On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Sam Ismail wrote: ^^^^ Yeah, I'm not impressed either. ;) Nope, I've just been using /UTILITIES because that's the only truly bootable disk I got with my III. I also seem to have half (?) of Pascal, which boots sometimes but not others, but not all the way into Pascal because it looks for something on .D2 which I don't have. :/ If it's possible, how would I get to a command line from /UTILITIES ? I do still have all those Apple III disk images that I got from a publically unnamable source ( ;) ), but just getting them into machine-readable format proved to be such a huge hassle that I never got around to completing the task (and even my //e's Prodos disk is now corrupted). Give me 48-hour days and I might have it done within the week. Though a serial cable for the //c would help loads. Does anyone know how ShrinkIt works? I think that's the format of these disk images. I'd like to write a ShrinkIt->.dsk image converter, and then I can cut out all kinds of messiness. I might even be able to write the files directly to disk on my Amiga. Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

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On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, D. Peschel wrote: I'll just say this: Apple UCSD Pascal blows. As you mentioned, if you put the wrong disk in, it does not give you a way to recover. I know its hard to believe any software could be worse than Windows at error recovery, but Apple Pascal was. I once lost my entire disk of Pascal programs because the OS could not find the right disk. The error message was something like "Volume not found: directory erased". I kid you not. It was like "Gee, I didn't find the disk I wanted, so my head exploded and I just formatted your disk with all your class projects for no logical reason. Duh." The compiler was slow but decent. The editor was crummy. The "OS" was really more of a worse-than-crud menu system. Still, SirTech software built Wizardry--one of the all time best games ever--in Apple Pascal, and it was highly successful. So it was usable. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ever onward. September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 08/09/98]

At 11:26 PM 8/12/98 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: Interested folk might visit my UCSD web page at the address below. I've got my C source there for dealing with P-System disk images, for getting directories and bursting files from images. As for Sam's childhood trauma disk injury, should we discuss which systems didn't have a hardware-based "disk changed" indicator, and which relied on software methods to prevent that sort of disaster? I saw my first PERQ a few weeks ago at the ACM SIGGRAPH meeting in Orlando. It was in the 70s history exhibit, along with one of my Teraks. Someone else had lent a PERQ, I don't know who. It wasn't running, though, and I don't know anything else about it. Interesting looking! - John Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Tony Duell wrote: <snip> <snip> Sounds like an Amiga 1000. ;) ;) ;) Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

On Sun, 16 Aug 1998, Tony Duell wrote: ^^ ^^ ^^ I thought that three winking smileys would be enough, but apparently not. Yup, I know. Note that I cut everything about the user-writable microcode, leaving only "Writable Control Store". The Amiga 1000 also has something called "Writable Control Store" (WCS), but for a different purpose. I also selectively left in the bits about the PERQ not having a text mode, and about it having a blitter. I have a feeling my little attempt at humour got me mistaken for a rabid "Amiga-against-the-world" religious fanatic. I like my Amigas, but my participation on this list almost guarantees I'm not one of the nut-brigade. <other impressive PERQ stats snipped> Is there anywhere where I can see what the PERQ's OS looks like, Tony? Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

Well, I think that's how it worked, but the last time I used the actual disks was several years ago. We may have used different versions. Of course, emulators don't care if something's on the front or back of a disk, and I use an emulator now. Yes, but Apple as much as UCSD helped with the conversion and wrote system- specific libraries (none of which are documented in the generic UCSD docs I have access to). And you have to admit that Apple could have made a more flexible program. (I never managed to configure it for 80 columns, though the manual described how.) I *really* have to see a Perq sometime. And I'm still rather pissed at the reaction I got from the people at Bletchley Park... they DO have Perqs, but hearing "All the machines we want switched on are switched on" eliminated any hopes of seeing them the day I visited. :( -- Derek

It's hard to express just how disappointed and even angry I was (especially without using obscenities). My expectations were high; I had come all the way feeling a bit cocky that day (I knew I know more than the average visitor knows, about computers and encryption and the math behind them). I hadn't had time to send e-mail in advance so knocking on the glass and introducing myself may have seemed bold. I don't envy the volunteers. They're desperately in need of money (the place is in disrepair) and they probably spend a lot of their time getting money rebuild is a plaque commemorating its switching on. The plaque mentions the Duchess of Kent IIRC. The rebuild is only 1/5 or 2/5 done! [*]) Also the CCS which owns the computers is independent of the Park itself. But I still think they're making the situation worse for themselves. Their aloofness put me off ("We only come every two weeks -- we have other lives to lead, you know" someone told me in a somewhat frosty tone). The CCS is doing all kinds of projects, but very slowly. The Park's exhibits are beautiful (Their Enigma gave me exactly the same results as a simulation (except the sporadically non-lighting light bulbs, but I hear that's a common problem)) but the information underlying the exhibits is not being gathered or disseminated very quickly. Considering that these people know many things that are essentially irreplaceable (and aren't young either), I'd expect them to rethink their priorities somewhat (preserve and share what they have, welcome help, maybe come more often, and fix the buildings up). Are there cultural differences here? Are they still nervous about security? Were my expectations too high? Did I come across the wrong way? Were the wrong people there that day? All I know is that the degree of entropy there is one of the few things that can make me _really_ sad and angry. I won't even _mention_ the Science Museum (maybe next post) except to say: - The contents of the "Recent Additions" case are apparently the same as the last time someone else brought up the topic on the list. - If you go, be sure to visit the library. (Ask at the museum. It's part of (the far end of) Imperial College just down the street.) It goes a long way toward making up for the disappointment of the exhibits. And I still want to know what's in the PDP-16 book that I didn't have a chance to read! [*] 5 parallel sets of logic (one per hole in a 5-hole paper tape. Really!) The tape reader and one (or maybe two, I forget) sets of logic are done. -- Derek

