No Fragments Archive 12: Textmags & Docs/nf_archive_12.iso/MAGS/TEXTMAGS/ATARI16/INFO91.ZIP/INFO91/200.TXT

Text File | 1997-04-16 | 25.1 KB | 618 lines

Info-Atari16 Digest         Tue,  9 Apr 91       Volume 91 : Issue 200

Today's Topics:
                         Atari cpu evolution
                                 GDOS
                    GIF,PCX,TIFF <-> IMG (2 msgs)
            Graphics on the STE - v. generally speaking..
                         Lynx carts to trade
                     New LodeRunner at terminator
                         Notebooks: SO there!
                            Rufus (2 msgs)
                      smail on Atari ST (2 msgs)
                SPC Pics from Umich, corrupt? (2 msgs)
                          Terminator Request
                The TT -- Gosh, I actually touched one
                             union demo 2

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

Date: 1 Apr 91 14:00:08 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard
 !sunic!mcsun!ukc!keele!nott-cs!lut.ac.uk![e-mail] (Mohammad A. Rahin)
Subject: Atari cpu evolution
To: [e-mail]

Keywords: Motorola 68040

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>[someone speculates about evolution of Atari TT models with Motorola 68040 cpu]
>
>I guess it would be safe to assume that Atari is considering the '040 cpu for
>their next generation along the TT product line.  But the microprocessor spec-
>trum has shifted from the dominance of the 80x86 and 68000 families from Intel

        [stuff deleted]
>
>-------------------------[start of article]------------------------------------
>
>>From: [e-mail] (Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz)
>Subject: PgC 7600 (was Re: Second-generation RISC)
>Organization: CEC Karlsruhe
>
>I'm typing what I've read in a local computer magazine here in Germany.
>The magazine isn't exactly known for overwhelming accuracy, so beware.
>
>Summary: I'm underwhelmed.
>
>Done by small British company called PgC, Ltd. (Yawn). Funded by Clive
>Sinclair (Oha !). RISC machine with a couple of onboard systems to make cheap
>machine implementation possible. The components:
>
        [stuff deleted]
>
>Name   When    Price   Technology      MIPS
>PgC7600        1/91    400 $   Bipolar         200
>PgC7610        2/92     40 $   CMOS             80
>PgC7620        1/93    100 $   Bipolar         250
>PgC7700        2/93    400 $   CMOS           1000
>PgC7710        4/93    200 $   Bipolar        2000
>
>If you ask me: Too little, too late, no serious performance, no software.
>Forget it.
>
>                       Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz, CEC Karlsruhe
>
>------------------------------[end of article]---------------------------------
>
>If the PgC series has the capability of adaptable microcode and CISC emulation,
>then it would merit consideration by Atari as an alternative to the Motorola
>68000 line.  At the very least, it would offer Atari a little leverage against

        [stuff deleted]

>The British press probably has reported on the PgC chips more extensively and
>I wonder if anyone there could make corrections, additions and their perspect-
>ive on the preceding information?
>
>Thanks,
>Jack


See Byte latest (March 1991) issue. Dick Pountain wrote a very informative
article on this chip (PgC).

Cheers.

Rahin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 _ _ _   __   _ __
' ) ) ) /  ) ' )  )      /
 / / / /--/   /--' __.  /_  o ____
/ ' (_/  (_  /  \_(_/|_/ /_<_/ / <_

[e-mail]     -> from within UK
[e-mail]     -> from outside UK

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 19:11:25 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.ed
 u!gvlf3.gvl.unisys.com!tredysvr!cellar![e-mail] (Darling)
Subject: GDOS
To: [e-mail]

Could someone explain what this GDOS beast is?  I have a German clone in the
AUTO folder for RUFUS; what does it do besides allow me to use selected
programs?

BTW, I am sort of surprised about all the probems people are having with
RUFUS.  I downloaded it from GEnie, un-ARCed it, and it has run flawlessly
without tinkering.


