This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (586 messages)
Brian, Basically, Commodore is moving away from the "grab bag" approach of the old mountlist. If you'll look in the "storage" drawer that was installed as part of 2.1, you'll notice a drawer called "DOSDrivers" – these are the replacements for the CBM-standard entries in the old mountlist. Each of…
Darron, As a "guess", are you running TurboText in the background from your user startup? If so, are you starting it before you've added SC:C to your path? I suspect that the shell being spawned from within Turbotext, because it inherits the Path from the Turbotext process, doesn't have the…
Erik, Don't be too hard on yourself. It's difficult to stay on top of procedures when they keep changing, even if they are getting much easier. I've made more than my share of mistakes and oversights myself – it's frequently the only way to learn! Glad you got things working.…
I just brought double clicked on the format icon and was presented with a list of available devices – one of which is PC0: (720K). This is, of course, the CrossDOS device, which will format to the MS-DOS format. Are you sure you had the device mounted when you tried…
Instead of using the Workbench "Format Disk" menu item, you can open up the 'System' drawer on the WB, and double-click on the 'Format' program icon. That will allow you to format the CrossDOS disk without having to resort to going to the CLI. Hope this helps…. – BobR
Robert, As Chris pointed out, the (reasonably accurate ) Sysop Roster is available in the Forum Announcements – at the Forum! prompt, the command "ANN" will give you a menu of the various announcements, and the sysop roster is among the choices available. As for a VGA to S-video adaptor,…
Mike, Try the following line: address command "stack 8000" || '0a'x || "run foobar" By stringing the two commands together with the linefeed separating them, they will be run consecutively by the same CLI process, which would keep the 'stack' command sticky to that process. Hope this helps…. – BobR…
Tim, There should be no problem with the system's accessing your 2-meg expansion board with a 2630 installed. I have a 2 meg 16-bit ram board in my system also. The 16-bit memory is slower, but the system is smart enough to use the 32-bit memory first. While you won't…
Tim, The 2.04 upgrade Enhancer Kit includes a new ROM. It's a fairly simple installation, although you may feel more comfortable having your dealer's service tech install it. My accelerator board is the Commodore 2630 – has a 25 MHz 68030 and 4 megs of 32-bit memory. Because the memory…
Bill, I have no personal experience with the GVP boards, but have heard "mixed" reviews of them from others. Some folks really like then, others have reported problems of compatibility. I don't recall the specifics. I've never heard of the Vector board – is that a European hardware vendor? What…
Tim, I have a Commodore 2630 in my system, and have had no problems or complaints with it. I've also been running Version 2.0x (or later) of the OS since before 2.04 was released (I'm a registered developer), and have not had any software failures that were OS-related. Of course,…
Jay, That's correct. Of course, the memory on the 2630 will be _faster_ than the 16-bit memory, so the optimal configuration would be 4 megs on the 2630 (32-bit), and 4 megs on the other (16-bit) memory board. Good luck…. – BobR
Charlie, The Zorro-II bus specifications reserve 8 megs of memory space for autoconfiguration by the addon peripherals. DMA is limited to this 8 megs, as is the addressing capability of the CPU on the motherboard. With an add-on CPU on the expansion accellerator board taking over the process, it can…
Redmond, I understand that the PCMCIA's use of 4 megs of autoconfig space is not your "fault", but a result of the PCMCIA spec and C='s implementation thereof. It sounds like you have things well covered for flexibility, given the "reality as we know it". – BobR
Dom, My only association with QQP is that they published The Perfect General. I have no other involvement with any other projects of theirs, nor do they keep me informed of their activities. Sorry, I can't help you here. – BobR (Motorola Inside!)
Jay, The 2630's memory is standard "autoconfig" memory, which means that it configures into the same memory space used for Zorro-II boards. Your friend would have to limit his 16-bit fast RAM to 4 megs (assuming 4 megs on the 2630) – he'd have a total of 8 megs of…
George, The problem that you are probably experiencing is that you _have_ followed the AmigaTerm documentation – it has a significant error that does affect downloading. Make sure you set your serial configuration to 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity (8N1). That should get you going. I…
Redmond, Congrats on being the first with an A1200 add-on — sure looks like Microbotics was on the ball! Regarding the PCMCIA use of the upper 4 megs of autoconfig space, what happens if one were to have an 8-meg SIMM installed – does the autoconfig logic allow for only…
Jim, My knowledge of Basic is extremely limited, so I can't really offer you direct help with what you are asking. I do have a little experience with writing war games, however. (I co-wrote The Perfect General, and have also done the Amiga conversions of a couple of other war…
Patrick, Download the file LHA138.RUN from Library 16 (Archivers). It is a self-extracting file which contains the program "lha" and it's docs. It will be able to deal with files ending in the .lha extension. Hope this helps…. – BobR
Henry, You need the program LHA138.RUN, which is in the archiver library here (Lib 16). It is a self-extracting archive (doesn't need anything to unpack it, just run the program after you download it). It contains the program "lha", which is what you need to extract from files ending in…
Steve, Look in Lib 10 here – RCS56B.LHA — it's a freebie. hope this helps… – BobR
John, With The Perfect General, I was using a different revision control system on the PC side (TLIB), and was just bringing the "work-in-progress" source over to the Amiga and kept a "PC-branch" and an "Amiga-branch" of the source code in RCS. I've since switched to using the GNU RCS…
John, I don't know anything about ToolMaker – haven't even had time to look at the demo version. However, you may want to look into RCS for managing your source code. One of the things it can do is what you are asking for – merge the changes in two…
4000's built and shipped, and has little manpower remaining for other items. Simply a guess on my part. The problem with VGA support on the bridgeboard is tied to the basic architecture of the interface design of the Janus system, utilizing "dual-ported" RAM to provide the graphics display. The difference…
