MAIN LINE COMPUTER USERS - JANUARY 1997 - ISSUE #176 **** JANUARY 1997 ***************************** ISSUE #176 **** VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, MENDEL HALL MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - JAN 04 ! THE HAPPIEST NEW YEAR TO ALL ! ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS RENEWAL REMINDER! 2 ANNOUNCEMENTS 2 Trading Post 2 64/128 meeting minutes 2 ACE15 Command/function summary 3 Quicky Programs 4 AMIGA User Happenings 5 A\BOX - future AMIGA? (Pt. II) 6 GEOS and RAMlink 9 Masthead/Meeting schedule 9 Membership Form/Dues 10 ---------------------------------------------------------------- MAIN LINE 64/128 USERS - Room 158 For some time now, our Internet guru, Peter Whinnery, has been telling us about a "UNIX-like" operating system for the 64/128 - and offering to show it. Well, if the weather permits, we'll try to do just that for this month's meeting! Below are some remarks from Peter (originally published in July): ACE is an operating system for the Commodore 128 and Commodore 64 that provides a Unix-like command-shell environment. All ACE programs will run on either a C128 (in 128 mode) or a C64. On page 3 is a re-listing of the commands and functions that are offered in ACE15, the version that you can download from the MLCUG BBS, consisting of 5 archives and 1 doc file. ---------------------------------------------------------------- A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR With Christmas behind us, we now look forward to the beginning of the New Year! Can we make it to the Year 2000? If the club needs you - and you need the club - we will! Help us all to help each other and make the club work for us! GEOS & RAMLINK If you have an interest in using GEOS with a RAMlink from CMD, then the message below - from Genie - may be of help. ************Category 6, Topic 44 Message 109 Sun Sep 08, 1996M.RANDALL2 [Maurice] at 14:10 EDT E.Volcheck, to spill the beans a little... An article on setting up a RamLink for booting into GEOS won't be too necessary pretty soon. A new Configure will be released shortly that will assist in that procedure greatly. In the meantime, you need Config RL that comes with your RamLink and you also need geoMakeBoot. The RamLink must be set as device 12 or higher (don't use 14). After setting up your RL to run with Config, put all your files on it and also geoMakeBoot. The RL will be a RAM1581. Swap it to drive A or B and run geoMakeBoot. It is now a boot device. Also be sure that your boot partition is the first available 1581 partition on the RL. Also, the first partition created must be a DACC type of at least 256 blocks. When you boot from the RL, the device it will end up as must be available for use. Let me rephrase that. If it will end up as drive B in GEOS, then you can't have a device 9 running. Otherwise you will have a conflict. So, you will have to set up your system to accomodate that. In my case, I have an FD as device 8, an HD as 10 and the RL as 16. So with no device 9 I don't have a conflict. When booted up, the RL will be drive B but the RL-DOS will still see the RL as device 16. GEOS treats it as a RAM device instead of a DOS device. If you have problems with this, just say so and I will try to correct it for you - Maurice ######################################## ANNOUNCEMENTS & SPECIALS ######################################## RENEWED? - Just a final reminder to renew your membership in MLCUG. If you have not renewed by mid-January, you'll be off the mailing list. We hope that does not happen and that we'll have a full complement of renewals going into 1997. Your user group is still the best way to get help - especially if you plan to keep using your 8-bit or AMIGA computer system. NEW YEAR - as we move into the New Year - your input on meeting content is strongly solicited. we got a few ideas at the December meeting, but not enough to keep us thru the year! Please provide your suggestions at the meeting, by phone, in writing or posted on the BBS. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $ TRADING POST $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ FOR SALE: A1200 w/4 meg, internal harddrive, external hard drive, 1084 monitorPanasonic KX-P1124 printer, CD drive w. CDs, extra mice and joysticks, and about100 discs of software. Documentation isincluded. Asking $800. If interested, call Walter Johnson, 610-626-8849. (2) FOR SALE: C-64 with power supply and dust cover in original box. Asking $20,call Emil Volcheck, 610-388-1581. (2) FOR SALE: MLCUG has a lot of hardware that is available for purchase by MLCUG members and at attractive prices! 