24-May-86 18:44:17-PDT,29047;000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from RED.RUTGERS.EDU by SUMEX-AIM.ARPA with TCP; Sat 24 May 86 18:43:11-PDT Date: 24 May 86 21:30:22 EDT From: Jeffrey Shulman Subject: Usenet Mac Digest V2 #41 To: Usenet-Digest-List: ; Message-ID: <12209373251.17.SHULMAN@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Usenet Mac Digest Saturday, 24 May 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 41 Today's Topics: Seen GKS for Mac? Acta/Symmetry Software SCSI disks Re: HFS again Re: Delphi Mac Digest V2 #19 Re: Mac+ (attention: Apple) Cheap ($5) fan for a hot Mac Loads and loads of SCSI drives for Mac+ -- Which to choose? Apple buyout? Fanny Mac cooling fans Pointers needed to Spelling programs and hard disks Info on Setting up Mac Lab wanted recipe: getting HFS to run on the TECMARs Apple, please interchange ZOOM-Box and CLOSE-Box CAUTION, WARNING, DANGER ThinkTank 512 and 128K ROMS Re: Loads and loads of SCSI drives for Mac+ -- Which to choose? Re: List Manager availability (was: ICONS in buttons) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From: edmoy@ucbopal.UUCP Subject: Seen GKS for Mac? Date: 21 May 86 05:32:19 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley I seem to remember seeing an ad for GKS for the Mac in some magazine, but I can't seem to find it. Anyone have any information on this? Thanks. Edward Moy Academic Computing Services University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 edmoy@ucbopal.Berkeley.EDU ucbvax!ucbopal!edmoy ------------------------------ From: dlt@csun.UUCP Subject: Acta/Symmetry Software Date: 20 May 86 15:44:16 GMT Organization: California State University, Northridge Does anyone happen to know the address/phone number of Symmetry Software who market a desk accessory called Acta?? (An outline processor that, unlike Think Tank, uses the Mac interface). Maybe it's new, but I don't see it advertised in any of the glossies. Thanks, Dave -- -------------------- Dave Thompson uucp: {ihnp4 | hplabs | psivax}!csun!dlt CSUN Computer Center Northridge, CA 91330 ------------------------------ From: lewis@harvard.UUCP (Harry Lewis) Subject: SCSI disks Date: 21 May 86 13:53:11 GMT Organization: Aiken Comp Lab, Harvard There has been remarkably little information on the net about any of the 10-30MB SCSI disks for the Mac+. If ANYone has ANY experience with ANY of the following, please post me and I will summarize for the net. (Or if someone else is already doing or has done such a survey unbeknownst to me, let me know that.) DataFrame, from SuperMac Technology HD-20, from MDIdeas LoDown-20, from LoDown PL-20, from Peripheral Land Sun Streak, by Sunol Systems Others? To keep this simple let's leave out disks that do not interface through the SCSI port: i.e. external disks that interface through the serial or floppy port, and internal disks like the HyperDrive. I started from thumbnail descriptions given in the current A+ and a telephone list in the current MacWorld, but I didn't get very far. Except for SuperMac, none of these companies seem to have dealers in the Boston area. (MDI claimed that they have dealers in Boston, but it was company policy not to give out their names!!! This is the sort of thing that makes me worried about buying from a company ... .) On a similar vein, does anyone have experience, + or -, with Programs Plus in Stratford, CT? They are a mailorder house and their current MacWorld ad shows several of these products at favorable prices. - Harry Lewis lewis@harvard.EDU, .CSNET, .UUCP ------------------------------ From: bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey) Subject: Re: HFS again Date: 21 May 86 19:37:28 GMT Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon This seems to be a special case of a more general problem. MacPaint drops cut/copies on the floor for me, and MacDraw complains that I have "insufficient disk space" to preserve the clipboard outside of MacDraw, on my Mac+ running the old system/finder with a 512K startup ramdisk and everything else on 800K MFS disk. Putting MacDraw on the startup disk seems to solve my problem, but I haven't tried to find a solution to the MacPaint problem yet, given my frequency of use of MacPaint and the existence of the C&E "Billboard" program. Possible Causes: It is rumored that the new Scrap Manager forces the disk desk scrap to be always on the startup volume. Things that expect it to be on the current volume, and then do things like check for disk space on the current volume, may decide that there