botton@i88.isc.com (Brian D. Botton) (03/26/91)
Hi Fellow 3B1ers,
Once again I'm sending out my kit blurb. A couple of things to note,
1. I mailed out the two outstanding kit orders I had last Thurdsay and I
have not received an order in at least 2 weeks. So if you sent an order
and haven't received it, it probably got lost in the mail.
2. My blurb may be a bit confusing. I do NOT supply Mgr. The reason I list
it is because anyone can get if free.
I want to thank John Milton for his software patch to let Mgr work. Not
only does it give you the chance to give Mgr a try before you take your
machine apart, it is a very nice piece of UNIX hacking.
After you give Mgr a try with the software patch, you'll want the hardware.
The software patch takes better than 50 memmory accesses to do what one
memmory access with vidpal does.
There has been a fair amount of posting in the last week about Mgr and what
it does and doesn't support. Rest assured that you can have all the, ah,
wonderful, yea, that's it!?!, features of UA when you need it. And then,
when you're done playing games, do some real programming using Mgr. If you
like programming in an X or Sun environment, you'll like Mgr.
*****************************************************************************
This is my standard blurb covering the kits I am selling. If you have a
question that isn't covered by this blurb, feel free to send me e-mail. I
will try to respond as quickly as possible, but my new wife and I are still
very busy, ;-).
VIDPAL KIT - $25
This kit contains a PC board, a programmed PAL, a capacitor, a socket, 66
pin sockets, ~1 inch of wire wrap wire, and complete instructions.
What this kit does is it allows you to access the video ram of you 3B1/7300
directly from any user process. The significance of this is you can now write
your own window manager with a lot less hassle. The reason I came up with this
kit was because Brad Bosch and I wanted to run Mgr on our 3B1's and we didn't
want to write a new wind.o for Mgr.
Vidpal is a little daughter board that is placed between the 68010 and the
mother board which intercepts and modifies the supervisor signal. The PAL
checks to see if you are addressing the video ram, and if you are, the
supervisor signal is forced active. This means the memory management PAL will
not cause a bus error because it thinks your are in kernel mode. The vidpal
PAL makes sure that ONLY the video ram is made accessible, otherwise you would
loose all hardware protection.
One of my design goals was there had to be NO modifications to the mother
board, and the daughter board allows this. The kit requires a modest amount
of soldering skill and for your machine to be mostly disassembled. Most
people will find that it isn't difficult to assemble and install.
SECOND HALF OF VIDPAL KIT - $15
I used to sell only part of the vidpal kit for $10. For those people who
purchased the partial kit, I have what I call the second half of the kit
available. This kit includes all the rest of the components that you had to
order on your own to complete the partial kit. THIS KIT IS ONLY FOR THOSE
OF YOU WHO ORDERED PARTIAL KITS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. If you don't have
a vidpal kit and would like one, order the full kit mentioned above.
P5.1 UPGRADE KIT - $6
I am selling copies of the Convergent P5.1 upgrade kit. This kit includes
a programmed PAL, a high quality socket, a capacitor, and instructions which
include several diagrams. You will have to provide about 10 feet of wire wrap
wire and soldering tools.
The P5.1 upgrade allows you to use hard disk drives, such as the Seagate
ST-4096, that have more than 8 heads. To get more then 1025 cylinders you will
need a WD2010x chip, which I am NOT selling. There have been several
discussions on the net about this topic, so I will refer you there.
This kit is more difficult to install then the vidpal kit, but it is not out
of the reach of most people. You will have to take your machine almost
completely apart, but it isn't hard to do. There ARE some alternatives to
this kit. ICUS Software (Lenny and GIL) sells instructions on making a board
that allows two hard disk drives to be accessed by your computer while giving
you more then 8 heads. While the P5.1 kit doesn't interfere, it is a no-op as
far as their kit is concerned. Also, John Bly Milton has a board that will let
you access 4 hard disk drives with more than 8 heads and 2 floppy disk drives.
>From what I understand, you will need to do most of the P5.1 upgrade, but if
you are going to use his board, don't bother getting the P5.1 kit from me.
EXTENDED DIAGNOSTICS DISK - $1 or $2
If you are going to format a hard disk drive with more then 8 heads and/or
more then 1024 cylinders, you need to get a copy of the extended diagnostics
floppy disk. I am providing copies of this disk for a modest fee.
MGR - $0
Mgr is a great little window manager that is relatively easy to install and
works quite well. As many of you know, it is still in beta, but don't let that
stop you. It really is quite solid and is beta mainly because the device
drivers need to have their install scripts cleaned up, along with some minor
details. If you like having windows similar to what you have on a Sun, this is
what you are looking for.
There are a couple of things you should know about this package. First, it
uses the public domain pseudo ttys package that has been posted to the net, so
if you have pseudo ttys from elsewhere, ethernet board and starlan?, you will
need to do a little reconfiguring, Brad does provide the necessary guidelines.
Also, Mgr will not compile with gcc, at least not the version that Brad has,
but works just fine with the stock cc. Both of us have 3.51/3.51m systems so
we cannot test Mgr with anything earlier. As long as you have a flexnames
compiler FROM AT&T you shouldn't have any problems.
To get a copy of Mgr, use anonymous ftp to max.physics.sunysb.edu,
129.49.21.100. You need only the main file, the patch files are for people
with earlier releases.
ORDERING INFO
The kits cost the following:
vidpal $25
second half of vidpal $15
P5.1 $6
extended diagnostics disk $1 with P5.1 or vidpal kit
$2 if ordered alone
Send a mailing label and a check in US funds to my NEW ADDRESS:
Brian D. Botton
1748 Paddington Ave.
Naperville, IL. 60563-2028
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