#WHAP Problems
27 messages in this thread
Well, I finally got WHAP to read the message base. I deleted gomf, popcli and
blitzfonts. I also had not properly saved my configurations @ GO DEFAULTS.
There is definitely a compatibility between one of the above programs as until
they were removed from my startup-sequence, I could never type on the screen
and have it register.
During the initial log-in, I had to help WHAP a couple of times @ more !
prompts. It got totally lost in EASYPLEX and I had to abort/hangup. I guess
easyplex is not quite set up perfectly. But logging back on I got the
AmigaVendor messagebase, so that much is working. Could part of the problem be
that I had set CIS up for VT100?
Greg,
As I said earlier, I run with GOMF 2.2 and PopCLI III as well as a lot of
other things. There is no conflick with Whap!.
Since you are getting the MORE ! prompt you do not have your CompuServe
profile set up correctly. Type GO DEFAULT and manually set your Top Page to
MAIN, EasyPlex to NOTIFY ONLY, and BRIEF to YES. Then delete your Txxxx file
in the Whap: directory (depending on the baud rate, it will be T2400 or T1200
or T300). Then have Whap! go for it again and go through it's first time
initialization. If successful, it will send me an email. If no email is sent,
you have not set up your CIS profile correctly.
Best,
-jcs-
Well, it works completely. I have set up DEFAULT twice and when I log on I now
don't get the more ! prompt. The first time (last night about 11pm) I know I
exited without saving properly. The second time I know I did save properly, but
WHAP died in EasyPlex. It is now working fine… I will again (for the fourth
time <grin>) delete my T2400 file and start over to see if it gets thru
EasyPlex.
I have two questions/comments: First, Whap needs a time of day clock on each
screen. Once Whap is working I won't be spending six hours a day with it, but I
lost all track of time. this is just a convience item. Second: When will WHAP
let me type in the screen? It worked when it was hung up on a MORE ! prompt,
but during the logon sequence, it ignores all my keyboard input (trying to see
if I could mess up log on).
I was also running Blitzfonts and ARP. Now that I am semi operational I have
brought each of these back and cannot duplicate the lock-up problem that I had
earlier. I wonder if it wasn't the fact that my termina;l type was VT100 and
VT100 escape codes confused WHAP and/or the serial.device. The only other thing
I did was to adjust my preferences serail buffer from the minimum to 16K (maybe
it locked up if it overflowed). It always locked up when it was attempting to
read a forum message. If a large message, it locked up somewhere in the middle.
It would read as many as three short messages. Does this make you think it was
buffer-size related?
By locking up Imean that the modem LEDs indicated no data was bein either way
and that the three gadgets (hangup, abort, online/terminate) did not respond to
mouse clicks by changing color or updating the status screen.
Jim, I know I've been something of a pain in the neck, but It is now working
and I am very happy with it. Thanks, Greg
Greg,
It appears that you don't yet have it set up correctly. The program has
not sent me the confirming email. It will do that when everything is
configured properly.
You locked up because you had a Tnnnn file on disk yet Whap! did not
properly setup the parameters because you've not done one of the following in
your CIS profile. Top Page = MAIN, Brief = YES, EasyPlex = NOTIFY ONLY.
Until you do that, delete your Tnnnn file, and have Whap! go through it's
full setup procedure, you will be getting lock ups.
Best,
-jcs-
Jim, Apparently the fourth time is the best. The re-initialization went
perfectly. Thanks. -Greg
Greg,
Great!
Best,
-jcs-
Ok. New problem. I downloaded the DL headers for all three forums at one time.
It went well. I picked files from all three forums and tried to download them.
The AmigaTech files went well, but Whap got confused. It tried to download
several AmigaArts files, and the first went OK. The next one hung and CIS said
the files were not in the DL (14). The files I wanted were in DLs 8 & 9. Since
I used the default 14 day scan, I feel something got out of sync and fooled
WHAP into DL 14.
I then reselected the files from the catalog and WHAP did the same. I
redownloaded the catalog and WHAP got screwy(er). In the catalog section on the
third blue bar going across the screen (the title bar?) random garbage started
showing up. I kept going further into the catalog until the last one. I was
just clicking on the next button fairly fast to get to the end of the catalog
(44 files). Guess What? The next never ghosted and I got guru #3.
I rebooted and deleted the AmigaArts.CAT file and redownloaded the catalog. Now
everything works right. My opinion is that I had line noise at a critical part
of the file and WHAP got Whapped! Guess What Again? I got a different # of
files than the first time, significantly fewer (23 I think).
-Greg
Greg,
Should that happen again, upload the questionable file(s) to DL 16 and
I'll take a look at it and see what's going on.
Best,
-jcs-
I now have a good idea what's going on. Each DL section in AmigaArts.Cat begins
with a LIB X ! and end with one with all the scanned file headers in between.
The first file in Lib 9 has a name of lib9.arc. I deleted the entry for
Lib9.arc out of AmigaArts.Cat. Now when in the download section of Whap,
HAMGIF.Arc (the file I want) shows up in the top brown color bar as being in DL
9!. The LIB part of LIB9.ARC occupies the same three character positions on a
line as LIB 9 ! AmigaArts only shows this as it is the only forum with the
contents arced as LIBN.ARC (yet). Perhaps you can get CIS to change then to
ARTLB9.ARC,TECHLB9.ARC,VENLB9.ARC, etc. to avoid this problem. I will upload
working and not working versions of AmigaArts.cat to DL16 to demonstrate this.
