Info-IBMPC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (08/04/89)
Info-IBMPC Digest Thu, 3 Aug 89 Volume 89 : Issue 76
Today's Editor:
Gregory Hicks - Chinhae Korea <COMFLEACT@Taegu-EMH1.army.mil>
Today's Topics:
dBaseIII+ File Format
Information on PKARC/PKXARC Request
LPR/LPQ utilities update
Status of wuarchive
Text Retrival for DOS
TIFF Routines
UFG_103.ARC - Mail and news/echos between FidoNet and UUCP
Z-248 Problems
Today's Queries:
Freemacs 1.5e problem
Help needed with Display Write -> WordStar conversion
Help with SWAP.ARC
Info on several PC's Requested
.GIF, .PIC, etc. files
Keyboard Reset
Expanded memory emulator from autoexec.bat?
Flashlink Comms software
Recording Nursing Notes, et al
pc interrupt problems
Turbo C 2.00 problem
Info-IBMPC Lending Library is available from: WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (see
file PD1:<MSDOS>FILES.IDX for listing of source files)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 89 14:57:19 CDT
From: Tom Cervenka <CTCT100%UICVMC.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu>
Subject: dBaseIII+ File Format
>From: <BRUCEH%UTKVX3.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
>
>Can anyone tell me what the layout for a dBase III+ database (.DBF) file
>looks like. I have figured out the field definitions, but the first 32
>bytes contain info like how many records, etc. I would like to know the
>layout of this area
"File Formats for Popular PC Software", Jeff Walden, Wiley Press, 1986, says,
dBase III Data:
Byte 0 - Version Number (?) , 03h, no .DBT(memo) file present, 83h, a .DBT
file is present.
Byte 1-3 - Last Update, YY, MM, DD
Byte 4-7 - Number of records in data file, 32-bit
Byte 8-9 - Length of the header structure
Byte 10-11 - Length of a record
Byte 12-31 - Reserved
Byte 32-n - Field Descriptors
I think this is the same in dbIII+, hope this helps.
Tom Cervenka - University of Illinois at Chicago
Internet: ctct100@uicvmc.aiss.uiuc.edu Bitnet: ctct100@uicvmc
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 89 08:55:55 EDT
From: "David M. Fellows" <FELLOWS@UNB.CA>
Subject: Freemacs 1.5e problem
Russell Nelson has sent me a copy of Freemacs 1.5f which corrects the
problem I described yesterday. I don't know if he will be uploading it to
the Simtel-20 archives or not.
David M. Fellows
School of Computer Science
University of New Brunswick
P. O. Box 4400
Fredericton, N. B., Canada
E3B 5A3
Telephone: 506 453 4566
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 89 09:01:44 edt
From: bvan@mvax.dcem.dnd.ca (Bryan E. Van Blaricom)
Subject: Information on PKARC/PKXARC Request
Phil Katz has distributed a complete description of the ZIP file
formats with his latest distributions of the PKZ file. The latest one
I've seen in the Simtel20 archives is pd1:<msdos.zip>pkz092.exe, though
there may be a later version by now. I don't know if the formats for .ARC
files are freely available now, after the SEA vx PKWARE thing.
Bryan E. Van Blaricom
DCEM 5
National Defence Headquarters
Ottawa, Canada
[-------------------------------]
[ bvan@mvax.dcem.dnd.ca ]
[-------------------------------]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 1989 05:38 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: LPR/LPQ utilities update
[--forwarded message--]
From: richard@CALVIN.SPP.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain)
I have uploaded the new version of my LPR/LPQ to SIMTEL20 as file
PD1:<MSDOS.PRINTER>LPR-LPQ2.ARC
LPR and LPQ are two utilities to work with the standard MSDOS background
printing program and enhance it's usefulness.
LPR lets you pipe standard input into a spool file, which is then passed
to the print queue maintained by the DOS print.com utility. File
arguments (with wildcards) to lpr are also passed to print. Calls to lpr
and print may be freely mixed. Added bonuses are a logging of the time of
each print job, and a rush option to insert a job at the head of the
queue. The spool files are created in a special spool directory, and
automatically deleted by a later call to lpr. LPR does not look at the
file in any way, except for the following:
- input files which are empty are not printed.
