Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) (09/28/89)
Info-Mac Digest Wed, 27 Sep 89 Volume 7 : Issue 171
Today's Topics:
Apple's announcements today...
A Slow/Non-Starting HD40 Caused By Large System File.
BibTeX & MetaFont
Converting from Think C 3 to Version 4
Educational software
Finder windows (2 msgs)
Frame Grabbers
Info-Mac Digest V7 #126
Info-Mac Digest V7 #168
KanjiTalk, Japaneese Word Processors, Etc...
Macintosh II Problem
Mac SE/30 External Drive Cases
PLUS Runtime Version Needed
QDV files
Superdrive Problems w/Mac II
Temporary fix for overheating 80mb Quantum internals.
TeXtures hyphenation table
windows
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: Sat, 23 Sep 89 9:33:35 PDT
From: cpdaux!steve@apple.com (Steve Lemke)
Subject: Apple's announcements today...
>Consider the following. The IIci wil retail for about $1,500 more than the
>IIcx. Well, for that $1,500, I can get a video card and a Dove Accelerator
>(does the Marathon run on the IIcx? If not, will Dove put out a Marathon that
>does?) for a IIcx with a 32Mhz 030. Now if a 25Mhz offers a 60% increase in
>speed over a 16Mhz 030, a 32Mhz 030 ought to offer about 40% increase over a
>25Mhz platform.
Uh, well, not exactly. The IIci was REDESIGNED to take advantage of the 25Mhz
clock speed. That is *NOT* the same as jamming a 25Mhz processor into a Mac II
(or IIx, or IIcx). Also, I'm not sure how you figured a 32Mhz offers a 40%
increase from 25Mhz. Anyway, if Apple does a 32Mhz, then it probably will
offer the proper ratio of speed improvement. But, I would be willing to bet
that a IIci would be faster than a IIx (or cx) with a 32Mhz accelerator.
Something to keep in mind, though, from what I've seen so far, is that although
the on-board video is nice and cost-reducing, if you want top performance out
of the machine, buy a video board anyway. The on-board runs slower than a
card, and reserves part of your SYSTEM RAM for screen memory. How much it
uses depends on what video mode you're using. On a 1mb or 2mb machine, it
hurts. On a 4+ mb machine it might not matter that much, but the speed diff.
is slightly noticeable.
>Also consider this. The Portable announced today is equipped with only a
>68000 and 1M, expandable to 2M. System 7.0 will run on this, barely, and you
>will not have the advantage of virtual memory. Sure, there is a slot for
>accelerators, but when you consider that you need a CMOS 68030 or 68852 in the
>slot, you understand that accelerator will be very expensive.
The portable is very energy conscious, and therefore (as you mentioned) needs
a CMOS processor. According to an Apple person at the recent Seybold DTP
conference in SF, there does not exist a CMOS version of the 020 or 030 yet,
and therefore they had to stick with the 68000. Almost everything in the
portable is designed with power conservation in mind - the hard drive, the
specs for add-in boards, the display, and the fact that the machine goes into
a sleep (1 (one) Mhz) mode when you haven't used it for a while. This, in
addition to their choice of battery, lets you use it for alonger period of
time, and allows them to have a DA that tells you how much battery time is
left. The best part of the whole thing is the screen. The active matrix
screen is fantastic - take a loot at it, and then look at the "normal" LCD
screens found on other portables. If you've ever seen "Shufflepuck" on the
Mac, you'd probably expect it to look really bad (with the fast motion of
the puck flying around the screen), but it's great! The only think to say
is - take a look at it. If I had the choice of lugging my Mac II around
with me, lugging the portable Mac around with me, or going Mac-less, I'd
definitely choose the portable - it really is a cool machine.
----- Steve Lemke ------------------- "MS-DOS (OS/2, etc.) - just say no!"
----- Internet: cpdaux!steve@apple.com GEnie: LEMKE
----- Or try: apple!cpdaux!steve CompuServe: 73627,570
----- Quote: "What'd I go to college for?" "You had fun, didn't you?"
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 89 22:29 CDT
From: "Sandro Corsi, Univ.of WI-Oshkosh" <CORSI@oshkosh.wisc.edu>
Subject: A Slow/Non-Starting HD40 Caused By Large System File.
