The September issue of Macintosh II Report (Thom Hogan and Michael Swaine) says that "Plugging anything into the Apple Desktop Bus while the system is running can harm the Macintosh II's motherboard. This means that you shouldn't plug or unplug either the keyboard or the mouse while the system is running."
This advice is given in response to two readers who asked (1) if it was OK to switch from the mouse to a trackball while using a CAD program and (2) whether the dealer was telling the truth about the owner damaging his own motherboard by plugging in the mouse while the computer was running.
Has anyone else heard or read this before? If there are no cautions in the manual about this, are you really responsible for any damage that occurs?
Shirley Kehr
------------------------------
From: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner)
Subject: Re: NeXT generation of Macs
Date: 30 Sep 88 18:13:19 GMT
Organization: Engineering, Michigan State U., E. Lansing MI
Well, a few tidbits I've heard from people follow. I have absolutely no idea how much of this is true, though I suspect it's at least fairly close.
Apple is supposed to be working on a true virtual memory, multitasking operating system, which will be more-or-less (99%?) compatible with existing applications (read: a much better MultiFinder). They are putting in a lot of effort on this system (one person I talked to said Apple is putting more effort into their new Mac OS than any other software development). Release date? I don't know, but I suspect late this year or sometime next year. I've also heard they are working on a multiuser system, based around the 68030. I don't know any details, except that it's supposed to support 12 users. My guess is that this also entails having some new bitmapped terminals (on Appletalk?) to communicate with the machine; maybe we'll see 68000-based terminals implementing the user interface, and a 68030 computation/file server. But that's just a guess.
Just some rumors...but those are always fun, right?
-------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | "VMS forever!" |
| Michigan State University . | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu |
Apple gave MS a copy of documented source code so that MS could develop software with it. The only rights that came with the source code were to allow MS to use it to develope Mac Software. When MS used it to produce a copy for IBM, MS might have broken several laws.
Needless to say, Apple sued. MS then revealed the original agreement which has since been on practically every bbs across the country. The agreement said MS could do anything they want with it, up to competing with Apple or revealing the agreement.
Apple claims Windows will allow IBM to compete better against Apple Macs. MS claims that they did nothing wrong since Apple said they could look at the source code.
Fortunatly, we have courts to clear this up. MS will lose either way. If they win the case, then they have effectively given up any hope of a copy-right on MS-Dos because OS are not copy-rightable. If they lose, they will keep MS-Dos the way they have it, but lose all the work they did on Windows. Either way they lose.
------------------------------
From: long@mcntsh.dec.com
Subject: MicroPhone II bug
Date: 4 Oct 88 04:13:00 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
I have what I think is a real live bug in MicroPhone II. I have two versions: a "pre-release" version dated May 20, 1988 and a "real" version dated June 27, 1988. With the LATER version, it appears that the "system flag" is not being set correctly between modem and user scripts: it always returns success.
Situation: I have a modem driver that I put together for a DEC Scholar. The script (modem) "Dial Service" returns success or failure depending on the status of the call. Problem is, the user script that is calling Dial Service ALWAYS sees success. I have verified that the Dial Service script IS returning the correct status (failure, in this case). By the way, the "system flag" is transfered correctly between user mode scripts as well as between modem scripts; the problem occurs when mixing user mode and modem scripts.
Now, for the fun part: these IDENTICAL scripts work perfectly with the May 20, 1988 version!
So, how is VersaTerm, anyway? 1/2 :-)
Any insight? Thanks - Rich
------------------------------
From: jordan@Apple.COM (Jordan Mattson)
Subject: Re: resedit
Date: 4 Oct 88 18:52:00 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Dear Folks -
The current shipping version of ResEdit is 1.2B2. Within a month, 1.2B3 will be shipping. The difference between 1.2B2 and 1.2B3 is the addition of editors that support the international resources and bug fixes. Look to the electronic service and APDA outlet near you for this release.
--
Jordan Mattson UUCP: jordan@apple.apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc. CSNET: jordan@apple.CSNET
Tools & Languages Product Management
20525 Mariani Avenue, MS 27S
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-973-4601
"Joy is the serious business of heaven."
