No Fragments Archive 12: Textmags & Docs/nf_archive_12.iso/MAGS/TEXTMAGS/ATARI16/INFO89.ZIP/INFO89/770.TXT

Text File | 1997-04-16 | 17KB | 381 lines

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INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Thu,  7 Dec 89       Volume 89 : Issue 770

Today's Topics:
                       ATARI sales .. going up?
                           Dear Rich Covert
                      Form Doc's: Good job, Jos!
                   Problem with Mega 2 Screen Dumps
                            Shareware MAC
              Still searching...   Gotta Flame a Little
                        Who owns the ROM code?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 18:51:20 GMT
From: brunix!iris.brown.edu![e-mail]  (Marshall Vale)
Subject: ATARI sales .. going up?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Richard E.
Covert) writes:
> Has *ANYONE* out there in NEtland SEEN a Real Live AD for the ST, either
> on TV or in print?
>
> Just curious.

 I did, ONCE.  I was in the east San Francisco bay area about 3 years ago
at my grandfathers house.  We were watching TV and an ad came on showing
the IBM PC.  I talked about its bad user interface.  Then a Mac Plus was
shown and they made a point about its high price and no color.  They then
showed an ST using Supra's picture blaster program, pointing out its use
of color and low price.  Very nice actually, but alas, the only way to see
it now is to get to Alpha Centuri before it does.

-- [e-mail]

"And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
 Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball."
                                   A.A. Milne "Now We are Six"

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 16:45:05 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force![e-mail]  (Richard E.
 Covert)
Subject: Dear Rich Covert
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Greg
 Csullog) writes:
> I agree with the netter who wondered whether or not dear old Rich actually
> understands Laser printing speed. Hey Rich, for your benefit I'll rephrase
> an earlier posting.
>
> 1. I digitized a photo of my daughter with the Migraph Hand Scanner.
>
> 2. I printed the .IMG file from a Mega 2 to an SLM804 and it took less
>    than 1.5 minutes.

Greg, which program did you use? What it EasyDraw's OUTPRINT (a GDOS program),
and if so did you use GPLUS, and if so which version of GPLUS (the latest is
version 1.3 I believe).

>
> 3. I printed the same file from an AT at 10 MHz with an 80287 also at
>    10 MHz (overall NORTON SI = 12.4). and the pic took just over 44 minutes
>    printing from GEM Paint.   <<< Yeah, 44 MINUTES >>>
>
> The difference is due to transmission speed.

Greg, which printer did you use? Did you use a serial or a parallel printer
port?? If serial than at what speed? And comparing a printout on different
machines says NOTHING about the speed of the printer UNLESS you use the
SAME printer on both machines. Are you saying that you managed to get 300
dpi printouts with the SLM804 on a MSDOS machine? WOW! I am impressed!

>
> Hey, if you really believe in this 11 ppm, 8 ppm, 6 ppm stuff, that lakefront
> property in Canada's Arctic is still for sale and has your name written all
> over it!

Greg, I said in my last post that the MAJOR reason that I sold my SLM804
was that I wanted a laser printer that works under Mac, MSDOS, and ST
systems. The KXP4450 does so.

As far as speed, if you would be so kind as to email me a uuencode ZOOed (or
 ARCed)
copy of your picture I would be HAPPY to benchmark it against my KXP4450.

In fact, if folks out there want me to benchmark the KXP4450 against the
SLM804, I can do so. My friend still has the SLM804. I can test it on both
my 3 year old 520ST (with a meg of RAM), and my 2 year old Mega ST2 (upped to
4 megs). On the Mega, I could test it with the Turbo16 in the Fast and Slow
modes.

So, please folks, I am NOT saying that one printer is faster than another.
I am simply saying that I will benchmark my new printer against the SLM804
in as identical a system as I can.

And when you are printing on systems, like the Mac and the PC, which DON'T
have a FAST DMA port to the printer, the page per minute print speed of
the printer is important. So, for my Mac and PC programs, the KXP4450 is
faster than the HP LJII or the Brother or the Canon or the whatever.

So, please inorder for me to do a benchmark I nned to know that following:

1) What ST are you using?

2) What TOS are you using?

3) Are you printing using GDOS, GPLUS, or a non-GDOS program?

4) Which FILE are you priinting?

5) How do you time the print job?

If there is interest I will do a benchmark. But as I said, I won't argue
which printer is faster. I simply want a laser printer that I can use under
Spectre and MSDOS.

--
 Richard E. Covert (covertr@gtephx)
  (602) - 581-4652
|  AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ   |
 UUCP: ?ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att?!gtephx!covertr

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 17:33:44 GMT
From: mcsun!inria!mirsa!falbala.inria.fr![e-mail]  (Colas Nahaboo)
Subject: Form Doc's: Good job, Jos!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

First, let's all support Jos Vermaseren, having a hard time with all the
brain-dead Brett "he or she" Maraldos around...