 !! \    __  __  __   ____ __  _  ___     !!  Production, Pre-Production,
 !!  \  //! ! \\ !!    !!  !\\ ! // \\    !! and dance remixing @ FACT HQ:
 !!  / //_! !_// !!    !!  ! \\! !  __    !!      [e-mail]
 !!_/ //  ! ! \\ !!__ _!!_ !  \! \\_!!    !!_______________________________

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

Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 05:11 GMT +1
From: ____ Zarko Berberski ____ <[e-mail]>
Subject: GIF,PCX,TIFF <-> IMG
To: [e-mail]

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|              if you feel this is not of general interest            |
| send answer to my address and I'll post summary as a single message |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

    Could any kind soul send me detailed description (or even better
a source code) of GIF,PCX,TIFF,IMG picture-formats and their creation.
I need to do GIF,PCX,TIFF <-> IMG conversion for a friend who will
very soon have to receive/store/retrive/"reformat"/send pictures in
all those formats. I'v choosen IMG format as a base since it seems to
be most widespread and easiest to manage but if GIF proves to be much
more space efficient then it might became the base. The key point is
that the whole proces will have to be done authomatically. Just to
make things worse ih has to be done while user (my friend) is on-line
and needs certain picture in a certain format and there is nobody home
to do it (except his ST, of course :-). So, there is no chance that any
paint program could be used for conversion and I'm very short with time
and information (yes I have GIF.DOC but have no time to reinvent the
wheel, although I usually like to do that :-).

<<<<<<<<<<<<--------<<>>-------->>>>>>>>>>>>
<<<<----      Zarko Berberski       ---->>>>
<<<<----  [e-mail]  ---->>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<--------<<>>-------->>>>>>>>>>>>

P.S.    Program like this can be a nice "Door" for a BBS so if anybody
      would like to have it let me know and I'll post it to the net.

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

Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 05:16 GMT +1
From: ____ Zarko Berberski ____ <[e-mail]>
Subject: GIF,PCX,TIFF <-> IMG
To: [e-mail]

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|              if you feel this is not of general interest            |
| send answer to my address and I'll post summary as a single message |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

    Could any kind soul send me detailed description (or even better
a source code) of GIF,PCX,TIFF,IMG picture-formats and their creation.
I need to do GIF,PCX,TIFF <-> IMG conversion for a friend who will
very soon have to receive/store/retrive/"reformat"/send pictures in
all those formats. I'v choosen IMG format as a base since it seems to
be most widespread and easiest to manage but if GIF proves to be much
more space efficient then it might became the base. The key point is
that the whole proces will have to be done authomatically. Just to
make things worse ih has to be done while user (my friend) is on-line
and needs certain picture in a certain format and there is nobody home
to do it (except his ST, of course :-). So, there is no chance that any
paint program could be used for conversion and I'm very short with time
and information (yes I have GIF.DOC but have no time to reinvent the
wheel, although I usually like to do that :-).

<<<<<<<<<<<<--------<<>>-------->>>>>>>>>>>>
<<<<----      Zarko Berberski       ---->>>>
<<<<----  [e-mail]  ---->>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<--------<<>>-------->>>>>>>>>>>>

P.S.    Program like this can be a nice "Door" for a BBS so if anybody
      would like to have it let me know and I'll post it to the net.

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

Date: Mon,  8 Apr 91 23:35:14 +0100 (Central European Time)
From: [e-mail] (NATUERLICH)
Subject: Graphics on the STE - v. generally speaking..
To: [e-mail]

Hi Howard

I've been thinking about the same thing too, but my calculations
always came up with "too expensive". Of course if you think 16 MB isn't
expensive ... as you do in your post. While thinking about it I
had this great idea for a new RAM technology, which unfortunately
(then unbeknownst to me) already existed as dual-port RAM. Even then the
bus width needed and the cycle speed is just about too ridicolous for
a home computer. Personally I'd be happy with 640*400*16bit colors at
70Hz and some hires in mono. That would be monetarily feasible, I only
want color for the games <slobber> anyway, and some hires for programming.