C.S. Lewis
Usenet Mac Digest Friday, October 7, 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 136
The problem you describe of the Dial Service command always returning SUCCESS when using a Modem Driver (as opposed to the built in driver) is indeed a known bug in the current version of MicroPhone II (June 27, 1988) which will be fixed in a future version - HOWEVER there is a simple workaround for the time being.
As you point out, the Dial Service Modem Script is getting the proper value so that if you create your own success variable flag (say mySuccess) and have the main script check that rather than doing a test on the return of Dial Service, things work just fine. For example:
[Main Script]
REPEAT
DIAL SERVICE* "My Service"
UNTIL mySuccess = TRUE
[Dial Service Modem Script]
...Dialing goes here...
...Wait and When stuff for testing connect...
IF SUCCESS
SET VARIABLE FROM EXPRESSION "mySuccess=TRUE'
ELSE
SET VARIABLE FROM EXPRESSION "mySuccess=FALSE'
...rest goes here...
Most of the modem drivers that we ship with MicroPhone II have something like this in it. The best one to check is the Telebit Modem Driver as an example of this workaround.
--
Leonard Rosenthol
Software Ventures
MicroPhone II Development Team
------------------------------
From: tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson)
Subject: DiskExpress upgrade worthwhile?
Date: 5 Oct 88 04:00:34 GMT
Organization: HP Design Tech Center - Santa Clara, CA
I just got a letter from ALSoft, offering to upgrade my Disk Express to version 1.5 (for $10.00). Has anyone else done this yet? Was it worth it?
I had used DiskFit 1.41 for quite a while now, I'd thought I'd test out Redux, to see how it compares. Overall there pretty comparable, Redux does have more flexibility on selecting specific file not to back-up, etc. BUT!!! The TWO MAIN REASONS I found Redux WORTHLESS compared to Diskfit:
1. When I did an incremental backup with Redux (after about
2 days of disk usage) It asked me FOR EVERY SINGLE DISK
except for about 4-5 out of my 60 disk backup set !!!!
It had to update folder info on all these disks, which
just took a second, but it VERY ANNOYING to have to pull
out and insert all those disks!. Diskfit never
performed this bad.
2. Diskfit keeps it's back-up in Finder compatible format.
Quite nice.
I'm staying with Diskfit. It's simple and it works extremely well.
Usenet Mac Digest Friday, October 7, 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 137
Subject: Re: Is Dollars and Sense Compatable with 6.02?
Date: 6 Oct 88 07:41:57 GMT
Organization: Stanford Data Center
Version 4.1c of Dollars and Sense corrects the problem, and works with all current versions of the MacOS, including 6.0 and 6.0.2. Contact Monogram for upgrade information - I think they were asking $5 for a new disk to registered owners of version 4.0, and if you upgrade from the previous release (1.4) you will of course get 4.1c. Do not use 4.1b or earlier with system 6.0/6.0.2 as data files can be corrupted. -Barry
Eynon
------------------------------
From: kelvin@cs.utexas.edu (Kelvin Thompson)
Subject: The computer as a medium (was Re: Computers in education)
Date: 6 Oct 88 23:20:40 GMT
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
[I e-mailed Robret Dorsett a reply to his fine article about Macs, Apples, and computers in education. He suggested I post it. Here it is. sort of artsy-fartsy bullshitty, but *I* find it interesting.
Very nice article. You get my vote for prez.
But I have one minor quibble:
> 3. Computer education: this should take the form of teaching how to use the computer as a form of expression, as a *tool*.
Alan Kay -- the Lord God King Guru of human/computer interaction -- is very careful to distinguish between the computer as a form of expression and as a tool. More specifically, he says the computer is a *medium*, which is a different sort of thing from a tool. Two distinguishing characteristics:
[1] A tool is (mostly) only good for what it was made for, but you can always come up with surprising new uses for a medium.
[2] You use a medium to make a tool.
For example: A computer is a medium; a word processor is a tool. You can make a computer compose and perform music; you can only write text with a word processor. You use a computer to create a word processor.