- a formfeed as the last character in the file is stripped, since PRINT
will supply one for you (at least my print does - DOS 4.01)
LPQ is a utility to display and manipulate the print queue. It displays
the files in the queue, each with a job number, file size, and the time of
entry (if they were inserted by LPR and not PRINT). In addition, it can
cancel individual files by job number, cancel all jobs files, or move a
given job to the head of the queue. It can also suspend print operations
(thus leaving the printer port free to other applications such as word
processors), and then restore the queue and resume printing later. The
percentage already printed is displayed for the file at the head of the
queue (this may not be very meaningful if you use a large printer buffer)
Of course, PRINT should be already resident and pointing at the correct
printer port before you run LPR. (It checks for this first).
The source was compiled with TurboC v2.0, tiny model and converted to
.com It has been tested on DOS v 3.1 and 4.01. It has not been tested
under 2.x but I think it should work. The multiplex interrupt 2F was
undocumented then but print.com was using it (according to Norton).
Files:
lpq.c source for lpq
lpq.com compiled lpq
lpq.doc documentation
lpr.c source for lpr
lpr.com compiled lpr
lpr.doc documentation
lpr.prj project file for Turbo C
readme this file
LPR and LPQ are copyright (1989) by Richard Brittain Permission is granted
to freely use and distribute these programs as long as my copyright notice
is not removed. These programs may not be sold.
All comments, suggestions etc. welcome at any of the addresses below.
Richard Brittain, School of Elect. Eng., Upson Hall
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
ARPA: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu
UUCP: {uunet,uw-beaver,rochester,cmcl2}!cornell!calvin!richard
---end forwarded message---
Thanks, Richard!
--Keith
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 89 6:56:17 CDT
From: david@wubios.WUstl.EDU (David J. Camp)
Subject: Status of wuarchive
Note that we are working on getting most of the simtel20 archives mirrored
on wuarchive. -David-
Bitnet: david@wubios.wustl ^ Mr. David J. Camp
Internet: david%wubios@wucs1.wustl.edu < * > Box 8067, Biostatistics
uucp: uunet!wucs1!wubios!david v 660 South Euclid
Washington University (314) 36-23635 Saint Louis, MO 63110
Forwarded message:
>Date: Wed, 26 Jul 89 14:32:31 CDT
>From: Chris Myers <chris@wugate>
>
To past, present and future users of wuarchive, the Washington University
Public Archive system...
WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING WITH WUARCHIVE?!
Those of you who have been NFS mounting the /archive partition from
wuarchive recently have almost certainly noticed a number of times when
your connection to wuarchive was hung. Because of the many crashes
suffered by wuarchive, if currently have the archives mounted via NFS you
should unmount and remount them. For this we apologize and offer the
following explanation and information:
Wuarchive is a DECstation 3100 with two Imprimis (CDC) Wren V 600MB disks
and an Exabyte 2GB tape drive. When the system was first set up it was
running a Field Test version of Ultrix 3.0, which was buggy. As it later
turned out, so were both of the disk drives.
Older models of the Imprimis Wren V drives (those with Firmware Revision
Level 5911) had a problem which only shows up on very fast machines. This
problems manifests itself by locking up the SCSI bus of the computer,
forcing a hardware reset and reboot. This happened every few days to
wuarchive... Then Ultrix 3.1 came out and it was 20% FASTER than 3.0 --
the crashes came more frequently, up to several daily. [note: the
firmware revision levels are not numbered sequentially, or even in any
particular order: 5911, 5466, 5946]
Both of the faulty drives have been replaced by our VERY helpful dealer
and everything is working without a hitch. We expect uptime for wuarchive
to be much closer to 100% now that everything has been fixed -- it is now
a production machine and we will try to announce in advance any [planned]
downtime.
For anyone who doesn't know about wuarchive, here is a bit of propaganda:
Wuarchive.wustl.edu contains a large archive of Public Domain software.
This service, which is offered at no cost by the Office of the Network
Coordinator, is available to any interested party. You may freely mount
the archives on your system via the Network File System (NFS) or access it
via Anonymous FTP.
Currently the archive contains over 390 Megabytes of software for Unix
systems, Macintosh and IBM PC compatible computers; there are also
hundreds of documents detailing various standards used throughout the
Internet, bug fixes for various operating systems, all of the packages
offered by the GNU project and complete source to the X11 windowing
system.