Steve Wall <smwall@pica.army.mil> writes:
> (...) Lo and behold, I found that his copy of the file SYSTEM had grown
> to 8.5Mb. I then scanned his HD40 with my copy of Disinfectant 1.2, but it
> didn't find any viruses. (...)
I had a somewhat similar experience with MacWrite (v.5) some time ago: as I
was backing up soY]3iles, I accidentally dragged the application icon
to a floppy -- to my surprise, the Mac came back asking for an inordinate
amount of disk space. As in Steve's case, no obvious viruses showed up --
but, unlike him, I wasn't experiencing any inconveniences, so I just
chucked the bloated MacWrite (all 5.8 MBytes of it, if I remember
correctly), and replaced it with a fresh copy. So far the problem has not
occurred again -- although I don't really check on a regular basis (I've
got enough bleeding problems on our network to worry about things that
don't really hurt).
I just wonder what might cause this sudden proliferation... can we start
feeding news of "computer cancer" to the yellow press fascinated with
electronic diseases ?
Sandro Corsi // Dept. of Art // Univ.of Wisconsin-Oshkosh // Osh.,WI 54901
<corsi@oshkoshw> // <corsi@oshkosh.wisc.edu>
[Moderator's Note: This happened to me too. Anyone got a clue? -- Jon]
------------------------------
Date: 22 Sep 89 22:44:00 WET
From: "Stalder D S" <dstalder@tafs.mitre.org>
Subject: BibTeX & MetaFont
Does anyone know of any non-commercial (share/free/xxx-ware) editions of
BibTeX or MetaFont for the mac?? If so, please send me mail at the address
below. If not, I will probably write a MetaFont from the web2c'd sources.
--
Torin/Darren Stalder/Wolf
Blessed Internet: dstalder@mwunix.mitre.org
Be! Bitnet: dstalder@gmuvax
ATTnet: 1-703-883-5747
Hail uucp: multiverse!uunet!pyrdc!gmu90x!dstalder
Eris! Snail: PO Box 405/Fairfax, VA 22030/USA
DISCLAIMER: I have enough problems getting credit what I do do for
work, much less this stuff.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 89 13:11 EST
From: ELIOT@cs.umass.edu
Subject: Converting from Think C 3 to Version 4
I just got my 4.0 upgrade, and have converting a large existing program
to run with the new compiler and libraries. Unfortunately, there are
many changes to the libraries, and no documentation of the changes.
As best I can remember, here are the problems I ran into.
(1) STDIO.h has been split up into stdio and stdlib.h. This is likely
to show up as prototype not found or undefined symbol errors in the
compiler.
(2) The clalloc and mlalloc functions are no longer defined. calloc and
malloc now (apparently) have no 32K size limitations, so the other
functions are not needed.
(3) Many of the unix functions have been removed. For example, setmem,
and all stpXXX functions are gone. I found equivelents for everything
I needed quickly, but you have to be very careful about argument
order. For example setmem(addr, n, chr) is replaced by
memset(addr, chr, n). A macro or a GREP replacement can easilly
fix this.
(4) The stcXXX functions are gone. Many of these convert from numbers
to strings and back. Converting from strings to numbers can be done
with sscanf or more cheaply with atoi. Converting from numbers to
strings seems to require sprintf now. I have not found any direct
function call to do this.
(5) Stdio_Macinit and Click_on are both gone, and good ridance.
The console "feature" is now separated from the standard ANSI libraries,
(sort of) so you don't have to do anything explicitly to get rid of this
crock.
(6) When fopen is called to open a file in WRITE mode instead of APPEND
mode it resets the file creator and type to ????. The solution I have
used for this is to REMOVE the file first, then use the Mac CREATE trap
to give it the right signature, and then open it in APPEND mode.
It would be better if there were a way to specify the signatures for
fopen to use. A pair of global variables would do the trick, without
violating mac or ansi standards.
long New_File_Creator = '????';
long New_File_Type = '????';
Should be used by fopen to set the signature. These variables can
be set before calling fopen to get some other value.
(7) Type names can no longer be used as formal parameters when the "old" style
function definition is used. I.e. the following will not work:
typedef int foo;
void MyFunc(foo)
foo *foo;
{...}
But this will:
void MyFunc(foo *foo)
{...}
(8) The printf %p directive has changed. Instead of printing a pascal string,
it prints a pointer as a hexidecimal value. Use %#s to print a pascal string
instead.