isn't enough. This problem would be compounded (and lead to the observed symptoms) if both MacDraw and MacPaint "knew" that disks are always 400K big. Confirming evidence is that MacDraw seems to behave just fine when there's more than 400K free on my 800k disk. Only fixes I can think of, if this is indeed the case, are to junk MacPaint, which already violates the User Interface Std. in about 5 million ways anyway, and to persuade Apple to fix MacDraw, which is about due for an upgrade anyway. Bart Massey ..tektronix!reed!bart ------------------------------ From: ephraim@wang.UUCP (pri=8 Ephraim Vishniac x76659 ms1459) Subject: Re: Delphi Mac Digest V2 #19 Date: 21 May 86 13:46:51 GMT Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA > From: DDUNHAM (7975) > Subject: DA limit > Date: 10-MAY 01:13 Macintosh In Fact > > >Does anyone know why the Font/DA Mover refuses to put more than 15 DA's > >in the system file? > > Because Apple doesn't understand how people really want to use the > Mac. They decided to reserve some of the DRVR slots for dynamic > allocation. So far, nobody's using them. *******Wrong******* > It's possible to install more DAs using the DA Installer from Dreams of the > Phoenix, or using ResEdit. (On a Mac+, it's possible to give DRVRs IDs from > 32-47, so you can get enough DAs in to scroll!) > > (These slots in the unit table are officially reserved by Apple, BTW.) They are also *used* by Apple and by developers following the development guidelines! The "dynamic slots" are used (that I know of) by the printer drivers and by my hard disk driver. I intend to convert my ramdisk to use a dynamic slot, too. I expect that other authors are using them as well. Ever looked into your Imagewriter file with ResEdit? The driver number is not in the usual range, which suggests dynamic assignment of the actual number. The numbers from 32-39 are reserved for SCSI devices 0 - 7. Since these devices are supposedly guaranteed the use of these slots, they don't check for conflicts. And since the SCSI drivers don't live in the system file, the DA mover won't notice the problem until it's too late. ------------------------------ From: oster@ucblapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) Subject: Re: Mac+ (attention: Apple) Date: 21 May 86 18:18:07 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley I can't let this go by. The MacPlus sound runs fine with MacNifty SoundCap(ture), with MacNifty Studio Session, with my own, simple programmer's music editor, and with Deluxe Music Construction Set. No _properly written_ sound program fails on the MacPlus. ------------------------------ From: evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall) Subject: Cheap ($5) fan for a hot Mac Date: 22 May 86 01:33:02 GMT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ I finally decided to do something about my MacToaster. Not wanting to spend >$50 on a clean commercial solution I cleaned a 3" fan from a flea market (99 cents I seem to remember) up with a q-tip and isopropyl. After a cord a switch were attached the fan was mounted at an angle (normal to the fan about 30 degrees from verticle) in the space immediately behind the handle with some double sided foam tape along the handle as well as the indent area. The remaining gaps were sealed with plastic tape. The sucker is fairly noisy (perhaps I should have gone with the "quiet" fan for $3 at the market), but it really keeps the Mac from heating up. Steve Crandall ihnp4!mhuxt!evans ------------------------------ From: moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) Subject: Loads and loads of SCSI drives for Mac+ -- Which to choose? Date: 22 May 86 07:27:05 GMT Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA Well, I decided that making my own 20 Meg hard drive system for the Mac+ wasn't worth the $250 difference it takes to buy the whole shebang outright from one of the third-party companies offering external hard drives for Mac+s. So I picked up the latest issue of MacWorld and BOOM! An article listing about 8 different companies offering these things! The two 20-Meg external SCSI hard drives I've heard mentioned for the Mac+ is the SuperMac Dataframe and the MDIdeas-20. Anyone have recommendations for or against these suckers? Or for any other external drives? The opinions would be appreciated... "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer UUCP: {princeton,ulysses}!allegra -\ {decwrl,qubix}!sun -\ {akgua,gatech,harpo,purdue,uf-crgl}!sb6 -\ {cornell,decvax,ihnp4,sdcsvax,tektronix,utcsri}!uw-beaver -- !fluke!moriarty {hplabs,nbires}!lbl-csam -/ {microsoft,ssc-vax,telmatic,tikal,uw-vlsi} -/ ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA ------------------------------ From: schoff@rpics.uucp (Martin Schoffstall) Subject: Apple buyout? Date: 23 May 86 03:06:29 GMT Organization: RPI Computer Science Dept., Troy NY A few weeks ago Apple bought software technology from a certain Lowell based Qbus/SuperMicro/Unix-SysV (need any more help) Computer Company for the tidy sum of $4.5 million. Shortly thereafter the company was liquidated. What was acquired? About 15 man-years of software that implemented the MAC user interface on a UNIX machine with a bitmap display. This same software had been made available to a certain Rhode Island based University that is involved with MACs. marty -- marty schoffstall schoff%rpics.csnet@csnet-relay ARPA schoff@rpics CSNET seismo!rpics!schoff UUCP martin_schoffstall@TROY.NY.USA.NA.EARTH.SOL UNIVERSENET RPI Computer Science Department Troy, NY 12180 (518) 271-2654 ------------------------------ From: sja@mhuxl.UUCP (Sam J. Anastasio) Subject: Fanny Mac cooling fans Date: 22 May 86 12:50:58 GMT Organization: AT&T BELL LABORATORIES READING, PA In response to the complaints about video interference caused by use of the Beck-Teck Fanny Mac fans, I would like to comment. I know of 6 installations of the unit (two of them, my own) with no such problems. The only possible complaint I could see, would be with audable annoyance. It doesn't bother me, but I would imagine that some may be irritated by the "air motion audio". It isn't any louder than an ordinary muffin fan, and I guess I've been around so many of them all my life in all types of electronic gear, that I don't even notice at all. ***** Sam Anastasio mhuxl!sja ***** ------------------------------ From: evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall) Subject: Pointers needed to Spelling programs and hard disks Date: 20 May 86 00:38:06 GMT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ My wife is about to embark on a large project with her Mac + and would appreciate any pointers to info on good spelling programs (we have Mac.Spell.Write, which is fairly bad as well as incompatible with the Mac +), text editors besides MacWrite and Word, and good SCSI hds in the 20Meg range (are there any good ones for reasonable prices yet -- will there be in the next few months?). thanks for any info Steve Crandall ihnp4!mhuxt!evans ------------------------------ From: dan@uwmacc.UUCP (dan jatnieks) Subject: Info on Setting up Mac Lab wanted Date: 23 May 86 15:41:56 GMT Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center I am in need of information with regard to setting up a large (around 75 workstations) Macintosh Lab that will be used by college students for introductory computer science classes. Each workstation will be a Mac Plus with a HD20, and about every five will share a printer over AppleTalk. The items I would like to get feedback from others who have set up such labs (or anyone else with suggestions, hints, etc.) are the following: Hardware Security Aside from the Apple Security Kits, are there other systems that are more effective? Specifically, how does one secure a HD20 and prevent cables from being tampered with ? (The Apple Kits do not include a way to lock down a HD20) Does someone make a case that encloses the whole system? Software Security Software such as MacPascal can be 'locked' with MacTools to prevent the casual user from copying them. Are there any alternatives to this method that are better? more secure? Is there any way to prevent at least most people from re-initializing the HD20? This could be a serious problem. Has anyone made a patch to the Finder to disallow the 'erase' option if the disk is a hard disk? Is there a way to make the HD20 *always* be the startup disk? I seem to recall that it was possible to set the default boot drive using PRAM editor. Will this method work on a Mac Plus and a HD20? (If we had the Mac enclosed in a security case, the battery would be inaccessable and the change would be permenant) Networking Software We plan on putting every five or so Mac+'s on an AppleTalk network so they can share an ImageWriter II. We also plan to go the software route rather than the hardware route. (Although comments on hardware solutions are welcome too!) I have heard that MacServe crashes a lot. Is a new version coming? How is it overall? Does anyone have experience with other servers like HyperNet or Omninet? Does anyone make a gateway that allow more than 32 machines on the network? Does any software support this? Does any of the networking software support print spooling? If anyone has experience with such a project we would appreciate hearing about your experiences, solutions and problems. These are just some of the major points that have to be dealt with, any other comments, suggestions, warnings or hints would be greatly appreciated as well. Mail replys to: ...