If your system supports NFS you may mount the archives by using a command
similar to the one below:
# mount wuarchive:/archive /archive
To access the archives via FTP, the username is 'anonymous' and the
password is 'guest'.
Chris Myers
Software Engineer
Office of the Network Coordinator
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 89 15:00:05 CDT
From: Tom Cervenka <CTCT100%UICVMC.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu>
Subject: Text Retrival for DOS
>Does anyone know of any text retrieval packages that are available under
>DOS?
I use, "ZyINDEX", by ZyLAB Corp, 3105-T North Frontage Road, Arlington
Heights,IL 60004, 312-632-1100.
They call it a "lexical database". I call it text retrieval. And it is
fast. It'll take a variety of wp formats, Wordperfect, Word, DW4, to name
a few and even straight ASCII. You first run a program to add the document
to an index. You don't have to define the keywords, it just uses
everthing in the document except "noise" words. After this, you can
retrieve any document by using any keywords with combination of boolean
logic. A list of all docs is displayed and you can move directly to the
text that matched. I don't think it has any hooks into databases but I
highly recommend that you check it out anyway.
Tom Cervenka - University of Illinois at Chicago
Internet: ctct100@uicvmc.aiss.uiuc.edu Bitnet: ctct100@uicvmc
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 89 15:01:53 CDT
From: Tom Cervenka <CTCT100%UICVMC.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu>
Subject: TIFF Routines
> Does any have/know of any C or Pascal routines that will import TIFF
>and/or PCX image formats? We have a professor here who wants to scan
>images, then manipulate them with his own code. Any suggestions and/or
>hints would be appreciated.
Don't know about PCX, but you can get TIFF routines from DEST Corp, 1201
Cadillac Court, Milpitas, CA 95035, 408-946-7100. They call it the TACS
(TIFF ACCESS/CREATE SYSTEM?) and it's free. Microsoft is supposed to have
this too. The TIFF 4.0 spec is also on the SIMTEL archives in
pd:<msdos.graphics>tiff-40.arc
Tom Cervenka - University of Illinois at Chicago
Internet: ctct100@uicvmc.aiss.uiuc.edu Bitnet: ctct100@uicvmc
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1989 14:25 MDT
From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: UFG_103.ARC - Mail and news/echos between FidoNet and UUCP
[--forwarded message--]
From: pozar@vangogh.Berkeley.EDU (Tim Pozar)
I have uploaded UFGate to SIMTEL20.
Directory pd1:<msdos.fido>
UFG_103.ARC Mail & news/echos between FidoNet and UUCP
Tim
Thanks, Tim! We've been wanting for some time to add this to the
archives. There have been many requests for it.
--Keith Petersen
Maintainer of SIMTEL20's CP/M, MSDOS, and MISC archives
Internet: w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil [26.2.0.74]
Uucp: {ames,decwrl,harvard,rutgers,ucbvax,uunet}!wsmr-simtel20.army.mil!w8sdz
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 23:02:25 GMT
From: MAT430%DE0HRZ1A.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Z-248 Problems
> In Info-IBMPC Digest V89 #69 Gregory Hicks reports problems with a
> freshly low-level formatted hard disk.
A few weeks ago I had similar problems with a logical drive D. The reason
was simply that I had forgotten to 'high-level' format (i.e. DOS format)
the drive. Just an idea ...
Regards,
Eberhard Scherzler Bitnet: MAT430@DE0HRZ1A
Universitaet Essen
D-4300 Essen 1
West-Germany
[That's not the problem here. We've low-level, as well as high level,
formatted the disk. As soon as we make a directory, the ">" shows up when
we CD to it. We're trying to locate a spare controller and a drive in an
attempt to isolate the problem. It's not a 'contaminated' system. We
used new, unopened DOS disks in an attempt to ensure there were no virus'
present... gph]
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jul 89 21:33:00 GMT-10:00
From: "603 MILITARY AIR SUPPORT GROUP" <603masg@hickam-emh.arpa>
Subject: Help needed with Display Write -> WordStar conversion
I am posting this for someone who does not have access to the net.
He needs to convert Display Write files to Wordstar, if possible, or
ASCII. The files are on regular 5 1/4" MS-DOS formatted disks.
