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| Title: | AMIGA NOTES |
| Notice: | Join us in the *NEW* conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2 |
| Moderator: | HYDRA::MOORE |
|
| Created: | Sat Apr 26 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Wed Feb 05 1992 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 5378 |
| Total number of notes: | 38326 |
3168.0. "NEW USER Introductions from COMP.SYS.AMIGA" by WJG::GUINEAU (Quantum Reality) Wed Nov 29 1989 18:19
The following are questions/answers commonly asked in the USENET news group
COMP.SYS.AMIGA.
Article 44034 of comp.sys.amiga
Path: shlump.nac.dec.com!decuac!haven!ames!mailrus!uunet!microsoft!w-edwinh
From: [email protected] (Edwin Hoogerbeets)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Introduction to comp.sys.amiga
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 29 Nov 89 06:25:56 GMT
Expires: 1 Jan 90 03:24:19 GMT
Reply-To: [email protected] (Edwin Hoogerbeets)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 1424
[I'm going skiing in Whistler this weekend (yeah!), so that's why this
is a bit early this month -ed]
This is an introductory posting to comp.sys.amiga. If you are a new
reader of this group or even if you just want Amiga/Usenet information,
please read the following articles.
This posting last changed: Nov 28, 1989
Changes this month:
Added: How to get comp.sys.amiga from bitnet sites (,BIT)
Added: Which file name extensions archivers use (how to extract them)
(,END)
Added: Can You Use An Amiga 24 Hours A Day? (,24)
Added: What is ARP? (,ARP)
Deleted: How to use the kilowatt archive server (,ARC)
(It's going away - please do not use it any longer)
Deleted: What does flashing caps lock LED mean? (,LED)
Deleted: Closing the initial CLI (,CLI)
Updated: The Fish Public Domain software library. (,FNF)
(added section on submitting things)
Updated: How to get multiple RADs (,RF1:)
It is recommended that you save this article for future reference.
Please refer to this article first before posting to the net. This
will help keep the comp.sys.amiga* groups uncluttered with topics that
have already been discussed. Previously deleted topics are still
available from the editor via email.
*
* There is an analogous posting in comp.sys.amiga.tech.
*
To save this posting when you are using
rn or vn: s newuser<return> to save in the file News/newuser.
notes: snewuser<return> to save this article in the file ./newuser.
To read any of the following topics after this page, type 'g' for 'go
to' and the three letter index identifier in capitals that is listed on
the left. This article contains the following topics:
,NET The Etiquette of the net. (netiquette) Please read this article
before posting anything.
[email protected]
,MOD How to receive and post Amiga programs from/to the moderated Amiga
newsgroups.
[email protected] (Bob Page)
,BIT How to get comp.sys.amiga from bitnet sites
Jonathan Crone <uunet!ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!CRONEJP%UREGINA1.bitnet>
[email protected]
,FNF The Fish Public Domain software library. How to get Fish disks
and how to submit programs.
[email protected]
,PIC How to get and send Amiga graphic pictures and related 'show'
programs.
[email protected]
,BUY Which machine to buy? (500 or 2000 Amiga, Atari, Mac?)
uunet!Sun.COM!cmcmanis (Chuck McManis)
[email protected]
[email protected]
,HAR Hard drives for Amiga (especially the 2000)
[email protected]
,HED The 2090(a) and SCSI drives
jesup@cbmvax
,ECS How to get RAD: to recover with the new Agnus
[email protected] (Adam Levin - CATS)
New Agnus for older B2000s
[email protected] (Dave Haynie)
,MIN Minix for the Amiga ???
[email protected] (Andy Tanenbaum)
[email protected] (Commodore Amiga)
,010 Need information about 68010.
[email protected] (Scott Evernden)
,HAM What is HAM?
Tom Limoncelli <[email protected]>
,EXE Execute script errors
Tom Limoncelli <[email protected]>
,AT Questions [and answers] on AT Bridgeboard
[email protected] (Paul Higginbottom)
,TEX Where to get AmigaTeX
[email protected] (Tomas G. Rokicki)
,AMAX Do you need a Mac drive to use AMax?
[email protected] (Doug Lee)
,CS Commodore's customer support phone number
[email protected] (Lauren Brown - CATS)
,RXX ARexx: Where to find it?
[email protected] (Larry Phillips)
,RF1: How to get multiple RADs
[email protected] (Lawrence Esker)
,CLO How to fix "Battery Backed Up Clock Not Found" errors
[email protected] (Jim Wright)
,END Which file name extensions archivers use (how to extract them)
[email protected] (Terminal Entry)
,24 Can You Use An Amiga 24 Hours A Day?
[email protected] (Dale Snell)
,ARP What is ARP?
[email protected] (Richard Moster)
Send questions, comments, submissions to:
Edwin
[email protected] or uunet!microsoft!w-edwinh
*************************************************************************
,NET
From: [email protected] (Edwin Hoogerbeets)
Subject: Netiquette
Behaviour on the net:
Behaviour on the net should be based on respect for other readers. If
you follow this guideline, the net can be a very powerful tool for
useful information.
Try to reduce the amount of material posted and keep your articles
short. This helps to save on phone bills throughout the entire
Usenet community and saves time when reading the voluminous Amiga
news groups.
Try to avoid posting your view on an issue that has no "correct"
answer. An example of this is the "my machine is better than your
machine" discussion that often flares up in the microcomputer
newsgroups. If you must express your point of view, please indicate
that you would like to continue the discussion via mail, so as not to
harass other readers that are not interested in the subject.
Please do not make derogatory postings (aka. flames). Do not subject
other readers to these childish tit for tat postings. Do not post
anything that you wouldn't say aloud in a large group of people. Have
fun via mail instead. These guidelines help to keep up the useful
information content of the newsgroups.
Newsgroups:
There are currently four official groups dedicated to the Amiga. Here
is a brief description of each of them and what kind of articles they
should contain:
comp.sys.amiga - This newsgroup is for general discussion of Amiga
related news, software and hardware. Please do not post programs
here.
comp.sys.amiga.tech - This newsgroup is for the technical discussions
about programming the hardware and software of the Amiga.
comp.sources.amiga - This newsgroup contains the sources to freely
redistributable programs posted exclusively by the moderators.
comp.binaries.amiga - This newsgroup contains the binaries related to
the programs in the sources group. This group can also only be
posted to by the moderators.
Please adhere to these classifications and post your news to the
appropriate group. See the MOD section (enter g MOD) in this posting
on how to post to and receive from the moderated groups.
Mail:
If you would like to reply to an article posted by someone else and
you do not think your reply is of value to others on the net, then
please send mail to the poster instead of posting a reply. This
helps reduce the amount of news sent each day and improves the ratio
of signal to noise in the newsgroup. When in rn type 'r' to reply via
mail. Type 'R' to include a copy of the poster's article.
