Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) (08/01/89)
Info-Mac Digest Mon, 31 Jul 89 Volume 7 : Issue 133
Today's Topics:
A few thoughts
Boomerang 2.0b7
Database packages
Fontnames from Hypercard
Hard drives
Hardware problems
How complete is THINK C++?
Hyper Bulletins
Info-Mac Digest V7 #132
Really, I don't make these up myself!
regarding recent postings on batteries on MACIIs
SF&I, mounting SCSI Drives.
ShareWare tracker Stack
Sounds
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: Mon, 31 Jul 89 09:05:31 CST
From: Michael Hanrahan <C09615MH%WUVMD.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: A few thoughts
I thought I'd add my peice to some postings in the last three INFO-MAC
digests.
Concerning SE/30s
=================
My department bought an SE/30 with an 80 meg hard drive and got it
it in our hot little hands around May 5th. By the beginning of June,
the hard drive failed to boot and was brought in to our Campus
Computer Store for repair. We waited close to 3 full weeks for a
replacement drive and that replacement drive just failed AGAIN this
past week. My advice? If you are buying any machines from Apple (ANY
machine, not just a '30), buy them without hard drives and buy the
hard drives yourself and make sure it isn't a Quantum.
If I had paid for this machine out of my own pocket, I would be
raising Cain with my Apple dealer. Unfortunately, I don't think Apple
has any incentive to improve their quality as long as people pay the
"Macintosh premium" for the machine and then give Apple even more
money for AppleCare for protection from problems which (for the most
part) should never occur.
About MPW
=========
I haven't used MPW personally, but the impression I've gotten about
it is the same as Bill Lipa's. It is probably the most powerful
environment available, but it borrows quite a few concepts from UNIX
which may annoy people who aren't particularly fond of UNIX (I count
myself in this group).
ShareWare Prices
================
If you use your Mac to make a few bucks, when you look at the price
a shareware program (or a commercial program, for that matter), try to
get an idea of how much time that program is saving you before saying
"This price is way outta line!" Most of the About boxes for shareware
I've seen don't demand payment just for putting the program on your
machine, they only want a payment if you find it "useful." I do NOT
think the shareware programmers are trying to ride the same rising
price spiral that commercial products are. You have to remember, the
Macintosh programming environment is MUCH MUCH more complex now than
it was back in the "good old days." Shareware vendors are simply
trying to recover a small (believe me, a SMALL) fraction of the
time and effort they've put forth to develop a decent program.
Enough said!
Michael Hanrahan
Educational Computing Services
Washington University
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 89 08:40:40 EDT
From: Norman Gall <gall@nexus.yorku.ca>
Subject: Boomerang 2.0b7
In comp.sys.mac.digest you write:
|I can't get this version of boomerang to work. An older (INIT only)
|does work. I tried removing all my cdevs/inits and MacsBug.
|Symptoms: I get the icon at startup, with a slash through it.
| SF{Get,Put}File dialogs don't have the boomerang icon, and
| act like normal, unenhanced dialogs.
I know this sounds stupid, but are you pressing anykeys or is the
CapsLock down when you boot? Remember, this version of Boom is a cdev
too. Go to the control panel and make sure that everything is turned
on properly.
n
---
York University |"It is one thing, to shew a Man that he is in an
Department of Philosophy | Error, and another, to put him in possession
Toronto, Ontario, Canada | of Truth." -- John Locke
_____________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 89 00:21:02 PDT
From: USERQKMP@cc.sfu.ca
Subject: Database packages
Someone up above asked about database packages. This reminded me...back in
'85 I was develping with Omnis 3+. It was fast, it was robust, it networked
well -- but it was *REALLY* ugly. 4thD, of course, is the exact opposite on
all three counts :-), dBase Mac is ok but sorta lame, and FoxBase is a MS-DOS
program with an ill-fitting Mac tux. (Disclaimer: I've only been forced into
actually trying large projects with 4D. But I will never touch it again!!!)
Now, this spring I was working over in the UK. The last week I was there
Blyth started a massive PR push for Omnis V, which from the sample application
I played with looks like it has all the features + more of 4thD -- plus it is
**FAST**, and actually works over networks, unlike 4thD ;-)
But I got back to North America -- and have heard *nothing* for the last
three months. What happened? They haven't even written me to update by
Omnis 3.23 to V. Is there some reason for this massive indifference?