3 computer - C-64 w/PS $25 2 disk drive 1541 - clone $20 13 disk drive 1541 - various $20 1 disk drive 1541 - 8/9 sw. $25 1 disk drive 1541-II $30 3 interface - Cardco $ 5 1 interface - MSD $ 5 11 joystick $ 2 1 modem - Panasonic 1200 bps $10 1 monitor - amber - Panasonic $10 1 monitor - screen filter $ 5 2 plotter - Commodore 1520 $10 2 printer - Commodore 1525 $10 4 printer - color - Okimate 10 $10 1 printer - Okimate 120 $20 1 printer - Star Gemini II $25 1 printer - Star NX-1000C $30 1 RAM expander - 1700 (256K) $20 1 Swiftlink - RS-232 $20 1 VIC-20 with 64K RAM/video TBD includes one of the 1541 drives) There is also a lot of software that we are inventorying. A list will be at thenext meeting. You can contact Charles Curran, if interested. THE WRITE STUFF word processor for the 64 and 128, each version is $20. That includes V1 & V2, plus BB Talker with the 64, manuals, quick reference and overlay for the keyboard. Also have, for both versions, the ILLUSTRATOR add- ons at $3 each for original (uses Print Shop and RUNpaint) or IIA (uses the FGM graphics). ****************************** 64/128 MEETING ****************************** For our December meeting, we got a tantalizing look at the new SUPERCPU 64 from the gnomes at Creative Micro Design. While in the background, they may be figuring out where to go when the Commodore 8-bit machines finally die, in the foreground, they keep putting out neat, new widgets! This one aborning is a 20 megahertz CPU replacement for the 64. The device plugs into the expansion port and takes over for, or replaces, major portions of the C-64 system. This allows it to do some things up to 20 times faster than the original. Tho the CPU runs 20X faster, it still has to work thru the existing disk drive, memory and video systems; so a lot of stuff has to be slowed down to the old 1 MHz to communicate with them. Thru the good offices of Bill Bacon, we had that first glimpse of how the SUPERCPU 64 from CMD performs. The demo at our meeting was, unfortunately, marred by one of Murphy's glitches! That was a failure of Bill's GEOS disk to boot on either of our available drives. Needless to say, it worked fine at Bill's home on his system! Because of this, we missed seeing how the extra speed might help with this graphics intensive application. One of our other members, Dennis Krall, has just recently got a SUPERCPU and told us that using it along with a RAMlink makes things go in the wink of an eye! Bill showed us a fractal graphics drawing program. We could see the change in drawing speed as he flipped the normal/turbo switch back and forth. You can do this with no ill effect; so it makes it pretty easy to show where the speed can help and where not. Next he showed a demo program from issue #149 of LOADSTAR. It had been written to show off the performance of the device. And it did in quite jazzy fashion. Then, we took a look at a demo of Fun Graphics Machine. Not much to see as the demo was pretty much paced by the way the author puts together and records these demos. Jury is out on this one. The last thing we looked at was SKY TRAVEL, the graphics planetarium show. Here we had a definite winner. For example, we timed 3 parts: 1) load the program and have it initialize - normal time 64 seconds (with JiffyDOS). This consists of the actual loading from disk (which the turbo does not help much on), plus the calculation to initialize, which it should help on. Results - the loading seemed to go about normally, but the calculation went very quickly - total time 38 seconds. 2) with the program now fully in memory and no more disk accesses needed, we asked it to jump the display from the default date of 1985 Jan 01 to 2000 January 01. Normal time 30 seconds, turbo time 5 sec. (or a bit less) 3) then we asked the program to swap its view from south to north. Normal time 5.5 sec. - turbo about 1 sec. 4) find the moon, Jupiter or Comet Halley - normally 5.5 to 7 seconds, turbo time about 1 second. So, we're getting at least a 6-7X speedup. The program just appears to jump to the new configuration - like a "big" PC, for example, does on such software. Almost fast enough so that a bit more speed would not be useful (that is, anything done in less than a second gets lost in your reaction time and no further speed increase has value) - not there yet, but pretty good on this particular software. Thanks to Bill for bringing in his unit and showing it off. Mayhap we can have it back to show off GEOS when that difficulty is resolved. ****************************** ACE15 COMMANDS In this month's 8-bit