Mathew, I'll try to respond to some of your complaints and may add some facts to support Commodore's actions, although I'll be the first to admit that there are some "gray areas". However, there are some mitigating factors of which you may not be aware that make some of the…
Victor, Whether AGA will help in porting an MS-DOS game to the Amiga or not really depends on the game. For something like The Perfect General, it wouldn't have helped a lot, as we were only using 16-color graphics, but it would have helped some due to the graphics speedup…
have to look at it objectively and decide what is best for my company's health and growth. It's definitely not an easy decision to make. In this specific example, the jury's still out. We have decided to spend some money and resources in investigating the feasibility of the conversion, so…
"optimal" machine configuration, but the lowest-common-denominator that we'll support). In 1988 in the Amiga market, the "base-level" machine was an Amiga 500 or 1000, with 512K of memory and 1 floppy drive. At the time, fitting the original Empire on that machine was a tight-fit, but it did work. It…
Peter, First, I'd like to say that I'm pleased that we are able to get a dialog going on this issue, as I think it's a very important issue. I have really not been trying to "burst your bubble", but trying to get a little more "fact-based", as opposed to…
Peter, Reality and your numbers simply don't agree. 3 man-years of development and two man-years for support costs more than $125K. More in the range of $200K to $250K or more. On top of that, what about hardware costs? Software costs? QA costs? Other costs of doing business? Most of…
Michael, Fast ram on the _motherboard_ of the A3000/A4000, and/or fast ram added via a Zorro-III memory board would not conflict with the Bridgeboard. Fast ram added via a Zorro-II memory board would have the same restrictions and possible conflicts as on an A2000. – BobR
Michael, The Bridgeboard is a Zorro II device. Zorro-II is limited to 24-bits of address space, which means that the only addresses it knows are within the lower 16-megs of address space. There are 8 megs of "fast" memory addresses available in the 16-meg space, and the Bridge's dual port…
Dave, I'll cite a specific example. A game that I've been involved with, "Empire – Wargame of the Century" was published by Interstel, who had a license to publish this game from the holders of the copyright. About a year ago, this license to publish was rescinded (in accordance with…
Peter, You _may_ be more successful if you compile, in addition to the list of names, the hardware configuration of the folks who are clamboring for the product. How many of these people have "equivalent hardware" to the machine requirements for the MS-DOS version? I don't know what Falcon 3.0…
Toasters are not eligible for born-again virginity. – BobR
Paul, The "real" problem with the casual leaking of information (in my opinion and in my self-serving interests) is that I, as a developer, really do need this information as it directly has an effect on how I'm going to be getting my next meal. With the prevalent trickle-leaks coming…
Actually CBM does hire software engineers to disassemble "problem" programs. That is why there are so many "compatibility hacks" in the 2.04 operating system. They put a lot of work into work-arounds to continue supporting programs that broke the rules. In some cases, the programmers could be "excused" because the…
#74120-
#VXL30
Message #74137
Ted, I don't have any experience with the VXL-30, so I can't help you there. Just thought I'd let you know that the vendor, Microbotics, has a section in the Amiga Vendor forum. Perhaps they can answer any questions you might have. Hope this helps…. – BobR
Al, The "easy" answer is that you can't. The "hard" answer is that you'll have to write the code to parse the string yourself, and then generate the routines to evaluate the expressions. In other words, you'll have to write a (limited) language interpreter that understands algebraic expressions. Not a…
John, Yes – our systems can keep up with the high speed modems. I'm generally using my Amiga A2500/30, and occasionally my 486/33 Klone. The other end is running a Klone (either a 486/33 or a 386/20). The systems don't have a problem keeping up (although the slower Klone is…
Michael, I doubt that is the problem – the symptoms don't indicate that he is getting far enough for the speed of the 1000 to be a factor. That would only happen after the connection is made, with the symptoms being missed characters on the receiving end on the A1000.…
John, I really don't have any idea what your problem could be. My (tiny) company connects our two offices via modem – we have a Supra 14.4 in one office and a PPI 14.4 in the other, and we have no problems connecting with each other. We're using "standard" default…
Steve, I'm hoping to attend. Still gotta work out a few nits (like how the heck I'm gonna pay for it :-). – BobR (Motorola Inside!)
Christian, I used to use an EX800 with my Amiga. The driver that I used was the standard EpsonX driver supplied by Commodore. Note that I did not use the colo(u)r option of the printer very much, because I was never impressed with the quality of the images. Hope this…
Vic, Mungwall indeed does have a "snoop" option, that is identical in function to the original snoop. The output is strippable via snoopstrip. Very useful for locating memory leaks. Hope this helps…. – BobR
Michael, Ahh, that makes sense. What you got "caught" by is the fact that the compiler vendor shipped both 1.3 and 2.0 versions of "amiga.lib", and _they_ named the latter one to "amiga2.0.lib" because they were supplying both versions. The RKM is "correct", though. Commodore only supplies a single library…
John, Not quite sure what you're looking for. Mungwall does hook both AllocMem() and FreeMem() calls – it wraps both ends of the allocation with "cookies", which it checks when the memory is freed (to detect overruns). It also has an option to log all allocations/frees to the serial port…
Michael, 'gadtools.library' is indeed in ROM (for systems with 2.04 and above). It is not a "link-time" library, so BLink doesn't need to find it. Like most of the Amiga operating system libraries, it's a "run-time" library. Your program gains access to it by using the OpenLibrary() call to get…
Roy, The Nec printer uses a different toner cartridge than the HP lasers. In fact, that's one of the negative aspects of the printer, as I believe that the toner cartridges are fairly expensive (it's a single replacement package for everything), and as far as I know, not compatible with…
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