🚀 go-pugleaf

    First, after installing an Atari Corp.  20 megger HD on my
    Atari520st (w/1 meg upgrade), I'm no longer able to acces the RAM
    disk.  I'm using the RAM disk posted some time ago that was in ASCII
    hex format (640 byte .prg file).  The hard disk seems to insist on
    being drives C:  D:  (conficts with RAM disk) and E:.  I tried
    patching the hex code to read BSET #5,D0 to provide me with a drive
    F:  ram disk.  No go.  Drive F:  IS recognized but pulling a SHOW
    INFO says it's got 6meg available (not quite right 8^) ).  Anyone
    have this RAM disk living happily with an Atari Hard Disk?  If so
    whats the correct formula?  Who should be first in the AUTO folder?
    Is there a sequence of adding drive icons to the desktop?  Maybe
    that's where I blew it?

No.  The problem is that the ramdisk drivers only intercept calls to
drive 3 (= D:); simply patching the BSET is not enough.  I have disassembled
the whole thing and am in the process of rebuilding it in a slightly more
general way.  (For example, I prefer that it get the ramdisk size from
a file.)  I'll post it whenever I get around to finishing the job.

    Finally, saw MW C being advertised in this months Dr. Dobbs Journal.  Does
    anyone have the package?  A small review would be nice.

I have it.  It's a very promising packing, but...

1.  The object files are incompatible with the ones used by everybody else
    (i.e. different from the developer's kit and from OSS Pascal).  They
    provide a utility to convert developer's format to their own but not
    the other way around.  Thus, I can't use MWC to write Pascal-callable
    utilities.

2.  The MW argument passing conventions also seem to be subtly differnt
    from the standard.  I wrote an OSS Pascal program that takes command
    line arguments and tried to call it from "msh", the micro C-shell that
    comes with the MW package.  No go; the arguments never made it through.
    However, it works fine called as a .TTP file or from the PD COMMAND2
    shell.  Going the other way around, I recently got Beckemeyer's
    Multi-Tasking C-Shell and tried to call the micro emacs editor that
    came with MW.  Also no go.  It started up okay but it couldn't find its
    command line arguments.

3.  The symbolic debugger that comes with the package is very nice and seems
    to work with MWC programs.  However, I tried it with a random .PRG file
    and it refused to load it.  I of course didn't expect symbols from such
    a file, but I did expect to be able to use the disassembler.

4.  There are a number of annoying little bugs in the micro C-Shell that are
    not worth going into here and hopefully will be fixed in future releases.

In summary:  If MWC will be your ONLY software construction package, the
I recommend it.  The book that comes with it is nicely put together and
seems pretty complete and accurate.  However, the gratuitous incompatabilities
with the rest of the world make it much less useful in a mixed environment
that it ought to be.

    Do they provide a resource construction set?

No.

--Mike Fischer <fischer@yale.arpa>
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