demo, Peter Whinnery will show the following set of commands available in the ACE operating system for the 64 or 128: cp - copy files rm - remove files (scratch) mv - rename files (named for Unix "mv"=="move") mkdir - create a new directory (flat name) rmdir - remove an existing empty directory (flat name) wc - count words, lines, characters of files grep - search for a substring in files (from Unix "grep") tr - translate from one character set to another sort - sort lines of files wrap - wrap lines longer than 75 characters date - display current date&time forty - switch to 40-col screen, slow mode eighty - switch to 80-col screen, fast mode on 128, or soft-80 on 64 read - read files (for testing) mem - display available dynamic and transient-program-area memory hello - dumb little "hello world" example program window - set the current window dimensions acechr - characterset loader keymat - key-matrix loader head - display the first N lines of a file (by Jake Hamby) jif - display the current jiffy- clock time mousetest - mouse/graphics demo more - full-screen file viewer uuencode - encode files into uuencoded format uudecode - decode files from uuencoded format bcode - encode files into BCODE format unbcode - decode files from BCODE format crc32 - display CRC-32 *B* values for files (new standard) crc32a - display CRC-32 *A* values for files (old standard) kar - KAR (Kevin's ARchiver) file archiver (all-text format) unkar - KAR (Kevin's ARchiver) file dearchiver vbm - VBM bitmap-file viewer vbmpr - VBM bitmap-file (v2 only) prints on Epson-compatible printers as - one-pass assembler term - simple VT-100 terminal- emulation program fx - custom File eXchange (upload/download) program z - ZED text editor ****************************** QUICKY PROGRAMS! [by Emil Volcheck] Do you run across a file (such as a buffer capture from your terminal program) that has a return at the end of each line? They can be a real pain to edit in your friendly word processor - the kind which do not have the ability to wipe those unwanted returns out. If you have that problem, here is a short routine that will do the job of removing the "extra" carriage returns at line ends, while still preserving the blank lines between paragraphs. The routine uses a default filename (RETURNS.GONE) for the output file, but you can easily change that if you wish. 10 PRINT " *** ROUTINE TO REMOVE EXTRA CARRIAGE RETURNS ***" 20 INPUT " FILENAME ";NA$ :H$="RETURNS.GONE 30 INPUT " DEVICE # 8";DV 40 OPEN 1,DV,8,"0:"+NA$+",S,R" :REM OPEN FILE TO READ 50 OPEN 2,DV,9,"0:"+H$+",S,W" :REM OPEN FILE TO WRITE 60 GET#1,A$:S=ST:IF S THEN 100 70 IF ASC(A$)=13 THEN 200 80 PRINT#2,A$;:PRINT "."; 90 GOTO 60 100 PRINT#2:CLOSE 2:CLOSE 1 110 PRINT:PRINT "EXTRA RETURNS ARE GONE" 120 END 200 GET#1,B$210 IF ASC(B$)=13 THEN PRINT#2,A$; :PRINT#2,A$;:GOTO 60 220 PRINT#2," ";:PRINT#2,B$;:GOTO 60 By the way, have you been browsing the World Wide Web - with LYNX - on something like the Genie on-line service? If so, then you might at times be downloading a "web page". If you do, it, too, can be a real bear to edit and print because of all the HTML coding (the stuff that makes things look pretty if you have a graphical web browser on an Amiga, Mac or PC). Having fooled around with editing some of those pages - and cursing quietly - I decided to write a little routine to get rid of all the HTML code stuff. The routine that follows is similar to the program for removing returns. It, too, uses a default filename (CONVERTED.HTML) - which you can change if you wish. Here tis: 10 PRINT " *** ROUTINE TO REMOVE CODING FROM HTML FILES ***" 20 INPUT " FILENAME ";NA$ :H$="CONVERTED.HTML" 30 INPUT " DEVICE # 8";DV 40 OPEN 1,DV,8,"0:"+NA$+",S,R" :REM OPEN FILE TO READ 50 OPEN 2,DV,9,"0:"+H$+",S,W" :REM OPEN FILE TO WRITE 60 GET#1,A$:S=ST:IF S THEN 100 70 IF ASC(A$)=60 THEN 200 80 PRINT#2,A$;:PRINT "."; 90 GOTO 60 100 CLOSE 1:CLOSE 2:PRINT:PRINT " CONVERSION COMPLETE!":END 200 GET#1,A$ 210 IF ASC(A$)=62 THEN 60 220 GOTO 200 Living in the Commodore world, you do have the opportunity to run across files for the Amiga that you might want to edit on your 8-bit. BUT, again, you're likely to have a problem as the Amiga system (like UNIX from whence it came) uses line feeds INSTEAD OF carriage returns. So, how about a routine to make them manageable? It should be simple to put together after looking at the two above. Anyone want to propose a short program? I'll be happy to put it in the next issue..... Just send it to me (preferably by email) by mid January. I'll be looking! ****************************** AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS By John Deker, AMIGA SIG LeaderMAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - Room 162 Our December meeting was small, but very productive as we took time to take care of some of the individual computing problems of our members. In particular, we did a minor upgrade on Dennis Egan's A600 by adding a 4MB PCMCIA memory card and attempting to install the latest version of the PD program EasyCalc. Having succeeded in proving the performance improvement gained from installing the Fast RAM card, but failing to get EasyCalc working, we turned our attention to getting a full installation of Workbench 3.0 on Ted Dean's A1200 where there previously was only a partial installation. Having satisfied to some extent the immediate problems of two of our we then turned our attention to a review members, of some of the 'upgrades' I'd made to my A1200, namely the Blizzard 1260 accelerator from Phase 5 and the new Directory Opus 5.5. For awhile during this review, we focused on a general discussion of CPU's (Central Processing Units) and onboard instruction and data caches, RAM speed and overall computer performance bottlenecks, and touched on the issue of software compatibility with the new high performance CPU's. ------------------------Relative CPU Equivalency Table MOTOROLA - INTEL 7 MHz 68000 = ~14 MHz 286 14 MHz 68020 = ~28 MHz 386SX 50 MHz 68030 = 100 MHz 386DX 33 MHz 68040 = 66 MHz 486DX 50 MHz 68060 = 100 MHz Pentium NOTE: There really isn't a good match on the Intel side to the Motorola 68000 and 68020 CPU's, but for rough overall performance comparison, I've chosen the 286 and 386SX processors. Though Motorola makes a 68010 CPU, it offers essentially no performance advantage over the 68000 processor.------------------------ We never did get to the issue of graphics manipulation as was our intent, and no one seemed terribly disappointed by that fact. It is our intent to pickup on that subject at our next meeting and continue from where we stopped previously. However, as always, if our members have immediate problems and bring the offending problematic hardware or software with them, we will try to devote time to the resolution of their problem as long as there is consensus that in general others will learn from the experience too. IS THERE A FUTURE AMIGA?(Subsection 1 - the VisCorp Situation)(Subsection 2 - the Phase 5 A\Box Vision) VISCORP UPDATE ON AMIGA SITUATIONPress release of December 2, 1996;for further information contact:Hugh Jencks (312) 655-0903 VIScorp announced today that while conducting its due diligence for the planned acquisition of the assets of the former Amiga Technologies AG, its financial institutions and the management of Amiga agreed that the assets to be acquired were of significantly less value than the US$20 million which had been proposed. The original US$40 million offer included the guarantee of ESCOM distribution in Europe as well as several other features which disappeared with the ESCOM bankruptcy. One of these items is the fact that one of the most valuable pieces of the inventory is currently encumbered in a complicated legal challenge to the ESCOM AG bankruptcy estate. Without the assurance that this piece could be delivered as a part of the package deal, VIScorp began to reconsider their offer. Further, it has been discovered that the intellectual property is being pirated daily by small and large companies alike. To combat this problem, VIScorp intends to partner with Mahr Leonard Management Company, a Dallas, Texas company specializing in patent infringement. Due to the above, VIScorp allowed its offer to expire on October 2, 1996, and lowered its bid shortly thereafter. Throughout all of this time a wholly-owned VIScorp German subsidiary continued to operate Amiga through Oct. 31, at its own expense and with the concurrence of the Trustee. This was done because VIScorp believed that Amiga was more valuable as an operating company and wanted it to retain this value. During this period VIScorp paid Amiga expenses, including salaries, and generated over $2 million in sales which were to be credited against the final sale price at a later date. VIScorp continues to be interested in completing the acquisition of Amiga. It believes that the future of two-way, interactive television depends in large part on the installed base of Amiga users who currently access the Internet through their televisions and Amiga A1200 computers to reach thousands of available Amiga titles. It also believes the next step is to modify the operating system to further adapt the television market to the vast