-Greg
Greg,
Yep, you found a bug. It's already been fixed.
As for as you (the user) is concerned, there are 2 things I could do. 1)
Upload the fixed version. I don't like that idea because it would force
everyone to download it again. 2) Get the sysops to rename those files. They
did. So, the version you have will cause problems on files in the Libs that
start with LIB<number>. Sorry. In several months of beta testing with 20 or so
testers, we never ran into that.
Now that the files have been renamed, delete your AmigaArts.cat file. All
should be well.
Best,
-jcs-
Jim, that's OK for me as I am pretty much an AMIGAFORUM-only type person here
on CIS. However, other users may belong to many other forums. I can see a
problem co-ordinating the file naming conventions with all the sysops on all
the forums. Any one sysop not knowing about (or not caring about) this problem
may well re-introduce the bug at some later date. You might get some anti-amiga
nut uploading files beginning with 'lib' just to make WHAP break. Since I can
go into the catalog file and edit the problem file descriptor out with
micro-emacs, it is no big deal for me. But for others it might.
Not posting the fix may leave some people with enough of a bad taste in their
mouth to not only decide to not buy WHAP!, but to usKh!"!inking of Jerry
Pournelle) as another reason to say the Amiga is broke, barely working, kludgy,
etc.
Think about uploading the fix. You can always have the sysops replace the old
WHAP.arc with the new one and upload a patch file for the people who downloaded
Whap before the new post date. I would not feel bad about dl'ing the patch file
even if it was 100K.
-Greg
Greg,
Ok. I'll probably get it online by tonight.
Best,
-jcs-
Jim, it's funny – I uploaded all of those LIBx.arc files from an ARChive that
Bill Eastburn had uploaded of all the LIBS. I gave alot of thought to what I
should call them – guess I'm glad I chose LIBx – not glad they have to be
renamed – but finding a bug inadvertantly is always kinda neat!
<grin> Marlene
I was premature in saying it now works correctly after deleting my
AmigaArts.CAT file. It went to DL14 just the same. Was doing several things:
getting message from AmigaTech, replying, getting messages from AMigaArts, and
DLing the desired files.
-Greg
Whap! will lock up and get confused if you're not set to expert mode, which is
part of the problem you were experiencing.
As far as lockup goes, it wasn't a guru but it just sat there waiting for
things to happen that didn't happen. Once it does get set up it doesn't do
that any more – I've seen line noise that've garbled things, and Whap!
eventually typed OFF to get off the system.
Actually I'm not telling the whole truth – it was *simulated* line noise made
by me banging the phone to see what would happen. 🙂
One more thing….. the description for WHAP.arc does not mention that it
contains WHAP.doc. For those who have decided to get it from the messages here,
it might appear that he/she needs to download both WHAP.arc as well as
WHAP.doc.
-Greg
When I saw the News Flash at the top of the forum that announced Whap! I
got the impression I needed to download BOTH WHAP.arc and WHAP.doc. I, too,
suggest revising that Flash.
Sometimes I get a MESSAGES prompt and whap just stops. I've found that if I
click in the window and hit a return whap then resumes as cis does.
Ron
Ron,
Whap! is set up to look for the Forum ! prompt. Make sure you have Brief
= YES in your CompuServe profile. Then in forums you frequent, make sure the
setting there is to use the global parameters. This is the default setting
when joining new forums. If you have your CompuServe parameters set up
properly you can only get the Messages prompt if you've explicitly turned it on
in any given forum.
Best,
-jcs-
I'll go in and explicitly turn it off (grin).
Ron P.S. Why does whap! keep deleting itself if I leave it in the whap:
directory?
Ron,
Deleting itself? That's a new one on me!
Best,
-jcs-
Whap deletes itself, sometimes the doc file,, whatever passes for a parameter
file, all on a very random basis, but especially noticeable upon cold reboot,
when you sometimes can't find half of what you're looking for. I keep copies in
a second hd partition, but I get a bit tired of recopying them. I suspect a
combination of bug and setup trouble. I had this bright idea that I shouldn't
keep downloaded files in the whap directory. I don't know if this has anything
to do with it.
Ron P.S. I have mailed a check!
Ron,
I've never seen it delete itself or any file it's not supposed to delete.
Are you running it from ram: or VD0: ?
Best,
-jcs-
No, from DH0:. I've had whap! and whap.doc deleted more then once without any
concious help on my part. By the way, why does 1.2 still start up saying that
it's 1.0?
Ron
Ron,
You've got something screwy going on. Whap! does not delete itself and
1.2D says 1.2D when it starts up.
Best,
-jcs-
I had the same problem and discovered that I had the entry point for the
Forum set to Messages! instead of Forum! You may have overridden your global
settings in an individual Forum and WHAP! appears to hang if it does not see
the Forum! prompt. Changing it within the offending Forum worked for me. You
might try it.
+BR+