Following up:
If you do feel the reply is important enough for everyone on the net,
then please keep your posting small. In rn, type 'f' to follow up,
and 'F' to include a copy of the poster's original article. Please
trim the included article down to only the relevant parts, so that
people are reminded of the gist of the original without having to
re-read the entire text.
Posting original material:
Original material is preferred, as it offers something new for the
readers. However, if you must post a request for information or software,
please include a request for mail instead of a news followup. Again,
this is to help reduce the amount the reader must go through each day.
Cross posting:
Cross posting to many newsgroups takes no more room or time than
posting to one newsgroup. However, many more people see your article,
and the above rules become more critical. If you do cross post,
please realize that people from any of the groups may followup to
your article. By default, most news programs post to all the original
newsgroups. If you think the replies to your article will only be
relevant to one group, please use the Followup-To line to indicate
that the named news group should be used for replies. Also, if you
are replying to someone else's cross-posted article, please edit the
Newsgroups line to indicate only the groups to which your reply is
relevant.
Remember to have respect for your fellow netters and you will gain the
most from Usenet.
Edwin
[email protected]
*************************************************************************
,MOD
From: [email protected] (Bob Page)
Subject: how to retrieve programs from the moderated groups
How To Use The Comp.Binaries.Amiga Postings
Every comp.binaries.amiga submission is archived with the ZOO archive
program, which does a fair amount of data compression and retains the
original names, dates and directory structure within the archive.
Because Usenet data paths are not 8-bit, these archives must be
encoded to "regular ASCII" which is 7-bit. The encoding is done with
a program called 'uuencode'. The version used adds a checksum at the
end of each line, and includes the file size at the end of the
encoding.
Sometimes the files are too large for one posting (Usenet postings
should generally be less than 64k bytes but you can sometimes get away
with longer postings). If this uuencoded zoo archive is too large, it
gets split into pieces, roughly 64k in length.
Finally, the (possibly split) .zuu files are enclosed by some simple
UNIX commands. This 'shell archive' is commonly known as a 'shar'.
There is a more-or-less standard set of file extensions used to show
the file type. The file extension is the set of characters after the
dot (or period) in the name. The set of file extensions used is:
.zoo An archive file in ZOO format
.zuu A .zoo file that's been uuencoded
.zu1 The first file in a split .zuu file
.zu9 The ninth file in a split .zuu file
.zu10 The tenth file in a split .zuu file
.uu1 The first shar file in a (possibly split) .zuu
.uu9 The ninth shar file in a (possibly split) .zuu
.uu10 The tenth shar file in a (possibly split) .zuu
To get all this back into a usable form, you need to:
1. Unpack the files from the shar format (the verb is usually called
'unshar'). You can either use a standard text editor to remove the
info, or the unix 'sh' (Bourne Shell), or a publicly available tool to
do it for you. With some tools (like 'sh'), you are required to
remove the Usenet header information first; other unshar tools will
remove it for you. Once you unshar a .uu? file, you'll have a .zu?
file.
2. Combine all the .zu? pieces into a large .zuu file. You should use
something like 'cat' under UNIX or 'join' under AmigaDOS. It is
important that you combine the pieces in numerical order. Be aware
that the single digit pieces do not have a leading zero, so a wildcard
sort will probably not do what you want. Instead, you should specify
the files in this way: zu? zu??, which will do the single digit files
first, then the double digits. You can rest assured there will not be
any triple-digit postings.
3. Convert the .zuu file to a .zoo file with the 'uudecode' program.
If you have a version of uudecode that understands the checksum and
file size information, you should use it. If you don't, you can still
use the old uudecode program, but you will not know if the file has
somehow become corrupt.
4. You now have a .zoo file. To extract the files into a directory,
you need a program called 'zoo'. After "un-zoo'ing", most submissions
will have some documentation to tell how to set up and run the
software on your Amiga.
---------
Of course you need to get the program(s) to your Amiga to run them.
Usually this means downloading the software to your Amiga through a
terminal program. If you want to download the files as quickly as
possible to your Amiga, you should do steps 1-3 above on your UNIX
machine and download the .zoo file to your Amiga, since the .zoo file
is the smallest of the files. It's also usually faster and easier to
do steps 1-3 on the UNIX machine because you have less worry about
disk and memory limitations.
However, some terminal emulators available for the Amiga do not handle
binary downloads well. Experiment with yours and see. If you have
trouble, you might try a different protocol or different terminal
program. If all else fails, you can download the .zuu file, which is
an ascii file, and do the uudecode on your Amiga.
The mechanics of terminal programs, protocols and downloading are
beyond the scope of this document. Most terminal programs should have
a manual section describing how to log in and do remote downloads.
---------
Here are the tools you need, under UNIX, AmigaDOS, or both. All are
publicly available; you do not need to purchase anything to make use
of the software that comes across in comp.binaries.amiga.
shar, sh, unshar - a tool to unpack the shell archives, or use an editor
cat or join - to append the split .zu? files to one .zuu file
uudecode - to decode the .zuu file to a .zoo file
zoo - to unpack the ZOO archive.
--------------------------
From: mace.cc.purdue.edu!ain (Patrick White)
Subject: How to post to comp.[sources|binaries].amiga
I'll give you a quick rundown of the various ways to make submissions in
preferred order..
1) make up some postings and post them to the proper groups -- since these
groups are moderated, the posting will get sent via mail to the
moderator(s). Preferred. Helps us a bit if we forward the submission
to a different machine.
2) send mail to the mail aliases amiga-sources-request or
amiga-binaries-request. Next best -- but be sure the size of the file
will go through mail unscathed (100K or less is usually ok). (BTW, the
aliases are always directed to the right person to receive the
submissions)
3) send mail directly to the moderators. Same warnings as above, but also
be sure to send it to the right person -- if you get it wrong, your mail
might never be heard from again.
Since all these ways use mail, the data transmission is equally reliable
between them. The main difference is ease of submission, and what happens
at our end.
The current moderators are:
Bob Page - [email protected]
- uunet!sun!page
*************************************************************************
,BIT
From: Jonathan Crone <uunet!ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!CRONEJP%UREGINA1.bitnet>
Subject: How to get comp.sys.amiga from bitnet sites
Jonathan P. Crone distributes all amiga Usenet groups for North American
Bitnet sites.
.sys.amiga and .sys.amiga.tech arrive as daily digests of the messages
.binaries.amiga and .sources.amiga arrive more or less direct from
Bob Page
JpC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan P. Crone [email protected]
[email protected] List moderator.
*************************************************************************
,FNF
From: [email protected]
Subject: How to get Fish disks.
WHAT'S AVAILABLE
----------------
There are "do-nothing-useful" examples of various capabilities of the
AMIGA, real development tools, editors, languages, games, and other
odds & ends. Also included are machine readable form of many of the
examples (received directly from C-A sources) out of the official
AMIGA manuals, including the ROM Kernel Manual.
