Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) (10/24/89)
Info-Mac Digest Mon, 23 Oct 89 Volume 7 : Issue 184
Today's Topics:
Adobe Type Manager
Controlling Tape player from HyperCard
Conversion ?
Ehman Drives
Ehman Hard Disks
Ethernet fro mac plus
Free Market?
HyperCard and Audio CDs
LISTSERV PUNCH
More Excel 2.2/Moire CDEV problems
Password protection for LaserWriters?
PC emulation on Mac
Portrait Display and Macintosh SE
Problems with Mac Ethernet products....
Public Folder
RedRyder: automating Kermit downloads
The program Mac Drums and its instrument files
Think C HyperCard Interface Routines
THINK Pascal (Bug?)
Using IBM CGA monitor with MacII???
WindChooser 1.12
Windowshade Bug???
Your Info-Mac Moderators are Bill Lipa, Lance Nakata, and Jon Pugh.
The Info-Mac archives are available (by using FTP, account anonymous,
any password) in the info-mac directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu
[36.44.0.6]. Help files are in /info-mac/help. Indicies are in
/info-mac/help/recent-files.txt and /info-mac/help/all-files.txt.
Please send articles and binaries to info-mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
Send administrative mail to info-mac-request@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 23:28:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bob Sidebotham <bob+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Adobe Type Manager
My wife just purchased a copy of ATM (heavily discounted at $57). For
her purposes (DTP with Ready, Set, Go!), it's a rip off:
1. It only works with type 1 fonts. Right now, this means that most
third party fonts won't work.
2. If you have a Laser Printer, you won't be happy to hear that ADOBE
only provides three or four font families with ATM. If you want the rest
of the fonts you've already have in your printer, you'll have to fork
out another $199 (list).
3. It's too slow for her main application: she uses a page layout system
(RSG 4.?) and has a Radius accelerator with floating point support. Even
with a 512K font cache, the system's performance is terrible--too slow
to consider using it.
4. Finally, it doesn't work with RSG scaling. RSG lets you scale the
entire display to fit the screen, or to make it bigger for detail work.
I suspect that ATM is deciding which hints to use based on the selected
font size, rather than the effective font size after scaling. In any
event, this has two bad interactions when the display is scaled to
smaller than actual size. First, under these conditions, the fonts are
*unreadable* (they're quite readable if you disable ATM, however).
Second, "tracking" (and, I suppose, kerning) just doesn't work. If any
inter-character spacing is added, the characters are shipped past the
right margin of the text block and clipped!
I believe she's planning to send it back.
Bob Sidebotham
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 16:36 EDT
From: <PJORGENS%COLGATEU.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu> (Peter Jorgensen)
Subject: Controlling Tape player from HyperCard
Damian Roskill of UMass wonders about controlling a tape player from HyperCard.
This seems like a good opportunity for me to update people on my generic
HyperCard controller for electrical devices. (We plan to use it to controll
home vcrs.)
Design is complete and prototyping has begun. It looks like this controller
will be buildable for about $25 worth of parts. It is based on a touch-tone
decoder chip (from Radio Shack) and support circuitry. It responds to the
touch tones that HC can generate through the Macs sound port. It essentially
can control up to 16 switches, toggling them on and off at given tones.
I'll be posting complete information about its construction and use as soon as
we're done testing it.
Peter Jorgensen
Microcomputer specialist
Colgate University - Hamilton, NY 13346
AppleLink - U0523
BITNET - PJORGENSEN@COLGATEU
tel - 315-824-1000 ext 742
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 14:56:02 EDT
From: FALK%NORUNIT.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Subject: Conversion ?
Hello!
Anybody out there who have any knowledge about a conversion utility (DA)
that can do conversion between different physical units of measure
(eg Pascal to PSI, meters to feet, watts to Btu/hr etc)
There is a DA called CONVERTER in the archives which
converts currencies very nice. However, it has only 18 choices of conversion.
Regards
Christian
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 89 08:33:19 PLT
From: Paul Brians <HRC$04%WSUVM1.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Ehman Drives
In regard to Ehman hard drives: See the current issue of MacUser, in which
three inexpensive drives are compared. Ehman was rated noisy, somewhat
slower, but cheapest. I have had a 32 meg one since last spring and have
been pretty much satisfied. It's fast enough for me, although it could
be quieter. It has a six-foot cord, so you can place the drive away
>From your ears (though of course not in an airtight soundproof spot--like
all drives it needs to breathe).