I as a lowly long-time Atari customer, would indeed be already happy
over some _small_ improvements.
How about Player/Missile Graphics for at least the *&~% mouse cursor,
I can not believe that in the nineties we still got to  erase the cursor,
draw something, turn it on again, erase the cursor draw something , turn
it on again (*)


Not neccessarily Atari specific:

Floating point is done in hardware (What %age of the user crowd
actually uses floating points (me NEVER!!) ?), but the stuff you'd
really need is done in software (probably in compiled Alcyon C to boot)
Programs like EZ-draw would definetely profit from a hardwired
draw routine for example. How about a microprogrammable stupid CPU,
that you'd just give instructions like
FOR(;;)                       ;; this is some mix between
IF IRQ pending                ;; english, basic, lisp C and ML
  GRAB BYTE from PORT0        ;; lisp for the comments that is
  STUFF it into BUFFER at $XXXX ;; har har
  IF BUFFERP == full signal IRQ LEVEL 2
  CLRIRQ
END

That's basically perfect for sound processing, non DMA I/O processing
and maybe even so stupid tasks as memory initializing. And the 'real'
CPU with it's overkill of registers and cache and what have you
needn't worry about those bothersome context switches for every
*%~$ little interrupt. Didn't need to shift, no ALU except an
increment for the address registers. No cache...


Why is everyone so hung up about processor speed ? Sure it's nice that
the compiler does it in 5 minute, if it used to grind for 15 minutes
but chances are that a faster harddisk might be just as profitable
in terms of speed. How often do you compile, aren't you 90% of the time
just typing stuff into an editor ?? Personally I am quite happy even with
a lowly 68000 @ 8Mhz. Yes you speed demons it's allrite for me, IF the
rest of the hardware would do the job, I think a CPU shouldn't do like
graphics, I/O and sound!! My guess it that there just aren't enough
competant people in hardware R&D (anywhere for that matter) to do the
job. So they put in a faster CPU and delegate the rest to a cheesy
graphics card, which virtually does nothing except converting RAM
to colored dots.(the one Intel or TI chip I heard about maybe an exception,
but probably not). Ok this does not neccessarily apply to machines in
scientific environments, where one shittily written application is layered on
top of another (probably in some local LISP dialect) until the processor
croaks.


About every two years it gets to me and I write an article like that,
that's maybe because I would like to buy a computer and don't see
anything I'd like to buy. (Well that ST Notebook sounds tempting,
got yet to see one though...) thanks to the readers of comp.sys.atari.st
for taking it with some humor and letting the old man ramble on
a bit.
bye y'all

        Nat!



(*)Probably the Amiga does that right

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

Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 17:59:21 CDT
From: JAMES DONAHOE <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lynx carts to trade
To: Info-Atari 16 Bits <[e-mail]>

I have the following cartridges for the Lynx that I would like to trade
with someone:

Slime World
Zarlor Mercenary
Robosquash

If you have one of the following games, I'd like to swap for one of the
games above:

Blue Lightning
RoadBlasters
Xenophobe

Please send me email if you are interested. Thanks.

Jim Donahoe
BITNET:  [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 23:21:49 edt
From: [e-mail] (A.S.T.R.E.)
Subject: New LodeRunner at terminator
To: [e-mail]

Hi,
   In response to the guy asking for LodeRunner games for the ST, I've just
ftp'ed "lodeclon.arc" to terminator.cc.umich.edu.  It is a monochrome-only
version of the game.  While I never really tried Go-up, I found lodeclon to
be quite enjoyable.
   (BTW: make sure that the three folders mentioned in the docs are in your
         ROOT directory.)

     //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    //      Jeff Vincent / ASTRE      //  ASTRE = Competition Rocketry  //
   //  [e-mail]  //     Publisher of STAR-DATE     //
  //------------------------------------------------------------------//
 //          "So, like, do you guys ride in these things?"           //
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 21:59:10 GMT
From: o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu![e-mail] (Mark Choi)
Subject: Notebooks: SO there!
To: [e-mail]

For all those out there who are convinced that TRH is the Word when it
comes to the notebook market, and that Atari knows what the hell is
going on on the other side of their closed eyelids, please read on:

Zeos Notebook PC
12mhz 286, 2"x12"x10", 1 meg RAM, backlit VGA, and ext. vid. port, 20
Meg HDD, 1.44 meg floppy, $1995.

