September 2002 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

partitions extension
by Holzapfel Carsten 17 Sep '02

17 Sep '02

it is possible to extend a oberon partition? and how can I do that, with a exist Native Oberon, Aos (typ 76) partition? kind regards Carsten Holzapfel --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) Version: 6.0.389 / Virus Database: 220 - Release Date: 16.09.2002

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video card problem when boot
by Yuri M. Skripkah 17 Sep '02

17 Sep '02

Hello , All. I try work with Permedia 2v AGP card (4M SGRAM). 3D3D/0009 (PCI ID) But it work in VGA only. I have black screen in 1024x768x in S3 and hang when boot Bluebottle from CD. Is they work with Permedia 2 3D3D/0007 only? -- Best regards, Yuri mailto:yurix@i.com.ua

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Native 24.0802 Installation
by Stefan Salewski 15 Sep '02

15 Sep '02

Hello! I have just installed PC Native Oberon 24.08.02. (Only base-system from Oberon0, no additional packages.) A few comments: Installation is clear and straight forward, but I think there should be an additional step between Partitions.Show and Partitions.Format. The text in *.Tool may look like "Use Partitions.Show to see all available Partitions. Then select a partition like "IDE0#01" and execute Partitions.VerifySelection to proof your selection." Partitions.VerifySelection should write something like "You have selected "IDE0#01" (First partition of your first harddisk). Execute Partitions.Format to format this partition or select another partition." to the log. ---------------------------------------------------------- I have prepared the first installation to boot from floppy. Then I booted Oberon0 again to prepare for booting direct from harddisk. The command is "Config.BootPartition menu~", but I was not absolutely sure which command I have to select before this. I guess it may be "FileSystem.Mount IDE0#01~", but I was not sure, so I have done the whole installation process again. The same question appears if I boot Oberon0 again to change Display parameters. I guess I have to do Boot Oberon0 Config.Disk Filesystem.Mount Config.Mode But I am not sure. Will Config.Mode modify the Bootblock, so that I have to adapt my Bootmanager? ------------------------------------------------------------- Config.DetectVesa gives a TRAP: TRAP -13 General protection fault (PC Native 24.08.02) Unknown EIP=00000B6AH EBP=00000000H TRAP -14 (recursive) My Hardware: Mainboard: Asus A7V133 Rev: 1.04 Processor: AMD Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHz Graphic-Card: Matrox G450 ------------------------------------------------------------ While booting Oberon0-disk for the second time, the system hung displaying a black screen with blue frame. The reason were bad blocks on the floppy. Best regards Stefan Salewski

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Re [Oberon] An Alternative to Microsoft Gains Support in High Places
by cglur＠onwe.co.za 14 Sep '02

14 Sep '02

Doug wrote: > I attach an article that appeared today in the New York Times > that *may* have bearing on Bluebottle and Native. At least > alterntives to Microsoft are being considered. This is vitally important to us: - hiding in the shadow of linux, gives some protection against MS. (any computer device or service I buy is "in terms of Winxy"). - linux code being open can be copied (or used for ideas). eg. for new hardware drivers. Tapping into a big brain-population. - apart fom the technical, the (more slippery) socio/psychological aspects of open, collaborative efforts are being pioneered by linux; from which we can learn. Also what NOT to do. - it's nice to be able to re-confirm that native oberon is faster, smaller easier.... > Yet Mr. Jiang also spoke glowingly of Microsoft's involvement in China. The > company set up a research laboratory in Beijing and recently made a > commitment to invest $700 million in China over the next three years in > education, training and research, and in investments in local companies. Yes, giving free software to schools is a great move: 1. the marginal cost is near zero 2. build another generation that thinks computer is spelled m i c r o s o f t. Same principle as giving narcotics to the youth. A sure winner. Some of you might know of my (so far futile) effort to spread n-o to ex-soviet societies, to tap into the ample brain power, by using the mass of redundant/scrap PCs in the G7 countries. The Russians have a 'smart-arse' attitude to life - "if it's not expensive, it's not good"; which I think the south asians don't suffer from. When I was in India, Sri lanka in 1985, I correctly predicted that is would be ideal for a software factory - obvious. Especially since it's so easy to make any character fonts, I imagine that for any left to right script (arabic is right to left), a few scrap PCs to some bright, keen Indian kids for experimenting with n-o could escalate like a forrest fire. Do any of us still remember the early PC revolution: wiring pcbs and chips ? Not the whole world is driven by the McDonald, Microsoft, Disney model - yet. -- Chris Glur.

