February 2003 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] PPP
by eas-lab＠absamail.co.za 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

> peter_easthope(a)gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca wrote > > A few weeks back Chris asked that the results of > > my studies and tinkering with PPP be made available. > > > > The notes are now at a link under "Miscellaneous > > Links" here. > > http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/ > > Edgar wrote: > Thanks Peter ! I added the link to your stuff on > www.edgarschwarz.de/oberon. Yes thanks. PPP implementation is no trivial task. A problem which rarely occured in the past, now happens daily for me. Apparently because of telco line degradation. I don't know if it has socio-political causes or if it will improve as the weather changes -- eg. man-holes flooding ? The symptoms are shown by the 'trace':- Dial script startedModem off-line, device 0 closed Sending [ATZ] Waiting 10s for [OK] {ATZ||OK} Sending [ATX] Waiting 10s for [OK] {|ATX||OK} Sending [ATD 3407501] Sending [ATM1] Waiting 60s for [CONNECT] {|ATD 3407501|ATM1||CONNECT} Calling [PPPMain.StartInst PPP 2nm4nx6x@za] ---- up to here is OK, then the following 2 lines do not occur: End of script IPCP is finally ready. Device opened. We have to expect and accept some 'fail to connects'. But this is more problematic. As previously observed, there are very few n-o dial-up users. Those who don't/can't use n-o internet connection for their 'stuff' really don't get the full n-o experience. The above described problem would cause many inet-connectors not to use n-o, especially since further dial-ups fail to dial the modem !! The modem lights react, but no dial tone is available. Ie. if a 'fail' (apparently due to my bad line) occurs after the action: Calling [PPPMain.StartInst PPP 2nm4nx6x@za]; then the 'system' is caught in an unanticipated state. Previously I needed to re-boot. Then with much experimenting I found that with repeated Crtl/<break> immedidtely after I MM the Configuration.DoText 'script' which does: NetSystem.SetUser pap:2nm4nx6x$za:<myPassWrd>@PPP ~ Dialer.Dial PPP Device0 ~ Dialer.State PPP Device0 ~ , I can eventually get the modem to get a dial tone. Obviously I've tested several modems and computers and n-o versions. The fact that I need several attempts, suggest to me a complicated real time interatction of n-o 'tasking' & V24 & the serial chip & the modem. The combined interaction of these 'systems' doesn't reach the required initial/reset state, unless I force a "TRAP 13 Keyboard interrupt" at a SUITABLE TIME. Ie. a 'Keyboard interrupt' at the right stage of some cycle, allows the 'system' to reset. The RFCs as indicated by Peter Easthope are references and don't intend to give a broad overview - which is needed before any indepth analyses of the existing source-code. Obviously those who have seriously worked with the source code, have invested the labour in aquiring a broad overview. It seems a pity that this knowledge is not captured and documented. While reading the RFCs (and colour-marking, as n-o does so well) and being annoyed by the many 'forward references', I was reminded of my first reading of a Wirth writing: no need to multi-scann; written like a mathematical theorem - apparently from a mind trained in years of designing languages for single scan compilers. I look forward to the day when documentation (text to pass information between humans) is based on forms and templates with a strict syntax instead of ad-lib. Is XML something in this direction ? Can someone point me to a broad overview of PPP before I analyse the RFCs and source code ? It's called successive refinement. -- Chris Glur.

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Re: [Oberon] PPP
by Edgar＠EdgarSchwarz.de 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

peter_easthope(a)gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca wrote > A few weeks back Chris asked that the results of > my studies and tinkering with PPP be made available. > > The notes are now at a link under "Miscellaneous > Links" here. > http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/ Thanks Peter ! I added the link to your stuff on www.edgarschwarz.de/oberon. Regards, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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Ram & processors
by Gérard Meunier 06 Feb '03

06 Feb '03

Hello, I need two informations for my programs under BB: the amount of available ram and the number of processors. I think that AosBoot.memTop gives the first answer. Is there a more portable way to get this information? I don't know where I can get the second answer. AosProcessors.allProcessors seems interesting, but it is not exported. So... Thanks for clues. Gérard

