeXT several months ago. I just log-in to it via another TCP/IP site (like our terminal server) with the PC to transfer any files to/from MS-DOS. KA9Q is a bit handier on those few occasions when I can get a SLIP connection. Can't say much on the COM1 or COM2 monitoring. "The tomb is empty" Rick Troth <TROTH@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> ------------- Rice ONCS VM Systems Support ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 90 15:29:04 MEZ From: Klaus Hahn <I3160901%DBSTU1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Subject: LISP wanted We're planning to buy a decent implementation of the Common Lisp standard for a 80386 machine. It should be able to accept asm- or C-subroutines as a means of making some functions somewhat faster and it would be nice if windows, debugger, CLOS and all these goodies were there. Any pointers are deeply welcome. Klaus Hahn Dept. of Psychology University of Braunschweig Spielmannstr. 19 D-3300 Braunschweig, West-Germany ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 90 19:39:08 GMT From: minnow!Paul.Zimmerman@cis.ohio-state.edu (Paul Zimmerman) Subject: Making command.com run different autoexec.bat upon bootup > It would be nice if there *were* a way to do what you are > suggesting... > > -- There IS a way to run something other than autoexec at bootup. My system calls "system.bat" when it boots! (I got sick of every program thinking IT knew how to design my autoexec for me when it installed itself...) It has to be done the hard way, though. Patch command.com manually with a different file name. This has got to be worked out for each version of DOS with NU or something similar... Paul ===================================================================== # WORLD HEADQUARTERS: T.P.N.V.S. (Twin Peaks Non-Viewers Society) # # Usenet - minnow.bgsu.edu Fidonet 1:234/25 # ===================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 90 16:59 EST From: Henry <STEWART%WILLIAMA.BITNET@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu> Subject: Novell vs PCSA Williams College is investigating possible methods of connecting administrative IBM PC's (XTs, ATs, PS/2s) with the Administrative VAX. We are most interested in a comparison of Novell's Netware for VMS with DEC's PCSA. Do you know of any literature that compares Novell's product with DEC's? Do you know of anyone that has completed such a comparison recently? Thanks, Henry Stewart HSTEWART@CC.WILLIAMS.EDU HSTEWART@WILLIAMS.BITNET (413) 597-2093 ------------------------------ Date: 14 May 90 13:16 -0700 From: Thomas Wong <twong@civil.ubc.ca> Subject: PCFile-DB version 5 dated May 5 We found a bug in PCFile-DB version 5. So we called ButtonWare. Their technical support said that they know about the bug and have fixed it in their latest release of PCFile-DB (shareware). The latest version is still PCFile-DB version 5, but it's dated May 5th. I've searched all over and can't find a copy of this shareware (dated May 5th that is). Has anyone seen and/or does anyone have a copy of this latest version? I would appreciate any info and/or address where I can ftp this file from. Thanks in advance. Thomas. /*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /* Thomas Y. K. Wong INTERNET: thomas_wong@civil.ubc.ca */ /* Civil Eng., U.B.C BITNET: thomas_wong%civil.ubc.ca@ubcmtsg */ /* Van, B.C., Canada UUCP: ...!van-bc!civil.ubc.ca!thomas_wong */ /*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 1990 11:31 MDT From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> Subject: UUPC 1.07j - uucp for MS-DOS - now available [--forwarded message--] From: UUPC/Extended Help Desk <help@kendra.kew.com> UUPC/extended 1.07 is a small but FREE package for exchanging mail with a system running or emulating a UNIX UUCP connection. Other packages which perform this function include FSUUCP, WAFFLE, and UFGATE, but they are larger and include USENET NEWS support, which UUPC/extended lacks; most of those are shareware, rather than freeware. The UUPC/extended package is now available as files UUPC07JU.ZIP (the executables, sample configuration files, and formatted documents) and UUPC07JS.ZIP (the source files and unformatted documents). The files were created with PKZIP 1.10; ARC format files are no longer distributed. The ZIP files are available on the following Internet sites via anonymous FTP: Site Directory wsmr-simtel20.army.mil pd2:<msdos.uucp> clutx.clarkson.edu /pub/uupc grape.ecs.clarkson.edu /f/uploads UUPC is no longer available from kendra via kermit. This access has been replaced by grape.ecs.clarkson, which is an OPUS BBS; it is 260/360 in the Nodelist, and be can reached at (315)268-6667, 8N1, 1200/2400 Baud, 24 hours. New users of the BBS should download 00readme from the root directory. The recent changes to UUPC/extended follow; this list is taken from the UUPCBUGS.DOC, included in UUPC07JU.ZIP. All questions and bug reports related to UUPC/extended should be directed to me at help@kendra.kew.com. Drew Derbyshire Bugs Fixed in Version 1.07j: 1. Specifying the -u (user mailbox) option after the -x (debug) option would reset the debug level. 