Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (Jon Pugh and Lance Nakata) (10/14/88)
INFO-MAC Digest Friday, 14 Oct 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 96
Today's Topics:
NeXT Introduction
Snd->Soundcap Converter
HELP: Does SCSI Accelerator 1.2 init require "Loud Harmonicas" ROMS?
Anyone already used a CDC Wren IV Drive with the Mac???
NTX SIMMs versus MacII SIMMs
1M simms connector designations
Kermit 0.9(40) with screen savers
Modula @ compiler
Possible new virus [forwarded message from Virus-L]
Conversion of HP-GL to Postscript
MacDraw II binary file format
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 88 10:51:57 PDT
From: PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA
Subject: NeXT Introduction
I just got back from the NeXT introduction and thought I should report on the
facts that were revealed to the world today. I must say first that while the
NeXT machine is new and exciting, I don't think it is revolutionary. It is
merely doing the things that people have thought should be done (at least the
people I talk to). It is hot. It is fast. It is easy to program.
A description of the show is in order. We lined up outside as people
presented their picture ids and were cross checked on the guest list. The
symphony hall in SF is a very posh place and I ended up in a balcony box right
above the stage. Perfect seating. Watching the audience was a who's who of
the computer biz pasttime. I saw H. Ross Perot, Hiedi Rozen, John Devorak,
The Woz, Andy Hertzfeld, Chuck Farnham, and many others. When the lights
dimmed, Steve Jobs came out and began by saying, "It's been a long time."
He got a standing ovation at the end.
He first went through a description of a machine's lifetime in terms of it's
level of innovation. Machines have a 10 year life cycle and the Apple II is a
prime example of how a machine peaks innovatively about 5 years after it is
introduced and then the only changes are hardware tweaks to make it perform
better. The reason for the decline in innovation after 5 years is that the
machine's strongest point becomes it's greatest liability. It's hardware
locks it into a decline. Changing the hardware is impossible because of the
base of applications that have been written for the existing hardware.
Whereas, when it was new it's hardware made it the choice platform for new
applications. The IBM PC and Macintosh were also depicted on their own 10 year
innovation curves. The interesting thing to note about the IBM PC and Mac
curves was that they are crossing right now. The IBM PC peaked in 1986
according to Jobs, and that means that the new innovative software packages
are being written for the Macintosh first. I think we would all agree that
this is true. Steve is betting that the NeXT machine will be the next wave
of innovation. He placed this peak in 1994, 5 years after now (well, after he
starts shipping for real next year).
A tour of the hardware and a movie of the Fremont production facilities was
then shown. For brevity's sake I will just out line the minimum
configuration. Remember the Jobs priniciple, you make progress by raising the
lowest common denominator. The machine has no real options, but it is
expandable. A 25 MHz 68030 with a 68882 FPU and the 56001 DSP (a 10 MIPS
Digital Signal Processor), all from Motorola. It comes with 8 Meg of RAM
expandable to 16 Meg. That's 1 Meg SIMMs. They suspect that it should work
with 4 Meg SIMMs, but they haven't been able to find any to try with. The
connectors include a 2 Mac DIN8 serial ports, a DB9 printer port, a Mac pin
compatible SCSI port (operating at a much higher speed), a thin cable ethernet
port, and a port for hooking directly up to the DSP (just in case). They
include a backplane for future expansion which is a 25 MHz Nubus wherein all
the protocols are controlled by a single ROM which will be available to
developers for $25. All this seems to be really increadible, but it doesn't
address the single most important issue that NeXT has addressed. Memory is
the bootleneck for this whole machine. All the peripheral processors cannot
do squat if they are waiting for memory, so the NeXT crew looked at
mainframes for the solution, and implemented 12 DMA IO channels in 2 large
VLSI chips. These "mainframe in a chips" allow the NeXT machine to haul ass.
They also implement a large portion of their storage controllers in these
chips.
