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Usenet Mac Digest     Saturday, March 5, 1988        Volume 4 : Issue 32

Today's Topics:
     Office Management for Plastic Surgery Solo Practice
     dqDrvSiz
     Re: Updating the Desktop
     How to calc. total RAM installed?
     VersaTerm-Pro bug.
     Mac+ hardware question: 2.5 Meg using 256k SIMMs only ?
     hardware question: source for carriers for 256k SIMMs ??
     C++ FOR MAC ANYONE? HOW ABOUT GNU C++?
     Looking for Scott's resource file...
     Re: Beginning Mac Programming
     Ehman 800k drive warning
     Re: Circular Windows
     Re: LSC: booleans != TRUE ??
     differences between Reflex+ and Filemaker+
     Packed Booleans=1 byte not 1 Bit Warning!
     Copy II Mac 7.1 problem
     Re: dqDrvSiz
     Re: differences between Reflex+ and Filemaker+
     New Question about the Serial Drivers
     NEON Caveat (was Re: Advice for starting programmers...)
     Re: Tool-Tool, "Prototyper"
     Re: NEON Caveat (was Re: Advice for starting programmers...)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (CROWE)
Subject: Office Management for Plastic Surgery Solo Practice
Date: 27 Feb 88 20:23:24 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

My brother-in-law is a plastic surgeon with a couple of Macintoshes. He
wants to expand his systems (new Macs, HDs, LWs, etc.) to run his
practice. He's striking out on his own (private practice) and leaving
the university environment and is envying the office management software
that his colleagues use on their IBM systems.  These are likely database
applications, but alas, I'm no expert in this area.

He wants to handle

    o Billing
    o Report Generation
    o Patient Accounting
    o Procedure Accounting
    o Surgical Accounting

I don't know what some of these are, but they probably are second nature
to those who design these systems.

If someone knows of a package that does these things, please contact me.
 If you know where I might find a listing of packages, please contact
me.  In general, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
--
Donald Crowe
AT&T Bell Labs
Whippany, NJ
whuts!crowe
201-386-3961


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Rick Watson)
Subject: dqDrvSiz
Date: 25 Feb 88 20:24:01 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

Does anyone remember the extension made to the drive queue entry to
allow drives with more than 65536 blocks?  It had something to do with
putting the high-order bits somewhere else, but I can't remember where.
--
Rick Watson
University of Texas Computation Center
 arpa:   [e-mail]
 uucp:   ...seismo!ut-sally!ut-emx!rick
 bitnet: ccaw001@utadnx     span:  utspan::watson
 phone:  [phone]-3241


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Gray Watson)
Subject: Re: Updating the Desktop
Date: 29 Feb 88 05:18:50 GMT
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.

Howdy:

I hope I'm not number 103 to answer this.

The question was:  How do you preserve the Finder's comments when you
want
    to rebuild the desktop file??

I used ResEdit to copy all the comment resources out.  I believe they
are found in the desktop file under FCMT.  Just cut them all out and
save them on a floppy and then rebuild the desktop and then paste them
back in.

Recommendation:  BACKUP HARD-DRIVE BEFOREHAND!!!!  This could be
potentially
    very dangerous!!!!  If you screw up the desktop you could loose it all!

It's worked fine for me for about 4 months (4 times).

good luck,

gray watson


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Ted Johnson)
Subject: How to calc. total RAM installed?
Date: 26 Feb 88 17:41:04 GMT
Organization: HP Design Tech Center - Santa Clara, CA

What is the proper way to calculate the total amount of RAM installed on
a Macintosh?  I was using the following:

    long totalRAM;

        totalRAM = (long)TopMem()/1024;

This worked fine with System/Finder 4.1/5.5, but gives me too small of a
number (e.g., 179 instead of 1024) when run under MultiFinder.

BTW, I'm doing this from inside a DA.

Any pointers/clues are much appreciated!

    -Ted


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (James H. Cloos Jr.)
Subject: VersaTerm-Pro bug.
Date: 29 Feb 88 07:21:42 GMT
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY

This is a warning of a bug I've found in the VersaTerm-Pro terminal
emulation package.  I'm using a University-owned copy, that appears to
be version 2.00. I don't remember if this is the most recent version; so
I'm not sure if this bug is documented or even fixed.  I do know that
*I* haven't seen anything  about it on the net.

