#Yo!
57 messages in this thread
What an excellent addition to the forum staff!
Thanks. I hope that I can catch up on all the messages so that I can start
to contribute more.
John… welcome aboard! Tell us a little about your background with the
Amiga… any areas of special expertise and/or interest?
(Forgive me if I should already know who you are… I'm not very up on
who's who in Amigaland <blush>)
John is quite capable of speaking for himself, and he will – but
during the first five years or so of the Amiga he was in charge of
the C compiler division of SAS, and had much to do with the writing
of the Lattice (now SAS) C compiler, among other things. His
contributions to the Amiga community would take a very, very long
message. We are truly fortunate to have him here, in my opinion.
Thanks Betty. I look forward to getting to know John, and I'm happy
that he will be available to us here in the forum. I was thinking
about you just yesterday… hadn't heard from you in awhile. How've
ya been?
Michael,
Perhaps I should have told everyone sooner, but I just couldn't. My
husband has been very seriously ill for quite some time, and it has taken
most of my time to care for him for several months. He died Tuesday
morning, and it will take a bit longer before I can participate here as I
used to. I'm sure you will understand. We were married almost 37 years
ago.
Betty, no words can express the loss that you are feeling, and I'm sure all
of us understand you being away from the forum's for awhile. As always, we
will look forward to your participation when you get the chance.
I am very sorry to hear of your personal tragedy. My thoughts are with
you.
There is little I can say to ease your time of grief, but be assured you
have my deepest sympathy at your loss.
best wishes to you, Betty. Sorry.
Ben
You have my deepest condolences Betty. Take time to do what you need and
don't worry about things here. If there is anything that I can do to help,
please don't hesitate to ask.
It's 2am here. I hope I can speak for the rest of the Europeans on line.
It's very sobering to think of the loss of a loved one. My deepest
condolences to you.
Charlie, and John, and all the others – thank you. Without support from
friends – both local and online – this would have been much more difficult.
Betty
Betty:
I am so very sorry. If it can be any comfort, I'm sure you enriched
your husband's life just as much as you have enriched the lives of those of
us who have come to know you on this forum. May God be with you in your
time of need.
– via Whap!
And he enriched mine, Bill. Among other things – HE was the electronics
engineer who taught me how computers work.
Thank you.
Betty
>… HE was the electronics engineer who taught me how computers work.
Teachers and loved ones change lives forever.
Words can never make things "OK". However, you have my sympathies,
thoughts, and prayers. Take Care….
– via Whap!
Thank you, Alex. I do appreciate it.
Betty
Betty, I extend you my sympathy and my prayers. Tim
Thank you, Tim.
Betty
Betty:
Very sorry to hear about your loss. My thoughts are with you.
Regards Charles
And I appreciate it, Charles.
Betty
Betty: we're very sorry to hear of your loss.
andy
Thank you, Andy.
Betty
Betty, my condolences to you and your/his family.
–jp–seattle–
Thank you, John.
Betty
Betty,
Please accept my deepest sympathies. I did not know Richard, except
through your words, but I do know how much you loved him. I wish there were
words that could really help.
-larry
Thank you, Larry. It helps to know that people care.
Betty
When I bought one of the first Amiga's sold in Canada – a LONG time
ago – I was working in the video production business and my employer
wanted me to translate an Edit Decision List program I had written in
BASIC on a Sony
CP/M computer to C on the Amiga. He bought the (then)
Lattice C Compiler and I started to teach myself C. I learned through
the Amiga grapevine about a BBS run by something called the SoftWare
Distillery. I called there and found John Toebes!! I even found his
home phone number (don't remember how) there and called him to ask
about the then new linker they had written, BLink, and was given a
wealth of information. John continued to help me for about 6 months
until the product was finished, never once saying he was too busy to
talk and could I call back. IMHO, even though BLink was a P.D.
product then, (it has since become the linker for the SAS compiler)
the support and new knowledge I aquired(sp) from John about that
product and C programming in general was and STILL is the highest
level of customer support I have EVER recieved for ANY product,
computer or not!! This may not tell you much about his experience
with the Amiga, but it will show you what kind of support you will
receive from him for any questions.
Thanks for relating your experience with John Toebes! I'm sure others
will see your message and take it to heart.
Well, several people have already piped in to give a few comments, but I
can summarize pretty quickly:
I have been involved with the Amiga since 1985 in many areas. I
organized the Software Distillery and was the head of it until recently.
