We finally got 1.99j (1.99i was not made available to the general
public) out. As far as I know, it's much better in all ways but one
than anything else that we've put out so far. The one exception is
that the DOS version currently will not allow you to run code that
uses SANE (i.e. floating point system calls) on a PC without an FPU.
The file "emu387" is still there, but with the new DOS extender
technology we're using, it's not being used. This will change by the
time 2.0 comes out.
In addition to 1.99j being more stable, we have added the serial
number, authorization code that I mentioned before. The user
interface is a bit rough, but we really needed to get 1.99j out there
ASAP, since 1.99h was in many ways the worst experimental version
we've released to date.
So far, we haven't handed out any serial numbers or authorization
keys. We'll begin doing that tomorrow (Tuesday), when we'll e-mail
information to every Executor/DOS user who put down an e-mail address
on his/her registration card and sent that to us. At the same time,
we'll be sending serial number/key pairs to all our paid
Executor/Linux customers -- there was no registration card to fill
out; we have your e-mail addresses.
After we do the e-mail mass mailing, we'll do a U.S. mail mailing to
everyone who sent in a registration card but who did not provide us
with an electronic mail address. If you purchased Executor/DOS, but
did not yet send in your registration card, please do so now.
New orders will automatically be sent with serial numbers and
authorization keys.
I realize that it's a bit ackward to be assigning these numbers after
so many of you have already purchased the product, but in the long
run, such numbers and codes will make it easier for everyone. Please
don't phone us about these numbers until Thursday, at the earliest.
We had to redo some of our customer database and we still have a
little work to do on that end.
NEXTSTEP users: within an experimental release or two, we'll start
building Executor/NEXTSTEP experimental versions again. In some ways
you've been lucky to be spared the ups and downs of 1.99c,d,e,...,h.
That's the good news. The bad news is we've had very little response
from NeXT in our request to have them give us the documentation needed
to make our color version fast. We're hoping that after they see a
new version that does everything the other ports do, but isn't as fast
as it can be that they'll give us the time of day.
We believe that 1.99j is fairly stable. As such, 1.99k won't be out
until we have integrated our new file browser and fixed the filesystem
bugs that remain that show up in the file browser. After that, we'll
add System 7 spoofing, and as always, we're doing tons of bug fixing
as we add features.
We're sufficiently happy with the 1.99j release that we're putting the
Linux version on sunsite and the DOS version on SimTel. It will be a
little while before they appear there.
ftp.ardi.com and www.ardi.com will be on-line soon, but they will
initially be (until we get Executor sales ramped up) fairly slow and
we may have to limit access to mirror sites.
--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com
From owner-executor Mon Feb 27 17:24:44 1995
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From: pageone@netcom.com
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id RAA14671; Mon, 27 Feb 1995 17:15:44 -0800
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 17:15:39 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Is there a sidegrade to Executor/Linux from Executor/Dos?
I'd like to be able to sidegrade to Executor/Linux if possible,
either when the registration numbers are sent by e-mail or for a nominal
fee. I'm moving into Linux now, and being able to run Macintosh Word 5.0
(assuming, hopefully 1.99j fixes it - I'll try it out tonight!) on Linux
is a big thing since there are currently no native Linux WP's out
there...
Thanks! I'll surely be posting 1.99j comments when I get 'spare
time' to play with it. I've got the files to Netcom, I just have to
download them to my computer now... thanks!
- Chad Page
From owner-executor Mon Feb 27 22:04:55 1995
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Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 23:00 MST
From: ctm@ardi.com (Clifford Thomas Matthews)
To: executor@nacm.com
Subject: Executor/DOS 1.99j BUGS
Sender: owner-executor@nacm.com
Precedence: bulk
Hi Folks,
Executor/DOS 1.99j has major problems on some machines. There appear
to actually be at least two causes of trouble.
One problem is the new memory autodetection code can cause problems.
You can get around this bug by always specifying "-applzone" (note,
there is no "e" between the "l" and "z", because it stands for
Application Zone, not Apple Computer Zone) option.
executor -applzone 4096
will dedicate 4 MB to a section of memory that your programs will see
as the amount of memory the "Mac" on which they're running has
allocated for them. (Internally, we'll use more than 4 MB, because we
also have to have memory for our synthetic CPU, the graphics routines,
translation space, misc. buffers, and so on). We're looking into
what circumstances cause our new autodetect code to fail.
If that workaround doesn't help you, you may find that running
Executor from a DOS shell under Windows will help you. Something we
are doing around the time when we're checking out which disks you have
on your machine appears to have difficulties with "cwsdpmi" the free
DPMI provider that we're using. If you run under Windows, you get
Windows as a DPMI provider and the bug does not appear. We're working
with cws to find out whether it's a cwsdpmi bug or whether it's our
bug that just happens to only show up under cwsdpmi.
I apologize for the inconvenience. I personally spent many hours
testing E/D 1.99j before shipping it off and making the announcement.
However, I didn't turn a copy over to Vaune Fischer, our wonderful
technical support person, because it seemed to work so well and I knew
that we desperately needed a 1.99h replacement. One of the machines I
normally do testing on over here is away being repaired and another
one was in the process of getting groomed to be our FTP/WWW server.
It's always something.
I'll send more e-mail as we make progress.
--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com
From owner-executor Tue Feb 28 00:35:46 1995
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Date: Tue, 28 Feb 95 01:31 MST
From: ctm@ardi.com (Clifford Thomas Matthews)
To: executor@nacm.com
Subject: E/D 1.99j bug found and fixed, 1.99k out soon
Sender: owner-executor@nacm.com
Precedence: bulk
Hi folks,
If you're an Executor/DOS user and you haven't yet picked up 1.99j, my
suggestion is that you don't, and that you wait for 1.99k. The major
bugs that we could reproduce over here are fixed, but we won't be
putting 1.99k out until we've tested it for a day on every machine we
