This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (473 messages)
The CK722 and the 2N104 were the first transistors that could be bought at a price of less than $10, so their appearance was quite a breakthrough. The CK722 was NPN and the 2N104 PNP, so you could try one of each. Economical power transistors started arriving a year later.…
Umm .. did you get around to reading that article about how transistors work yet, Betty? 🙂 Jim
It's I KINGS 7, verse 23: (quoting Revised Standard): "Then he made the molten sea: it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, .. and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference". Now, Betty, you can't expect a man who has seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred…
> NASA used 3.14 instead of 3.1415927… I doubt it. Then again, I'm told that on one occasion in the 19th century, a state legislature passed a law that in that state, the value of pi would be taken as 3. Seems they wanted to simplify things .. 🙂 –Jim
Some folks love to wrestle with questions such as how to do a binary multiply/divide (that includes me .. I tend to write the code fresh rather than use macros). Other folks just want to get the job done. And a few trust their floating point processors (even that of…
.. did you try UNSIGNED? –Jim
>> CAN the Amiga do perfect addition, subtraction … with decimal .. ? It's a matter of definition. Can any entity in the finite universe divide 10 by 3, in decimal, perfectly? Even with 24 megabytes of memory, the "3" digits would march on and there would be a loss…
.. and, in addition to telling what it is, tell us where you are. If you happened to obtain this game in Europe, it might be of limited playability to NTSC North Americans. –Jim
OK, the next thing to check is that picture of a hand holding up a Workbench disk. Near the disk, you'll see a designation that says V1.2 .. or maybe V1.3. For your information, the V1.2 verion will take either 1.2 or 1.3 Workbench disks. It's also useful to know…
>> .. has there ever been an Amiga show within 1000 miles of Seattle or Vancouver BC? There was one in Calgary, Alberta, last August. Depending on how far back "ever" goes, there have been quite a few Amiga shows in Vancouver, sponsored by Commodore. But not in the last…
#World of Amiga reborn?
Message #215025
[I haven't noticed this being posted earlier; excuse if it's already known] A recent item on a Toronto BBS: Date: 10-03-95 (17:38) Number: 2278 of 2283 (Refer# NONE) To: ALL From: ERNIE CHORNY Subj: 1995 World of Amiga Wonder Computers have announced that they are organizing the 1995 World of…
You're just learning about the charms of floating point. You may change your variable to an integer type (I suggest LONG or UNISGNED LONG), and the fractional part will go away. You may make your floating point number DOUBLE (or LONG FLOAT) and the fractional part will become virtually insignificant.…
AT on German TV !
Message #214847
>>I was surprised to read this, as France is so close to Germany… Only physically. 🙂 –Jim
>> the conclusion I came to was not to expect .. [any behaviour] Good conclusion. You never know what a new release or an alternate shell might do. –Jim
No, the debug packages lead you astray. The CLI/Shell A0 pointer is to the first non-space character. (Since I couldn't trust the debuggers, had to write a special program to test it, but it's true, at least with 3.1). –Jim
The command tail is indeed pointed to by A0, with D0 containing the number of bytes it has. This is not your raw command tail, since redirection information will have been removed. The value in D0 includes the trailing NewLine character; as far as I know, that character is always…
A somewhat late afterthought to the search-methodology question: I've just uploaded an ARexx program plus data file in library 7 of the AmigaUser forum. It uses the built-in "hashing" system of ARexx to find indexed stuff fast. And/or: if you have access to a Commodore 64, I've uploaded the same…
(off the thread topic, but I can't resist): >> .. people are prepared to pay much for a faster computer .. That's to overcome the sluggishness of present day programs (using sloppy compilers?) and operating systems such as Windows .. –Jim
>> To my knowledge, was written .. in B, the predecessor of C. To be exact, only AmigaDOS was written in a language called BCPL, a relative of B. This system was done as a crash project when the original Amiga DOS system (CHAOS) came unstuck during early development. BCPL…
>> "Traditional C" usually connotes K&R C .. OK, would you go for "generic C"? I was trying to address the original question, "What's a good book from which to learn C?". The problem as I see it is that most books stay strictly with "generic" code: level 2 file…
>> I understand what you give up by using C, i.e., speed, size of executable file … You don't give up that much. C is quite efficient, and compiles into fast code. There are also ways of arraging to trim out much of the "canned code" (I'm referring to c.o…
>> I'm going to start teaching myself how to program in C… >> .. and I'm hoping to get some good pointers… Gosh, allow me a quite chuckle on the wording. A good part of getting used to the C language is learning how to cope with pointers; pointers to…
Thank you for those kind words. –Jim
Yes, you're catching the idea I was trying to convey: "Class Constructs and Data Encapsulation", as it's often called. Which brings up the idea that you have a LOT of new terminology to digest when you go to an OO language. For example, a bundle of data and associated code…
>>Do you find OO [Object Oriented) to be a good method for designing programs? I don't make great use of it myself, but sometimes – in the middle of a data file reorganization – I wish I had done. Here's a rough sense of what OO gives you. You can…
>> Hi. Could someone tell me what the newest version of of the SAS C compiler is … I need to know if a new version is due in the near future… hain has already answered, but I'd like to add: if you get the final 6.5 version, you should…
Small correction: PPP130.LHA – Lib 4 ; ppp 130 (it's not in lib 5)… –Jim
Invoicer Mod
Message #210042
>> INV.LHA .. need to change VAT to TAX … I haven't downloaded this program, and for the moment have other things to be done. But, assuming the program is not commercial or copyrighted by the author, this type of cosmetic change shouldn't be hard; you might even try taking…
ARexx is so rich in commands and functions that it's easy to miss a few… I kinda wish the manual had been organized in a different manner, so that readers could go to an area they are interested in. Starting with ADDRESS seems to skew perception of the language, and…
>> I need to make a program (in AmigaBasic!) that will sort # of letters and then spew them out … The reference to AmigaBasic indicates that you're working on an older Amiga operating system, but no matter .. Many programmers are anxious to make their sorts FAST, in which…
Phillip W may be overstating his case, but he has a point. Three 16-bit chips came out in roughly the same time frame: The Intel 8086, the Zilog Z80, and the Motorola 68000. Of the three, the Motorola chip had by far the best framework for future expansion: 68000 programs…
If an address (or the user of a post office box) changes, the new resident is supposed to mark any mis-addressed mail as undeliverable and return it to the post office. Sadly, many recipients just throw such material in the garbage. Your money may not have been taken .. it…
Re saving documents in Scribble: Page 24 and/or page 84 of the manual (he does have a manual, doesn't he?) says "select menu PROJECT, item ARCHIVE, submenu item DOCUMENTS. Alternatively, press right-Amiga D. You'll get a requestor: fill in the desired file name in the appropriate area and then click…
Flipper fluster?