In that capacity I have worked on many projects including PopCLI (a very
well cloned/copied program), MemWatch, Blink, Hack, Kermit, WBRun,
IconExec, SetAlt, and about a zillion other little things that never made
it off the ground. I also worked at SAS and was responsible for the
compile portions of the 4.0 and 5.0 Lattice/SAS Compilers and for the last
2 years was manager of the SAS/C development team. Along with Doug Walker,
I have done several filing systems including NET: and Parnet and NET-DNET.
I was also responsible for leading the Distillery in the rewrite of the
AmigaDOS 2.0 commands in C. Personally I did the work on ED, Edit, Type,
and a few others.
I can converse on almost any subject on the Amiga, but am certainly an
expert on DOS, C, and Software Architecture. To date I have published 33
Articles about programming the Amiga (assuming you count my 18 C columns in
the Amigan Apprentice and Journeyman). At least if I don't know the answer
to a question, I can certainly find someone who does know the answer.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
Yeah, so what… how many levels can you clear in Lemmings in one sitting?
(hehehe) 🙂
No, really, It's great to have you here. I am sure that your talents will
be of tremendous value to Amiga Forum users… Your expertise, along with
the skills and talents of the rest of the SysOps here (and ofcourse the
user base of regulars who contribute) make CIS a great place to hang out.
I'm a five year Amiga user who knows zilch about programming… my
questions tend to be along the lines of "How do I turn this on?" or "Where
do I put that assign statement – and what's the syntax?".
And while I don't believe that I can get smart by hanging around smart
folks… it sure doesn't hurt. I've have learned a lot here online, just
by being here and keeping my eyes open. You know, sort of rubbing
shoulders with the pocket protector crowd 🙂
Again, welcome aboard.
P.S. You know it's kind of funny. I feel like I've been given so much
form the Amiga community (in help and support and in PD programs), and I
have this great desire to 'give something back' in return. ut I don't have
the skills or talents… so I'm going to take this opportunity to say
"THANKS" to you, Andy Finkel, Steve Ahlstrom, Steve Bennett, Betty Clay,
all Amiga Section SysOps, and a list of onlne users way too long to mention
by name, that have all made my life with the Amiga more productive, more
interesting, and more enjoyable.
Well, since you asked, I finished Lemmings within a week of getting it.
When Bryce Nesbitt was down here, we spent time looking for secret levels
and attempting to get 100% on every level possible. Lemmings certainly was
a good challenge while it lasted.
"…I finished Lemmings within a week of getting it."
That's too bad John. For awhile there, I thought I was going to like you.
Well, look out….I just saw an ad for 80 new Lemmings levels. Not sure
when it's going to be out, but I'll bet when it is, it'll fly right off the
shelves!
They had to come up with more levels since the last person without the
original game (me) bought it last week. 🙂 — Art
> I finished Lemmings within a week <
Yeow! Thats intense. Do you sit in frot of an Amiga full time?
Nah, Only those hours that I am awake :-). For that week that I was
playing Lemmings, I probably gave up a bit of sleep to get through it. I
just hate having unsolved puzzles.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
Yo Ho! I'm sure there are a lot of us kicking our heels back in your
back yard. I for one, am glad to have access to such a large source
of knowledge on the Amiga. Welcome aboard John!
Well, thanks for the vote of confidence Betty. I guess that I will have to
work hard to live up to the expectations.
Shhh.. It's supposed to be a secret that I can be reached at home :-).
I do remember the many questions that I got in those days about Blink
and Hack. In fact, a number of them were at 3:00 in the morning or
so (ok, so I was still awake then).
Speaking of reaching people at home, this week on CIS there's a free trial
of a nationwide phone and name database that can easily search by name,
phone number or zip code. I foudn myself, most of my relatives, and even a
few famous or semi-famous people, too. This week, it would be great for
looking up old friends for holiday mailings…
PhonFile is one of Compuserve's better kept secrets. I suspect the
genealogists have been using it about as much as anyone. I know of several
people who have collected the addresses and phone numbers of everyone in
the US who have the sirnames they are researching. It's a great way to
locate people with whom you have lost touch.
John, It appears to me (I could be wrong!!) that you are hitting the
COMMENT button in View! instead of the REPLY. COMMENT sends to the To:
field of the msg. and REPLY sends to the Fm: field of the msg. Sorry if I
got that wrong!! 🙂 And yes I do remember you being up at 3:00 in the
morning!!!
'Tis possible. I don't profess to like how it works, but I certainly can
not function without it… I'll try and pay attention to the button.
Perhaps if I slept once in a while this wouldn't happen…
Welcome to CIS, John. Let's get this Tech area rolling! It's been pretty
slow lately.
Well, it looks like we will have to light the fire here then.