I had a good deal of trouble talking to a knowledgeable person on their
toll-free line when I had trouble with a noisy fan; and when I sent back
the unit per their instructions, they returned it unfixed--even noisier--
and with the disk reinitialized! Fortunately, I had backed it up.
When I called again, Ehman apologized and sent me a new free fan with
directions for installation, which turned out to be fairly simple.
The new fan was much quieter, though still more noisy than--say--a Jasmine
or Crate drive. So their service record is mixed; but they seem to mean
well; and they are polite.
And then there's price. They seem to drop the price about $50 every two
months. I THINK somebody told me they just ordered the 32 meg drive for
$400. Jasmine is playing catch-up in the price wars. They used to be
the price leaders, but Ehman must be cutting into their business. BTW,
I also heard that Jasmine is no longer bundling SUM and other software
with their drives. True?
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 09:54:00 CDT
From: "I'll take a hurricane over an earthquake anyday"
Subject: Ehman Hard Disks
I just bought an Ehman drive for $499. It formats out at 46.7 Mb. Best
deal I could find and I did a lot of calling. Their documentation was
much better than I had expected, pretty thorough, and far superior to
my recently chrashed (and still unrepaired CMS drive). Ditto for the
utilities.
Of course I've only had it for a month or so, but so far I'm very happy.
Haven't had any need to test their tech support but their sales staff
was friendly and pointed out strengths and weaknesses of their drives
and strengths and weaknesses of the competition which was refreshing after
listening to a lot of competition bashing from other companies.
CMS on the other hand has been a pain. The drive I had from them died over
over two months ago and the replacement drive showed up full of unrecoverable
sector errors.
I'll gripe more thoroughly if anyone is interested.
Jim Bradley
Acknowledge-To: <ACSH@UHUPVM1>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 11:47:16 EDT
From: James Gallagher <TJP101%URIACC.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Ethernet fro mac plus
Someone asked about a SCSI ethernet box for the Mac Plus. If memory
serves me, Kinetics makes one -- I believe it is called 'EtherPort SCSI'.
James - tjp101@uriacc.uri.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 15:30 EDT
From: Matthew Wall <WALL%brandeis.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Free Market?
Legislation restricting choices made by universities regarding preferred
vendors is NOT ``free market.'' If Amiga [insert computer company of choice in
here] does not wish or is unable to match Apple's excellent on-campus programs,
discounts, and rapport with the needs of higher education, that's Amiga's
problem. Volume discounts and special programs have been a part of business
since ancient times; it's called competitive pricing. The business types
allegedly interested in the ``free market'' sound like schmoes just trying to
get an advantage through legislation, having failed to obtain it with better
products and prices.
I might add that Educational pricing is also a way that computer firms can
contribute to the general development of the educational system. We should be
encouraging such discounts to aid the educational system.
University folks, think how the volume of sales on your campus would drop if
students and faculty had to pay ``full'' price. Think of fewer public
resources, less access to computing. Computing technology on a campus is
something more than just another piece of the computing market.
Finally, there is an extremely practical side to limiting the number of vendors
at a particular site: the ability to standardize programs and support.
Businesses practice this sort of internal standardization, and I don't see why
universities should be prevented from doing this.
If you fall into one of these groups---(a) in higher education (b) do business
with higher education (c) received a higher education (d) received a lower
education (e) aspire to receive a higher or lower education (f) have friends or
family who would like to someday receive a higher or lower education---
write your legislators NOW telling them this bill is BOGUS.
PS Sorry about the ranting. It does seem like Apple attracts an unseemly amount
of legalistic loutishness, though, doesn't it?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matt Wall WALL@BRANDEIS (Bitnet) Who knows? Maybe my opinions *do*
Brandeis University Computing Services reflect those of my employer...