There are probably more differences that I havn't noticed. In general Think C
4.0 is very good, and I welcome the object oriented programming facilities
even without yet trying them. However, I think Symantec should have included
a list of these changes. It took me much of an afternoon to find all of these
problems. (It would have taken most of a week to find all of them without
the source code debugger!)
Chris Eliot
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 13:01:55 MET
From: Ger Groothuijsen <U070022%HNYKUN11.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Educational software
On Mon, 25 Sep 89 11:58:53 BST <Fergus_Doherty@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK> said:
>Hello, Does anyone out there know of listings/suppliers of good
>educational software for the Mac suitable for Medical and
>Biochemistry university students. European or U.S. origin.
>Fergus Doherty, Nottingham Univ., Biochemistry Dept.
Send a message (directly or by mail) to
OASIS@ECNCDC
For instance (VM/CMS):
TELL OASIS at ECNCDC INFO
Or the same command in the body of a mail.
OASIS contains a catalog of microcomputer software suited for use in
higher education. Quite interesting stuff!
greetings, Ger Groothuijsen
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 9:13:28 PDT
From: cpdaux!steve@apple.com (Steve Lemke)
Subject: Finder windows
>I've got an SE/30 with 5Mb of RAM. Why can't I have more
>than 12 windows open at once? I can't believe this is actually
>hard-coded somewhere so could someone tell me how to increase the
>number of windows the Finder will let me have open simultaneously?
You need to get a program called "Layout", probably available via ftp, or
on any of the online systems. If all else fails, I can mail it to you.
It will let you change the max. windows open, as well as forcing icons to
be placed in their proper "grid" positions (like if you drag, it snaps the
icon to the icon grid). It will also let you add a feature where if you
double-click the title bar of a window then the "parent" window opens up
(or comes to the top if already open). You can also change the normal icon
spacing so that icons don't have to be all on the same horizontal - helpful
if you have long names and they overwrite each other. Very useful program!
Basically it is a friendly interface to the LAYO resource in the finder. If
you prefer, you can also just use ResEdit to tweak these various parameters
in the LAYO resource, but I prefer to use the Layout program.
--
----- Steve Lemke ------------------- "MS-DOS (OS/2, etc.) - just say no!"
----- Internet: cpdaux!steve@apple.com GEnie: LEMKE
----- Or try: apple!cpdaux!steve CompuServe: 73627,570
----- Quote: "What'd I go to college for?" "You had fun, didn't you?"
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 8:25:46 EDT
From: Kenneth Sussmann (PBMA) <sussmann@pica.army.mil>
Subject: Finder windows
> I've got an SE/30 with 5Mb of RAM. Why can't I have more
> than 12 windows open at once? I can't believe this is actually
> hard-coded somewhere so could someone tell me how to increase the
> number of windows the Finder will let me have open simultaneously?
>
Use Resedit to open the LAYO resource in the Finder.
The last entry is for the maximum number of windows
that can be opened. It's normally set at 13. Just
remember that if you increase the number of windows to
increase the memory partition size for the Finder if
you're running under Multifinder or else you'll run out
of memory.
Ken
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 15:11 CST
From: RINEWALT%TCUAVMS.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu
Subject: Frame Grabbers
I am trying to help a colleague in Biology who wants to do image processing.
He is on the verge of buying a 386 machine and a frame grabber and software.
Can anyone recommend a frame grabber and software for the Mac. I would like
to make a convincing argument for that approach.
Dick Rinewalt Computer Science Dept Texas Christian University
RINEWALT@TCUAVMS
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 10:38 U
From: TCHAO%TWNCTU01.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu
Subject: Info-Mac Digest V7 #126
Dear Mac Fellows:
Is there a LaTex implementation for Macs? Where can I get it?
Thanks!
T Steve Chao
National Chiao-Tung University
Communications Engineering Department
75 Po-Ai Street
Hsinchu, Taiwan 30039
E-mail: tchao@twnctu01.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 13:11:06 EDT
From: Sari <3XMQGAA%CMUVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Info-Mac Digest V7 #168
I have a couple of questions:
1) I notice a lot of screen jitter on my Mac SE. A Mac Expert told me that my p
ower supply is dying. My mac is only 1.5 years old, though. I do not want to p
ay $200 for a new power supply. Any advice?
2) I have an ImageWriter// w/ a color ribbon. How can I print color w/Illustrat
or '88 and Freehand?