Suggestions/questions are always fair game. How about 2 brownie
points for the toughest question 😉
Enter reply. (/EXIT when done)
1: OK, here's one I hit lately. Someone sent me a A2091 hard iskdisk
car 2: d with some data on it. I wanted to mount it in my
sys 3: tem and copy from it to my hard disk. I have an older
S 4: eries I GVP controller now, it autoboots. What should I
have 5: done to add in the A2091, to mount it, and to copy
the da 6: ta? I wasn't given a mountlist for it, . I wanted
a 7: utility to read the RDB and turn it to a mountlist.
I 8: had no luck with it, and eventually screwed up the drive
b 9: y writing a n incompatible mRDB to it…
10: /post
Message # 16280 posted
OK, here's one I hit lately. Someone sent me a A2091 hard disk card with
some data on it. I wanted to mount it in my system and copy from it to my
hard disk. I have an older Series I GVP controller now, it autoboots.
What should I have done to add in the A2091, to mount it, and to copy the
data? I wasn't given a mountlist for it. I wanted a utility to read the
RDB and turn it to a mountlist. I had no luck with it, and eventually
screwed up the drive by writing an incompatible RDB to it…
Read devices/hardblocks.h
Sure, that file has the RDB definition in it. At the time, I just wanted
to get the drive working, using some nice PD utility that someone else
wrote when they had the time. 🙂
In this particular case, what should I have done? I ask because it wasn't
obvious to me, and also because I'm suspecting that there's something wrong
with my machine. If I did try the right thing, and it didn't work, then
that helps me…
John,
Ok…if you want to play the hardware swapping game, you simply
pull your controller and drive, install the 2091, plug the drive in and
boot it or at the least run HDToolbox on it.
If you want to play the software game, you write a SCSIDirect
command that reads in the RDB's and use the info in hardblocks.h to break
out the information you needed.
Don
Boy, you really do have a tough one. If I were sitting in front of the
drive, it can be done with careful use of DISKED or some other disk scan
utility. At this point in time it looks like you may no longer have the
format information. The approach I would take to it might be to guess at
where the partitions are and then change the RDB until it is recognizable.
If you find the root block (not too bad to do in fact), you can calculate
what the partition sizes should be. You should be able to hack up some
code that scans all blocks on the disk looking for root blocks. If you need
help with this, I can try and find some sample code lying around.
You're right, it's all moot for now – the drive is scragged and I've sent
it back to the people I got it from. I politely asked them to copy the
data again. 🙂
I *think* the right answer is to autoboot from the A2091 after I've
disabled the autoboot on my GVP. Then, I can use the GVP command to
automount my regular partitions. This is only a guess, because it's one of
the things I didn't try. It wasn't clear to me how a particular board's
device driver gets loaded in these situations. If it autoboots, it comes
from ROM, if it doesn't, it might come from a file in Expansion. But if I
have a card that's disabled from autoboot and it has no file to drop in
Expansion, what can I do? Am I missing something here?
You can put a device driver into devs: and then do a Mount command to
reference the device directly. In general, you can't count on moving the
autoboot drive from one controller to another.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
You mean, I can put a mountlist-type entry into a file or into the
devs:MountList, and then 'mount' that hard disk… yes, that's why I was
looking for a program that could read an RDB from any hard disk and turn it
to a mountlist. Hmm. Guess I see the problem, stating it that way: I
can't read that RDB until I've got a device driver that can read the disk,
and obviously, I don't have one.
Usually if the controller can read any disk on the system there will be a
device installed (even if supplied by the boot rom in the drive) I would
recommend booting the system and seeing what devices are on the device
list.
I think I've deciphered my problem. My GVP controller is too old, it's
actually ROM version 1.0, an "Impact" model card. Although it has some kind
of RDB, it's not an official one, which confused me. Another problem was
that I didn't have the A2091 file in my Expansion drawer. Although the
person who gave me the card assured me it wasn't necessary, because they
dropped it in other machines all the time and it worked fine; it turns out
they had the A2091 file in their expansion on the primary drive anyways. I
bought a HardFrame a few weeks ago trying to get my CD-ROM drive attached,
and it wouldn't work with the GVP in place. I was able to get it working
with the A2091 in at the same time. So, the long and the short of it is, I
ordered a new GVP '030 Combo board today, which has a built-in SCSI that
should work with both a dropped-in A2091 card and/or my CD-ROM drive.
I think I'll have a hardware sell-a-thon soon… maybe my present 28 Mhz,
4 meg GVP '030 will go, along with a Micron/ASDG 2 meg board, and the older
GVP SCSI adapter. I'll take $10,000 for the lot of them, or best offer. 🙂
Congrats on becoming a SYSOP!