Does anyone out there know of a program that can do this for him? Any
help would be greatly appreciated.
James Linscheid
<603MASG@Hickam-EMH.AF.MIL>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 89 19:49 CDT
From: Jerry Katz at Saint Louis University <KATZJA%SLUVCA.SLU.EDU@icsa.rice.edu>
Subject: Help with SWAP.ARC
I'm trying to swap Tornado Notes out of RAM to EEMS memory on a Longshine
EEMS board (it works fine with every other program- who cares if it a
nameless clone?). I found SWAP.ARC on <MSDOS.sysutl>, which appears to
be the program the Tornado Notes publisher recommends. When using it, it
tells me there is less than 16K available to swap (the memory available
and program load looks like:
PSP blks bytes owner command line hooked vectors
----- ---- ----- -------- ------------------- ----------------
0008 1 38032 config
11CA 3 3280 command 2E
12A2 2 6528 MIRROR C: D: /tC /tD 25 26
143D 2 6832 PC-CACHE /IA /IB /SIZEXP=... 67
15EA 2 9056 PCSHELL /r
1822 2 65312 BACKTALK /1 08 13 28 FE
2816 2 41712 DESKTOP /R/CS 09 1C 21
3246 2 1568 MARK
32AA 2 77088 TN N/A 16
4582 3 144512 PROCOMM 0C
68CE 2 3200 COMMAND
6998 2 3200 COMMAND 22 24
6A63 2 219600 free
block bytes (Expanded Memory)
----- ------
0 917504
1 163840
free 491520
total 1572864
This makes me believe the program is having trouble dealing with my clone
board, or EEMS memory (it was designed for EMS 3.2).
Does anyone have experience with the SWAP program? Is there another
version or another program which will swap RAM based TSRs up into EEMS
memory?
Please respond directly to me. If there is any interest, I will be glad
to summarize and post the results.
Thanks in advance.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 89 12:12 EDT
From: <HGOLDSTE%UDCVAX.BITNET@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu>
Subject: Info on several PC's
1) Anyone with info as to the compatibility of the Commodore PC40 III
which is supposed to be AT compatible (and for $1800 w/40meg,VGA seems
like a good deal) ... ?
2) Anyone with experience with GATEWAY 2000, an IOWA company that
advertises alot and has, for example, a 386 20mz system w/VGA,80meg 28ms
drive, 5 1/4+ 3 1/2 floppies, 4 meg RAM for $3500 ... any experience with
any of their systems would be appreciated ...
Thank You.
Harold Goldstein
METS Fan/Strawberry hater
University of the District of Columbia
JNET%"HGOLDSTE@UDCVAX"
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 14:05:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Duchowski <jd3a+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: .GIF, .PIC, etc. files
Hello,
I was wondering if anyone could shed some more light on the various
formats of graphic files, such as .PIC, .GIF, etc. I was attempting to do
the following:
1. Screen capture a .GIF display generated by CSHOW7 with the capture
utility of PC PAINT. This generated a .PIC file.
2. Read in the above .PIC file into Lotus Freelance to generate a
PostScript output.
However, it turned out that .PIC files generated by PC PAINT are quite
dif- ferent from the .PIC files generated by the Lotus family (?). So, I
was won- dering if there was a way to translate .GIF images into
PostScript by some other means ? This brought me to a question of the
formats of graphic files in general. I apologize if I am repeating a topic
which has probably been discussed before, but I found only fairly
descriptive explanation of this topic in PC Magazine without many
technical details.
Thanks for any hits/comments and suggestions.
Sincerely,
John Duchowski
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 89 22:21 EDT
From: <PG_IBMREP%UNHH.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Subject: Keyboard Reset
I was just wondering if anyone knows of a program which can reset
the keyboard on an IBM pc XT or AT. I would like to reset it the same as
a ctrl alt delete does.... Please let me know if anyone has anything
thanks.... Peter P. Geremia
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 89 17:46
From: <REDDINGT%DM0MPB51.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: Expanded memory emulator from autoexec.bat?
I am running windows/386 some of the time on a Compaq 386/20e. This
version of windows has its own LIM4 emulator. Unfortunately this is not
compatible with the CEMM.SYS program delivered with Compaq DOS 3.31. Is
there any way of loading a LIM4 emulator at the DOS level (and removing it
again)? I use several other programs that I prefer to run without
windows/386. The solution of setting up two config.sys files, renaming and
rebooting is somewhat inelegant. Any info would be appreciated.