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 89 09:38:55 PDT
From: Paul Romaniuk <PROMAN%UVVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: HyperCard and Audio CDs
<damian@umass.bitnet> was enquiring about controlling audio CDs from
HyperCard. In addition to tools available from APDA and Voyager for
this purpose, there is a set of inexpensive XCMDs, and an "editor" stack
for developing interactive audio CD stacks available from a company
called Shoal Bay Software here in Victoria. Since I wrote these XCMDs
for the company, I won't say anymore, other than there are two demo
stacks in the Info-Mac archives (in the HyperCard directory) that you
can download to try out for yourself. The XCMDs were written
specifically to interface with the Apple CD ROM drivers, but you can use
the free demo programs to test them out with other CD ROM drives and
software drivers.
Paul Romaniuk,
University of Victoria
PROMAN@UVVM.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Wed Oct 18 13:23:12 1989
From: microsoft!t-jims@uunet.uu.net
Subject: LISTSERV PUNCH
Anyone have a dearchiver for the LISTSERV PUNCH format that sometimes gets
sent by the list processor at Rice? I was thinking of writing one myself
but if someone has already done it, why waste my time. Please send any info
to: uunet!microsoft!t-jims
Thanks
Jim Sather
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 11:45:43 CDT
From: mka@teller.cray.com (Mark Anderson)
Subject: More Excel 2.2/Moire CDEV problems
I too have had some problems with The Moire CDEV screensaver (I don't know what
version, though) and Microsoft Excel 2.2 running under System 6.0.3. However,
I don't think that the problem lies with the brand of Mac (madson@unix.sri.com
said it crashed his SE30. It also crashes my Mac Plus and a co-worker's IIcx).
Madson made a point (albeit somewhat sexist-- Excel boys?) that the problem
might be solved by a fix to Excel. I don't know. Whatever the case, I would
recommend that anyone who is planning to run Microsoft Excel think twice about
using a screensaver (or at least the Moire brand) in the background.
--Mark Anderson (mka@teller.cray.com)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 08:32 EDT
From: Josh Smith <JBS92@swat.swarthmore.edu>
Subject: Password protection for LaserWriters?
I'm a student at Swarthmore College, and recently picked up a GCC Business
Laser Printer for personal use. As this was a fairly substantial expense on my
part, I'd like to keep folks from just casually wandering by and printing out
fifteen copies of a ten page seminar paper on it. This is easy enough to
do in the physical sense (keep the door locked :); however, my dorm has talked
about setting up a LocalTalk network, which would basically give anyone on the
net access to the printer any time it's powered on and plugged in. I could just
yank the LocalTalk box or keep the printer off when not actually in use, but
I'm wary of pulling cables in and out when the printer is on, and would rather
abuse the power supply as little as possible. So, what I'm looking for is
something to password protect a networked printer, either when people try to
select it or when people try to use it... Anyone know of such a creature?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
| Reality: Josh Smith | "I swear, by my life |
|Internet: JBS92@CAMPUS.SWARTHMORE.EDU | and my love of it, |
| BITNet: JBS92@SWARTHMR.BITNET | that I will never live |
| CSNet: irilyth@cs.swarthmore.edu | for the sake of another man, |
| USMail: Josh Smith '92 | nor ask another to live for mine." |
| Swarthmore College | -Galt's Oath |
| Swarthmore, PA 19081 | |
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 09:54:33 EDT
From: Timothy Hamilton <thamilto@ccb.bbn.com>
Subject: PC emulation on Mac
Does anyone out there have experience using PC emulation on the MAC,
preferably Mac II series?
1) Does the Mac 286 hardware solution work? Will it run Lotus products,
especially Lotus Manuscript?
2) Does the Soft PC solution by Insignia work and how well?
3) Given that my problem is running Lotus Manuscript on a Mac II, are
there any other and better options out there besides these two (purchasing
another cheap clone PC is not a desireable option in this case)?
Any recommendations or referrals would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Tim Hamilton
INTERNET thamilto@bbn.com.apra
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 12:41:14 EDT
From: "Judith T. Frawley" <JFRAWLEY%SUVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Portrait Display and Macintosh SE
Is it possible to use the Apple Portrait Display with
a Macintosh SE? I have a client who purchased the Portrait
Display with video card and SE, and I need to give him
an answer.
Thank you.
Judy Frawley
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 14:33:40 EDT
From: dmg@lid.mitre.org (David Gursky)
Subject: Problems with Mac Ethernet products....