Alex Curylo USERQKMP@sfu (Bitnet)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 89 23:14 EDT
From: "Maj. Doug Hardie" <Hardie@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL>
Subject: Fontnames from Hypercard
There is an XXFCN titled "FontName" that returns a list of all available
fonts in the system. This XFCN is in the Developer Stack that is
available in the archive.
-- Doug
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 89 10:36:34 PDT
From: USERQKMP@cc.sfu.ca
Subject: Hard drives
With my recently purchased SE/30 I got a GCC FI/80 -- and had the brilliant
good fortune to get one of the new Quantum mechanisms (access time 12 ms to
15 ms depending on whom you talk to). Suffice it to say that after a few
weeks with that floppies are unbearable and even the standard Apple HDs
provoke paroxysms with their pokiness.
Oh yeah -- all the HDs people are complaining about dying just out of
warranty are most likely Seagate 40s. Well-known to be bad news.
My point? hard disk brand name is irrelevant. What sort of mechanism it
has is what you should be worried about. Quantmum are excellent, Seagates
are Ok but flaky, Rodimes are trash.
alex curylo IDQKMP@SFU (Bitnet) 604-298-8913
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 89 23:19 EDT
From: "Maj. Doug Hardie" <Hardie@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL>
Subject: Hardware problems
I had an unusual situation that I can't explain. Last Friday, I had
several spurous reboots. At the time, I was debugging a program so
thought nothing about it. However, later it went off and did not
reboot. The power switch had no effect. I could not get it to power
back up. My hard disk came up fine, and both are powered from the same
wall outlet. So I figured the analog board on the Mac+ had died and
took it in for repair. The people there tried to power it up, and it
worked fine. So I brought it back home and it is now once again working
fine. I did notice that the line voltage here seems to be somewhat low.
I don't have any accurate meters here so I can't say for sure.
Is there a circuit in the Mac+ that senses low line voltage and either
powers down or wonn't let it power up below some level? I have never
seen such a feature discussed, but it is the only explanation I have
been able to hypothesize.
-- Doug
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 89 21:27:32 EDT
From: siegel@harvard.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel)
Subject: How complete is THINK C++?
The object extensions in THINK C 4.0 are a compatible subset of C++; all
methods are virtual, support is provided for direct and indirect classes,
single inheritance, and runtime binding. We also provide an additional
extension: if a method calls "inherited::foo()", the "inherited" is taken
to mean "call my ancestor's method of the same name". The behavio
of inherited:: can be easily ported to C++ by means of a macro.
R.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rich Siegel
Staff Software Developer
Symantec Corporation, Language Products Group
Internet: siegel@endor.harvard.edu
UUCP: ..harvard!endor!siegel
"When it comes to my health, I think of my body as a temple - or at least
a moderately well-managed Presbyterian youth center." - Emo Phillips
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 10:00:48 EDT
From: ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams)
Subject: Hyper Bulletins
[]
Here is a Hypercard stack I whipped up for use in the electronic music
studio here. It is basically a Bulletin board system designed to work
on a Mac which has many users. Each user can leave notes of general
interest for the other users. It is very simple, but hopefully useful.
This stack is freeware, You are free to change anything you want, but you
must keep the about card as is. Also, if you make any changes, please
send me the new stack so I can learn and maybe enhance future releases (and
with credit, where credit is due).
Enjoy!
-Andy J. Williams
--
Andy J. Williams '90 | <hello> | ack@dartvax.dartmouth.edu
31 North Main Street | set $NAME='inigo_montoya' | Systems Programmer
Hanover NH, 03755 | You kill -9 my ppid | Kiewit Computation Center
603-643-2177 | prepare to vi | Dartmouth College
[Archived as /info-mac/hypercard/hyper-bulletins.hqx; 28K]
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 89 23:56:01 -0400
From: Walter Maner<maner@andy.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Info-Mac Digest V7 #132
Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators):
> But, I find it real frustrating when I want proces a group of files
> envoke that command once for each file in my list.
Try MPW!
CSNet maner@andy.bgsu.edu | 419/372-8719
InterNet maner@andy.bgsu.edu 129.1.1.2 | BGSU Comp Sci Dept
UUCP ... !osu-cis!bgsuvax!maner | Bowling Green, OH 43403
BITNet MANER@BGSUOPIE
[But MPW scripts cannot run user-compiled programs, can they? Not
sure... Bill]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 89 14:21:35 EST
From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL%UCONNVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Really, I don't make these up myself!