Message #208558
Hmmm. A new hard disk system (new controller, too) works very nicely, but I'm having troubles getting my 386 to play in the new configuration. It may be Flipper that's giving the trouble .. but the more I look at it the more puzzled I get. Now, I know the…
>> US and Canadian dollars are fairly the same value … Wish it were so, but the Canadian dollar has been hanging below US$0.75 for a while now. (You should be able to get a more precise current rate from your bank or financial source). >> .. so 6500 is…
>> Some compilers can get by without amiga.lib, SAS certainly can… I'm curious about this. I know that SAS C makes pragmas available to produce more efficient calls to many library functions… But I thought that amiga.lib was the only source of code for: printf, fprintf, etc. As far as…
That's a great summary of current "street" prices, Paul, and I found it interesting reading. I suspect many people with there were similar postings for other Amiga models… And you draw attention to a point that's close to my heart: SAY YOUR LOCATION! You may well get more interest in…
The ARexx equivalent to POKE is EXPERT, form: count = EXPORT(addr,[str],[maxlen],[pad]) Thus, to store hex FF at address hex 1234 (I do NOT recommend you do this), you would code: y=EXPORT('1234'x,'FF'x). As you might guess the equivalent to PEEK is IMPORT. And if you're going to mess around with this…
1. I'm sure you know this part, but since the Amiga is multitasking, you can always open another CLI/Shell and take whatever directory listing you need to get a file name. Heck, with 2.0 and beyond, you can cut-and-paste the name of the file you want over to the application.…
Believe you're right. I have been told that the original ARexx did not store its variables using a hashing technique, but the first upgrade switched over. I don't know this from personal experience, but I heard that the speed improvement was noticeable. –Jim
>> a "hashing" technique > .. an example or in-depth description? Here's a brief and very sloppy example. Please try to find a better hashing algorithm than the one I will suggest. ASSUME: You expect ot have 200 records or so. Good; I'll has into a table of 512 bytes…
> Are you the Jim Butterfield of the C64 days? Yup, and before the C64 days, too… >> .. building a list (based on first character).. > .. I'm not sure it will be faster.. For the sake of argument, let's say that your data is evenly distributed between the…
"alphabetically sorted" may be something of a red herring.. but.. The traditional way to find an item in an ordered list is by a binary split search. In other words, you go to the middle of the list, and depending on whether your search value is higher or lower, move…
>> I have tried freeware DICE, but it doesn't have the "Amiga Includes" … You've hit the nail on the head. The C language makes liberal use of the include files. But those files are copyrighted by Commodore. That makes it difficult (impossible?) for anyone to offer a free compiler,…
The Rexx Plus ™ Compiler was produced by the Dineen Edwards Group, at 19785 West Twelve Mile Rd., Suite 305, Southfield, Michigan, 48076-2553, phone (313) 352-4288. I had heard that they had gone out of business, but have no confirmation of that. You could try phoning to see. (If the…
>> did you ever write a series on Basic 7.0 for the 128? When the 128 was first released, I wrote a series of articles on how to handle it, from both Basic and M/L programming standpoints. I also did memory maps and architectural descriptions (Transactor July 1986, V7 issue…
I don't currently write anything for the Amiga. I do write a column (maybe to become two, I'm not sure) for "Commodore World", published by CMD. And Jack Vander White (CEE-64 Alive!) has expressed interest in recycling some of my earlier material, including perhaps the book on Machine Langauge. Most…
>> .. you forgot the part about using a macro ID and password Gosh, there are so many types of computer out there, and so many terminal programs! People still log in on the 8-bit machines (Commodore 64 and other brands) with whatever terminal programs they can rustle up ..…
It seems that many CompuServe communication nodes want to talk with 7 bit data, even parity; but you'll need 8 bits when you start downloading. There are two-and-a-half ways to approach this (and the method you choose will likely depend on the terminal package you are using): 1. As Lee…
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