A beautiful example from Kay: Paper is a medium. You can use it to keep a diary, blot up spills....or make paper airplanes.
Of course you can come up with lots of exceptions and gray areas, since most things have some characteristics of both. Still, I think it's an interesting distinction to make.
> Subject: Re: Computers in education (Re: Golden Gate) (LONG)
>
> Oookay, I'll buy the "medium" idea. But then again... you can't use a paper as an expressive medium without a pencil (a tool). What's the analogy for computers? :-)
Who says Origami(sp?) isn't expressive? No pencil there.
> I quite like Kay. I attended his lecture at UT a couple of years ago; he has many interesting ideas (ideas, apparently, which Jobs bungled up in copying to the Mac). I wasn't terribly thrilled about his DC-3 metaphor ("All of the dials should point in the same direction in 'normal' states"), but it was certainly interesting... Do you know if he's been published in anything recently?
It was at that exact same lecture I first heard him and got interested. A year or so later (i.e. a few years ago) he had the lead article in Scientific American and said a lot of the same things. Last I heard, he was working on the Vivarium project for Apple and MIT. I don't keep up with the HI literature enough to know more.
And let me rush to Jobs' defense [...pause a sec to put on the asbestos suit...]. Kay has been talking ever since the seventies about the computer as an appliance, and my understanding is that that's exactly what the original Mac (closed architecture and all) was trying to accomplish -- you just plug it in, flip the switch, and you're ready to go -- no week-long training courses, no agonies of cables, screwdrivers, and manuals. What exactly did Jobs screw up, given the technological and marketing limitations of the time?
I own and use Redux for my hard disk backups. I will agree with Tom that it can be a pain to feed in all your diskettes for a few seconds (while it updates folder info). BUT, I find the feature he touched on briefly to be THE feature that sold me on Redux...that is its very flexible file selection for backup and restores. It provides a very friendly user interface using a checkbox scheme. Beside each folder name is a folder icon. Clicking beside this icon produces a popup menu for marking or unmarking all the contents of the folder, opening it or closing it. If you chose not to mark all the contents and open the folder, you can mark any or all files individually. When the folder is opened, each file/folder inside it is displayed below the folder name but indented slightly. Beside each file name is a mini-icon indicating the type of file (application/document/...) and a checkbox allowing you to mark it for backup/restores.
REdux supplies extensive filtering control over which files/folders are to be viewed. All those modified after a particular date, all those starting with a certain string value, or ending with..., or only applications, or only system stuff, or...and the list goes on.
After the first time you backup your hard disk, during any subsequent backup sessions, Redux will indicate which files/folders have been modified since the last backup. This greatly assists in the selection process. There may be times when you don't want to do an incremental backup of ALL files modified since the last backup. I know I don't always want to incrementally backup everything. In addition to my master backup, I do multiple subset backups of the files I use most frequently. This prevents me from incrementally backuping up every couple weeks. I just incr. backup my much smaller subset(s).
Redux also provides a macro language that allows for making and tailoring scripts for automating your backups/restores.
I call Redux a VERY flexible backup utility program, probably the most flexible now available. It has two modes of operation: a simple user mode for those who don't want power but just want a quick and easy way to do backups at the push of a button. Then there is the power user mode which provides all the features mentioned above. User preferences are preserved.
I don't find Diskfit's method of storing files in Finder format to be something I miss. Redux is so easy to use, I don't have a need to by-pass it and read stuff off directly in the Finder. If I wanted that, I would just use the Finder for doing my backups. Redux compresses the file data to preserve space.
SUMMARY:
In defense of Diskfit (I have not used it but have read several reviews of it), if all you want is a push the button and leave it alone while it backups up everything on your hard disk, then this is the program for you.
But if you want basically complete control over what gets backed up, down to the individual file or folder, then Redux is an excellent choice.
--Bruce
Disclaimer: I am in no way connected or affiliated with MicroSeeds, Inc. ....the makers of Redux. ..I am only a satisfied owner and user of Redux!
--
-----------------------------------------------------** These are my opinions, & not necessarily those of Mentor Graphics Corporation **