>From the Robert X Cringely column in the 24 July InfoWorld (did anyone
else notice that Cringely's column is the only page in that issue with
"July 31, 1989" at the top :-)
"I'm learning lots more about the Unix world and more since I came
across an undocumented, unannounced gateway that allows Compuserve nd
Internet users to exchange messages free. It's very easy to use, but
I'm sworn not to tell you how."
VAPORWARE tells all :-) details about the Compu$erve email gateway are
appended to this month's column. Note the date on the information;
someone was kidding Cringely when they told him he couldn't tell.
Enjoy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the August 1989 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
i486 Announcements.
Although last January's report that PC's based on Intel's
new i486 CPU would be introduced by year end was greeted
with some skepticism, no fewer than four manufacturers (IBM,
ALR, AST, and Cheetah International) have announced i486
"upgrade" boards to be shipped "during the fourth quarter."
Cheetah International is offering a choice of a 33 MHz 80386
CPU or a 25 MHz i486 chip for the same $4,995 price. None
of the systems announced, thus, far have motherboards
designed specifically for the i486 and thus will not be able
to realize the full potential of the new processor. The
first complete i486 system may be announced by Sun in
November (see last February's column).
- InfoWorld 17 July and PC Week 10 July
100 MIP PC?
Even though the i486 exists only in sample quantities,
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has already begun discussing
the i586. At a presentation to the Capital PC Users Group
in Rockville, Maryland Gates asserted that "Over the next
five years we'll be able to take PC architecture up to 100
million instructions per second." - InfoWorld 17 July
Apple Splits with Adobe.
Apple has announced that it is developing its own PostScript
language interpreter (due by this time next year) in order
to add its own features and avoid royalty payments to
Adobe. Apple is selling all of its 3.4 million shares
(16.4%) of Adobe stock (after tax, Apple expects to retain a
nearly $50 million dollar profit on its November 1984
investment of $2.5 million).
- MacWeek 11 July and PC Week 10 July
Managing Windows Presentations.
OS/2 Presentation Manager 2.0 for the 80386 (and i486) which
is expected late next year will be able to transparently
translate unmodified MS-DOS Windows applications.
- PC Week 17 July
IIgs Chip Set in the K-12 Macintosh?
In spite of the guffaws from numerous friends at Apple, the
rumor that the company will market a single computer (see
the November 1988 and January and May 1989 columns) capable
of running both Macintosh and Apple 2 software refuses to go
away. In the latest version, the low-end replacement for
the Mac Plus (the so-called K-12 Mac) will retail for $1,299
and contain the Apple IIgs chip set. Maybe it will be
called the IIgs+? Considering the source, the whole concept
may be wishful thinking. - MacWeek 11 July
Mac Stacks of IIgs.
Gossip is that this Fall Apple will release software that
will let the IIgs run Mac Hypercard stacks (slowly).
- InCider August
Apple Takes a RISC.
A prepared statement from Apple says "We have chosen the
Motorola 88000 as the primary platform upon which we are
basing our RISC research. Since our research efforts are
only beginning, it is premature to say whether or not we
will have a RISC-based personal computer." Translation:
Apple's next Macintosh generation will be built around the
Motorola 68040. The 88000 is more likely to appear first
(as early as the first quarter of next year) as display and
sound controllers. Converting the main CPU to the 88000
would require a total rewrite of the Mac Toolbox (among
other things).
- MacWeek 27 June and 11 July and InfoWorld 10 July
What's Happened to the 33 MHz PS/2?
It doesn't look like IBM's 33 MHz 80386 Model 75 will make
its forecast August announcement (see last March's column)
because it is still having trouble getting Class B
certification from the FCC. The i486 board for the 25 MHz
Model 70 is a "peripheral" which isn't subject to the same
certification standards. It's possible that the i486 Model
70 will be available for sale before the Model 75.
- PC Week 10 July
PostScript Quality on Ordinary Laser Printers.
Zenographics is readying an inexpensive ($195) set of
software drivers for Microsoft Windows which will provide
sophisticated graphics and type-set quality output without
the expense of PostScript hardware. A fourth quarter
release is planned for the SuperPrint package which will
offer PostScript quality, scalable fonts, and support for
24-bit color output devices. - PC Week 10 July
IBM Brand Laser Printers.
This Fall IBM will announce three new laser printers based
on a modified version of the Ricoh six page per minute
engine. The low-end model with 512K of memory and 13
built-in fonts is slated to cost less than $1,600. The top
of the line model with full PostScript support will retail
in the $3,000 range - well below current PostScript laser
printer prices. - PC Week 26 June
New Laserjet.