Martin Reddington
Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry
Dept. of Neuromorphology
8033 Martinsried
F.R.Germany
------------------------------
Date: 19 Jul 89 20:01:50 GMT
From: rutgers!csnz.co.nz!paul@beaver.cs.washington.edu
Subject: Flashlink Comms software
A local BBS recently came up with a little gem of a comms package for
MS-DOS, called Flashlink. Unfortunately it came with no indication of its
legal status re shareware, copyright, PD etc.
I'd like to hear from anyone who knows if this package is commercial. The
software is a simple Procomm-like comms package, with one major advantage
-- MNP emulation to level 5 (although I only got level 4 to work). It
also does file transfer too, e.g. Ymodem-G.
It seems that there is another earlier version of it floating around
called MTE. Both packages seem to have been written by a company called
Magicsoft. Flashlink seems to have been marketed by someone called
Cardinal. Any ideas?
echo "thanks" >/dev/future
Paul Gillingwater, Computer Sciences of New Zealand Limited
Bang: ..!uunet!dsiramd!csnz!paul Domain: paul@csnz.co.nz
Call Magic Tower BBS V21/23/22/22bis 24 hrs +0064 4 767 326
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 89 13:28:33 CDT
From: "Rod Custer" <C478074%UMCVMB.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Subject: Recording Nursing Notes, et al
We are looking for some simple pc software for recording nursing notes at
the medical school. We need to record basic patient data as well as
nursing and medical diagnostic information. Ideally it would be great to
do so in a 1/2 page format. Is anybody aware of a simple pc database
program that our nurses could use on this combination of data? We realize
that it may not be appropriate to request the names of companies or
specific packages. If not we would appreciate being at least pointed in
the right direction.
Thank you for your assistance.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 12:13 H
From: <WONGCH%NUSDISCS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> (WONG CHEE HENG)
Subject: pc interrupt problems
I am having the following problem in programming interrupt on a PC AT running
MS-DOS :
I have a interrupt handler which handles interrupt from com 1. The
interrrupt handler needs to do file writing using the Microsoft C 5.1
fwrite() function, and in the 'fore ground', i.e. the main program may do
file read/write also. The problems are:
1. what if while the fore ground is doing file access (r/w), and
interrupted by the com1 interrupt which initiates another file access
(r/w) would this causes problem ? OR there is no problem ? s.t. the
interrupt handler will finish its file access and return to the
foreground, and then the foreground program continues ?
2. The fore ground program may also doing a DMA transfer from a 3-com 3
plus card to the main memory. Since file access involved DMA (is that
right ?), will this conflict the the DMA access in the interrupt handler
if the DMA routine in fore ground is interrupted ?
I realy need some expert out there to comment on this problem and suggest
some possible solution to. Many thanks in advance.
from: WONG CHEE HENG, National University of Singapore
BITNET address: wongch@nusdiscs
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 89 11:03:17 EDT
From: "Marc E. Beland UPEI C.C." <BELAND@UPEI.CA>
Subject: Turbo C 2.00 problem
I have a recurring run-time error that I hope someone has found at one
time and has managed to conquer. The code in question is a fragment I
cribbed from this list a while back: the C "milli-second" timer routine.
If I compile it with the Tiny Memory Model Option and execute it, I get a
Stack Overflow! error, and it's --- RESET TIME!
The .EXE version, and the .COM version (produced by EXE2BIN) are both the
same in this regard. I have tried it with every version of DOS (3.1x -
3.3x) I could get my hands on, and with empty AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
files. The machine is a no-name XT clone, 640K, ATI EGA.
Now for the kicker: the two:trivial solutions I have found so far are to
1) remove the setvect() function (which seems to be the source of the
problem), and of course, invalidates the routine, or 2) compile the code
using the Small (or other) Memory Model, which would eliminate the ability
to have the code to that TSR thing.
*ANY* help in the form of pointers (excuse the pun), ideas, suggestions,
hints, fixes, or patches would be greatfully appreciated. You can reply to
the LIST, or direct to me.
Thank you!!
Marc E. Beland
BELAND@UPEI.CA
------------------------------
End of Info-IBMPC Digest
************************