The problem occurs with COMMAND SETs.  I usually have the command set
set to SHORTCUTS, which allows certain of the program's commands to be
performed by typing OPTION-char.  Shortcuts defines OPT-Q to QUIT the
program.  The prob- lem occurs when the remote computer sends non-text
ascii characters.  The program allows the mac to interpret the keyboard
using the conventional routines, traps those defined as OPTION-char for
its own use, and sends the conventional ascii characters to the remote
computer.  Unfortunately, when versaterm receives ascii characters w/
values >127, it interprets these TOO as if they were typed at the
keyboard.

What this comes down to is that, if you use the shortcuts commands, and
the remote computer sends the ascii character whose value corresponds to
the mac-ascii character 'oe,' the program QUITS!

Depending on how you are connected to the remote computer, this may or
may not result in disconnection.  Unfortunately, if you are not
disconnected, & you re-run the program, as soon as you hit a key or hit
the button on the mouse, the program will resume receiving any data the
host may still be sending.  This could result in an infinite loop.  (If
this happens & there is no way for you to disconnect from your system
while it is (for instance)  CATing data (to use the UN*X syntax) or
otherwise running a program, the loop can be terminated by running
VT-PRO by double-clicking on a commands document other than shortcuts.
This way, OPT-Q will not be synonymous to QUIT for session.

I'm not too familiar with PROGRAMMING the Macintosh, so I'm not sure if
what I'm about to propose can work, but if its possible for a program to
differ- entiate between data coming from the modem/printer port vs. data
from the  keyboard port, then it should be simple to do this, and have
VersaTerm only trap option chars comming from the keyboard, & either
print or just ignore those comming from the modem/printer port.

If I'm just rehashing old news, I appologise, but, as I said earlier
I've not seen anything on it, & thought it important enough to post
regardless.
--
|==-==--==---==----==-----==------==-------==------==-----==----==---==--==-==|
|                         #include <disclamers.h>                             |
|     James H. Cloos, Jr.                 "I *HATE* quotations"          |
|       [e-mail]                              -Ralph Waldo Emerson  |
|       [e-mail]           -(emphasis added)     |
|      {allegra,decvax,ihnp4,vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!cloos                |
|==-==--==---==----==-----==------==-------==------==-----==----==---==--==-==|


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Werner Uhrig)
Subject: Mac+ hardware question: 2.5 Meg using 256k SIMMs only ?
Date: 29 Feb 88 16:31:01 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

Question: can you configur a 2.5 Meg Mac+ with 256k chips *ONLY* ?  what
    jumper-configuration is required?

Details:

Given a Mac+ upgraded to 2Meg using a MacMemory upgrade in the following
configuration:

    a) a carrier-board for the 4 old 256K SIMMs  ( = 1 Meg RAM )
    b) a baby-board with 32 256K chips  ( = 1 Meg RAM)
    c) a jumper which, attached between pin 11 and 12 of the CAS-chip
       at E3 (or between pin 11 of CAS at E3 and ground=right side of
       capacitor C18 above BMU2 at E2) represents "ONE ROW OF RAM ONLY"
       (note, that 2 SIMM-slots are considered "one row"; i.e. the
       Mac+ has 2 rows of 2 SIMMs each)

the 2 boards with 1 Meg of memory in 32 chips of 256k each are installed
in ROW 1 (next to the 68000) and the second ROW is empty. the jumper is
installed, and the resistor-jumper "256k RAMs only" is in-place (as it
comes from the factory;  i.e. it is not cut out, as Tech Note 176 would
require you to do if you were installing 2 1-Meg SIMMs based on 1Meg
Ram-chips)

Problem:

I have some extra 256k SIMMs which I'd like to install in ROW 2 for a
total of 2.5 Meg ..... but I'd need to know a jumper configuration that
will work; (I have tried with and without the "ONE ROW OF RAM ONLY"
jumper, which did not work; but before I cut out the "256 ONLY"
resistor, I'd sure wished someone would assure me that that is the
problem's solution.  I can't help the feeling that there is no solution,
but ..... )


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Werner Uhrig)
Subject: hardware question: source for carriers for 256k SIMMs ??
Date: 29 Feb 88 16:49:05 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

With all these 256K SIMMs available cheap - and the 1 MEG SIMMs pipeline
having dried out, we are, once again, looking for a source of those
little babyboards, onto which you can mount four 256K-SIMMs and mount
the resulting 1 Megabyte of memory into the slots of the 256k SIMMs in
one/any of the following machines:  the Mac+, the Mac-SE, the Mac-][
....