HOW TO OBTAIN DISKS
-------
First, check with your local dealers and user groups. Many already have
the earlier disks. Since these disks can be copied freely, and widespread
distribution is encouraged, they propagate out to central distribution
points fairly quickly.
If you just can't wait, or can't find copies locally, I am willing to
make these disks available for the cost of media, mailing materials,
postage, and miscellaneous expenses (like wear and tear on my drives).
My goal is to get as much software as possible into the hands of people
that can use and enhance it, and make the AMIGA the success it deserves
to be.
Generally, each disk contains all source necessary to recreate the
executables provided. All programs are currently compiled with the
latest Lattice C and/or Manx C compiler available at the time of release.
In a very few cases (noted in the description) the code will not compile
or run for some reason, but was considered interesting enough to include
anyway. Almost all executables are known to run on the latest
kickstart/workbench combination available at time of release.
Disks are typically 85 to 95 percent full.
HOW TO ORDER
------------
To order, send a list of the disks you want, and $6 per disk ($5 per disk
for 10 or more disks), in U.S. funds, to:
Fred Fish
1835 East Belmont Drive
Tempe, Arizona 85284
USA
Price includes cost of media, mailing materials, and first class domestic
postage. Overseas orders add $5 per order for Air Mail. Time and other
jobs permitting, all disks will be mailed within 3 days of receipt of order.
Feel free to order more the the current number of disks available. Excess
funds will be placed "in escrow" (refundable at any time) and drawn against
for automatic mailings of future disks as they become available. I hope
to add at least two to four disks per month to the library. Given that I
have a database of about 300Mb of freely distributable software to
draw upon, that should be a fairly easy goal to accomplish.
DISK CATALOG
------------
A disk based catalog is available directly from me at no charge (as long as
you supply disks and postage). The catalog has been split into two disks
(disk 0A and disk 0B). To get a copy send two disks and $0.65 postage to
the above address.
DISTRIBUTION CRITERIA
---------
To the best of my knowledge, materials in this library are freely
redistributable. This means that they have met one or more of the
following conditions:
(1) The materials contains explicit copyright notices permitting
redistribution.
(2) The materials were posted to a publically accessible electronic
bulletin board and did not contain any copyright notice.
(Such materials will be removed if it is subsequently shown
that copyright notices were illegally removed.)
(3) The materials were posted to a widely disseminated electronic
network (such as usenet), thus implying that their author/poster
intended them to be freely distributed. This applies only if
they contain no notice limiting distribution.
(4) The materials contain an explicit notice placing them in the
public domain. This is not the same as condition (1).
SUBMISSIONS
-----------
For those wishing to submit material for possible inclusion in the library,
here are a few simple guidelines that will make my job of organizing the
material MUCH easier:
1. Don't submit bootable disks or disks with any other
sort of proprietary material included, since I then
have to go examine each file to decide if it is
distributable or not, and if not, what effect removing
it might have.
2. Organize the distribution in a manner similar to my
disks. I.E, place all files related to a particular
submission under a single directory on the disk. If
there is more than one submission per disk, it's ok to
to place each submission in it's own directory.
3. Try to write a simple entry for my "Contents" listing
that summarizes your submission. It should be about
3-10 lines, and include the current version number,
the version and disk number of the most recent version
(if any) that was last included in the library, whether
or not source is included, and an "Author" list.
4. Ensure that your submission will run correctly from
it's subdirectory and if necessary, supply a script
runnable from workbench (via c:IconX) that makes all
necessary assigns, copies fonts and libraries, etc.
One last note; I get frustrated when I get email from people and then
can't get a message back to them because of some sort of braindamage
in the return path. Please don't assume that just because you never
saw a bounced message, that it actually got through to me, or even if
it did, that I ignored it. I DO RESPOND TO ALL MY MAIL. I don't
spend ANY time trying to figure out how to work around bad paths if
my response gets bounced back. For best results, include your
phone number in case the email route fails completely. Also note that
my preferred usenet address has changed recently to this machine
(fishpond!fnf), rather than mcdsun!fnf.
[Note: fish disks are available via anonymous ftp at
uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (128.174.5.54) for fish 1-188
uihub.cs.uiuc.edu (128.174.252.27) for fish 189-222
- ed]
*************************************************************************
,PIC
>From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Picture swap (was Re: clite demo)
So I am hereby officially becoming a picture collector. If you have
pictures, drop me a disk. For every disk of pics I get, I'll send it
back with what I may have found by that point.
A few notes:
1. If you send ray-traced, sending the input to the ray tracer would
be appreciated. That's up to you.
2. If the picture can not be displayed with DPaintII or the DISPLAY
program that comes with DBW_Render, please provide a display
program somewhere on the disk or at least give me some clues as
to how I should display it.
3. Make *sure* you give me full mailing info and such.
4. Anything you send me should be freely redistributable. This means
that I'd love to get digitized pictures out of your favorite
magazine, but that's not legal.....
5. If you DO violate note 4, at least tell me you did so I don't get
into trouble with someone Official.
6. Keep copies and insure yourself if you send more disks than you're
willing to lose in the mail.
If I start to get some collections together, I'll do a followup and tell
people what they can do to get some pictures from me without sending
submissions. I'm also willing to accept pictures over the phones if I
don't have to make long long-distance phone calls to do it. If you have
DBW_Render pictures, you can just email those to me....
My mailing address is NOT my work address, however. Send disks, etc to:
Joe Larson
6121 St. Croix Ave. N.
Golden Valley, Minnesota 55422
Disks sent to me at work will get here, but home would be better....
--
UUCP: rutgers!dayton!joe Dayton Hudson Department Store Company
ATT : (612) 375-3537 Joe Larson/MIS 1060
(standard disclaimer...) 700 on the Mall Mpls, Mn. 55402
*************************************************************************
,BUY
From: uunet!Sun.COM!cmcmanis (Chuck McManis)
Subject: a comparison of PC's... which one to buy
This posting is an effort on my part to demonstrate why
these arguments are pointless. I try to show that the Amiga 500 and
the 1040 ST are essentially the same design with different compromises.
When all is said and done they are the same computer. You as a reader
look at the two machines, look at the way the designers compromised,
and pick the one that *you* like better. Also be aware that your
choice is only the better choice from your perspective, others will
disagree and they are also correct from *their* perspective.
Take the following comments from Peter as an example :
In article <[email protected]> (Peter Ted Szymonik) writes:
> ...I'd say Atari will have no
> problem reaching the million mark next year if it hasn't already
> done so! ...
Given the "magicalness" of a million machines (see the PS/2, Apple Mac
announcements when they broke a million) it is clear that Atari (or
Commodore for that matter) will be shouting to everyone that can read
(especially developers) to let them in on the good news. Witness
Commodore's hyper sensitivity as they get closer to that number.