and developing resources being created by the Amiga world-wide development community - products which include games, entertainment, and information. CODE NAME: A\BOX Although the sale of Amiga Technologies from ESCOM to VISCORP seems to be in suspended animation, there is at least one Amiga support company, Phase 5 of Germany, that have been very vocal about the future they'd like to see for the Amiga. In fact they've gone as far as to turn blueprints into hardware reality with the production of 68060 accelerators, and they seem to have a vision that promises excitement for Amiga fanatics. Here is the second of a 2 part installment of that vision as captured off their Web page. CONTINUING THE PHASE 5 VISION... THE GENERAL SYSTEM DESIGN OF THE A\BOX The A\BOX system will be implemented as a progressive and innovative concept of a personal workstation which offers extremely good value for money. As we have mentioned, the system builds up on the innovative CAIPIRINHA chip which serves as the functional heart of the system. The type of processor we intend to use will be the Initial PowerPC processors of types 603e and 604e. Theoretically these can be operated with clock frequencies of up to 500 MHz. At present, with the first A\BOX design, a maximum of two processors can be connected on the CAIPIRINHA processor bus; a corresponding expansion option for the second processor will be available in the A\BOX design. The memory can be expanded by using inexpensive standard SDRAM modules with a width of 64 bits (168-pin JEDEC DIMMS). In future these SDRAMs will increasingly be replacing slower, traditional DRAMs. Eight slots will be available so that the memory can be expanded to a maximum capacity of 1 gigabyte. The slots can be expanded in pairs (due to the 128-bit mode). As a standard feature the system provides two video outputs, one of which has a maximum pixel rate of 220 MHz and the second of which can be operated at 135 MHz. In addition to this, the second video output can be synchronised externally and is thus suitable for compatible analogue video applications. Also available, naturally, are an integrated Fast SCSI-II controller with an external port and an integrated ISDN connection. Via standard video inputs two analogue video inputs can be simultaneously digitalised in Y/C quality and then processed in real time. The audio inputs and outputs also offered by CAIPIRINHA which it will, of course, be possible to synchronize with the video ports, are available in the form of Cinch jacks for processing high-quality audio data. Keyboard, mouse and other operating devices are connected up via a serial desktop bus. In addition to this, there are external connections for the IEEE 1394 firewire port, the serial interface and the parallel interface. Due to the open design concept of A\BOX, the outstanding hardware features of the CAIPIRINHA system controller and the excellent operating system capacities, A\BOX offers itself as an ideal platform for unusual applications for third-party developers working both in the field of software and in the field of hardware. Any I/O expansions which may be required, such as ATM boards, Ultra SCSI or RAID controllers or others can be easily adapted via the PCI bus. In addition to this, the most versatile enhancements can be developed for the A\BOX via both the PCI and the 16-bit DMA bus. At present all options are still open as far as the housing is concerned. The mainboard design of the A\BOX will, at all events, be geared towards the usual standards so that the option of choosing a more inexpensive standard housing will be kept open in addition to a custom housing. A LARGE NUMBER OF OPTIONS FOR THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE A large number of options will be available for the operating system software of the A\BOX. In general the A\BOX project aims to implement an Amiga-OS-compatible operating system of a state-of-the-art technical standard and to provide it as a basic operating system for the A\BOX. Modern functions such as support for multi-processing are to be transparently integrated. The basis for this development has already been created in the form of the Amiga-OS 3.1 compatible operating core which is currently being tested in the software labs of phase 5 digital products. In the near future we will also be pressing ahead with more development work in co-operation with important software partners, for example on an updated GUI or other high-level components. An important aspect of this development work will be our efforts to make the operating system provide complete support for