I have seen such a board as part of the MacMemory MaxPlus upgrade kit,
but doubt that there would be sufficient clearance to mount several of
those models one behind the other;  and this particular board would be
too wide for the SE configuration of the SIMM-slots.  The Mac-][ has
different geometry requirements again, and one would need to mount, at
least, 4 of them to get to the 4-Meg option.

I believe that someone had posted this question before, but I have never
seen an answer to it ....  any leads anyone ??
--
(prefered mailbox:)        [e-mail]
                ....!ut-sally!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner
(if rascal is unreachable:)    werner@[e-mail]
                [e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Jordan Bortz)
Subject: C++ FOR MAC ANYONE? HOW ABOUT GNU C++?
Date: 29 Feb 88 03:32:58 GMT
Organization: Apex Software Corp., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Ho There sports fans....I'm looking for a C++ implementation for the MAC
II... any out there? How feasible is it to port GNU C++? Has anyone done
this?

    Jordan


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Ted Johnson)
Subject: Looking for Scott's resource file...
Date: 27 Feb 88 22:21:05 GMT
Organization: HP Design Tech Center - Santa Clara, CA

Does anyone know where I can find the resource file that goes along with
the sample program in Scott Knaster's "How to Program the Macintosh"?

-Ted


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Byron Han, fire fighter)
Subject: Re: Beginning Mac Programming
Date: 29 Feb 88 17:40:06 GMT
Organization: Communication Tools Group - Apple Computer, Inc.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil Kahn) writes:

>I just got IM 1-3 and 5; I couldn't see a need for 4 which seemed to
>be Plus specific. Macintosh Programming Secrets has been recommended
>and bought. Are both volumes of Macintosh Revealed useful? Volume 2
>seemed to be the one that gets cracked and old from use. And what
>about these books that only talk about the Toolbox? They sound useful,
>but no mention has been made yet on this digest.

Volume 1,2 are needed.  Volume 3 no really - just an index for 1 and 2.
Volume 4 is needed for MacPlus specific stuff (which also applies to
SE/II) Volume 5 is SE and II specific stuff.

The MacRevealed stuff is great if you are a beginner.  After delving
into the deeper mysteries of Macintosh, it will prove less useful.

Programming the Macintosh with MPW by Joel West is also good.

Macintosh Programming Secrets by Scott Knaster is good after you've been
programming a while.

Hope this helps.

I have no connection with anyone except Apple where I work.  This is NOT
an official Apple endorsement or recommendation.  Just my own.

--
------------------------ Byron Han,  Communications Tool ----------------------
     Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 27Y  Cupertino, CA 95014
 ATTnet:408-973-6450    applelink:HAN1    domain:[e-mail]     MacNET:HAN
GENIE:BYRONHAN   COMPUSERVE:72167,1664   UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!han


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mike Khaw)
Subject: Ehman 800k drive warning
Date: 29 Feb 88 17:39:09 GMT
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA

The Ehman 800k external disk drives are not compatible with SEs:  disks
are readable and writable, but keep getting ejected any time they are
idle.  I've called the Ehman technical support line and they admitted
that the drive was not compatible with SEs, but had no solutions.

Mike Khaw
--
internet:  [e-mail]
usenet:       {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!mkhaw%teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
USnail:       Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Larry Rosenstein)
Subject: Re: Circular Windows
Date: 1 Mar 88 01:13:07 GMT
Organization: Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer

In article <[e-mail]> eric@hector (Eric Lavitsky)
writes:
>
>A Mac II (probably a vanilla Mac as well) can have circular windows - I
>also saw it at DEXPO yesterday (yea, a round clock on the Mac Desktop - neat!).

That's was my little program called TimeKeeper.  I believe I sent it to
Info-Mac and/or comp.binaries.mac, but I haven't seen it show up as of
yet. (I have also uploaded it to some local BBS's.)

Any Mac can have windows of any shape.  The shape is simply defind by an
apprpriate region.  The circular window that TimeKeeper uses is
implemented with a resource that can be copied and pasted into any
application that wants circular windows.