The storage itself is everything it was rumored to be. 256 Meg of read,
write, erasable magneto-optical storage. That's it. It has about a 60 mSec
access time, but a transfer rate of over 1 Mbit per sec. Let me tell you, the
access time is not that noticable, especially when you consider that it's all
DMA access while the CPU can be doing something else (i.e. full multitasking,
remember?). Their press kits included a demo disk which is supposed to cost
only $50. So much for the removable disks. There is room in the machine for
two full height drives and NeXT will be offering both 330 M and 660 M
Winchesters as optional hardware.
The monitor is a megapixel display in 2 bit b&w. They thought that a big
display was more important than color and they also know the Hollywood motto,
"Always leave them wanting more." The monitor is 1120 x 832 at 92 dpi. Very
pretty. It has only one wire to the NeXT box (which is a black cube, but you
knew that) and no plug. The only switches are on the keyboard which plugs
into the monitor. It has two gold plated RCA jacks for sound output and a
stereo walkman plug for private listening. It also has a microphone input to
an 8 KHz digitizer for speech input. There's gonna be some shaking and
moving with this puppy! The mouse is a two button job, but apparently only
one button is used for most operations. We'll see how that goes. The
monitor has a stand built onto it for ergonomic control. The whole thing is
attached by a 3 meter cable to the cube. The cube is switchable to any power
source. Find a cable with the right plug and it will adjust to the power
supply.
The printer is a 400 dpi bit blaster. No Postscript on board since it is in
the cube. It is a straight path feeder and it has a single feeder tray that
can adjust to any size paper (well, smaller than 8 1/2 x 11).
The software is also impressive. They use Mach, a Berkeley 4.3 compatible
Unix done better, with the NFS file system. On this they place Display
Postscript and their own windowing system (none of the others would do enough
of what they wanted). On this they placed an Application Toolkit of 20
objects and created Interface Builder, a ResEdit-like tool for adding an
interface to your Application objects graphically. It very closely resembles
the Smalltalk Browser, I am told. On top of this will sit the applications.
These object oriented layers are what Jobs sold to IBM and what will be
called NextStep. IBM will apparently be using it on their RISC machine and
it will be application (source code) compatible with the NeXT machine.
It is all written with the GNU C compiler and Objective C 4.0. Both of these
come with the machine as does Unix. Also bundled is the GDB debugger, Franz
Allegro Common Lisp, Mathematica, and Sybase's SQL Server. NeXT also includes
some of their software; WriteNow, Searcher, their index program, Interface
Builder, and Workspace Manager, their Finder. Also included is Webster's 9th
Collegate (which I would have spelled right if I'd had one) Dictionary,
complete with illustrations, their Thesaurus, The Oxford Book of Quotes, and
the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Search for any word in any of
them. Fast too! It also has ALL the reference manuals on line.
Serious stuff for serious technojunkies!
Now get this, $6500 for the cube and monitor. $2000 for the printer. Then
they are charging $2000 for the 330 Mb drive and $4000 for the 660 Mb drive.
That's the university price and ONLY university people can buy them. They
will be shipping 0.8 to beta sites this month, 0.9 to beta sites and agressive
users end of first quarter 89, and 1.0 to regular people end of the second
quarter. When asked how people not associated with a university could get a
machine, Steve replied, "Enroll." There's a reason to go back to school...
Jon
N L pugh@nmfecc.arpa
M A L National Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center
F T N Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
E L PO Box 5509 L-561
C Livermore, California 94550
C (415) 423-4239
PS In case you don't know, the University of California runs LLNL, so I'm in
like Flint. Rumor has it that I will even get to be a beta site. We'll see.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 23:41 EDT
From: DB8Y@VAX5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Snd->Soundcap Converter
I have seen plenty of utilities that convert SoundCap files to snd resources
but none that convert the other way, i.e., from snd resources to those with
type FSSD. If anyone has come across such a utility in the public domain or
shareware realms, could you please send it to me?