the superb possibilities offered by the hardware. In addition to this we also plan to implement a NetBSD and a Linux version for the A\BOX in co-operation with other partners. The current concepts provide for a very close integration of these OS adaptations into the basic operating system of the A\BOX so that parallel operation of the two operating systems and of software applications based on these operating systems will proceed with extreme transparency and excellent coordination. A\BOX will also be open for other operating systems, especially including the ones that are already suitable for the PowerPC. In the future we might use attractive standard operating systems by way of licence agreements and emulation. OPEN CONCEPTS FOR THE FUTURE The A\BOX concept which we have introduced here will be structured in such a way that it is forward-looking and open. The technology used in the CAIPIRINHA custom chip is upgradable on silicon level. This means that in the future it will be possible to implement compatible systems enhancing the functions with wider memory or wider processor busses and to realize faster versions of this custom design with higher internal clock rates. In addition to this it is conceivable that a downgraded 64-bit version will be implemented. This means that systems of average capacity (e.g. 24-bit screen resolution with a maximum of 1280 x 1024 pixels) but which possess the full functional power of the concept we have outlined can be implemented at a price range considerably below DM 1500 or USD 1000. In order to possibly implement such a low-price version of the CAIPIRINHA Custom Chip, phase 5 digital products in the near future will be seeking contact with partners who might possibly be interested and who offer the preconditions for the large-scale manufacture and distribution of such a product. But phase 5 will also be open for OEM partnerships with regard to the mass-produced A\BOX mainboards or the CAIPIRINHA system controller. WORLDWIDE AVAILABILITY GUARANTEED Worldwide availability guaranteed. For our own A\BOX systems, which will be sold in a price range starting from DM 3,000 (USD 2,000 or GBP 1,300) net (in the 150 MHz class with the basic features, i.e. a 16 M- byte memory, a hard disk in the 1 GB range and a CD-ROM disk drive) phase 5 digital products will be setting up an active international distribution system during the course of 1997, which will ensure that product and sales support is available as soon as delivery commences. This work will include selecting sales representatives, giving them preparatory training courses and opening up distribution and service branches as far as is necessary for professionally attending to important markets. The expansion of our Internet activities in the fields of sales, support, product support and marketing will make an important contribution towards distributing the system among an interest group that spans the four corners of the globe. These activities will guarantee for a worldwide availability of the A\BOX systems to interested users and customers. Contact: phase 5 digital products In der Au 27 61440 Oberursel, Germany Telefon: 06171/583787Intl. Phone: +49 6171 583787 Fax: 06171/583789 Intl. Fax: +49 6171 583789 Email: mail@phase5. deOrder: aproject@phase5. de Disclaimer: All rights reserved. All specifications are preliminary and subject to change without notice. AMIGA is a registered trademark of the respective owners. PowerPC is a registered trademark of the IBM Corporation. Now, Davy, that's what we call Cool Stuff! FUTURE MEETINGS If you have either software or hardware for your Amiga that has taken your fancy, please bring it to our attention. I'm sure your specific interests will be of interest to others. Let me know if this is the case at the next meeting, or leave me email on our BBS. Remember, a user group is only as rewarding as the sum of the efforts of its individual members. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 64/128/Amiga Meetings 1997 Steering Committee Meetings January 04 (SNOW???) January 08 February 01 (ICE?) February 19 ** March 01 March 12 * = second Saturday ** = third Wednesday ------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWSLETTER DEADLINE is January 16!!! ****************************************************************** EDITOR: Emil J. Volcheck, Jr. 1046 General Allen Lane West Chester, PA 19382-8030 (Produced with C-128, RAMlink, HD-40/85, 1571, FD-4000, THE WRITE STUFF 128, XETEC Super Grafix, Panasonic KX-P1123, Swiftlink RS-232 and Motorola 288 modem) MLCUG BBS: 610-828-1359 (300 --> 28800 bps), 24 hr/day