Compaq LTE
20MHz 386, 7 I/O ports, 30 /60 meg HDD, 3  meg RAM, 1.44 meg floppy

Dataworld NS 320SX
386sx, VGA with ext. vid., 2 meg RAM, 20 meg drive

Others include the Northgate slimline, and the Austin sx, with standard
2 meg RAM. These machines  have stated weights of under 7 lbs, including
the battery charger. I doubt the notebook ST  wieght includes the
charger. Without the charger, they weigh in less than 6 lbs. Granted
they weigh a bit more than the ST notebok, but do NOT tell me that they
are figments of my imagination, or that there are no machines out there
with both a hard drive and a floppy, as the guru TRH has stated. There
are others that are lighter, and are closer to the ST notebook, but I
have better things to do than to reread piles of magazines just to
vindicate my position  against the cries of the ignorant. I think I'll
stick with the STacy for a while. Dog as it is, at least I can use it
easily enough. And from the sounds of things over the Pond, we won't be
seeing the notebook for atleast another year and a half, if not longer,
anyway. (Told you so.)
    Sorry about no more constructive criticism, but I came to the
realization that as great (and, most importantly, feasible) my *dream*
machine is, no one at Atari is listening to anything but there own
shallow breathing. Too bad. They still have some glaring oportunites to
take over the US market. But not as long as their philosophy is "Power
without the Power". Maybe later I will have some more constructive
comments, but for now, there seems little point. Prove me wrong Mr.
Hall. Prove me wrong Atari. I dare you.


               -geisha-

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 00:27:59 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-b
 eacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!santra!saha.hut.fi!s37837k@arizona.
 edu (Jari Lehto)
Subject: Rufus
To: [e-mail]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Kalle
 Kivimaa) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
 (Andrew C. Stoffel) writes:
>
>>Really ?? ( I JUST got it and can't read German(?!) ) Does anybody
>>have an English version of the .RSC ?? I can guess a lot but not all
>>of the meanings of the menu entries.
>
>There is one at funic.funet.fi in directory pub/atari/comm (or telecomm).
>Someone could get it and put it in atari.archive, and also check my
>translation.
>

The translation is good but not complete... ;-/

Maybe I'll finish it some day. It may require changing the program itself
and I am anyway trying to make scandinavian characters work.
So I'll have to contact the maker of it...

                                Jartsu

        *** Jari Lehto, [e-mail], [e-mail] ***

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 00:43:19 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard
 !sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!santra!saha.hut.fi![e-mail] (Jari Lehto)
Subject: Rufus
To: [e-mail]

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Patrick
 Haggood) writes:
>I dloaded RUFUS from atari.archive sometime last year and only recently
>bought G+Plus so I could try it out (RUFUS needs GDOS).  However, I

I use Rufus quite often (few times a day) and I have never used it with
GDOS! Why GDOS is needed? I know it comes with it and you are not able to
load additional fonts without it, but that's all. It runs well without GDOS.

>am having problems with it.  First, I have the terminal protocol set to
>VT100, but I call up the University machines and the screen won't
>scroll.  It gets to the bottom of the screen and all the text disappears
>below the last line.  Also, the text that comes back from the mainframe
>is all junk!  I have the settings done the same as Uniterm but it's like
>RUFUS uses its own character table!  Anybody had the same type of
>problems with RUFUS?

Screen won't scroll? That's odd. I have never seen that...
Rufus uses character table similar to German keyboard... That's bad!
Set it so that it uses only 7-bit characters. It usually works.
And you may have the screen-size setting wrong. Try 80x24.

Hope this helps a bit.

                        Jartsu

        *** Jari Lehto, [e-mail], [e-mail] ***

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 20:47:21 GMT
From: math.fu-berlin.de!fauern!unido!mcshh!janhh![e-mail] (Jan
 Willamowius)
Subject: smail on Atari ST
To: [e-mail]

Article-I.D.: janhh.1093.04.91
Posted: Mon Apr  8 01:01:22 1991
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 14

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Guillaume Doumenc):
> I've read a few months ago that there was a port of smail for the Atari on
> the way. Is it finished now, and if yes is it available somewhere ?

I did a port quite a while ago and it runs on a few German sites. It
can be used in a slightly modified Mercuy-UUCP enviromnet. It's not
available thru FTP yet, but I guess I'll put it on a German FTP host RSN.
I'll post detailed information when it's on available.

- Jan

--
Jan Willamowius, Nienredder 6, 2000 Hamburg 54, Germany
E-Mail: [e-mail]

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 02:26:28 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!thelake!steve
 @arizona.edu (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: smail on Atari ST
To: [e-mail]

[In article <[e-mail]>,
     [e-mail] (Guillaume Doumenc) writes ... ]

> I've read a few months ago that there was a port of smail for the Atari on
> the way. Is it finished now, and if yes is it available somewhere ?