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jos
Vermaseren) writes:
>       It uses a customized macro package that was made
>       by someone else that makes for a very booklet format when
>       printed with two A5 pages on one A4 sheet in landscape
>       format.

My question: do you have a program to do this from your dvi, or
must I do some fancy photocopy work? Personally, I do not object to your
posting of the .dvi, just to your choice of a paper format not easily found in
a common laser printer.

Another point:
Richard E. Covert writes:
> Must be some form of Elitest mentatlity to post docs to a program
> in a format that 99% of the people don't use.

Well, forms is intended for maths, and math people use TeX anyways. :-)

PS: and, not all people have troff too now. Try to find a site with
"pic" or -me macros... I am sure they are less numerous than TeX sites...

PPS: I distribute GWM with a LaTeX documentation, TeX seems to be really
present everywhere...

Colas NAHABOO       BULL Research FRANCE -- Koala Project
                    (GWM X11 Window Manager)
    Internet:       [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 17:00:37 GMT
From: att!cbnewsm![e-mail]  (craig.b.ziemer)
Subject: Problem with Mega 2 Screen Dumps
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

A friend of mine is having trouble doing screen dumps.  He has a Mega 2
and an Epson LQ510 24 pin printer.  When he tries to dump a drawing from
within NeoChrome, using the ALT-HELP command, the result is compressed in
the vertical direction.  It appears to print each line OK, but the paper
does not advance enough after each scan such that the vertical height of
the finished printout is only about 1 inch!  When printing a text file,
everything works just fine.  Can anyone offer any suggestions?  Thanks.

*  Craig B. Ziemer                %%        DISCLAIMER: AT&T does not  *
*  AT&T Bell Laboratories       %%%%%%      officially support what I  *
*  Reading, PA                    %%        just said, in fact, they   *
*  UUCP ADDRESS: alux6!cbz        %%             rarely do :~)         *

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 18:00:50 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Larry Rosenstein)
Subject: Shareware MAC
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]>
 [e-mail] (Gabe Nemeth) writes:
>
>One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the amount of necessary code
>in the roms is quite small.  Thats because the system file contains patches
>to the different revisions of mac roms that overlay buggy or outdated code.
>So - all the roms have to contain is stuff found in the basic 64k roms.

Not true.  There are many routines that were added to the 128K ROMs that
were never made available as disk patches.  (For example, there are a lot of
Resource Manager extensions and QuickDraw calls.)  So a 64K ROM + System
Disk does not equal a 128K ROM.



--
                 Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
 Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 46-B  Cupertino, CA 95014
            AppleLink:Rosenstein1    domain:[e-mail]
                UUCP:?sun,voder,nsc,decwrl?!apple!lsr

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 18:07:03 GMT
From: mfci![e-mail]  (Jeff Wilson)
Subject: Still searching...   Gotta Flame a Little
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>
>[e-mail] (Daniel Deimert) writes:
>| I can assure you -- you won't be able
>| to sell a lot of computers if you don't tell them how to program it!
>
>I seriously doubt that the _majority_ of people who buy Atari
>computers, or any other computers for that matter, have the slightest
>desire to program their machines.  The simple fact is, most people who
>buy computers want to _use_ their computers.  They don't want to be
>bothered with "programming" the things.  Where a computer company
>will lose is if there is no software available for the computers.  It
>is important to make sure that professional programmers know how to
>program the computers, not end users.
>
Boy, do I hesitate to flame, but.....

FLAME ON!

I am one of the minority of end-users who DO buy in order to pro-
gram.  Of course I use computers as tools, too.

Several years ago, I bought a Commodore 64 with hopes of enjoy-
ing a cheap hack.  After living with it for six months, I gave
it to a university for a tax break (BTW, don't do that unless
you are prepared to receive donation-wheedling letters from
the Dean of Development for years thereafter).  Why?  Because
it a) wasn't well documented for development and b) didn't work
as claimed in the documentation I could get (serial port inter-
rupts weren't handled properly, among other things).

What a pleasure to have found sources like "De Re Atari" and
the Atari 800 internals manuals (including source code for the
O.S. and BASIC ROMs)!  I bought an 800XL, followed by two 130XEs
that I own today.  These products have more than met my expecta-
tions, granted that they share a puny processing architecture.
Within my library, I am ALWAYS sure to find definitive guidance
to the way Atari did things.  This has saved me lots of trial-
and-error experimentation.  It's also allowed me to write smal-
ler, faster programs, since I can, for example, see what sorts
of argument checks I do/don't have to provide before making
O.S. calls.