Does anyone out there have comments about bugs/problems they have had with
the various products used to connects Macs to Ethernet (be the product a Nubus
card or an SCSI device)?
David Gursky
Member of the Technical Staff
Special Projects Department, W-143
The MITRE Corporation
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 14:39 MDT
From: DSPhillips%UNCAMULT.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu
Subject: Public Folder
In the description of Public Folder by Michael Niehaus in a recent
Info-Mac entry, he suggests freely distributing this software (for file
transfers between Macs on AppleTalk networks). However, it should be
noted that the "About" message in Public Folder indicates that it is
free to licensed users of Claris products. Perhaps a Claris
representative could clarify whether they mind Public Folder being more
widely distributed.
Although Mr. Niehaus' comments about Public Folder operating in the
background are correct, it does not do so unobtrusively. During tests
involving file transfers between Mac Plusses, the server Mac crawled
almost to a halt during file transfers, with mouse cursor tracking being
disrupted, for example.
In spite of this and other limitations of Public Folder, I would like to
add my thanks to Claris for releasing this product to its customers.
Doug S. Phillips Telephone: (403) 221-8907 SuperComputing Services
BITNet: DSPhillips@UNCACDC The University of Calgary
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 89 22:26 CDT
From: "Sandro Corsi, Univ.of WI-Oshkosh" <CORSI@oshkosh.wisc.edu>
Subject: RedRyder: automating Kermit downloads
I bought RedRyder 10.3 to get files off a VAX running Kermit. I need to be
able to bring in several files at the time, preserving their separate
identity (thus, no VMS wildcards) and their filenames, and with
error-checking (thus, no 'capture text'-type transfers).
Thanx to RR's language I was able to whip up a handy procedure (see exhibit
A, enclosed), but on running it I was disappointed to see RR still put up
the same dialog box ("File Transfer Successful!") used for manual transfers
-- effectively defeating the idea of an automatic transfer of files, since
the dialog box must be manually acknowledged before the procedure will
resume its course.
I thought of possibly working around the problem by putting the remote
kermit in server mode, but RR doesn't support this option. I am pretty sure
I have read RR's docs thoroughly, yet I can't find a way to kill the dialog
box. Does anyone have workarounds -- or undocumented features -- to
suggest ?
======================== Exhibit A follows: =============================
(KermitDwnloader -- dwnloads files listed in dwnld.list to same-name ...)
(...files on the local machine)
(
COPYINTO @0,This procedure will use Kermit to download the files listed in:
COPYINTO @1,Newbury3380S:Comm.:RR 10.3:RedsLittleHelpers:dwnld.list
ERASE @2
(Turn on Special Status Bar)
@ ON
(Show variables)
SHOW@
(open text file with list of filenames to be dwnlded)
USEROPENI 1,Newbury3380S:Comm.:RR 10.3:RedsLittleHelpers:dwnld.list
IF ERROR QUIT
(start up Kermit on host)
TYPE kermitcM
PROMPT Kermit-32>
:TOP
(read a filename from the list)
USERREAD 1,A$
(on EOF, terminate procedure)
IF ERROR JUMPTO CLEANUP
:RETRY
PAUSE
TYPE send
TYPE A$
TYPE cM
(define var for dwnld directory on local machine)
COPYINTO D$,Newbury3380S:Comm.:RR 10.3:DwnloadedFiles:
(append filename)
CONCAT D$,A$
RECK D$
IF ERROR JUMPTO RETRY
TYPE cM
JUMPTO TOP
:CLEANUP
(close list file)
USERCLOSE 1
(then exit Kermit and logout)
PROMPT Kermit-32>
PAUSE
TYPE exitcM
PROMPT $
PAUSE
TYPE locM
PROMPT >
PAUSE
TYPE locM
===================== Thanx in advance for your help =====================
Sandro Corsi // Dept. of Art // Univ.of Wisconsin-Oshkosh // Osh.,WI 54901
<corsi@oshkoshw> // <corsi@oshkosh.wisc.edu>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 14:36:32 CDT
From: mka@teller.cray.com (Mark Anderson)
Subject: The program Mac Drums and its instrument files
I recently bought the program Mac Drums by Coda Software and was curious
about the file structure of the various instruments (snare, bass, cymbal, etc.)
