Article View: comp.sys.atari.st
Article #39613Re: Futher Adventures of ATM & Spectre
From: David Small
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1989 04:43
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1989 04:43
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2982 bytes
My thanks for the very kind comments concerning Adobe Type Manger and Spectre GCR! We have also had many positive responses on other systems. Frankly, I'm glad I wrote the software the way I did -- no patch files -- so new products could run after the software was cast in concrete. I did notice two things I might help with. First, we have seen *some* (not all!!) problems with internal Mega disk drives and GCR. Typically, the innermost tracks, 64-79, do not read properly. This appears to be due to horrific electrical noise inside the Mega. Mark Booth (STACE on GENIE) has extensively commented on how to produce a shield; it takes some thick aluminum, like cookie-baking stuff, and a few minutes of time. In 100% of cases, he has been able to fix internal drive problems, and he's up to 20 or so drives now. Next, MultiFinder is *not* stable, alas, under 2.3K. We have finally discovered why. As you know, there's a big problem with Mac software storing into location 0, a program fault. The stores cause a bus error, a crash I usually recover from. Well, on a hunch, we set the incircuit emulator to check for *reads* from locations 0 and 4, which do not cause a crash. (See, on a Mac, 0-7 are read/write RAM except on powerup; on the ST, they are ROM). Well whoops! Multifinder, through ROM calls, is *reading* location 0, and getting 602e1e00 (if I remember right), then plugging it into various critical memory tables. The result is a crash is not far off. The solution is to forbid the ROMs from doing that by simple entry checks for location=0 on these calls. Three were involved if I remember right. This greatly, greatly stabilized Multifinder, and to our complete surprise, MicrosoftWord 3.02. That was the bug in Word (out of memory) that I had been chasing over a year and failed on. Well, it works now. Anyway, I want to caution you on Multifinder. It is not yet stable on 2.3K. (Note: The "about Spectre" on 2.3K says 2.0 -- our fault.) We have fixed this in 2.5a, and ran it extensively at Comdex for a week with zero crashes, except for one known-multifinder killer D/A. We would commonly have 5-8 applications going at once. If you have a strong need for it, we could probably arrange a quick-release of 2.5A. It also features on-line configuration (press HELP and a config page pops up; use F1-F10 to toggle features) and some other goodies. Doug is also rewriting the launcher for some pretty stunning stuff. -- hope this helps, -- thanks, Dave / Gadgets
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!well!dsmall From: dsmall@well.UUCP (David Small) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Futher Adventures of ATM & Spectre Message-ID: <15095@well.UUCP> Date: 19 Dec 89 04:43:58 GMT References: <22827@brunix.UUCP> Reply-To: dsmall@well.UUCP (David Small) Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 50