{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dan -- ---------- "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dan jatnieks Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison C.S. Dept. Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison Academic Computing Center (MACC) Micro Consultant NetMail: ...{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dan USMAIL: Work - c/o MACC-MIC Home - 1301 Spring St. 1210 W. Dayton Apt.#601 Madison, WI 53706 Madison, WI 53715 ---------- ------------------------------ From: werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) Subject: recipe: getting HFS to run on the TECMARs Date: 23 May 86 17:12:00 GMT Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas Keywords: installing HFS into a System to work on the TECMAR hard-disk drives Summary: use ResEdit to COPY and PASTE Tecmar-resources into new System file PS: (yes, a PS up front of the seperately prepared article which follows below) both the boot-floppy *AND* the system in use on the Tecmar should contain the modifications outlined below. Preparing a 'Tecmar-system' on floppy and copying it to the HD is recommended. You can add Fonts and Desk Accessories to the HD-version later. Actually, the System on the HD does not need to contain all that the one on the floppy needs to have, but that is another story. WARNING: the TECMAR hard-disk needs to be reinitalized when migrating from MFS to HFS - so back-up all your goodies. Once you have created an HFS-DeskTop on the TECMAR, *NEVER-EVER* boot or switch to an MFS-System again. Details are too gruesome to explain. POINTER: if you don't know HFS and have no documentation for it, you should get a manual for a Mac-Plus somewhere and/or the respective Tech-Notes. HINT: under HFS it is possible to keep several different Systems (or complete System Folders) on the Tecmar. At boot-time, the Folder highest in the hierarchy which contains both Finder and System becomes the *active* one. Moving Files/Folders around (up/down the hierarchy) and rebooting can change that. The old "OPTION-CMD-double-click" on an alternate Finder in another Folder can also be used. NOTE: When creating an HFS-volume in the 'Tecmar Volume-Manager', a warning is given that "The Volume is not initialized" - ignore it; it's Tecmar's way of telling you that you have created an HFS-volume. You can create several HFS-volumes if you feel you must; creating additional MFS-volumes is also possible, useful for those applications that refuse to work with HFS. Probably, there is more to say, but for today I've said enough. Now for the the details of the installation: ok, campers, after a little soul-searching delay, I decided against posting a file containing the resources needed to modify a new system so that it works with the TECMAR-HardDrive. Reasoning: Tech Note #57 "Mac Plus Overview", page 18, describes the "INIT mechanism" and I quote: "When the system starts up, it looks for files with types INIT and RDEV in the system folder. If it finds any, it looks in those files for resources of type INIT. If it finds any of those, it executes them." Then, in the "December 1985 Software Supplement Additions ERRATA", page 5, it says: "Installer Script doesn't install DSAT 0 and INIT 31. The current Mac+ installation script "Mac Plus Update" doesn't install resources DSAT 0 or INIT 31. Thus disks that have been updated with that installation script comes up with "Disassembler Installed" when booting from the HD20 and never loads any file-based INITs. Note: as described in .. TechNote #57 under 'INIT Mechanism', INIT 31 in the System file looks for files of type INIT at boot time and executes INIT resources in any that it finds, allowing for driver installation at boot time without modification of the System file. [the first quote above shows that 31 was nowhere mentioned in TN#57] An installer script which installs INIT 31 correctly and additional information about thsi INIT 31 mechanism should be available in the near future. Developers who wish to make use of this INIT 31 mechanism should check for updates on ... the bboards .. or write to Apple. To make