Hewlett-Packard plans to introduce a new, low-cost four page
per minute laser printer in September. The under $2,000
printer will be the first shipped to the U.S. with the new
4-ppm Canon print engine. The printer will support a subset
of HP's Printer Command Language, including some graphics,
but will not have all the features of the Laserjet II
series. - InfoWorld 10 July
Low-Cost Line Printer.
Output Technology has announced plans to begin shipping in
late August a $3,995 printer with a 300 lines per minute
output. The Model 2132 will emulate any of the IBM
ProPrinter XL, Epson FX-286e, or Printronix P6080.
- PC Week 3 July
Toshiba Light.
Last month Toshiba began selling a 6 pound, book-size laptop
in Japan for the equivalent of $1,400. A U.S. version may
be available as early as this Fall. - InfoWorld 3 July
SAS Under OS/2.
SAS Institute has already released versions of its entire
line of statistical and decision support software for
MS-DOS. SAS plans to port its entire line to OS/2 under
Presentation Manager by the end of the second quarter next
year. The biggest attraction of the OS/2 versions will be
the removal of MS-DOS memory limits. - PC Week 10 July
MacMach.
Xinu, Inc., a Berkeley, California Unix developer,
demonstrated a Macintosh II running the Unix-based Mach
operating system at the Usenix Technical Conference. Mach
also is the basis of the NeXT operating system. Xinu is
still negotiating with Apple for distribution rights to
MacMach. - MacWeek 27 June
Vaporwatch.
Ashton-Tate and Fox Software are hurrying to see who can be
the first to ship new dBase/Fox-base software. dBase IV 1.1
which will fix numerous bugs that have retarded adoption of
version 1.0 as well as add some new enhancements is targeted
for "before October 1" while Fox is aiming for a
mid-September release of its latest dBase "work-a-like."
Ashton-Tate's Byline 2.0 has been delayed due to contractual
problems with the developer, but insiders expect the
problems to be resolved by Fall Comdex. Meanwhile A-T's
FullWrite 2.0 (September?) is so far behind that version 3.0
(January?) may overtake it. Apple's HyperCard version 2.0
(with multiuser, network support but without color) will be
delayed until after MacWorld in Boston this month. Now that
1-2-3 version 3.0 is finally out the door, attention is
turning to other Lotus products promised in 1987. Version
2.2 (for older PC's) will be released in September, 1-2-3/G
(Graphic, for the Presentation Manager) and Lotus DBMS (Data
Base Management System for networked 1-2-3) won't be out
until next year. Only four of the 22 Presentation Manager
promised last February for the end of June are on dealer
shelves. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says most developers
are now planning to ship later this quarter. The infamous
LapMac (too big, too heavy, too slow, and too expensive) may
have been quietly canceled.
- PC Week 3 and 17 July and InfoWorld 3 and 17 July and
MacWeek 20 June
Beware of Lawyers Reading Vaporware.
Lawyers for Ashton-Tate recently fired off a stern letter to
Wordtech Systems instructing them to destroy all marketing
literature and packaging material related to their dBase/SQL
product. The only problem is, Wordtech does not offer, has
not announced, and does not plan to sell a program by that
name. It seems Ashton-Tate's lawyers reacted a mistaken
report published in the April issue of the Netware Technical
Journal. - InfoWorld 10 July
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 89 17:43:38 -0400
>From: Karl Kleinpaste <karl@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: Mail access to CompuServe
[This is going simultaneously to comp.mail.misc on the Usenet and
info-nets@think.com.]
To clear up some confusion and squash several dozen rumors which have
been floating around since sometime this past Wednesday or
thereabouts, I'm telling people about this now, although more official
(officious? :-) announcements will be forthcoming sometime Real Soon
Now.
CompuServe is email-accessible. The machinery to do so has actually
been in place for some months, but there has been an arbitrarily large
number of reasons why official, live status has not yet been granted
to the gateway. Technically, this is true, even as I write this.
To reach a CompuServe subscriber account of the form
7xxxx,yyy
swap the `,' for `.' and add @compuserve.com:
7xxxx.yyy@compuserve.com
This is necessary for RFC compliance. To reach employees of
CompuServe, they have somewhat more typical usernames inside the
csi.compuserve.com subdomain.
CompuServe subscribers can reach people Out Here from CompuServe's
mailers via the specification:
>internet:user@host.domain
The use of ">stuff:" is CompuServe's general gateway-access syntax; it
does not appear in anything on the Internet side of the gateway, but
rather RFC-compliant headers are generated.
