** 2 pages Q&A / 2757 words ** ** More or less in order of preference ** --- ** Q ** PSU source Do you know where I can get a circuit diagram of the Mega ST2 PSU? Mine seems to be on its way out. I've done a lot of surfing and searching, but all to no avail. Obviously I'm looking in the wrong places... Forwarded by CyberSTrider to CIX ataricomputing conference ** A ** There are a couple of wirewound resistors which get very hot and eventually crystallise the solder round their legs causing dry joints. I've rescued ST power supplies several times by resoldering any suspect connections on the underside of the PCB. John Eason, CIX ataricomputing conference --- ** Q ** Something for nothing? I have come across many free internet-access schemes for PC users and it's hard to avoid the give-away CD-ROMs from Dixons, Tandy, and Tesco. One Atari newsgroup carried a plea from an Atari-user for advice on how to set up Freeserve ISP with his machine. Can your boffins outline briefly how we can all do this (perhaps even a concise article about it)? Yours a bit gormlessly... Noel Lundgren ** A ** ** On Reader Disk logo here ** We've had a long series of replies to this question so I've included the entire thread on the Reader Disk along with the configuration files mentioned here - good luck and when you get up and running drop us an email. ** UL ** * To get online via Freeserve using CAB, STinG and a suitable CAB.OVL proceed as follows: Edit STinG's DEFAULT.CFG and DIAL.SCR with your details. The DEFAULT.CFG file on the Reader Disk is in the progress of being "tweaked" for best performance, with the original values commented out for reference. Change modem port etc to suit your system. * If you'd like to be able to log in to another ISP as well, proceed as follows: Copy the DIAL.SCR to the same directory, renaming it to reflect the name of the ISP that you want to log in to. Then list the details of your proxy servers under "Network Environment", see the DEFAULT.CFG file for the required format. Change phone numbers and password details and so on to suit. Now you can select this script in the STinG dialer by clicking in the "Dial script" line at the top of the "Configs" menu. * If you're experiencing problems making a successful connection: It might be that your ISP doesn't use a PAP (Password Authenticated Protocol) connection. Try connecting with a terminal program with logging turned on, and respond to each of the questions with the details given to you by your ISP. Most likely you'll be asked for your login name and password, once you've logged in completely the screen should fill with indecipherable characters. Shut down the connection and edit the appropriate dial script referring to your log for details. There's an example script on the Reader Disk called SCRIPT.ASC. * If you've made a successful connection to your ISP (the STinG dialer reports "Link established" and "Success", but CAB seems to freeze with the message "Resolving host" proceed as follows: Double check that you're using a STinG-compatible overlay. Double check the proxy server details in the DEFAULT.CFG or DIAL.SCR (where appropriate). Proxy server details in CAB listed under "Server/Proxy" may not be current however if overridden by others set in the DIAL.SCR. * If you're using the latest CAB overlay and there's a delay when browsing through your offline cache: Load the dialer into memory alongside CAB. Single TOS users can rename the STinG dialer with an ACC extender and load it as an accessory - a recommended course of action anyway (you will need to copy the STING.INF file into the root directory of your boot disk as well). Or use Olivier Booklage's overlay version from 5.4000 onwards available from: http://194.2.128.248/vcf-com/download/cabovl.lzh Thanks to Derryck Croker, Daniel Cohen, Andrew Harvey and Keith Jackson for their contributions to this thread in the CIX ataricomputing conference. --- ** Recycle ** Making your Mark ** KURZEL.GIF here ** An alternative solution would be to use the keyboard kurzels (tags/shortcut) feature in your text editor, Everest, qed and Edith all support these. After setting up your sigs in the kurzel/tag file you can select between sigs on-the-fly. For example, typing "s_[Esc]" in Everest adds "Regards, Joe", "si[Esc]" adds a comment and "sig[Esc]" adds my full signature this concept can be extended to support as many signatures as you like. Joe Connor --- ** Q ** DBMaster class... Is there any way I can convert Antic DBMaster databases into a format which will allow me to load them into Microsoft Access or any other PC based database program? If not, could I use my Atari database files on a PC by using an emulator of some sort? Many thanks, in anticipation of a helpful reply. From the ataricomputing website ** A ** Printing a report to disk will give an ASCII file that will easily import into any other database. The fields are padded out to their full length with spaces so you can use a text editor, on the ST or the PC, to add commas as required by the new databases import filter. Paul Glover (FaST Club) ** A ** In general so long as you can export data from a database in human readable format you'll be able to convert it for use in any modern database. If