Also, does anyone know of a text file joining utility like Append that
supports desk accessories? Send it along, too.
Thanks in advance.
-Ross Rubin
DB8Y@CRNLVAX5
[Moderator's Note:
Check out SoundLeech in the archives.
--Jon]
------------------------------
Date: Tue 11 Oct 88 09:38:31-EDT
From: FAUSETT@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA
Subject: HELP: Does SCSI Accelerator 1.2 init require "Loud
Subject: Harmonicas" ROMS?
THE PROBLEM: With the SCSI-Accelerator init (v1.2) installed, my Mac+
hangs on the write in a file duplicate or copy. The system behaves
normally without the init.
BACKGROUND: SCSI-Accelerator is an init written by David Denowh, and
posted to Sumex-Aim by David Platt. I'm using a Mac+ with revision 2
("Lonely Heiffers"?) ROMS attached to a homebuilt SCSI drive
consisting of Tulin's Adaptec driver (Tulin included the init on their
driver distribution disk), an Adaptec 4000A controller and a Seagate
4096 drive.
Any ideas on what's going wrong?
Thanks in advance.
Mark Fausett (fausett@radc-tops20.arpa)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 88 11:07:40 EDT
From: Alexander Falk <K360950%AEARN.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Anyone already used a CDC Wren IV Drive with the Mac???
Hi there,
Has anyone ever tried to use a CDC Wren IV SCSI Drive with a Macintosh?
Which software should be used for formatting?
Which driver should be used?
Is it possible to have both A/UX and MacOS partitions on one drive and use
MORE THAN ONE MacOS partition at the same time?
Best regards and thanks for all replies in advance|
Alexander
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 88 10:16:39 PDT
From: PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA
Subject: NTX SIMMs versus MacII SIMMs
Upgrading a MacII has left me with an extra set of 256K SIMMs which I thought
I might stuff into my Laserwriter II NTX, but nooooooooooooooooooo, the SIMM
slots in the NTX are BIGGER than the Mac II SIMMs. Does anyone have a clue
why these are different? Just to get you to buy something else, eh?
Jon
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 88 23:22:23 CDT
From: lee thompson <DISC17Y@UHUPVM1>
Subject: 1M simms connector designations
A GUY IN OUR DEPARTMENT HAS COME UP WITH SOME 1M DIP DRAMS. (120 NS).
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PINOUTS TO THE SE 1M MEMORY EXPANSION
BOARDS ARE, OR WHERE (OR WHO) I CAN FIND THEM?
MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE.
LEE THOMPSON
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 88 23:34:30 IST
From: "Jonathan B. Owen" <GDAU100%BGUVM.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Kermit 0.9(40) with screen savers
I am having problems with using Kermit 0.9(40) while one of either two
screen savers are active. When "Flex" terminates (i.e. after moving
mouse or the likes) the cursor of the Kermit window is misplaced,
wrong font appears when typing, and program bombs after a while.
When "Moire" terminates, Kermit bombs immediatly. The third Screen
Saver I have used, "Pyro" is the only one that operated in harmony with
Kermit, but to my opinion, is the most uninteresting to watch.
The "Flex" and "Moire" CDEV screen savers were downloaded from MACSERVE.
Anyone else run into simular problems?
JB
______________________________________________________________________________
(--) /--) /-(\ Email: gdau100@bguvm (bitnet)
\ / /--K | \|/\ /\/) /|-\ Snail: 55 Hovevei Zion
_/_/o /L__)_/o \/\__/ \X/ \_/ | |_/ Tel-Aviv, 63346 ISRAEL
(/ Jonathan B. Owen Voice: (03) 281-422
Point of view: A chicken is the means by which an egg reproduces an egg.