No, I really just wanted to know how it works. They get hardly any press and are probably quite rare now, so I was impressed to see a book on them. Are they programmable in any sense of the word? My mental image is that they can be made to do some data manipulation that would be very impressive on a general-purpose computer (because of the speed -- maybe simple conversions or the kind of operation that graphics ASICs do) but are very unextendable, so you reach a point where they just won't do something. Can they be cascaded to give you more flexibility? -- Derek

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On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, D. Peschel wrote: I don't know about the file types, but I believe you are correct about filesystem structure. However, I don't run ProDOS on any of my other systems. I had an Apple ][+ clone in my early teens and I used DOS 3.3, and never had a reason to use anything else. I never even ran across a ProDOS disk the whole time I was an Apple user. Perhaps the SOS/ProDOS similarity will become useful in future, yes. In fact, that's what makes xferring the disk images I've got, to the III, even possible. If I couldn't use a II to reconstruct the disks for the III, I'd be completely stuck. I guess I'm missing two of those sides, but I'm also missing the second drive. It seems to need a disk in .D2 specifically, but I don't *have* a .D2. (With SOS, disk labels start with "/", and device names start with ".".) [re: disk image source] Somewhere else. I know how freaked-out Apple users can get about piracy (I used to read comp.sys.apple2) so I'm not naming my source lest s/he gets lynched or mailbombed. The C library might be interesting. What I really want to know is how it *works*, not how to use it or what it does. I want to be able to write a deShrinkIt program for my Amiga that takes ShrinkIt files and builds valid .dsk images. Currently the only xfer software I have for the Apple ][ only deals in .dsk images. I wrote the software myself in '93 or '94, in order to preserve my Apple ][ software collection from bit rot. It was especially cool later on when I found an Apple emulator that used the same file format and even the same ".dsk" extension, because I already had a large library of disks on file. :) Now I've got an A1020 drive for my Amiga, though, and I was planning on writing a .dsk writer this summer, but I accidentally wound up employed and didn't have the time to do it. <s> I should probably just get in touch with the guy that wrote the Apple disk READer and ask him to make it WRITE as well, though. :) Thanks for the offer, but that is uneccessary. I can't yet use ProTERM, and ShrinkIt is available on the 'net. I did manage to get it onto a ProDOS disk, but that corrupted on me, so I'll have to do it again. I've still got Apple III disk images on Apple DOS 3.3 disks, though, so some of the transfer work is already done. Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

On Sat, 15 Aug 1998, Sam Ismail wrote: Glad to hear it Sam! Just didn't know if the cat was supposed to be kept in the bag. :) [re: ShrinkIt] Yup, I'm aware of that. I actually just used my A1020 drive to make .dsk images of my existing /// disks, as I also did with my Apple CP/M disks. I'm just lazy/short of time and don't feel like going through all of the stages. The version of ShrinkIt I was able to find seemed to only want to run on ProDOS, and that's where the major hassle lies. Seeing as I had been planning on attempting to write Apple disks with my Amiga 1020 drive, I thought it would be cool if I could write the ShrinkIt files directly or to a .dsk image on my Amiga as well. If I understood the ShrinkIt archive format, it might take less time to write a ShrinkIt->.dsk converter than it'd take to do everything through ProDOS. And considering my last experience with ProDOS, it'd be less prone to error. :) One of the major bottlenecks is my Hayes Micromodem IIe, which is currently my only means of getting data to the ][+. I'll get it done eventually, Sam, I just don't feel like facing ProDOS again. :) Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

Because you're wierd? :) Maybe you confused one strange program with another. If you work for XKL then you may have used SOS (the editor). I never have, but I think I saw a mode diagram in an RT-11 manual (e.g., "Push these keys when you're in mode X to get to mode Y"). My reaction was, "Oh sh*t, this is like a maze!". At least DEC repented and wrote EDT. In many ways EDT is a really good, well-designed program. I sorta like vi too, though. :) _Do_ you work for XKL? I thought you were a student (like me). -- Derek

[Maybe it's here?] Nope. No sign of it. -------