your database allows you to select the separator character avoid using quote marks and commas because these are commonly used for house names and line separators in postal address fields, I prefer using semi-colons. Exported files typically use quote marks, tabs, the vertical bar character, semi-colons, commas or other character as field separators and when attempting to import these look for Comma Separated Variable (CSV), Text or ASCII import options - try them all your mileage may vary. Alternatively you can probably continue to run DB Master using any of the popular Atari ST emulators including TOSBOX, Gemulator, MagiC PC, STemulator, WinSTon, PaCifiST and others. Joe Connor --- MAKEPRN RIP ** Tip ** Since the release of NVDI 5 it's no longer possible to make your own printer drivers. I have been in contact with Wilfried Behne about NVDI 5 and not only is there no MAKEPRN with it, there won't be one, or facilities for making your own drivers. I asked him what happened about printers that 2B didn't know about, or new models. He replied that a program like MAKEPRN would unfortunately not help either. If new printers appeared that don't work with existing drivers then it is usually necessary to program new printing processes (new commands or different preparation of the bitmap data). On a different topic, I also asked him about the greyed out options to print odd and even pages with WDIALOG and NVDI 5/Magic 6. Wilfried replied that some printing dialog functions needs special support from the associated program and if the program does not make these functions available then the relevant icon is disabled. Peter West, CIX ataricomputing conference --- ** Q ** Media Change Bug I have an Atari STF which I use to run Steinberg Pro 24 sequencing software. It also runs with the Little Green Selector v1.8c. Today something happened which I am sure has also happened to me in the past. While using Pro 24 I went to save a song. The Save selector box appeared. Suddenly realising that I wanted to save the song on another disk I swapped the two disks and saved onto disk 2. BIG MISTAKE! The moment I clicked that button my stomach went weak. I'm sure the file has saved but it is not that file I have lost. On disk 2 was another file but the disk reads the list of files I had on disk 1 which was in the drive originally. It is very possible that the file that I have saved has written across parts of the file I have lost on disk 2. My hope is that because disk two lists the wrong files that when it reads the right files (which would only be the file I was saving and the file I have lost) that I will have regained my lost file. I'm sure I managed to rescue the file last time this happened but I can't remember how to go about the rescue. What are you thoughts Via Andrew Wright, CIX ataricomputing conference ** A ** I fear you have overwritten the root directory because the drive didn't recognise the disk change, it's called the media change bug. The chances of recovery of non-text files are minimal, unless the old file was not fragmented and the new save was to a previously unused part of the disk. Even then, it would be hard to determine which clusters were used and how long the file was, unless you had a record of this somewhere. In future, you can avoid this by pressing the [Esc] key which forces TOS to re-read the disk. Alternatively click on the drive B: box in the file selector (assuming you were using A: and have only a single drive) and you'll be prompted to insert disk B: in drive A: and the directory will be re-read. Peter West ** A ** There is a slim chance of recovery. The chances are better if the files are smaller and if the floppy the system thought it was writing to had more data on it than the one you actually wrote to - the chances are it may not have overwritten the first file which was hopefully at the start of the floppy. ** UL ** * Don't write to the floppy at all. If you have KnifeST, use it to make a identical copy of the floppy and work on the copy not the original. * It gets technical and it might be an idea to get help... but even though binary files are fairly unrecognisable - the first cluster is often identifiable. For example, JPEGs have the text string JFIF somewhere in the first cluster. You need to examine the first cluster of another file of the same type to see whether there are any give-away clues as to what it looks like. * What you really want is info on the file length - but you might be able to get away without it. * Delete any files on the floppy which aren't on it (for example, files which are on the one the system thought it was writing to) - but not the one you really did accidentally write (because that one really is there). * You have to do an undelete option BUT you don't want it to take the starting cluster or length from a different file. I would approach this with something like KnifeST's build command and manually look for the starting cluster. First place I'd look is the first free cluster. * You can build the file back to the original length using successive free clusters. If you don't know the length and are lucky, the application will read the file and only use the valid part... or you have to use a lot of trial and