2. A transmit error (timeout, presumably, but maybe a NAK too) on a short packet (like at the end of the file) will cause UUPC to hang and eventually give up. The code in gspack() handles short packets by inserting a length byte (actually an "unused space" byte) at the beginning of the packet. If the packet needs to be resent, it inserts the byte again! 3. If a duplicate entry exists in the PASSWD file, all other entries in the PASSWD file are skipped. Modified loadhost() to continue looping after a duplicate entry. 4. Output from loadhost() is incorrectly identified as coming from checkname(). 5. If a bad communication link exists between UUPC and the other host, file transfers appear to permanently hang. Reduced retry limit to 20 from 200. This doesn't fix the underlying problem, but at least reduces its impact. 6. If the "-b" (Blind carbon copy flag) is used on mail, the "-b" is handled as a local address and printed. Corrected lmail() to suppress the delivery of mail to user '-b', and corrected sendone() to suppress the header. 7. Aliases of systems in the local domain are not located by checkname(). Added check for full system name before searching for name without domain suffix. 8. If local system is not in the .UUCP domain, mail sent to it in the .UUCP domain is not delivered locally. Modified user_at_node() to use checkname() to determine if a system routed via the local system is in the routing table. 9. UUCP "From " lines are interspersed with RFC-822 header lines. Only one UUCP "From " line should exist, and it should be first. Modified rmail() to examine incoming mail for UUCP "From" line and replace it with Received: line. 10. Temporary file names are now more unique, and UUPC doesn't overwrite existing temporary files. Enhancements made in Version 1.07j: 1. Split mail.c into mail.c and maillib.c to improve compile and edit response times. 2. Created options= configuration line in configuration file, allowing boolean options: * askcc * autoedit * autoprint * dot * fromsep * pager * purge * save as listed or prefixed with "no" to set and unset options. This allowed deleting the 'fromsep=' option line from the configuration file. These are described in detail in the sample configuration file. NOTE: To make UUPC 1.07j behave the same as previous releases, the 'askcc' and 'autoprint' options must be set. Otherwise, Carbon copies wil not be prompted for, nor will messages automatically print. 3. Added the options (o) command to set and reset options allowed on the options line of the configuration file. Also added the 'O' command to display the current setting of options. 4. Added the "purge", option, which, when true, causes mailboxes to be automatically deleted when empty. 5. Added the "pager" option, which, when true, causes the meaning of the "p" and "t" (print/type with external pager) commands to be exchanged with the "P" and "T" (print/type with internal pager) commands. 6. Added the "save" configuration option to automatically save any read, answered, or forwarded message in "mbox" in the user's home directory when reading new incoming mail. 7. Added the "dot" configuration option to allow message input to terminated by a single period (.) followed by a carriage return. 8. Added the "askcc" configuration option to make prompting for carbon copies ("Cc:") optional. 9. Added the "autoedit" configuration option to bypass prompting for text in interactive line mode and go directly into the user's editor, if desired. This option is ignored if no editor is defined or the mail is not being sent from the console. Enhancements made in Version 1.07i: 1. Allow new keyword autoprint=NO in user configuration file to suppress the automatic printing of messages. If autoprint=NO is set, only one line message description is printed. Note: Changed to part of options line in 1.07j. 2. Added the Toggle Autoprint (A) command. Toggles between autoprint enabled and disabled. Note: Deleted in 1.07j, replaced by 'o autoprint' command. 3. Moved prototype for FOPEN() from mlib.h into lib.h, where it belongs. 4. Split router.c into hostable.c and router.c. 5. Allow ~filename in save (s) and write (w) commands to save into another user's mailbox directly without knowing the configuration directory name for unsaved mail. -- Drew Derbyshire <--- The guy sitting at the UUPC help desk. Disclaimer: I do not accept money or phone calls related to UUPC. All UUPC mail: help@kendra.kew.com U.S. Snail: 108 Decatur St, Apt 9 Personal mail: ahd@kendra.kew.com Arlington, MA 02714 [--end forwarded message--] Thanks, Drew! --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 ------------------------------ End of Info-IBMPC Digest V90 #93 ******************************** -------