9 JANUARY===================<<< OCN NETNEWS >>>=======================1994 ************************************************************************ This Newsletter is posted as a service of the OS-9 Community Network * * * * * * * * * * * * * * SUBMISSIONS: We invite every member of the OS-9 Community to offer up any information that may be of interest to the members of this echo. Any article on any related OS-9 subject will be seriously considered for inclusion in this monthly posting. Send your articles via Fido NET Mail to Rodger Alexander,(1:301/3401). You may also E-Mail via Internet to (ralexander@nikiti.bham.wednet.edu). We offer no great reward ($$$),for posted articles other then the fame and praise you receive from your OS-9 colleagues, especially me. PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC MICROWARE GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH MICROSOFT A recent article in the Wall Street Journal featured an almost unbelievable account of MICROWARE going up against MICROSOFT....... and winning!! The aritlce explained that Microware has just contracted with Bell Atlantic Corp., the regional Bell company. Bell plans to distribute an interactive service to 10 million households by the end of the century. Bell has already placed orders for TV set-top boxes from three different suppliers and all of these boxes run OS/9 software. In the mean time, MICROSOFT is investing over $100 million a year and has allied with Intel and General Instrument Corp to develop their own TV set-top boxes. I think the key words here are MICROWARE and Atlantic Corp are planning to `distribute', while MICROSOFT and friends are busy `developing'. PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC Also reported in the article was a head-to-head test between OS/9 and a prototype from MICROSOFT called modular Windows. OS/9 came out on top. MICROSOFT's Chairman, Bill Gates was reported to have said that "The early interactive services trials will be disappointing because we haven't made enough progress in user interfaces and the richness of services delivered". An interesting account by MICROWARE's founder, Kenneth Kaplan mentioned that MICROSOFT tried to buy Microware in 1986. "MICROSOFT began trading publicly on the over-the-counter market." According to Mr. Kaplan, "Mr. Gates saw that Microware was chosen as the operating system for the Philips-Sony CD-I machine and he wanted into that market badly" rather than design a new operating system. Mr. Gates figured it made more sense to buy Microware. There was a cautionary note in the article that the Bell Atlantic phone company could change its suppliers, however it intends to provide the current OS/9 operated set-top boxes to 50,000 homes by year's end plus another million homes by 1995. With reported future plans for Bell PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC Atlantic to acquire Tele-Communications Inc., 20 million more homes could easily be added to the above figures. THE NOVICE PROGAMMER Like most beginners at C programming, I sometimes wonder if such and such can be done. As with the following problem. I very much liked the 'ON BREAK' call we have in Basic09. After asking around with some of the C programmers in the Dallas area, I was given a direction to start looking for the answer. The 'sgstat.h' header contains a structure 'sgbuf' which is designed to hold all the screen parameters. Declared in this structure are 2 charector bytes, sg_kbich and sg_kbach, that hold the values for 'tmode abort' and 'tmode quit', respectivily. By doing a 'tmode' on the hardware window you will find that 'abort' contains the value 03 and 'quit' contains the value 05. PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC One way to turn off the 'BREAK' key would be to access this structure with pointers and change these bytes and then write it back out, I found this to be cumbersome and d #include #include #include #define ESCAPE '\x05' /* abort */ #define CTRL_BRK '\x08' /* quit */ /* use only to embed my name in executable code */ char *ego[] = {"On_Break - Dave Kelly, v0.0, 1993, public domain"}; /* buffer to store key board parameter */ char key_board_buffer[32]; main() PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC { char c; Store_Keyboard_Parmeters(key_board_buffer); /* function call */ Off_Break_Key(); /* function call */ /* This is one way to impliment the testing of this */ /* routine. There are others but I will leave that */ /* to the programmers own exercises. */ while(c = tolower(getkey())) { switch (c) { case ESCAPE: escmsg(); break; case 'q': On_Break_Key(key_board_buffer); /* function call */ exit(errno); break; default: PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC break; } } } /* store key board parameters */ Store_Keyboard_Parmeters(key_board_buffer) char key_board_buffer[32]; { int i; _gs_opt(STDIN, key_board_buffer); } /* Turn break key off */ Off_Break_Key() { /* temp storage for this function */ char buf[32]; _gs_opt(STDIN, buf); /* read the screen options */ /* as in most cases, to turn */ PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC /* something off, set it to zero */ buf[16] = '\x00'; /* sg_kbich nomally holds 'tmode abort=03' */ /* BREAK */ buf[17] = '\x00'; /* sg_kbach nomally holds 'tmode quit=05' */ /* CONTROL BREAK */ _ss_opt(STDIN, buf); /* write the screen options */ } /* restore original key board parameters */ On_Break_Key(key_board_buffer) char key_board_buffer[32]; { _ss_opt(STDIN, key_board_buffer); } /* Tell user how to exit properly */ escmsg() { printf(" The proper escape key is the letter 'Q'!