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PPP
by peter_easthope＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

Chris Glur & others, A few weeks back Chris asked that the results of my studies and tinkering with PPP be made available. The notes are now at a link under "Miscellaneous Links" here. http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/ Links to the slightly modified *.Mod files are a little further down the page. In the "Notes" you will see several unresolved issues. Constructive feedback will be appreciated and I will try to continue the work. Sorry for the delay in putting up the information. Regards, Peter E. Peter Easthope http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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Re: Some questions about BB evolution.
by eas-lab＠absamail.co.za 03 Feb '03

03 Feb '03

Yuri M. Skripkah wrote: > So Linux is more conventional, has drivers for very poor hardware, and > cyrillic, it win in education in my country. I don't know anybody near, > who trying study programming with BB, like me. Did you make a Cyrillic font set for n-o ? Please post it to me. I made about 15 characters, just to confirm that it is not too difficult. It's an 'art' job, not a technical one. I'm in contact with people writing various fonts for indian languages - linux projects. But this seems very problematic. I though I could just take a machine (eg. 4Mb ram portable) to a school in india and show 2 bright kids how to 'play' with the FontEditor.Panel . And they could show their freinds, and after 3 days they would have a font set completed, and after 13 days they would have written a book. Now I find that some of the characters have 5 different horizontal levels. And if you allow for different line thicknesses, this implies at least 20 pixel heigh. And some of the chars are twice as wide as high. So you could fit perhaps 10 chars. where latin/Cyrillic would fit 4 lines of 80 chars. !! Not good ? BTW. when I was in India in 1985, I could SEE that I would be an ideal 'software factory'. Even with 'zero cost' hardware (redundant machines from 1st world) usage will not grow without applications. Net-working (email & newsgroups: fidonet is strong in ex-soviet countries) would drive usage. I remember the days when 300 Baud connection speeds were OK. I believe that a minimumal cost modem - manchester modem perhaps - could suffice for < 2400 Baud. I've tested the transmit side driver from a par.port via a few resistors: D to A; and speculate/hope that the receive side is doable with minimum cost. Since the ex-soviet countries have functioning telephone networks with low charges, minimal cost networking could build oberon user base ? Can any one remember when data was stored to audio cassettes ? I had a cassette version of a subset of Pascal from Microsoft, with a 10 page A4 pamphlet, for the Z80 based TRS. The software consisted of a small p-code interpreter, and the compiler was directly from Wirth's book. It was better than n-o, because as the source was scanned it was written to display, and just stopped at the error! I really think 'smart compilers' that claim to find multiple errors are a bluff. -- Chris Glur.

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Some questions about BB evolution.
by Yuri M. Skripkah 03 Feb '03

03 Feb '03

Hello , All. Glad to see activity in mail list - this is right sign what great work continued. I have some questions about BB. a) Aos look as good system. Thanks Pieter and others. But without application it will die. Native BB application will be late (may be...) Now primary application is Oberon system. But it not use new features from BB and still one task, one window. <b>Is anybody planing what Oberon active documents, modules etc. must (if need and explicit) have own task in BB? And visually own window like Plug-in Oberon?</b> b) Simply porting application look not reasonable - we already have BSD, Linux ,(Windows, at all) where a lot of application work fine in C/Unix environment and emulate env. is not good idea. ( Except learning purposes ) Who need Apache-featured web-server under BB if we have Apache under Unix? <b>In which fields BB application will use, as suppose it programmers?</b> If it will simply general purposes - without strong rules it will garbage bin ( Linux) and simply written on 'Pascal' ( Linux 'garbage' sometimes very useful, sure, but huge and knotty) c) This question preferably to Thomas. Build from Jan,14th have better speed. But I not understood, why program using assembler really slower than Win(tm) and X analogies. (I'm not a programmer and reading sources can't help me :() Only differences at user look is transparency. Of course, I can use more powerful CPU. But. Do You like intention make redraw window after dragging or scrolling desktop? As is in other GUIs? This setting will useful for all cases of slow or loaded CPU. I know what You very busy. This is for uncertain future. -- Best regards, Yuri, lazy user mailto:yurix@i.com.ua

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