> Also, I'm sure that a good chunk of those Amiga sales
> were the 500 which was probably bought primarily as a game machine
> while the majority of STs out there are 1040's which have much
> greater utility.
This is an especially wonderful example of why debating machine merits
is a waste of time. Here is a guy who obviously is very proud of his
computer ownership attempting to slander the "competition" with absolutely
no facts at all. If he understood the Amiga computer line he would realize
that the Amiga 500 *is* the Atari 1040 ST competition. Line up the features
side by side and even a third grader could tell you they were the same
machine, to wit :
1040 ST Amiga 500
---------- ----------
Processor 68000 68000
"Main" Memory 1 Meg 1 Meg
Screen Resolution 320 X 200 350 X 200
various #'s of 640 X 200 700 X 200
colors. 640 X 480 700 X 440
Disk Drive 720K 880K
Serial Port Yes Yes
Parallel Port Yes Yes
MIDI Port Yes No
DMA Port Yes No
Expansion Bus No Yes
Hard Disk Available Yes Yes
Memory Expansion Avail Yes Yes
Max Memory 4 MB 9 Mb
Blitter No* Yes
Audio Yes Yes
-----
* Blitter optional according to some things I have seen
And the astute readers will note that a.) Prices are different, b.)
Implementations are different, and c.) Neither machine is the "better"
machine to everyone. In terms of hardware capabilities they offer
the same functions.
The question you ask are "What are the decisions the designers made?"
Take MIDI for example. The Amiga does not have a MIDI port, the designers
did not decide to include one. It is easy to turn the Amiga serial port into
a MIDI port but it will cost you the user extra cash. *You* decide which
decision is better for *you*. Same thing with a hard disk. Atari builds
in a DMA port that makes connecting a SCSI device easier, Commodore provides
and expansion bus that you can connect a hard disk controller to. Here
the Atari designer may have said "Well, either we offer a hard disk
interface or an expansion interface, which will it be? Gee most of
our users will just want a hard disk so lets offer that." Whereas the
Amiga designer might have said "Lets offer an expansion port so that
other things beside a hard disk can be easily connected here." The
Atari decision makes for cheaper hard disks, the Commodore decision
makes for greater flexibility. Which do *you* prefer? *You* decide and
that makes that machine best for you. When one evaluates both machines
you will notice that the Commodore decisions tended to flexibility even
when it raised the cost, whereas Atari's leaned toward keeping the
price down at the cost of flexibility. None of these decisions make
one computer "better" than the other, they just make the computers
different.
Of course none of this means anything to someone who's ego is tied up
in the computer they own. That type of person will get just as hyper
about whether or not a BMW is better than a Mercedes or a Ford is better
than a Mercury. The important point to remember is that when you read
an article from someone who really likes their computer and thinks anyone
who doesn't like their computer obviously has a learning disability, you
have to understand that they are *correct*. This is how they think from
*their* perspective. There is no need to point out how their perspective
disagrees strongly with *your* perspective. That is because both of your
perspectives will disagree with everyone elses perspective. The end result
is a couple of thousand articles describing the authors perspective and
views. If you could condense them into a single survey message you might
et the Signal to Noise ratio up above .5 but I doubt it.
Well thats *my* perspective,
--
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: [email protected]
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
----------------
>From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Atari vs. Amiga: what to buy?
ATARI VS. AMIGA: WHAT TO BUY?
* the bottom line is -- whatever you like best. *
but here are some thoughts:
WORK/SCHOOL OS features:
========================
What kind of environment are you using at work/school? It is
Likely Multi-tasking. (VAX VMS, UNIX, ?)
- (AMIGA & ST) If VMS, I don't know of any VMS look-alikes for
either machine. there is a PD editor (TVX) that can be configured
to look like the VMS EDT editor I think... I know it can be made
to look like VI and emacs/jove/uemacs... (unix).
- (AMIGA) If unix at work,... unix editor PD look-a-likes "vi" and
"emacs" are available. (They are also available on the ST).
- (ST) If unix at work, then note that an ST version of MINIX
has gone to Prentice Hall for distribution (out in Sept? - check
comp.os.minix on when). You are familiar with MINIX? It is Version
7 unix look alike muli-tasking OS, comes with compiler and
unix-behaving tools.
- (AMIGA) As you know the Amiga has multi-tasking built in, so it you
can handle a different interface from the one at work, but are
used to multi-tasking, you are already set.
- (ST) UNIX? Today *now* there is a nice PD shell on the ST (gulam)
that looks a lot like the unix shell with many of the
commands. The editor is emacs-like, and you can pause the
editor, escape to the shell, compile a program, then bring
the editor back to the fore ground (via "fg" a-la unix). Not
multi-tasking. Context switching, but it is the unix look and feel.
- Note: Amiga and ST can run MSDOS stuff with appropriate add-on's.
ST cam also run MAC stuff with appropriate add-on's.
MIDI:
=====
The ST came with midi's built in and this has generated a lot of
ST midi software. Buy a copy of STart magazine. There are always adds
in that artist-oriented magazine for music editors, and multiple other midi
programs. I do not know what midi stuff is available on the AMIGA. I
think there is a large library of midi software on the PC market. You
may wish to look here too...
Final suggestions:
1. Get several machine specific magazines on both computers.
Try to stay away from those published by the machine manufacture; they
tend to be censored and over-hyped: "See how great we are!!!!!!!!".
2. Please try before you buy. - you may hate the feel of the
keyboard.
*BOTH* good computers, you probably can't go wrong what ever you
choose. To be fair, I do not own an Amiga. I own 2 Commodors (the
VIC-20 & C64) am the happy owner of 1 Atari (the ST).
I will not suggest either computer over the other. That is a personal
preference. A choice only you can make. My experience with both
companys is about the same. They are probably on a par with the rest of
the retail computer industry.
--
---> [email protected]
--
----------------
>From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: 500 or 2000 ?
>My next question is this:
>should I buy an amiga 500 or an amiga 2000?
>Can someone give me the pro's and con's of the two machines?
Ok, let me give it a try, The 2000 comes with 512K more than the 500 but
I have seen 512K expansion for the 500 priced under $150.
You can have IBM compatibility with the 2000 but not with the 500.
The 2000 costs more $$$ but it is a little less expensive to expand.
The 2000 is bigger than the 500.
If you expand with the 500 you need alot of space.
The 500 is about $700 cheaper if you get a 1 meg 500.
The 2000 is now selling for $1499.
The 500 is now selling for $649.
Did I miss anything? I believe those are all the diffrences. Hope I made
things easier rather than harder.
[email protected]
*************************************************************************
,HAR
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hard drives for Amiga (especially the 2000)
NOTE: The following is a summary of replies concerning my future
purchase of an Amiga 2000. I want a Hard Disk, and was inquireing
into advantages/disadvantages of the different cards, esp in ref to
the new Amiga 2000HD, which came with a CBM 2090A cantroller and HD
The 2000HD will sell about $100 less than a system built with
third party components. Of course, shop around to find the price
diff you will actually be working with.