error to get it back to the right length. ** UL ** Olly Skelton --- ** Q ** Give XBoot the boot? I have recently run into a small nuisance type problem with my Falcon. I am not sure if the problem is hardware or software related. I have a stock 4Mb Falcon with 120Mb IDE HD and have been using XBoot III for years on a Mega ST, TT and now the Falcon. Recently, I attempted to upgrade my HD Driver 7.12 to 7.61 and my troubles started. The drop down menus within HDUTIL.APP had invisible parts of the dialog boxes. If I guessed correctly and clicked with the mouse cursor, missing boxes and so forth would become visible. I tried this upgrade on another Falcon and I got the same display problems. Then I noticed that when I booted up the XBoot screen had a mouse pointer/arrow near the middle of the screen, but it was not usable, frozen in place. There was also a flashing cursor bar on the lower left edge of the screen, also unusable. The keyboard keys all worked normal and the chosen set was launched successfully and the mouse then would work as normal on the desktop. I noticed that if I opened the Auto folder and ran XBOOT.PRG from the desktop that it would boot normally with a fully functioning mouse on the XBoot screen. I have removed everything from the Auto folder, recreated the Auto folder with just XBOOT.PRG installed. I have repartitioned the hard drive and reinstalled early versions of HD Driver(7.04/7.12). I made new NEWDESK.INF files, but I can't make XBoot run from the Auto folder AND have a functioning mouse. I have not seen the grow bars under the Fuji symbol on boot up for quite sometime. I have tried every possible parameter selection in XBoot, different resolutions, Neodesk, no Neodesk, is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Dave Leippe, Sacramento, CA, via the ataricomputing webpages ** A ** Just possibly XBoot has become corrupted. Have there been any hardware changes, maybe a badly functioning Blitter? Check the NVRAM settings. XBoot is actually packed and in some cases needs to be unpacked to work properly and avoid problems with caching (IIRC the "Naughty" program can unpack it). Olly Skelton, CIX ataricomputing conference ** A ** It's possible the default resolution set in NVRAM might not suit XBoot. I'd recommend Stoop in place of XBoot. It allows the resolution of the desktop after booting to be set independently of selecting sets of AUTOs/ACCs/CPXs and is designed for the Falcon. The only disadvantage is it won't work with earlier machines. Peter West, CIX ataricomputing conference --- ** Recycle ** More colours in high res It's not quite as simple as an AUTO folder program. First of all, even if you have a colour (S)VGA monitor the plug would need re-wiring to accept a colour signal, since the ST's mono output is only a single line plus hsync and vsync. If you were to modify the ST to send a composite signal down this line you would still need to decode it for the monitor. Your memory requirement calculation is correct. The problem is for the computer to drive high resolution in any more colours than monochrome, remember that in this mode the refresh rate is also higher, so if colour is added the amount of bandwidth occupied would slow the machine to a crawl. GEM is slow enough as it is, games and demos get away with it because they use low resolution and custom graphics routines that bypass the operating system. Using this type of code to boost the colours available in GEM would require at the least a partial re-write of the OS. Even with NVDI, graphical web browsing on an ST can be pedestrian. In most cases speed is more important than colour, this is something a lot of people find out when they get their first telephone bill after buying a modem! If you really want detailed colour graphics on your ST you need an improved graphics controller, and a faster CPU is also recommended. Call Atari Workshop for availability and prices of the Panther graphics adapter, 01753 832212. Shiuming Lai --- ** Q ** Correct on Milan? On my Milan, I can get the 'correct' program (that comes with ease) to run and detect errors. However whenever it tries to fix them, the program crashes. So is there any program that runs on the Milan that can do what correct does? Colin.Ballantyne, via email --- ** Q ** Kicked into touch I am looking for a game called Kick Off. I would like to surprise my boyfriend with this because he used to play this when he was a child. He recently bought an Atari computer, but he doesn't have the game. Can somebody tell me where I can get this game? Can I order it somewhere? Can I buy it (in the Netherlands if possible)? Claudia van den Berg, via the ataricomputing mailbox ** A ** 16/32 were advertising Kick Off in AC#9 for œ7 plus œ5 each for the two extra data disks (Winning Tactics and Final Whistle). Post and packing to EU countries is œ4 and they accept credit card orders. ** BC ** Email: nharlow@cix.compulink.co.uk Telephone: 01634 710788 Fax: 01634 295895 ** /BC ** There's also one dealer in the Netherlands who might be able to help: ** BC ** MABN Computer Hardware http://www.xs4all.nl/~mabn/ ** /BC ** While you're buying presents why not buy your boyfriend a subscription to Atari Computing magazine. Joe Connor