--
         Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
 Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 32E  Cupertino, CA 95014
        AppleLink:Rosenstein1    domain:[e-mail]
        UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Larry Rosenstein)
Subject: Re: LSC: booleans != TRUE ??
Date: 1 Mar 88 01:16:53 GMT
Organization: Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Eric K. Olson)
writes:
>In a recent article Richard Siegel writes:
>>
>>In LightspeedC, TRUE is one and FALSE is zero.
>
>If memory serves me correctly, portions of the Mac OS use the highest
>order (sign) bit for the state of a Boolean, a Pascalism, I think (forgive

MPW Pascal uses 1 to mean TRUE and 0 for FALSE.  Inside Macintosh says
that a BOOLEAN is represented in bit 0 (the low-order bit) of a byte.

--
         Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
 Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 32E  Cupertino, CA 95014
        AppleLink:Rosenstein1    domain:[e-mail]
        UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Lee Spector)
Subject: differences between Reflex+ and Filemaker+
Date: 1 Mar 88 04:37:28 GMT
Organization: Center for Automation Research, Univ. of Md.

I'm considering getting either Filemaker+ or Reflex+ for a Mac plus with
30 meg hard drive, 1 meg RAM.  I need to update a database of cars
(approx 1500) and car sales daily, and to produce reports.  What would
be the salient diffenences between these programs for this application?

Thanks in advance... Lee


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Packed Booleans=1 byte not 1 Bit Warning!
Date: 29 Feb 88 19:10:08 GMT

At work we have bought copies of both TML and Turbo Pascal and now I
even bought my own personal copy of Turbo. The problem is that in both
of these compilers a packed array of Booleans does not pack to the bit
level, but at the byte level i.e. 1-byte per Boolean. This causes a
problem with (at least) two Mac routines that I have tried to use. The
KeyScan routine returns a KeyMap composed of - you guessed it, packed
Booleans. You have to ignore most of what's returned and do your own bit
testing instead. The problem is greater in the Appletalk ABusRecord
declaration. the atpBitMap is declared as a BitMaptype, which is a
packed array of Boolean. This means that the record is not the correct
length and so the incorrect parameters are used by the routine (its
looking 7 bytes less than it ought!). This is just a warning to anyone
who may have come accross the problem and not know what happened. We
lost a couple of weeks work with the latter one!  (the answer is to
define your own record, with an integer instead of a BitMap type, and
then mess about with it a bit when you fill in the parameters)
--
Phil Jimmieson
Computer Science Dept.
Liverpool University

Disclaimer: Nobody here listens to a word I say anyway...


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Copy II Mac 7.1 problem
Date: 29 Feb 88 22:27:00 GMT

A while back, I upgraded my copy of Copy II Mac to version 7.1 because I
was told that this version was Mac II and Multifinder compatible.  You
can imagine my dismay when I found that I couldn't get it to work even
if I ran in 2-color mode without Multifinder.  After talking with others
here that were using Copy II Mac without difficulty, I did some
detective work and discovered two separate sources to me problems:

1. Our network people had installed an INIT named Register Name on all
our
   systems to aid in diagnosing Localtalk problems.  (Register Name is
from
   Farallon, the Phonenet people.)  Register Name has proved to be
guaranteed
   death to Copy II Mac 7.1. 2. If I mount an Appleshare server (using
version 1.0 of the client software),
   this is also guaranteed death for subsequent use of Copy II Mac, even
if I
   dismount the server before running Copy II Mac!

Has anyone else seen this problem or does anyone have any further
insights?

Kurt W. Hirchert            National Center for Supercomputing
Applications


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (ephraim vishniac)
Subject: Re: dqDrvSiz
Date: 1 Mar 88 14:36:15 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rick Watson) writes:
>Does anyone remember the extension made to the drive queue entry
>to allow drives with more than 65536 blocks?  It had something to do
>with putting the high-order bits somewhere else, but I can't remember where.

The high-order sixteen bits of the drive size were put in a word
following the low-order sixteen bits (that's backwards, by 68000
standards).  To distinguish drive queue elements which used this
extended format, the queue element type was changed from zero to one.
--
Ephraim Vishniac                      [e-mail]
Thinking Machines Corporation / 245 First Street / Cambridge, MA 02142-1214

     On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put
     into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Re: differences between Reflex+ and Filemaker+
Date: 1 Mar 88 17:27:50 GMT
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd

Reflex+ is stronger in the database side, FileMaker+ is much stronger on
report generation and layout.

