Mousehole Report

By Rusty Hodge, Mousehole BBS

Happy New Year!

This should be an exciting year for MacProducts. The MacPlus should be available any day now with 1-meg of RAM, 800k drives and a SCSI (say: Scuzzy) interface on the back. MacWorkStation is on its way and hopefully "Jonathan" will be announced. (Jonathan is supposedly a 3-piece Mac, with seperate Keyboard, CPU and Monitor. Rumor has it that there will be an optional 17-inch monitor for it!) [Rusty, I heard the Jonathan won't appear till 1987. And the MacPlus upgrade requires a new case back because the serial ports have been changed to round type connectors to make room for the SCSI interface, a logic board swap because of the new arrangement of daughter boards for up to 4 meg, new ROMS and maybe 800K drives? Could be expensive! -Ed.]

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Finder 5.0-HFS

The Bitman

The new finder is very nice, some hidden functions are even included.. Using the new 5.0 version, with the New system, that contain's HFS 1.0, or the HARDDRIVE 20 driver, you should be able to use the heirarcheal structure on your harddrive and your floppy without the new roms, the new roms will just make your floppies bootable. With the new finder, select erase disk, hold down your option key, and click initalize, keep the option key held down until the disk is complete, now that floppy has HFS installed, you can verify this by noticing in the upper left, below the close box, a black dot to the very left.. The disk will not boot, but it will contain the HFS structure on it, also, there is a way to make an existing disk contain HFS, but I forgot how... something again to do with option key. Developer should be able to get the new roms, can't really say anything now.

Initializing a Floppy for HFS

DON L

To init a floppy you need the file HARD DISK 20 on your boot disk. You'll get a message something like HARD DISK STARTUP below the WELCOME TO MACINTOSH message if you do. Then keep the option key down until initialization is complete. Now is there really a way to convert a MFS disk to an HFS disk without reformatting? It would sure make life easier if there is.

Ant Killer

Hi there, well here's something I didn't know till last night. The new System/Finder, 5.0, (at least the copy I got) won't initialize a disk unless you've got a 512k! I tried with my 128k with the option key & without it, but it just wouldn't work, I'd always get a initialization failed(or something like that) and it would spit the disk out.

Mike Steiner

When you open a locked document from the HFS desktop, it tells you that the document is locked and you won't be able to save any changes. If the document is a BASIC program, (MS BASIC) you will be able to save, regardless of the message. When using the files$ (1) function with HFS, the string returned is the name of the disk and file. All intermediate folders are not identified. That means that if the file is in a folder, you will not be able to identify it because the filename returned by files$(1) is diskname:filename and BASIC will not find the file. Likewise, when saving a file using file$(0) to specify the filename, it will be saved in the disk window regardless of the folders you specify. Also, when opening a file whose name is written into the program, such as OPEN FILENAME$ FOR INPUT AS #1 if the file is not in the same heirarchy as BASIC (not the BASIC program), BASIC will not find it.

Slow DA's on HD-20

Jim Reekes

Has anyone else notice how slow the DA's run on the Apple HD20? Open the Scrapbook, then click on the gray area of the scroll bar. Wait... Wait.... and then wait for it to respond and update the window. This is also the case with the Note Pad, and any other DA. On the Note Pad, open note page #1, then click on the folded corner, wait....wait....and then wait Finally it'll page and update that window. This is on a HD20 with about 3megs of software and about ten DA's installed. And what's this problem about protected software using the attribute file bits? I hear that HFS uses them for different reasons now. This makes software protection schemes using this, un-usable on the HD20! Another problem I've found with file utilities on the HD20. Don't use 'em. Most of them don't recognize the HD20 formate anyway. But if it does, don't trust it. MacZap just "ZAPed" the HD20 into bit-heaven. It then became unusable! Thanks to a "hidden" utility found in the HD20 test program. Open the tester, type "cntrl-D". WOW!!! Now set the "distructive test" button to on. Proceed to test the drive. Sometimes you'll have to switch the drive and the Mac on and off again, but this recovered the HD20 to an "unreadable" state so that I could at least formate it and start over. Whew...