BTW, tech note. SCSI interface transmits 1 byte at a time, ST506
1 bit at a time. ST506 is the IBM standard, SCSI looks to be the
new standard.
2000HD- Basic a 2000 with a CBM 2090A Hard Disk Controller and a
40meg HD connected through a ST506 interface, leaving one more ST506
and 6 SCSI connectors open. The 2090A uses a DMA to controll the
hard disk, leaving the processor free to do other things.
The GVP HardCard is heavily recommended, clearly the best of the
established third Party cards. It has been around a while, so all
the bugs are gone, but it supposedly relies upon the processor to do
a lot of the work. The Quantum Drives are supposedly the Best on
the market, and is available in 28ms and 11ms types. Expect it
to last twice as long as typical drives. May require EEPROMS to
Autoboot.
The Microbotics card is impressive, claiming to transfer data at bus
speeds (as fast as the Amiga can handle it, not 65mph hiway, 15 mph
city ;) It uses a DMA to controll the drives, leaving the processor
free like the 2090A. It is a half sized card, so it can used in
expansion boxes, has power hookups for a card mounted drive, and
several extra SCSI interfaces.
There are a few other points to consider:
1. The CBM card has its own processor, the GVP can bog the
processor down if you are working processor intensive tasks, otherwise
the GVP is faster. The microbotic is like the CBM card in that it
doesnt harass the processor, and is the fastest and newest design of
the three.
2. The CBM comes pre-installed. The cards should not be hard
install, but I understand dammage done by improperly installed cards
is not covered by warrantee. But the 3rd party warrantees are
tiypically longer, CBM offers only a 90 dayer. This does not apply if
you already own an Amiga, but having an authorize service rep install
it should keep warranty problems away. It can also put you out another
60 or 70 bucks.
3. The CBM must boot to the old file system, not the newer
fast filing system. While this only affects a small section of the
Disk (The rest can be configured fast filing) The others don't have
this weakness. K1.3 was designed for autobooting to HD's but some GVP
cards may still require additional PROMS.
Personally, I'd like the microbotics with the Quantum 11ms, but 1st I
gotta check prices. I also want to investigate the possible bug. *I
have heard from a few people who own the microbotics, and so far they
are extremely happy with them*
paul
--
"Run, Run, as fast as you can, you cant catch me, Im the gingerbread man"
"Lets do some crimes. Yeah, lets get sushi and not pay"
6 6
[email protected] `--'
*************************************************************************
,HED
From: jesup@cbmvax
Subject: Re: 15 Head Hard drive and the A2090(a)
>I recently acquired a 15 head Hard Drive for my Amiga 2000 only to discover
>that the A2090(a) does not support >8 heads. Has anyone figured out either
The A2090 supports 8 heads for ST506 drives. For SCSI, the number
of heads is not important, so it WILL support all of your drives.
--
Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup
*************************************************************************
,ECS
>From: [email protected] (Adam Levin - CATS)
Subject: Re: RAD: won't
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Stuart Pierce) writes:
>Unfortunately, RAD: loses everything now when I reboot the machine. I added
>the R option to SetPatch in my startup-sequence, but that didn't help. What
>am I missing?
Use a lower case 'R' as in
SetPatch >NIL: r
and your RAD: will reboot. This could be considered a bug or a
documentation error; I will get it corrected.
Adam
--
Adam Keith Levin -- CATS Commodore-Amiga Technical Support
1200 Wilson Drive / West Chester, PA 19380 (215) 431-9180
BIX: aklevin UUCP: ...{amiga|rutgers|uunet}!cbmvax!adam
------------------------------------------
>From: [email protected] (Dave Haynie)
Subject: Re: New Agnus for older B2000s
in article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Marco Niese) says:
> could a reliable source at Commodore (best would be Dave Haynie) give a final
> statement here on the net about the New 1MB Agnus working in older (pre-rev.6)
> B2000s?
The 1 Meg Agnus works in all B2000s. There are two or three jumpers to change
to install it correctly (J101 is moved, J500 is removed or cut depending on
how your board was assembled, and J102 is cut if you want to come up PAL
instead of NTSC). The Rev 6 board _requires_ the 1 Meg Agnus for support of
refresh on it's 256K x 4 DRAMs, but it will work in every revision of the
B2000 ever shipped.
It will not work on the original A2000, which may be available in the
Netherlands as well as other parts of Europe. The easiest way to identify
the type of motherboard in your system is to see how many RCA phono jacks
you have in the back of the machine: there are 2 on the "A" board, 3 on
the "B" board.
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
{uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy
Be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it
*************************************************************************
,MIN
>From: [email protected] (Andy Tanenbaum)
Subject: Re: Minix for the Amiga ???
Two of my students did the port to the Amiga. They seem to have done an
excellent job, and it is now being tested. If and when there will be an
official release is another story. Neither P-H nor Commodore is interested.
I am working on that one, however.
Andy Tanenbaum
>From: [email protected] (Commodore Amiga)
Subject: AmigaMINIX, some answers
Finally some answers about AmigaMINIX from the guys who ported it. We
hope that the following will clarify most of the darker areas around
AmigaMINIX.
For those of you who don't know what AmigaMINIX is about: it's a UNIX
like operating system for you Amiga. MINIX was originally written by
Andy Tanenbaum for the PC-family and later on ported to the Atari-ST by
Johan Stevenson and Jost Muller. Because the ST version is based on the
Motorola 68000 we decided to port this version to the Amiga.
While porting MINIX to the Amiga we've tried to keep the main goal of
MINIX (education) in mind. This means we did not try to squeeze out every
bit of performance, especially not where this would harm the clarity of
the MINIX source code and/or structure. Another result of this goal is
that we decided not to use the usual Amiga disk format, but the PC (ST)
format instead. This way the AmigaMINIX and MINIX-ST file systems are 100%
compatible. Because MINIX doesn't use any dirty tricks, AmigaMINIX and
MINIX-ST binaries are also compatible; you can mount a MINIX-ST floppy on
AmigaMINIX and run all binaries. (Almost all, actually. Programs which do
use 'dirty tricks' as directly reading from /dev/ram to set the time-of-
day clock won't run properly of course!)
Although we wanted to use the PC format for the AmigaMINIX floppies we
didn't want to fall asleep when loading mined for example. We tried to
optimize the floppy driver as much as we could be using a track cache for
each drive and only compute the CRCs (checksums) when necessary. (Computing
a CRC costs about 50 ms. This limits the transfer rate to 6.9 kb/sec. The
normal transfer rate under AmigaMINIX is 4 to 5 kb/sec) Since each track-
cache occupies about 14 kb of CHIPMEM, these buffers are dynamically
allocated for only those floppy drives that are actually connected.