I'm using a version of smail that has been, in my opinion, finished for
quite a long time. However, I didn't port it. The people who did the port
have not released it for distribution, so I can't pass it around. Sorry.

The program also depends on the existence of several related programs
(uucico, lmail, email, etc.) that also have not been released.

I wish I could be more encouraging, but if the program I'm using is the
one you've been waiting to see released, I'm afraid it's simply stuck in
limbo.

----
  Steve Yelvington / P. O. Box 38 / Marine on St. Croix, MN 55047 USA
  INTERNET: [e-mail]    UUCP: plains!umn-cs!thelake!steve
  GEnie: S.YELVINGTO2               Delphi: YELVINGTON

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 21:23:11 GMT
From: o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu![e-mail] (Mark Choi)
Subject: SPC Pics from Umich, corrupt?
To: [e-mail]

>
>        Yeah, the same thing happened to me a few days ago.  Some of the
>spc pics worked just fine (like moonflag.spc, apollo10.spc and
>apollo9.spc), but others just wouldn't load and my shower would abort.

You were viewing these in the shower. No wonder you had problems. All
that water.

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 21:39:11 GMT
From: o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu![e-mail] (Mark Choi)
Subject: SPC Pics from Umich, corrupt?
To: [e-mail]

>
>        Yeah, the same thing happened to me a few days ago.  Some of the
>spc pics worked just fine (like moonflag.spc, apollo10.spc and
>apollo9.spc), but others just wouldn't load and my shower would abort.

You were viewing these in the shower. No wonder you had problems. All
that water, and all. was the shower hot or cold?


                -geisha-

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 06:57:42 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu@arizon
 a.edu (Sean Sterling Foiles)
Subject: Terminator Request
To: [e-mail]

I'm not certain, but ... I assume thoriginal Tos1.0 on floppy is
considered pd.  If so, could some one please post this to Terminator?
I've discovered some programs tht do not work under Tos 1.4 and wish
to try booting first with the old Tos.

No flames if this sounds foolish (wont the internal 1.4 over-ride the
software 1.0?), but some in net land once told me that this tactic
fixed his problem.

Thanks in advance,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Sean Sterling Foiles  / Univ. Texas Comp Sci Grad / [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 9 Apr 91 02:58:38 GMT
From:
 noao!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!thelake!steve
 @arizona.edu (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: The TT -- Gosh, I actually touched one
To: [e-mail]

The delays had dragged on so long that I had stopped looking for it. But
when I stopped by my dealer today to typeset the newsletter for the
Minnesota Atari ST user group, I finally got to use a genuine
production-model TT030.

So long as I stuck with ST High resolution, the TT was happy with
PageStream 1.8. Higher (TT-only) resolutions produced bus errors and, in
one case, an ``Illegal AES call'' dialog box. (One operation in 16-color
TT mode locked up the machine.) Presumably these bugs are known and will
be fixed in PageStream 2.1, which is said to be only weeks away from
release.

The machine was clearly faster than the ST. I didn't use it to lay out the
newsletter, just to drive an SLM605, so I can't offer any details.

The Mega STE also was in stock.

----
  Steve Yelvington / P. O. Box 38 / Marine on St. Croix, MN 55047 USA
  INTERNET: [e-mail]    UUCP: plains!umn-cs!thelake!steve
  GEnie: S.YELVINGTO2               Delphi: YELVINGTON

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

Date: 8 Apr 91 22:05:39 GMT
From: IFI.UIO.NO![e-mail] (LarsErikOsterud)
Subject: union demo 2
To: [e-mail]

Well, Karl-Anders here in Norway has written a much better SoundTracker
than Audio Sculpture (i have posted it but things take a long time to pop up
in comp.binaries....).  Both the St and STE sound is great and it's a normal
PRG-file and can be used from harddisk (no nasty programming here...)

 Lars-Erik  /  ABK-BBS [phone]  /   ____ ______ ________________________
  Osterud  /  [e-mail]  /   /___    /            The norwegian ST
__________/ ______________________/   ____/   /   Klubben,  user association

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

End of Info-Atari16 Digest
******************************