Acknowledge-To: <3XMQGAA@CMUVM>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 21:51 CDT
From: GREENY <MISS026%ECNCDC.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: KanjiTalk, Japaneese Word Processors, Etc...
Hi all....
I am sending this message out because my brother is currently taking Japaneese
at the university he attends, and is tired of writing out all of the japaneese
characters when he has a mac close at hand...
I, on the other hand, have heard of Kanjitalk and other japaneese items for
the mac but have never seen any of them up close. My brother currently has
a Mac 512Ke (used to be mine...) which we are planning on upgrading to a
Mac Plus level with one of the new recent upgrades that are out...and are
wondering what we would have to get him so that he could type his japaneese
characters instead of writing them....
Any help would be appreciated.....
Bye for now but not for long...
Greeny
BITNET: MISS026@ECNCDC
Internet: MISS026%ECNCDC.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
GEnie: Greeny
Macnet: Greeny
Disclaimer: #include<std.h>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 10:17:44 PDT
From: shahryar@sutro.sfsu.edu (Shahryar G. Hashemi)
Subject: Macintosh II Problem
Hi there,
About a few weeks ago I sent a message to INFO-MAC
regarding my problem with a Macintosh II that we have. At that
time the computer would be unable to boot for no aparent reason
>From the HD and I would have to zap the PRAM.
Right now the problem has become even worse. The
computer now doesn't even recognize that a SCSI HD exists
in the Macintosh. Unfortunately our technical support people here
at SFSU have not come up to fix the computer {for about 2 weeks}.
I would like to know if you know of any way I can fix the
computer without actually OPENing the computer.
Thanks,
Shahryar Ghazneini Hashemi
AppleShare Network Manager
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 10:17:51 EDT
From: jonathan@starbase.mitre.org (Jonathan Leblang)
Subject: Mac SE/30 External Drive Cases
I recently upgraded 18 Mac SE (dual drive) to Mac SE/30s. The SE/30 only has
one internal connector for an internal floppy drive, and so I am left with
18 extra floppy drives, and 18 users who are unhappy about loosing their extra
drive.
Does anyone know of a company that sells the cases and cables necessary for me
to make my extra drives into external disk drives? Any help would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks
jonathan
Jonathan A. Leblang jonathan@mitre.org
The MITRE Corporation 7525 Colshire Drive McLean VA 22102
703 883 5761
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 11:45 EDT
From: Christian Koch <FKOCH@ocvaxa.oberlin.edu>
Subject: PLUS Runtime Version Needed
I have just bought a copy of PLUS (the new SuperCard competition) and discover
that the runtime version of PLUS, which makes it possible to run a stack
without PLUS itself, is not included with the product as it is sold, but it is
available "free" (except for a $3.00 charge for duplication) from the vendor.
Unfortunately, the vendor says to allow several weeks for delivery -- no rush
orders possible. The vendor encourages persons to post this runtime version on
bulletin boards, but I haven't found it yet. Packaging a product with an
important component missing strikes me as an unfriendly way to go about winning
friends.
Since I have an urgent need to use the runtime version of PLUS right away,
I'm wondering if anyone might be able to put me in touch with someone or some
bulletin board that has this runtime version? Maybe even the PLUS vendors
might even post it themselves as friendly gesture.
Thanks!
Chris Koch
Computer Science
Oberlin College
Bitnet: fkoch@oberlin
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 11:09:20 CDT
From: Paul Fons <FONS@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: QDV files
In response to David Perry's question about QDV file display. I note that
such an option exists in Giffer (a gif display utility). A copy is located
on Sumex. I note this from the option "open QDV file" under the file menu as
I have no idea what a QDV file is. What is it?
Paul Fons
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 9:46:31 PDT
From: cpdaux!steve@apple.com (Steve Lemke)
Subject: Superdrive Problems w/Mac II
>I just received my Superdrive and installed it in my Mac II. The only problem
>is that it won't read DOS discs (from the desktop using DOS Mounter) or read
>or format DOS or HD discs from AFE. The drive works fine on a IIcx, but the
>Superdrive from the IIcx has the same problems on my II.
You _DID_ replace the IWM chip and the ROMs in your Mac II, didn't you? That
is part of the "official" upgrade. It is _not_ sufficient to just replace
the drive, unfortunately. That would explain why the SuperDrive works on a
IIcx (which is "SuperDrive compatible") but why the IIcx drive doesn't work on
your machine.