Internet nameservers for compuserve.com are alive and responding, and
pathalias data for a (fictitious) host "compuserve" has been published
since last fall. Internet mailers must support MX records in order to
reach CompuServe. The MX host is saqqara.cis.ohio-state.edu, a.k.a.
osu-cis. I understand that there is some magic that must be performed
on BITNET VM hosts in order to get there due to lack of MX support;
details from other BITNETters, not me.
[That's 7xxxx.yyy%compuserve.com@saqqara.cis.ohio-state.edu - Ed.]
Saqqara speaks with CompuServe approximately half-hourly, though this
will probably change as load is observed.
There are NO charges accrued to ANYBODY on either side of the gateway
for its use. CompuServe subscribers are charged their usual hourly
rates, but there is no gateway-specific surcharge.
The reason for this posting is that the gateway was mentioned rather
casually to info-nets@think.com, resulting in a rather impressive
flurry of queries, explanations, and test notes through the gateway.
The load has been, ah, remarkable. There were quite a number of
misconceptions about it (notably regarding charging, there being none
but others claiming that there would be), and I am hoping to prevent
further rumor-mongering. Vint Cerf presented this on CompuServe's
behalf to FRICC just this past Monday; there is "agreement in
principle" on the gateway's existence, but the formalities of the
situation have yet to be finalized.
Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not CompuServe.
Questions about the gateway => karl@cis.ohio-state.edu
Questions about CompuServe => postmaster@compuserve.com
Cheers,
--Karl Kleinpaste
Personification of the Mailer Daemon
Ohio State Computer Science
Instigator of the Internet/CompuServe mail gateway
no longer acting "postmaster@compuserve.com"
___________________________________________________________
(cccc) / \
( 0 0 ) | (Prof) Murph Sewall <Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET> |
(| > |) ___/ Marketing Department <Sewall%UConnVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.Edu>|
( \__/ ) <___ School of Business ...psuvax1!uconnvm.bitnet!sewall |
(____) \_ U. of Connecticut *standard disclaimer applies* /
\__________________________________________________________/
(This .sig "borrowed" from Johnson Earls <Jearls@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu> Thanx!)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 89 09:07 EDT
From: Gay Meredith <EGM%VTCS1.BITNET@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu>
Subject: regarding recent postings on batteries on MACIIs
You guys who are worrying about your batteries in MACIIs going dead are
worrying for nothing. Although the batteries are soldered, replacing them
DOES NOT require a new mother board. Your dealer, presumming he can read an
Apple tech manual, should be able to replace them. This is a standard fix for
any dealer and not an expensive repair compared to almost anything else you
need done. If your dealer tells you he has to replace the logic board to get
new batteries, I would suggest that you immediately look for another dealer.
- Gay Meredith
Apple Service Center, Virginia Tech
------------------------------
Date: Sun Jul 30 12:59:50 1989
From: microsoft!t-jackk@uunet.uu.net
Subject: SF&I, mounting SCSI Drives.
I just started using the SF&I formatter program with an adaptec 4000
controller board. This works fine. My one problem is that on my SE,
the internal SCSI drive is ID 0. So, I set this drive to be ID 1. Now,
when booting my mac, it sees both SCSI ports as active, and then trys
to boot from ID-1 since it has the higher SCSI priority; so if there
is no system on this particular drive, my mac gives the disk with a
question mark in it icon. If I put a system in this drive, it boots
like a champ! What do you suggest I do, since I want to keep my system
software on my internal drive.
Any replies would be greatly appreciated.
Jack Kingsley
uunet!microsoft!t-jackk
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 21:46:28 EDT
From: gall@nexus.yorku.ca (Norman R. Gall)
Subject: ShareWare tracker Stack
Just a little stack to help you keep track of what shareware packages
you are trying out, when you got it, how much you should send in, and
when you should dump it if you don't keep it.
Hopefully, this will remind some of the users to send in those
payments...
Norm Gall
[Archived as /info-mac/hypercard/shareware-tracker.hqx; 15K]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 89 14:38:18 EDT
From: danmcd@caen.engin.umich.edu (Daniel Laurence Mc Donald)
Subject: Sounds
I have two questions about your sound libraries:
1. Is there a program that allows me to edit sampled sounds?
2. I had a problem un-BinHex-ing the RoboCop sounds. I joined them
using MS-Word, and decoded them using Stuffit v1.31 at work. I got
a CRC header error. I removed the email header and tried again,
same error. Any clues?!?
------------------------------
End of Info-Mac Digest
******************************