Apart from the PC format disks there's another remarkable 'thing' about
AmigaMINIX: it doesn't support hard disks. (sorry) There are two main
reasons for this. In the first place there are several different hard
disks in use on Amiga's and we didn't want to write a driver for all of
them. Further, we didn't (and nobody in our neighborhood does) have a
hard disk to test our driver(s) on. If, however, hard disks are as common
in other places of the world as we're told, it shouldn't be long before
one of you will post a driver for your favorite hard disk.
To sum up the most important specifications of AmigaMINIX:
- AmigaMINIX boots from a normal AmigaDOS floppy (bootstrap) so
it can easily steal (use) everything AmigaDOS knows about your
Amiga. (Whether is's NTSC or PAL, how much memory do you have,
what color the screen is, what keymap you use, etc.) After that
it completely takes over your Amiga, and disables EXEC.
- You can use ALL of the available RAM which is normally available
under AmigaDOS, even if it's fragmented.
- The floppy driver can read and write single and double sided 80-
track floppies. (Also single sided for MINIX-ST compatibility.)
Up to four drives can be connected.
- The AmigaMINIX printer driver only supports the parallel (centro-
nics) port.
- The display driver use ANSI escape sequences and also provides
limited access to the color registers.
Some of you may wonder why we decided not to run AmigaMINIX under EXEC.
The main reason for this is that (at first) we thought that it wouldn't
run properly with the MINIX-ACK compiler. When we realized that this wasn't
such a big problem after all, the port was already half on its way. Another
reason is that we think that you should not run operating systems on top of
each other, if you want people to know what operating systems really is all
about. (Andy Tanenbaum once put it something like: "It's not writing a 15
page scheduler, but getting all the details right.")
AmigaMINIX is currently being tested here on the VU and because we haven't
found a distributor yet and don't feel like posting 3 Mb (yet :-) it'll
probably be a while before you can use AmigaMINIX.
-Steven Reiz & Raymond Michiels. ([email protected])
*************************************************************************
,010
>From: [email protected] (Scott Evernden)
Subject: Re: Need information about 68010.
In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Marco Dedecker) writes:
> - Is swapping the chips all you need to do, or are there some other
> ajustments you have to make ?
Thats all you need to do. I switched mine over 2 years ago
with no ill effects.
> - Does all the software still work with the 68010 ?
All current software (that I have anyways) works just fine. (The
old pre-1.2 Calculator used to blow up on /0 errors). Even A-Max
works properly with the 68010 (w/ 128K ROMS of course). There is
a PD program called "decigel" available in various places which
patches the trap vector for the 1 instruction which is incompatible.
I can't remember the last time I used "decigel".
> - What are the advantages of the 68010 ?
About 7% speed improvement as measured by Jez San's Amiga Speed
Program (recently on BIX and elsewhere). This number is about
exactly what I have experienced up to now, and I think it agrees
with Motorola's own figures. I think the speedup is noticeable,
but then I can also see infrared and hear to 25KHz ;-), so...
Should you replace your 68000 with a 68010? Well, they don't cost $60
anymore (what like $12 or so??), so you can't really lose. You can always
go back...
--
Scott Evernden PRIME Computer Inc.
[email protected] Commercial Systems Group
uunet!ssgp32!scott Technology Drive
(508) 478-8600 x2984 Milford, MA 01757
*************************************************************************
,HAM
From: Tom Limoncelli <[email protected]>
Subject: What is HAM?
What is HAM? (A NON-technical description)
HAM (Hold And Modify) is a special graphics mode on the Amiga. It
involves a special mode of the graphic chips that allow for all 4096
colors to be displayed at the same time; with some restrictions.
If you have Fish Disk #1, the program "colorful" will show what I
mean. It displays all 4096 colors at the same time.
How is it done? Each pixel on a normal screen has three components;
the red, the green and the blue (RGB). These R-G-B values are
combined to make the color of that pixel. In HAM, the first pixel on
each line can be any color. Then, the next pixel is the same color as
the previous one, except the value of either R, G, or B has been
changed. Only one component can change at any time from pixel to
pixel so you are restricted in displaying very different colors
directly next to each other. There is facility for two adjacent
pixels to be exactly the same, i.e. no change in either R, G, or B.
Using HAM many impressive graphic screens have been created. Because
of its peculiar restrictions doing certain tasks are not well-suited
to HAM and HAM is usually used for non-moving graphics (though it's
good for ray-traced animation). Digitized pictures look great in HAM.
Some programs store their graphics internally as 24-bit graphics (more
colors that the Amiga can display) for use with high-end graphics
equipment but permit the user to preview their graphics in HAM mode.
This is a real boon for high-end users because it enables them to
"estimate" results on their Amiga before they send them off to very
expensive printing services, etc.
HAM isn't perfect but it has its uses. Users should be careful about
selecting when and when not to use it.
*************************************************************************
,EXE
From: Tom Limoncelli <[email protected]>
Subject: EXECUTE: No K Directive
A common question that comes up is "I just wrote a script and when I
EXECUTE it I get an error like 'EXECUTE: No K Directive. What am I
doing wrong?"
Try making the first two lines ".bra {" and ".ket }". This tells
EXECUTE how to interpret {'s and }'s. A plain Amiga EXECUTE script
can do a heck of a lot more than most people know about.
This is documented in the AmigaDOS manual from Bantam which is still
the only C-A book that gives the CLI complete coverage. I hope that
after 1.4 comes out we'll find much better documentation.
*************************************************************************
,AT
From: [email protected] (Paul Higginbottom)
Subject: Re: Questions on AT Bridgeboard
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Chris Frerking) writes:
$I have recently had the misfortune of being told that I need to have a PC
$compatable computer. I currently own an A2500, and would like information
$on the AT Bridgeboard (I need a 286 or 386 machine). Specifically:
$
$1. Would it be cheaper to just buy an inexpensive AT clone? (I would
$prefer the Bridgeboard, as I haven't lots of desk space... but if the price
$difference were too great, I could find some space.)
It's tough to find an AT clone for less than the price of our Bridgeboard.
You MIGHT be able to, but generally the cheap clones are the large footprint
models (read `huge').
$2. Does the AT Bridgeboard cause any problems on the A2500? Is there certain
$software that won't run/hardware that won't work if the Bridgeboard is
$installed?
I have an A2500 with AT Bridgeboard installed here, and they work fine. I
believe you cannot have more than 6Mb of Amiga RAM with the Bridgeboard
installed, which isn't a problem for most people.
$3. How AT compatable is the Bridgeboard? (I am new to PC compatables,
$and have been told that this is a question which needs to be asked) (can it
$run xenix? minix? microport unix? OS/2?)
The A2286 is an entire PC AT on a card, including processor, math coprocessor
socket, BIOS, video RAM, 1Mb system RAM, and of course, PC slots in the Amiga.