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Re (2): [Oberon] Native oberon usage outside of G7 societies.
by peter_easthope＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 13 Sep '02

13 Sep '02

Yuri & others, y> everyday work need strong support for lot of languages in software. So true. That is one of the principal motivations for the Universal Character Set, UCS. http://www.unicode.org/ So here is another little project for us: implement full support for UCS in Oberon and BlueBottle. Regards, Peter E. Peter Easthope http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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Re: Multi Boot with BlueBottle and Win ME
by Stefan Salewski 12 Sep '02

12 Sep '02

Aubrey McIntosh wrote in comp.lang.oberon: > I was going to make a machine that is multi-boot with Win ME and > BlueBottle. A quick google search reveals many choices. A few of > these have change logs that say, over and over again, ... many bugs > fixed ... > > What are some other people satisfied with? > Hello, I use NT-Bootloader of Windows2000, because I need Windows2000, and NT-Bootloader is the only one which can start Windows2000 for sure. I think GNU-GRUB is a very good powerfull Bootloader, but still beta, and not fool-proofed. Linux Lilo should work too, not so diffical to use as Grub, but not so powerfull. I am not sure if you can use Lilo without a Linux installation. There is noboot.exe which can start BlueBottle from DOS. This is what I read, not own experience. I would prefer Grub, if there are no problems with Windows2000. Best regards Stefan Salewski

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Native oberon usage outside of G7 societies.
by cglur＠onwe.co.za 11 Sep '02

11 Sep '02

Yuri M. Skripkah wrote: > cocz> Especially since it's so easy to make any character fonts, I imagine > cocz> that for any left to right script (arabic is right to left), a few scrap > cocz> PCs to some bright, keen Indian kids for experimenting with n-o > cocz> could escalate like a forrest fire. > I imagine what reimplementation of CHAR, scanner, and all code from > ASCII to Unicode (16 or 32?) is not so easy. I can't do this - not enough > knowledges, but anybody, who has ability, may be not has enough > lifetime? I'm talking about computers which are used by humans. The humans are the 'enviroment' within which the combined 'system' of computer-human operate. Similarly the humans operate within the enviroment of their society. The 'system' (entity and it's enviroment) cannot be understood without acknowledging the enviroment part. When you draw a character with pencil on paper, another person can recognise and use it. The 'cost' (mostly human interaction) for getting a new (non latin) script up and usable is minimum, with n-o. With the existing n-o system a ten year old child can draw characters of the script that he knows, and his co-scholars can recognise and use them. This has to do with psychology and art; NOT bitmaps, fonts and mathematics. If the next child thinks he can make the charater(s) look better, he can change it. Successive refinement, AND minimum 'cost' to get started ! If you have native native oberon (which seems to be NOT the case, since we are 'reading from different pages') try: 1. Desktops.OpenDoc FontEditor.Panel 2. Paste Shanghai.Scn.Fnt in the TextField above the [Load] button 3. MM the [Load] button 4. MM the "20" button on the panel and see the bit mapped bird. Children would love to play with this. ............... > I have some talk with teachers in my city, they say: Oberon? > Oh,Pascal It's good,very good. But we study linux and really work > with windows - it's cheap ( thefted or donated-sic! ) and has really Cyrillic. > What I can say about? ... Well of course ! If you could think in terms of heirarchies of SYSTEMS, you would realise that the cost of the hardware is an essential part of the SYSTEM. I have been in ex-soviet, and we all know the per capita GDP. A few old/scrap PCs with n-o could work wonders. As for every thing in ex-soviet societies, the problem is psycho-socio, not technical. Soviet method is centralised and 'top down'. N-o usage will spread 'bottom up' like a forest fire or virus: two kids like it and tell their friend ... How do you expect the Ukrainian teachers to know what n-o can do with free hardware ? Even ghost would not accept the need for a 3 button mouse. Many things in life need to be experienced before they can be appreciated. Unfortunately, while I'm talking, the scrap PCs are becoming no longer available and much of n-o's small size is becoming irrelevant. -- Chris Glur.