a long story short, keeping the TECMAR in a seperate resource file didn't work for me (maybe because there were not only INIT-resources involved, maybe because the TECMAR INIT resource was also a 31, originally, maybe I didn't do it right ...) but only caused the boot-process to hang up. So it's back to using ResEdit to 'Copy-and-Paste' the resources from old Tecmar-System-files to new ones. And even if I'd post a file with the TECMAR resources only, you'd still need to learn to use ResEdit to install them, so, I figured, why go out on a limb taking the risk of hearing from Tecmar's lawyers about posting their code ??!! instead, here is the recipe of what you need to do: With the Resource Editor of your choice (latest version I have seen carries the Version number 1.0d12, but many earlier ones will do fine) open the System-file in the System-folder on your Tecmar boot-floppy. You want to grab the following from there (and you can do that with a Copy and Paste): DRVR 20 (which is .TDISK driver) FIXX (which contains 2 items: 20 and 21) INIT 31 (warning: number clashes with a 31 in new Systems from Apple) ICN# 555 (the TECMAR HardDisk Icon) STR 555 (some string, which identifies the drive as 'MacDrive') Now, I recommend that you create a new file named TECMAR-System-Resources which you keep around handy for installing into future new System files from Apple. One by one, copy the items above from the old Tecmar-System and paste them into the new file. When quitting ResEdit you'll be prompted to SAVE this new file (which you want to do, of course). If you get prompted to SAVE the SYSTEM-file where we copied the resources from, say NO !! you accidentally and unintentionally modified something there, and you don't want to make this mistake permanent. (But if you set the 'physical write-protect tab on your floppy, you don't have to worry about this) To install the Tecmar resources into a System, first make a BACKUP of whatever you are trying to modify (don't come crying to me if you don't) and, again with ResEdit, access (open) the file with the TECMAR resources and the System-file you intend to install them in. As I hinted at above, you should inspect the system file first for any numbers that might clash before installing the resources. For example, before installing INIT 31, we have to renumber it to some unused number<31 (I used 30). This is done as follows: Select the Tecmar-INIT-31 (by clicking on it in the respective window) and use Get-Info from the Menu-bar (or the equivalent keyboard-cmd) which will open a window which allows you to modify the resource-number by simple editing; close that window again. Now COPY the Tecmar-INIT, select (again by clicking on it) the System-file and do a PASTE. Do this for all the TECMAR resources. Note that when you close the files or quit ResEdit, you'll again be prompted to SAVE the files. This time it is correct to approve saving the System-file, but (as we modified the number of the TECMAR-INIT) you may not want to save that change in order to keep the TECMAR-resources in their *original* state. However, if you expect to do a lot of installations, you may want to change that number once-and-for-all (or until your newly selected number clashes with one to be found in a future new System from Apple). One last hint. If you are sure that all the resource-#s in the file of TECMAR resources are unique, you can install all of them together, by selecting in ResEdit the TECMAR-file-name, COPY, then select the System-file and PASTE. Well, I walked the tightrope between saying "too much" and "too little"; your tolerance is appreciated, if I did not manage to 'hit the spot' according to your personal taste or need. Cheers, ---Werner PS: Tecmars around here have the tendency not to want to boot after being turned off - sometimes for hours. I recommend you familiarize your- self with the rythm of the blinking of the light on the front panel. Around here, we found that when the Tecmar misbehaves, a 'light pat on the top' is all that's needed. My guess is that the arm is stuck and a little mechanical encouragement makes it become 'unstuck'. I can tell by the blinking light on the Tecmar front-panel when this condition arises. This advice is free and without guarantees. If you break your Tecmar with "heavy-handedness" you certainly will find sympathy here, but noone to accept the blame. PSPS: why don't we all call Tecmar and tell them what we think of their "non-support" of HFS and lack of a newsletter and/or updates? (216)349-0600 TECMAR tech service ------------------------------ From: werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) Subject: Apple, please interchange ZOOM-Box and CLOSE-Box Date: 23 May 86 18:18:46 GMT now that we have a ZOOM-Box (thanks, I needed that) I'd like to have it put where it should have been in the first place: where the CLOSE-Box is now. think about it for a second, lots gained, nothing lost. Better even, I'd like to have boxes in all corners doing the same thing: CLOSE when clicked on normally, ZOOM when using OPTION-click (or something similar), GROW incrementally when using CMD-click-drag. If you have to ask why ...: First, I want the ZOOM-box on the top left, so that I can ZOOM and SHRINK a window without having to move the mouse to where the top right corner is after zooming. Second, I'd like all corners to perform the same functions for the case where the top left one is 'off-screen' (BTW, I'd like to be able to push a window off-the-top also). Third, I'd like to be able to change the window-size incrementally in other ways than dragging the box in the bottom-right corner. "can't get enough of that ol' friendliness" ---Werner ------------------------------ From: robb@mentor.UUCP (Rob Bartel) Subject: CAUTION, WARNING, DANGER ThinkTank 512 and 128K ROMS Date: 21 May 86 21:19:54 GMT Organization: Mentor Graphics, Beaverton OR After losing several days worth of work on a ThinkTank 512 outline I called Living Videotext and found out that their current version of software (1.2) has a SERIOUS memory management bug in it that causes random crashes and screwy characters to show up in the outline. In addition, it is a creeping death sort of problem, and you can go through several saves accumulating these garbage characters until it gets so bad that the tool crashes. The problem is worse on long outlines (I havent seen it on outlines less than 10K in size) and occurs *ONLY ON* macs with the 128K ROM. I have not seen problems on my (work) machine with the 64K ROM. It occurs with either the old or new System and Finder combinations. Another note, TT512 doesnt work with anything that takes up any memory at all, as nearly as I can tell. DO NOT turn on the RAM cache, use switcher, and it is probably best not to use anything else that consumes memory (e.g. JCLOCK.) I note that the SIZE resource says 491K is the minimum memory size... Would someone out there *PLEASE* put me out of my misery and do a real MAC implementation of this indispensible tool. TT does virtually nothing at all like good mac software should. (e.g. no scroll bars, screwy text editting, evidently does its own memory management, is HUGE for what it does, is incompatible with almost anything else such as switcher, etc. etc. etc.) In defense of Living Videotext, however, the person I talked to there was very knowledgeable, helpful, sympathetic, and honest. She also didnt have a workaround other than to keep the outlines small. -- Rob Bartel ...!tektronix!sequent!mentor!robb ------------------------------ From: 6036792@pucc.BITNET (Kenneth Menken) Subject: Re: Loads and loads of SCSI drives for Mac+ -- Which to choose? Date: 23 May 86 20:29:01 GMT Organization: Princeton University Computing Center The MagNet20x external SCSI drive from Mirror Technologies is supposed to be quite good - it comes free with MacServe, but is still cheaper than the Dataframe. The Photon 20 from Warp 9 is another good one - it looks a lot like the MagNet, which is a hint that both are made by the same drive company. The advantage of the Warp 9: price. $795 is the cheapest I've seen for any 20 meg drive, from anyone - including discount houses like MacConnection and Programs Plus. I don't have addresses for either, but Warp 9 is at (800)328-6795 ex. 433 And unlike what I've heard about MDIdeas, neither of these is vaporware. Ken Menken Princeton U. ------------------------------ From: oster@ucblapis.UUCP Subject: Re: List Manager availability (was: ICONS in buttons) Date: 22 May 86 19:46:51 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley The List Manager is certainly available, and almost all of you have a program that uses it: ResEdit. I use it in my stuff, and have a partial interface to it written in T.M.L. pascal. If you want to run a list manager program under the old system, you must do what resEdit does: Have a copy of PACK0 in the resource fork of your application. (You can get a copy from the resource fork of ResEdit.) Now, will someone tell me what the other PACKs in ResEdit do. ------------------------------ End of Usenet Mac Digest ************************ -------