I've read this Newsgroup keenly for a few weeks now.  I had hoped
to find some encouragement for buying into the ST world.  In-
stead I've been scared off for the time being.  There is too much
talk of under-powered bus fan-outs, inconsistent results with
this ROM Rev. or that one, worries about loss of dealer support
(BTW, it's GONE in 8-bit Land :-( ), flakey laser printers, and
concern for obsolescence of currently owned STs as TTs start
shipping.  (Could be worse, I guess.  My brother owns one of
those Amiga things, and it's always crashing.  I can't imagine
why one would attempt to build a multiprogramming environment
around insufficient hardware protection!)

I'm encouraged that Atari Engineering employees are entering this
discussion.  As a computer company employee myself, I know that
Engineering is the soul of the organization:  the Marketing guys
think that they are in control, but this is a short-term delusion
in a world of technology that changes so quickly (I know:  I are
a Marketing guy).  It is worrisome that Ken B. has taken one of
the traditional Marketing positions ("users want solutions, not
tools or insight"), for he is an Engineering guy.  The problem
with this position is that it rationalizes (in my view) short-
sighted customer support policies.  One wonders how expedient
(and ruthless?) the Atari Marketing guys must be!

I will watch the unfolding of the TT product line closely.  I
wonder if Atari Marketing understands in its gut how different
the UNIX world's expectations may be from those in place for the
ST?  MOST UNIX programmers grew up on SOURCE CODE for the O.S. and
utilities;  they don't bother reading the `man' pages.  They
learned in University to be very independent and outspoken.  They
follow a raft of independent UNIX publications (e.g., "UNIX
World"), trade shows (Uniforum, UNIX Expo, etc.), and THIS NET.
They know how UNIX is "supposed to work" based on their direct
prior experience.  They view UNIX as an open system, not a propri-
etary, hardware-dependent system.

This mass market will not view the TT as "power without the price."
They will look at it as just another UNIX box, but with some in-
teresting sound and graphics capabilities.  They will be very at-
tentive to what the media channels mentioned above say about it.
If it's known as an unsupported turkey early on, it won't get an-
other chance in this very competitive marketplace.  Never mind how
many VARs (value-added resellers of software solutions) may be po-
tentially available to Atari.

I ramble.  The point of this is that a quality company cannot
rationalize-away product support.  And in the brave new world of
computer glut (check the WSJ for DEC and IBM layoff news), no one
need buy from a low-quality company.

Everyone on this Newsgroup has a vested interest in Atari's suc-
cess.  Atari, please take care of those who love you (yes, even
Richard Covert :-)  ), and we'll take care of you at the sharehold-
ers' meetings.  We'll make the individual buying decisions that
add up to considerable revenue and profit.

I'll meet Ken B. halfway and agree that for products such as the
Portfolio and STacey, the simplifying no-support assumption is
appropriate and consistent with the long-term health of Atari's
business.

So, could there ever be such a thing as a registered ST/TT USER?

FLAME OFF!  Replies by email encouraged to conserve bandwidth.

BTW, I agree heartily with Ken B.'s suggestion to write paper
letters.  Email is ephemeral, but an in-basket of letters is hard
to duck and must be explained to The Boss sooner or later.

Jeff

------------------------------

Date: 7 Dec 89 16:54:15 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!hrc!force![e-mail]  (Richard E.
 Covert)
Subject: Who owns the ROM code?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]>,
 [e-mail] (Chris Ridd) writes:
> A slightly off-beat question, but I've been wondering for a while.
>
>
> For a fairly simple enhancement to GEM, how about allowing more windows, like
> 16, instead of the current meagre 8?  This would allow all the DAs a window,
> and lots for the App (encouraging the use of modeless dialogues).  If I ever
> designed something like the AES, I would have written #define NWINDOWS 8 or
> some such-like, so would be able to change it later.

Chris, I can't speak for Atari or the programmers there BUT the original TOS
was written on a shoestring budget in a BIG hurray. So, some things wer left
 out.
The new TOSes are just extensions of the original TOS. Added such features would
increase the size of the ROM code. I can see why, with all the work being done
on the TT's TOS, the ST TOS hasn't been changed dramatically.

In fact, I would rather that Atari incorporate your suggestions into the TT.
Make the TT a super multi-window multi-tasking machine. Make the TT much
more wonderful than the ST.

>
> Shades of the MS Write discussion earlier this year!
Hey, I like MS WRITE!!! I bought it a year ago and for the few letters that
I write MS WRITE is fine.


--
 Richard E. Covert (covertr@gtephx)
  (602) - 581-4652
|  AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ   |
 UUCP: ?ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att?!gtephx!covertr

------------------------------

End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #770
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