KATZ

I just recieved my HD 20 today and I am finding a lot of software that needs to be changed to work correctly. Another problem if you are not using the HD 20 , Finder 4.1 will not recognize the external drive. And Apple recommends not using Finder 5.0 on floppies so whats the solution? Also none of the disk copy utilities will work correctly from HD 20.

Hacking into the HD-20

JIM REEKES

Just got a few new "hacking" tools for the HD20. FEdit 3.21 (can view the HD20); F/DA Mover 2.5 Backup DA (a DA that will backup the HD20?); HD Diag (diagnostic program used in dev. by Nisha and Rodime, this puppie can read/write any bit on the HD20. A note about the HD Diag says "Do not use Init Mac Dir or the Init Spare Table unless you've had a personal discussion with R. Mohme). Also, what's the story behind RENE'? That's the name of the device driver for the HD20. I heard something about this girl who liked to party with software engineers. Can anyone fill us in on this?

Monster Mac & HD 20

MACOWACO

Yes, Levco Monsters DO work with Apples HD20. It seems the earlier versions of the software had problems. The released stuff works fine. Levco tells me their hard disk product IS ready to go. They are only awaiting licensing of the software from Apple. Apple won't release the software till after their product hits the streets. They tell me that their disk interface will be the fastest route, but the user only notices the speed if there is constant access to the disk. Don't forget you got to have a monster to use their interface. With all the RAM the disk rarely spins for resources. Why buy their product? I asked. They say it will be much cheaper to go with it and the low cost PC hard disks out there than with Apple's. I also hear rumors about an internal 20 meg HD from Levco.

Hyper Surprize

RUSTY HODGE

General Computer is planning on introducing something "really fantastic" at the San Fransisco Mac Expo. This might be the rumored clip-on RAM upgrade.

Multi-mac

THE ATOM

Been playing around with this progam a while and discovered a few more nice features.... Lazy menus-> sets it up like GEM/Amiga. The menu pops up when the mouse is in the menu bar, then you point to the menu item and click to select it. Downloaded a few things from the Mousehole Download, and with Versaterm, Macpaint, and Finder installed, I could start a download, go to the finder, and see the file appear on the desktop and watch the free space(at the top of the window) go down as the file was downloaded. NICE! Also booted up Paint while it was downloading a file in the background and tried to draw some stuff. Slowed paint down quite a bit, but of course I had Versaterm set at 100% priority Good program.

(MultiMac will not work on the Tecmar MacDrive or the Apple HD-20, Hyperdrive and possibly all the other hard disks...)

800K DRIVES

MACGEORGE

Got my hands on a Taiwan Mac 800K drive over the weekend. Boots to a 800k formatted floppy in the external. Reads 400k Mac disks CopyII Mac functioned on Pinball, MacPaint took 9 alligators as to 15 on the Apple 3.5". System software was standard 4.1 updates. List price is suppose to be $399 ( Apple's is gonna be $695 ) I couldn't find a manufacturer name on the disk assembly, but all the IC's were Toshiba. This was the first shipment, so I had to return the drive today, but using an 800k drive was nice. Any Mac built after March '85 should be compatable with it ( that's when they changed the ROM's ). MacG.

(It is also possible to hook up a Unidisk 3.5 to a Mac with Rev. B. ROMS, all you need is a standard Mac drive cable and attach it to the drive in the Unidisk, bypassing the Unidisk controller board inside the Unidisk case. Apple has been shipping Unidisk 3.5 "service" drives on Mac internal drive mounting brackets since November! - Rusty)

Developer's Converence

Micro Ghoul

How many of you are planning on going to the Jan. 14-15th developer's conference up at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco? Maybe we can set something up. [Why don't they tell us about these things? I'm a developer and heard nothing about it! -Ed.]

Multi-Tasking Not For Mac

Bob Denny

The Mac as it is now will never be acceptable as a multi-tasker for lots of reasons. Strong statement? When I see a banker or documentation person at an aerospace outfit using a Mac and trusting it while multi-tasking, I'll eat my ... (use your imagination). Far more crude machines than the Mac are being used by just such folks in just that way, why not Mac? The reason is ... memory management ... experienced programmers (not wearing suits and ties!) ... sigh!