\n"); CurOn(STDOUT); /* For some reason I have not yet figured */ /* out, the cursor is turned off when you */ PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC /* press the break key. If you need the */ /* cursor, you must turn it back on. */ } /* Returns a one key stroke value */ getkey() { char c; return(read(STDIN, &c, 1) == 1) ? (unsigned) c : EOF; } Programming Note: I have used function names and variables much longer that the compiler will reconize to illustrate what each does. While each is unique and will compile, you should shorten them to conform with the 8 charector standard. I hope this information helps someone. _Dave Kelly PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC <<<< SOLDER FEST >>>> When was the last time your club had a 'Solder Fest'? What in the (*&@!) Is a solderfest? You ask. OK, let me explain. If your OS-9 or CoCo Club is like ours, each meeting consist of demonstrations and discussions about our favorite machine or favorite operating system, but major hardware projects are limited to one of the members showing off what he/she has accomplished to their machine to improve it's performance. GREAT! Great for them but not for me! How many CoCo/OS-9 users have envied those fellow club members who have their machines neatly installed in a PC tower case. It looks so PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC cool! But unless you have a great deal of experience in electronics and electronic hardware construction, you don't dare attempt to install your machine in a 'tower'. You just know that something will go wrong and then you won't have any computer at all. Solution......A SOLDERFEST! A special day long meeting of hardware hackers and non hackers. The expertise is there. The confidence is there. And your computer will come out 'NEW and IMPROVED' and WORKING! Can you imagine taking a Roto Tool and cutting your old multipak to one half of it's original size. NO WAY! How about installing a parallel port in your coco by soldering a 2nd PIA (68B21) chip on top of the original PIA . HUH? How about replacing the 6809 chip with the faster 6309 chip without destroying the CoCo's motherboard. OUCH! There are many hardware projects that most of us would like to have but will probably do without because we don't have the expertise. PAUSED (C)ontine (S)top PAUSEDC Regular club meetings simply are not long enough and not really the right environment to accomplish major hardware modifications to one or more computers. Our SOLDERFEST usually begins at 10 or 11 in the morning and goes to about 8 in the evening. The number of participants is limited by the number of hardware hackers available to help out. We found it best to keep the numbers limited to two 'non-techs' for every 'tech'. Things progress at a good pace with everyone busy. At the club meetings we determine what projects are going to be worked on and who is coming. It is the responsibility of the hardware hackers (techies) to provide a parts list to those individuals he/she will be working with at the 'FEST'. MM1 TECH Echo* To : Warren Hrach From : John A Donaldson Subject : Re: MM/1 TCP/IP Date : 93/01/26 09:45:52 Previous Reply is Message 1241 Next Reply is Message 1409 Warren, The UUCP port is seperate from BINKLEY. It is suppose to have not only UUCP but routines to do USENET MAIL. That is setup the packets for USENET and decode packets, Send Mail & Read Mail routines. USENET is not the same as FIDO. USENET mail is Internet mail. I read somewhere that someone was working on a bridge software to translate FIDO mail into Internet USENET mail and the other way around. John D --- RiBBS v2.10 * Origin: Ocean Beach BBS 619-224-4878 MM1 TECH moderator (1:202/343) Public Message Message # 1409 *MM1 TECH Echo* To : John A Donaldson From : Warren Hrach Subject : Re: MM/1 TCP/IP Date : 93/01/26 10:29:50 Previous Reply is Message 1408 On Tuesday, January 26th, 1993 - John A Donaldson wrote: JA> USENET is not the same as FIDO. USENET mail is Internet mail. I read JA> somewhere that someone was working on a bridge software to translate JA> FIDO mail into Internet USENET mail and the other way around. John, At one time Erik Seilstat had an MS dos util that took the Internet, Usenet newsgroup msg. to fido type. He used to send to me but no longer is active since he got married. He also had an MM/1. I think Tim Jones has an OS9 conversion program that does similar but I doubt that it is 2 way. Neither one could send mail back to Internet/usenet but recieved only. -Warren --- RiBBS v2.10 (Beta) * Origin: Ocean Beach BBS 619-224-4878 MM1 TECH moderator (1:202/343) Public Message Message # 1410 *MM1 TECH Echo* To : John A Donaldson From : Warren Hrach Subject : Kterm bug Date : 93/01/26 10:51:00 John, I have tried using Kterm Ymodem batch upload and cannot get it to work properly. What I did is to chd to my /r0 with several files in it. Then I start kterm 'kterm /t3' and log onto my BBS over my null modem at 9600 baud. On the BBS I call up the upload function for ymodem batch. I then have the kterm protocol already set to ymodem and click on the file function. Selecting send it asks for a filename. If I enter only one name it will send it but on the bbs it gets named 'no_name'. If I enter 2 filenames it will skip the first one and send the second only. I am familiar with how OSTERM does the batch send by calling up the current dir and one can click on the various filenames to que up the files to send. But Kterm only opens a window that you have to enter a filename into. The kterm i have is edition #200 CRC 94D038. BTW the xmodem1k works fine. -Warren --- RiBBS v2.10 (Beta) * Origin: Ocean Beach BBS 619-224-4878 MM1 TECH moderator (1:202/343) Public Message Message # 1411 *MM1 TECH Echo* To : All From : Warren Hrach Subject : math module Date : 93/01/26 11:02:38 Calvin Dodge has improved the math module's speed by 10-20 times. I have for downloading in my OSK Programs file section as 'CALSMATH.LZH' it is also freqable by the same name. I am also ticking it out to the OS9CN Librarys for distribution. -Warren Hrach, MM/1 Sales Rep. --- RiBBS v2.10 (Beta) * Origin: Ocean Beach BBS 619-224-4878 MM1 TECH moderator (1:202/343) =*= FIDO ECHO MESSAGES MENU =*= <1> Scan \ <2> Read > OS9 Echo mail <3> Leave / <4> Scan \ <5> Read > CoCo Echo mail <6> Leave / <7> Scan \ <8> Read > CoCo_Club Echo mail <9> Leave / Scan \ Read > MM1_TECH Echo Mail Leave / o back to Main Menu

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