So in a word - it's very compatible. The potential incompatibilities, which
relate to an interrrupt and a couple of memory locations that are used for
communication between AmigaDOS and MS-DOS are documented, and prevent (for
example) you having more than 1 serial card installed, and a parallel card
becomes LPT3: (I think), but I would think that with the mode command you
could make it act like an LPT1:. I don't believe Commodore has tested OS/2
or XENIX at this time. I see no reason why they shouldn't work, although
they may not if they want to share Amiga peripherals.
$4. Does the Bridgeboard provide any graphics capability - if so, what sort?
$CGA compatable? EGA compatable?
The Bridgeboard has RAM enough for MDA and CGA displays, which the Amiga
interprets and displays in a window or on a separate screen. The emulation
is very good, but...
$- If not, can a CGA/EGA/VGA card be plugged into the PC slots, and run
$off of a separate monitor? What about using the same monitor?
...if you want other modes or a real MDA or CGA display, you can, yes, plug
in a video card and use that. It may require a second monitor though.
$5. Does the Bridgeboard have its own memory, or does it use the Amiga's memory?
Yes, 1Mb, and no, although you could use Amiga's RAM disk as a DOS device.
$can it be expanded? Is extra memory added accessable to the amiga?
Yes, and no.
$6. Can the Bridgeboard use the Amiga harddrive?
Yes. It can even boot of it.
$Can the Amiga access PC harddrives plugged into the PC slots?
Yes, you can create an Amiga partition on a PC hard drive.
In addition you can move files back and forth using supplied utilities.
$What about access to the Amiga's 3.5" drives?
Only as virtual drives, not transparently.
$Does the Bridgeboard come with a 5.25" disk drive?
Yes, high density with AT version, and low density with XT version.
$...can it be mounted externally
You might have to extend your power cable, but it's possible, yes.
Plus, you might want to get a case of some sort for the drive.
$7. Does the Bridgeboard provide its own serial/parallel ports, or does it share
$them with the Amiga?
No built in ports, but the Amiga's parallel port can be loaned to the
Bridgeboard.
$If it shares them, how compatable are they?
This is implemented at the BIOS level, so anything that goes through that
should work. That is, software that tries to bang on hardware directly won't
work, which is why we don't allow sharing of the serial port, because no-one
goes through the BIOS to use it.
$Can I plug any piece of PC hardware into them without fear of harming the
$equipment?
Normal precautions apply. If you want the real mccoy, just get a
multi-function card - they're cheap.
Paul.
-----------------------------
>From: [email protected] (Paul Higginbottom)
Subject: Re: Problems with BridgeBoard, Bad Virtual Dirs
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Lawrence Esker) writes:
$...having persistent problems with data integrity on 'JLink' virtual
$drives in the IBM side of the bridgeboard. Does
$anyone share this problem. Can anyone help?
Yes. The JLINK software creates a virtual drive file that must grow
if new data added requires it (i.e., there's no more room with the file
at its current size). When this occurs, the JANUS software has to open
the virtual drive file and append the new data. THE FILE ONLY GETS CLOSED
IF YOU DO AN UNLINK!!! The problem may therefore not exhibit itself if
new data was added but the virtual drive file didn't have to grow (there
was still room left in it due to your deleting some other stuff perhaps).
One fix: add tons of dummy stuff to the virtual drive, then delete it all
then unlink it. From that point forth the virtual drive should not be
required to grow since it's already huge.
Another fix: using the new JANUS 2.0 software, you can create a [bootable]
DOS drive space on the Amiga hard drive that looks like, smells like [etc.]
a real PC hard drive as far as MS-DOS is concerned. You even specify
cylinders, heads, etc. for the new MakeAB command that creates the space.
This solution does not require the first fix.
$... Why is a virtual drive on
$the ibm a single Amiga file. A significant reliability issue IMHO. A
$single problem can destroy a whole (ibm) disk and DiskDoctor can't help.
The manual recommends that you have a separate partition for the PC
data, to prevent accidental removal of the file, etc. However, most people
have no problem with just allowing it to coexist with other stuff.
$Is there a way to force PCdisk to complete pending writes once the ibm has
$crashed, before rebooting it and remounting the virtual drives? Maybe
$executing PCdisk a second time?
No - I recommend you use the new software.
$Other Possible Bugs:
$The command AREAD does not seem to transfer data between an Amiga file and a
$virtual drive.
Problems with AREAD/AWRITE have been fixed for the new 2.0 software (they
were re-written).
I hope this helps,
Paul.
*************************************************************************
,TEX
From: [email protected] (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Subject: AmigaTeX
For a free demo disk and further information on AmigaTeX, please drop a
postcard with your name and address to Radical Eye Software, Box 2081,
Stanford, CA~~94309. This is *free* and will answer most questions.
-tom
*************************************************************************
,AMAX
From: [email protected] (Doug Lee)
Subject: AMax
>Here is the question: "Do you or do you
>not need a Mac drive to use AMax?"
No you do NOT need a Macintosh disk drive to use Amax. You do need it if you
want to read NATIVE Macintosh disks. There is software provided to read and
write one third of a disk (just the centre tracks) such that the disk can
be used on a real Mac, using Amax provided utilities and on the Amiga. If you
BORROW a Mac drive, you can connect it and diskcopy real Mac disks to a full
disk format unique to Amax using the amiga's drives as the destination.
This would allow you to make Amiga readable copies of system disks etc.
You could then download PD stuff with a modem and have many hours of happy
computing without having to read a real mac disk. Of course if you want to use
commercial software, you will either need the Mac drive to read it or access
to a Mac which you can use to copy stuff a third of a disk at a time.
--
Doug Lee
douglee@becker
416-461-5357
*************************************************************************
,CS
From: [email protected] (Lauren Brown - CATS)
Subject: commodore's customer support phone number
The correct phone number for Customer Support
is (215) 436-4200. Use this number to inquire
about getting 1.3.2, or any other end user question.
*************************************************************************
,RXX
From: [email protected] (Larry Phillips)
Subject: Re: ARexx: Where to find it?
>Okay, I've been seeing here lots and lots of stuff about ARexx.
ARexx is commercial, and list price is about $50. Do yourself a favour if you
buy it, and add another $50 (list) for WShell, which knows all about ARexx, and
makes ARexx scripts transparently callable as if they were binary executables.
I have seen both of these packages advertised in the $35 range from mail order
places. Both packages are written by, and available from:
[ed - Bill is also the author of conman, a nice console device replacement]
William S. Hawes
P.O. Box 308
Maynard, MA 01754
Phone: (617) 568-8695
*************************************************************************
,RF1:
From: [email protected] (Lawrence Esker)
Subject: How to get multiple RADs
>Is it possible to have two ram drive entries that look like floppies?
It is possible to make two RAD: devices.