However, I found that the Instrument Files have no resource fork-- simply
data. Thus, they can't be snd files or anything like that. Does anyone have
any experience with this or similar "Coda Digital Jam Series" software? (I
believe the program Jam Factory was at one time distributed by Coda and pro-
bably has the same instrument file structures.) I tried to read in the
instrument files with the SoundWav and Sound->snd 1.2e programs without
sucess. Ideally, a sound downloaded from, for example, the /info-mac/sound
directory could be converted with the proper software to an Instrument File.
Any ideas? Thanks.
--Mark Anderson
Cray Research, Inc.
(mka@teller.cray.com)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 10:21:27 EDT
From: jsmith@ctc.contel.com (James Smith)
Subject: Think C HyperCard Interface Routines
Does anyone know from where on the net I can down load the Think C
HyperCard interface routines ??
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 89 14:52:58 EDT
From: Juggler%UMass.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu
Subject: THINK Pascal (Bug?)
Hello,
I am a THINC Pascal and C user running on a 2.5 Meg SE under Multi
Finder. I have recently started getting an error reading something
like: "THE LIGHTSPEED PASCAL ZONE HAS BEEN DAMAGED. PROCEED WITH
CAUTION" followed by "YOUR ZONE HAS BEEN DAMAGED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION"
The error message section of the manual has no mention of these errors.
They mostly occur at the end of the run of my program. Does anyone have
any idea what may cause the problem and what it means to have a damaged
"zone" and what the consequences might be?
The second part of this problem is that if I leave Pascal (while in Multi
Finder) and I return, the Mac crashes and the menu bar flickers. I can
usually recover to the finder, but it is quite annoying.
Are these problems related, etc...?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
- Jack Carson
p.s. I haven't lost any data from these problems, but it's still a bummer.
Also, I've checked for viruses, etc...
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 15:22 EDT
From: <PJORGENS%COLGATEU.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu> (Peter Jorgensen)
Subject: Using IBM CGA monitor with MacII???
Hello,
We have a number of users who want to switch from older PCs to Mac IIs. They
have IBM CGA displays which they would like to use with the Mac. Does anyone
know of a card or cable that allows this to be done?
Thanks in Advance
Peter Jorgensen
Microcomputer specialist
Colgate University - Hamilton, NY 13346
AppleLink - U0523
BITNET - PJORGENSEN@COLGATEU
tel - 315-824-1000 ext 742
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 89 13:51:48 PDT
From: Mike_Dustan@cc.sfu.ca
Subject: WindChooser 1.12
Well, I downloaded this thing today and poked around with the
spiffy WDEFs and all. Nice, except for three things.
I shipped it over to my co-worker's Mac and had her reboot. She
couldn't. Somehow the System file had got shot full of holes and
the only way out was to restore from her backup (thank you
DiskFit!) After we went through the Control Panel and plugged
everything together, it seemed to work OK. It could use a little
stabilizing, methinks.
My main justification for keeping WindChooser was "Alex's
Shrinker", a real boon for "the rest of us" with small screens
but MultiFinder-sized memories. This turns out to backfire on me,
though; if I shrink a window with the shrink box, then move the
resulting mini-window about, when I expand the window again it's
displaced by the amount I moved the mini-window. Since
mini-windows get put near the lower left of the screen, the
tendency is to move them up and to the right. A moment's thought
will reveal where the title bar (and close, zoom and shrink
boxes) move to.
Third problem: I like to run Vaccine. WindChooser always has a
run-in with Vaccine every time I close it, whether I've changed a
WDEF or not. Furthermore, if I don't grant the request, my
machine hangs (no bomb, just hangs).
So, Alex and Pete, if you're listening, I eagerly await version
1.13!
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 09:47 EST
From: "Jeff Perkinson" <UNCJCP%UNC.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Windowshade Bug???
Howdy,
I just downloaded Windowshade 1.0 and I like what it does,
only when it is installed, all of my radio buttons, check boxes
and some standard buttons cease to function. What is going on
here? I first noticed the problem in the Monitors CDEV. I couldn't
switch from Color to Black & White/Grays. Is this a known problem?
Jeff Perkinson
------------------------------
End of Info-Mac Digest
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