malpass@LL-VLSI.ARPA (Don Malpass) (12/11/87)
Gee, I thought I was probably the only one on this net old enough to remember what Gliptal was. Is that stuff still used??? Anyway, tnx for the advice, although I've already done the pink-pearl number on the connector, pushed most of the IC's and examined everything with a magnifier for physical damage. My friend is in Colorado today, but I'll try to borrow his controller next week if I don't crack the code this weekend. I'm very careful about static since I use mostly 74FCT CMOS stuff at work, but I could have zapped something I s'pose. If it is a chip it will obviously be one of the WD's since (a) they are the most expensive ones, and (b) I probably don't have replacements in my basement to try before I borrow a board. OTHER THINGS: While the box was open I finally installed the 2.9 (or whatever) boot prom I got from you - tnx. Congrats on finally getting <hz100> on line. I poked around a bit and observed the following: CATADD.ARC doesn't contain a dummy one-line catmast.cat file to prime the pump, so catadd complains and then falls on its face looking for it. The smarter users will figure this out and make a dummy catmast.cat file, but the less adventurous ones will simply write off the package. And if one is added to the .arc, I'm sure the .crc file will have a bogus crc in it for that file. Do you want me to do anything, or do you want to attend to it? Maybe the .crc file wants deleting anyway! I'm confused about the cronology of UNIXSHEL.ARC, Kent Williams' C-Shell program. It's version number is 1.3, but the one I have been using for a year or so is Rev 3.6, dated 11 Dec 86. Mine has "alias" and other features, too (and a few bugs I have almost learned to avoid). And I THINK the disks I bought from him had either 3.5 or 3.7, but they're at home. Can we deconfuse the Rev/Ver number business for me and anyone else who likes this stuff? In spite of the small bugs, it's probably the most useful thing I've ever extracted from the net. If Phil Katz (of PKARC/ARCX fame) is tuned in, I'd really like to beg for consistency in command-line-option use in his two programs. I can NEVER remember which program wants the options preceded by '-' and which throws up if the '-' is used. In truth, I'd like to see them combined into one program anyway, but I'm sure that's more work and results in slower execution. The speed improvement over the old ARC is certainly impressive, but I fear the human-engineering has been disimproved. And since I use PKARCX as part of a help.bat file (which allows ALL the help/doc files I need to keep "on line" to be in one /etc/help.arc file), I'd love a version with a less verbose banner at the start. Presenting ascii files (-c option??) a screenfull at a time would be nice too, but piping through MORE is not much of a hardship. Finally, is there yet a fast-ARC available for mainframes? Cheers, don [malpass@LL-vlsi]