First make a copy of ramdrive.device in your devs: directory to
ramdriv1.device. Also copy the RemRAD program in your c: directory to RemRF1.
Since you used RF0: for your first floppy, you may want to rename the original
RemRAD to RemRF0 for consistancy.
Second, get a copy of NewZAP or some other binary file editor. Yes, this is
the hard part, but any well respecting Amiga Hacker should have this program.
Use NewZAP to edit devs:ramdriv1.device and c:RemRF1. In each program, replace
all occurances of ramdrive with ramdriv1 and all occurances of RAMB0 with
RAMB1. (Program is ShareWare by someone I think is on this net.)
Third, edit your MountList. Both RAD: type device entries must be identical
to a floppy description for DiskCopy to work on them. The RF0: entry should
use DEVICE = ramdrive.device, the other use DEVICE = ramdriv1.device. Also
make sure the entries contain 'MOUNT = 1' so Workbench recognizes them when
they are first mounted and not at first usage. I would add 'BOOTPRI = -128'
so the OS doesn't attempt to reboot on your RAD: devices. I don't know what
would happen if both RAD: devices were bootable and you did a reboot as this
is probably an unexpected situation for the OS to encounter.
This procedure may be extended to any number of RAD: type devices. Make sure
double check the MountList entries with your 1.3 enhancer manual for accuracy
for my memory is not always perfect.
>From: [email protected] (Lawrence Esker)
Subject: Re: problem with mounting 2 RAD's (from introductory posting to comp.sys.amiga...)
>The mount commmand appears to work--no errors, at least, and if I repeat
>the mount RF0: command the amiga replies that RF0 is already mounted.
>Typing ASSIGN LIST shows RF0 as one of my devices. However, typing info
>does not show up RF0 and I can neither cd or ls RF0:. Have I forgotten
>something/done something wrong?
DO NOT CHANGE the unit number. It must be 0. That is why
this entire cryptic procedure must be done, because C= was not farsighted
enough to accept unit numbers for multiple RAD: devices.
I did encounter the problem that is described. The case of the letters in the
Device = ramdriv1.device must match the case of ramdriv1.device within the
device file itself. It seems tha Mount finds the device to mount regardless
of case and mounts properly. However, the device then checks that its name
matches what it expects, case sensitive, and won't run if there is a mismatch.
Check that the case of all changes you made to ramdriv1.device is all lower
case. Also make sure you didn't accidently use ramdrive1.device instead of
ramdriv1.device anywhere. Finally, its always helpful to have Mount = 1 in the
mountlist so that the device is activated when it is mounted. An icon should
show up in the workbench for the device at mount time.
---------- Lawrence W. Esker ---------- Modern Amish: Thou shalt not need any
computer that is not IBM compatible.
UseNet Path: __!mailrus!sharkey!itivax!abaa!esker == [email protected]
*************************************************************************
,CLO
From: [email protected] (Jim Wright)
Subject: Re: Battery Backed Up Clock Not Found
| I ctrl-A-A'ed the beast and it came up complaining about its clock. I
| tried "setclock reset" but it, too, just complained about "clock not
| found". And there I sit.
This happened to me earlier. I "fixed" it by doing nothing. About the
second or third day I booted, the problem simply disappeared.
As I understand it, a register in the clock is getting trashed. The normal
startup then can't find a (proper) clock. The solution is to get the
registers in the clock back the way they should be. Between version 1.2
and 1.3 of the "setclock reset" commands, one works and one doesn't. (I
believe 1.2 works.(?)) Another possible fix is the program which claims
to "cure" the fabled "clock virus". Apparently it just resets the registers
in the clock. (Available at an anti-viral archive site near you.)
Jim Wright
[email protected]
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,END
>From: [email protected] (Terminal Entry)
Subject: Re: Archivers
Ending Use
---------------------------------------------------------
.zoo Zoo
.arc Arc
.zip Zip
.lzh LHarc
.sit Only available in "unsit" for amiga.
.Z Compress (Lempel-Ziv)
.C Compact (Huffman). Rather outdated.
.sh/.shr/.shar SHell ARchiver (SHAR) (or sksh)
.wrp Warp - Amiga Disk-archiver
.tar tar - stands for Tape archiver.
.sq Sq/Unsq. (forgot the proper name)
.bak Matt Dillon's HD->Flippy backup util.
.uue uudecode
.zuu uudecode and then zoo on the result
.z (small) pack/unpack
>From: [email protected] (Tad Guy)
Subject: Re: Zoo for unix
UNIX Zoo was posted to comp.sources.unix, and is available from any
comp.sources.unix archive site, such as XANTH.CS.ODU.EDU or UUNET.UU.NET.
On xanth, it's also available as /pub/zoo-2.01/zoo-2.01.tar.Z
...tad
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,24
>From: [email protected] (Dale Snell)
Subject: Re: Can You Use A 2000 24 Hours A Day?
|>>Are there any problems with leaving an Amiga 2000 on 24 hours a day?
|
|>I've run my 2000 on a 24x7 basis for the last 3 or 4 months; during that time
|>I've powered the machine down maybe 3 times total. Of course, I do live in an
|>area where the power is exceptionally stable.
|
|For that matter, anyone know about the A1000 being left on 24hr/day???
The NAG (Northwest Amiga Group) BBS is run on an A1000. The board
runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So far as I
know, the only times the board goes down is when it gets a power glitch,
then it has to be restarted. Other than that, it works just fine.
I don't think that there's a UPS or power conditioner for the BBS.
However, such a thing would be a wise investment for anyone thinking
about running any computer continuously. Especially if the power is
noisy or unstable. (Like in the town I live in. The lights flicker
daily. Does terrible things to computers, vcrs, etc.)
--dds
Big Whorls Have Little Whorls | Dale D. Snell BIX: ddsnell
Which Feed On Their Velocity | UseNet: [email protected]
And Little Whorls have Littler Whorls | CompuServe: [email protected]
And So On To Viscosity. | Disclaimer: My opinions, not Tek's.
*************************************************************************
,ARP
>From: [email protected] (Richard Moster)
Subject: Re: arp.library
ARP is the AmigaDos Replacement Project. It consists of
replacement files for most of the common AmigaDos commands (copy,
list, delete, etc.) along with a library file, namely arp.library. I
got my copy off of a local Amiga bulletin board.
The advantage of ARP is, as far as I can tell, three-fold:
(1) The replacement commands are smaller and therefore leave more free
room on your disk (I assume this was accomplished in part by utilizing a
library of common routines, viz. arp.library); (2) the commands are
slightly easier to use, such as being able to use "*" as a wildcard
(plus a few other goodies--there should be docs accompanying the other
files); and (3) a number of other programs (like VLT 4.226,
apparently) require that you have the arp.library present. There may
be other advantages to ARP, but these are the three that I am aware
of.
Richard Moster
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