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Re (7): [Oberon] Homework on ZipTool & MS dud-partitions
by peter_easthope＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 11 Sep '02

11 Sep '02

Chris & others, cg> Does 'unconventional' mean invalid for n-o ? Yes. cg> I get errors: ZipTool.Extract C:Temp.zip DUG_IDE.C => NewName1 ~ == file encrypted /compression method not supported OK. I was speaking hypothetically about how the commands should behave. Pieter's "homework assignment" asked only for documentation and not for improvements. I reconned the discussion about improvements was for bonus marks. =8~) cg> if it is confirmed that my errors: Will try after installing the latest alpha. Regards, Peter E. Peter Easthope http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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Re (6): [Oberon] Homework on ZipTool & MS dud-partitions
by cglur＠onwe.co.za 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

Peter E. wrote: > If someone wants to extract a specific file > or files with unconventional names, > replacement names are specified. Does 'unconventional' mean invalid for n-o ? > These can > be extracted later using : > "ZipTool.Extract > badfilename1 => goodfileanme1 > badfilename2 => goodfilename2 ~" I get errors: ZipTool.Extract C:Temp.zip DUG_IDE.C => NewName1 ~ == file encrypted /compression method not supported ZipTool.Extract C:Temp.zip "DUG_IDE.C" => NewName1 ~ == NewName1 file encrypted / compression method not supported, could not extract Can this version { ZipTool1.Arc (Aug 5) } handle DOS fileNames ? Ie. invalid n-o file names, like other commands can. eg. OFSFATTools.ChangeDir "D:D-386-4.OBN/" Native oberon surely must give us access to the WORLD. ZipTool.Mod is seriously lacking if we can't process the many *.zip files 'out there'. I (or some one else) could look at some code of the many procedures that 'handle' non-native-oberon file names, apparently (by convention) by enclosing in "quote-marks", if it is confirmed that my errors: 'file encrypted /compression method not supported' is in fact cause by the 'DUG_IDE.C' invalid filename. The ZipFiles extracted OK with linux and DOS / PKunzip . Also ZipTool1.Arc (Aug 5) extracts OK for n-o valid fileNames. -- Chris Glur. PS. I don't know how these non-ascii chars will email, but the Temp.zip starts like this (normal PKziped file): PK¶,[3ÚeV DUG_IDE.C ---------------- BTW. to test MS / PKunzip I again confirmed the 'power' of n-o: MS-DOS can't read my C: , but n-o can !! So I need to use n-o to copy C:/FLOPPY.BAK/Temp.zip to D: in order to test DOS-Pkunzip. I have considered that a 'newer BIOS' could perhaps handle my FAT IDE0#01, but an aquaintance who has the latest, also fail to see this IDE. This relates to my previous post re. distributing a standalone 1M4 diskettes to show Microsoft users what native oberon can do for them when their IDE is corrupted - what MS tools apparently can't do !

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about an alternative...
by Yuri M. Skripkah 06 Sep '02

06 Sep '02

Hello! Commercial distributives can be very cheap, but give some money for developing not interesting part needed for system. Without finances n-o will go to smalltalk squeak copy. With open source community go by linux way. It's not ideal, but not bad. With great marketing near windows way :))) -- Best regards, Yuri mailto:yurix@i.com.ua

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