----- Steve Lemke ------------------- "MS-DOS (OS/2, etc.) - just say no!"
----- Internet: cpdaux!steve@apple.com GEnie: LEMKE
----- Or try: apple!cpdaux!steve CompuServe: 73627,570
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 89 12:11 EDT
From: <DREWGD%VTCC1.BITNET@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu>
Subject: Temporary fix for overheating 80mb Quantum internals.
I found a temporary fix for an overheating 80mb Quantum 5.25 internal
hard drive in a MacII. It sounds silly, and looks ugly, but taping small
pieces of paper over some of the cooling vents in to redirect most of the
cooling airflow over the drive may keep it running. I found that the most
effective vents to block were the front half of the vents on the right side
of the box and about half of the top vents (over the nubus slots). This
solution kept my Quantum running for about two months until Apple could
provide a replacement. During this period, if the peices of paper were
removed, the drive would fail (shut down) within 10 minutes. If the paper
was in place, the drive ran fine.
This was done way back in '87, so I don't know if this fix is still current.
The MacII I was using was a "bare bones" machine - 2mb memory and no extra
nu-bus cards - so the cooling requirements were minimal. I would imagine that
this solution could be very bad on a "full" MacII - the restriction of cooling
patterns could cause other things to overheat. I only present this solution
as a possible way to download that vital data which was on the drive when it
first crashed. I am not sure, but this solution may even violate Apple's
warrenty. So, I take no responsibility whatsoever if this solution does not
work for you, or if it causes something else to fail. Use it at your own risk.
The only real cure I have heard of for an overheating drive is a new drive.
-- Greg Drew
DREWGD@VTCC1.VT.CC.EDU
P.S. I must give credit where credit is due. This is not an original idea.
I learned about it while working on an old IBM-PC which had a rather exotic
accelerator card installed. The person who installed the card taped off some
of the PC's cooling vents in order to increase airflow over the new board.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 15:54:07 ITA
From: ASTES%IGECUNIV.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Subject: TeXtures hyphenation table
Date: 25 September 1989, 15:43:38 ITA
>From: Egidio Astesiano +39-10-3538033 ASTES at IGECUNIV
To: info-mac at sumex-aim.stanford.edu
I'm using TeXTures v.1.0.x, and I was trying to change the
hyphenation table to the Italian one (I got the pattern &
hyphenation list from a friend of mine).
However it seems that TeXTures, although able to produce a format
like LaTeX or AmSTeX, does NOT accept the pattern command, and
complains that he is not running as IniTeX.
The manual says that IniTeX is not useful, since TeXTures can
produce formats by itself, but it seems that the hyphenation table
cannot be produced. I tried then to compile lplain.tex to see what
it happens, and eventually a \input{hyphen.tex} is executed,
which fails since no hyphen.tex file is contained in the distribution folder.
So i let TeXTures ignore the 'input' command. Now, the resulting
'LaTeXBis' format should not contain any hyphenation
table...But it is not: this format is as able to hyphenate my tex files
as the original LaTeX format is. So it seems that the hyphenation table
is built-in in the core of TeXtures and cannot be replaced by a fresh
one.
Hmmmm.
Does anybody there now what can be done to make TeXtures hyphenate
correctly my italian papers? Is it possible that by launching
TeXtures by pressing some kind of option-command-shift-esc etc. one
gets IniTeXtures run?
Alessandro Giovini
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 89 13:22 EST
From: George Nassas <GEORGE%LAUVAX01.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: windows
jwk@scripps.edu ("Two Sheds" Kupec) sez...
>I've got an SE/30 with 5Mb of RAM. Why can't I have more
>than 12 windows open at once? I can't believe this is actually
>hard-coded somewhere. could someone tell me how to increase the
>number of windows the Finder will let me have open simultaneously?
I believe the limit is stored in a resource in the finder. I think that
it is a layout resource (LAYO) but I'm not sure. Happily, I don't have to
be! The Info-Mac archives has a program called "Layout" that will change
the maximum number of windows that the finder can have open. It will also
change such things as wether the finder asks if it's o.k. to delete an
application and it will also enable a feature where you can open a folder's
parent folder with a double click on the title bar. It sure comes in
handy.
- George Nassas
Laurentian University
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
------------------------------
End of Info-Mac Digest
******************************