Major word of warning on Reflex+. It's buggy. A store I do business with
had all its customer data under Reflex. They 'upgraded' to Reflex+ over
the last few weeks, ran into amazing amounts of problems, and finally
had to unupgrade because of acknowledged (by the Reflex folks) bugs in
the program. No time frame on fixing them, either. They were losing
customer records, they were losing data records, they were losing the
interactions between them, and they were losing their minds. They're
back on reflex and running again, at the loss of about 30 days of
database updates.

This isn't encouraging to me....
--
Chuq Von Rospach            [e-mail]        Delphi: CHUQ

     There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
                               Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment, 1977


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Dan Freedman)
Subject: New Question about the Serial Drivers
Date: 1 Mar 88 07:00:03 GMT
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.


I have a programming question that I thought someone might be able to
help me out with.  I would like to be able to do some pre-processing on
characters that are to go out the modem port while using a terminal
program (say, versaterm or red ryder).  Is it possible for me to "patch"
the existing serial drivers, or perhaps intercept calls, do my
processing, and then pass the processed data on to the real serial
driver?  I have an SE, but would like this stuff to work on all macs.  I
have had a look around for the serial driver resources using resedit,
but haven't been able to find them anywhere on my system.  All replies
greatly appreciated.


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Donald E. Carlile)
Subject: NEON Caveat (was Re: Advice for starting programmers...)
Date: 1 Mar 88 00:18:22 GMT
Organization: TRW Space and Defense Sector, Redondo Beach, CA

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nicholas Spies) writes:
>...
>...NEON is also a Forth-based
>object oriented language mentioned in the book "Object-Oriented Programming
>for the Mac" by Schmucker (Hayden).

I got suckered into NEON about 3 years ago.  I don't recommend it.  I
flailed around for quite some time, and didn't really get anywhere.  I
got a hold of MacApp and coded up the same app very quickly.  And it was
double clickable without extra files to make invisible.

I know that this topic was for beginners, and MPW and MacApp cost more
than beginners want to pay, but I wanted to steer beginners away from
what looks to me to be a dead end street.

Anyone who disagrees with me is welcome to buy my copy of NEON.

DISCLAIMER:  My opinions are my own, and are not necessarily shared by
my  employer.

Additional disclaimer:  It has been a while since I had anything to do
with NEON, and it **MAY** have improved.

Don Carlile


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (andrew west)
Subject: Re: Tool-Tool, "Prototyper"
Date: 29 Feb 88 17:57:03 GMT
Organization: Bell Northern Research, Mtn. View, CA

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Class Account) writes:
>
>    Have you seen "Prototyper" from Smethers-Barnes?  It is a resource editor
> that generates code (LSC, LSP, MPW C & Pascal, and some others).  I saw a demo
> of it at MacWorld Expo and was generally impressed.  It can create menus,
  ...
> it.  Does anyone have experience with "Prototyper".
>
>         Bruce Burkhalter

The version of Prototyper that I have seen (1.0 I believe) does *not*
support any versions of C, Lightspeed or otherwise.  It can be used for
prototyping the user interface, but if you want to generate source code,
you must choose between Pascal--MPW, Lightspeed, Turbo or TML.

                     Andrew West
             {amdahl, hplabs} ...!bnrmtv!west


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Bob Loewenstein)
Subject: Re: NEON Caveat (was Re: Advice for starting programmers...)
Date: 1 Mar 88 15:51:37 GMT
Organization: U of Chicago - Astronomy & Astrophysics


> I got suckered into NEON about 3 years ago.  I don't recommend it.

I can't agree with this statement.  Kriya may or may not currently
support Neon, I don't know.  If not, that is its drawback.  We received
version 2.0 a year ago which runs very well on a MacII, although it did
not support color quickdraw.  Writing the interface is quite easy.  We
still program in Neon as well as MPW C.  I think an interactive
environment, especially for beginners who may wish to play with the
toolkit, is very valuable.  Also, since Neon includes all of the source
files to extend the Forth-like kernel, it is possible to add toolkit and
system interfaces as needed.

------------------------------

End of Usenet Mac Digest
************************
-------