______________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: 11 OCT 88 23:37-
From: JJW7384%RITVAX.BITNET@CORNELLC.CCS.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Modula @ compiler
Has anyone had any experience with the Modula 2 complier that is in the
public domain (written by ETH in Zurich, Switzerland)? I obtained it thru
the Infomac Server at Rice Univeristy, but the files I received did not
include the Compiler(m2comp) and the Linker(m2link). It's hard to do
anything without these two parts, so if anyone has them I'd appreciate it
if they would send them to me.
Are there any other Modula 2 compilers in the public domain???? I'd
appreciate any comments and/or sources...
Thanks in advance,
Jeff Wasilko
BITNET: jjw7384@ritvax
INTERNET: jjw7384%ritvax.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Disclaimer: Nobody ever cares what I say...
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 88 13:56:08 GMT
From: "Mr GILIBERT Herve , Mr BERLIER Jean-Marc"
From: <CIUSE%FRMOP11.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
I unsuccessfully try to print a postscript file, created on a MAC by
command K and transfered by KERMIT on a VAX/VMS, on a DEC LN03-R script
printer : I am happy to obtain not any error but I also obtain not any
printing !!!! if anyone has an idea or a solution please reply to me
directly.
Thanks
Herve GILIBERT
Universite de ST ETIENNE (FRANCE)
PS: I first set the timeout of the LN03-R to 300.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 88 10:37 EDT
From: "Jim Shaffer, Jr."
From: <SHAFFERJ%BKNLVMS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Possible new virus [forwarded message from Virus-L]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Shawn V. Hernan" <VALENTIN@PITTVMS.BITNET>
Sender: Virus Discussion List <VIRUS-L@LEHIIBM1.BITNET>
Hello,
Just yesterday we discovered 'nVIR' here, and now we have something
I've never heard of. Does this look familiar to anyone: We used Virus Rx
to check a program for the nVIR virus and found this:
_________________________
Invisible files and INITs embedded in system files
@#$% FILE----Bostb Be Evill--------:
________________________________________
Warning: Files are too new. *
ZSYS MACS--------System----------:
________________________________________
SUMMARRY: Invisible Files & Questionable INITs: 1
*One or more questionable files were found. *
*These don't seem to be of immediate concern. *
*You may wish to check their resource forks. *
*Relax for now but run this program again later. *
The file 'Bostb Be Evill' has us somewhat concerned. Anyone know what this
might be?
Shawn Hernan
Valentin@pittvms
University of Pittsburg
[Moderator's Note: I don't know what that file is, but I'd sure like to
know too! As an aside, I haven't had much success getting Virus RX to even
notice nVIR infections. Has anyone else had this problem? - Lance ]
------------------------------
Date: Wed 12 Oct 88 11:05:29
From: mcvax!LINNEA.LiU.SE!J-PERSSON@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: Conversion of HP-GL to Postscript
I am looking for a program, preferably on Mac, that converts HP-GL files
to postscript.
We have a combined measurement, control and presentation software on a
IBM PC. The software is used for industrial load management to optimize
the use of applicable Time Of Use, TOU, rates. The graphical output
genarates HP-GL files to be interpreted by a plotter.
We would like to use the conversion to get our graphs into various
Macintosh software e.g. Word, Macdraw.
Has anyone experienced this problem or even better, found a solution ?.
If so, I would be glad if you let me know.
Reply, snail mail: E-mail:
Link|ping Institute of Technology J_PERSSON@SELIUC51.BITNET
Department of Mech. Eng.
Att: J|rgen Persson
581 83 Link|ping
SWEDEN
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 88 16:59 PDT
From: FOLTA%VAXR@circus.llnl.gov
Subject: MacDraw II binary file format
Help!! I have developed a program that converts a MacDraw binary file to
a different graphics format. Now that MacDraw II has come out I learn that
Apple changed the format of the binary files. Does anyone know the format for
the MacDraw II binary file??
Thanks, Peg
------------------------------
End of INFO-MAC Digest
**********************