Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I was in the Memory Location while you were in action.  It was a
    vicarious thrill.  One gets so few opportunities to go out and buy the
    whole shooting match (the rest of us have to sneak one program at a
    time past our wives ;^).  In spite of the infant mortality, have
    fun and good luck. 

    Just curious, how much did the whole shootin match cost?  Did you
    get any kind of a VOLUME discount?
    

    re: .1--Thanks, Bill.  The only technical person I talked to during
    my "spree" was a guy whose name I didn't get, but who said he was
    from BBN.  That couldn't be you, could it?  He told me I ought to
    get something for my wife, too.
    
    re: .2--The total was $5040, including Massachusetts taxes.  Don
    gave me about 10% off of the software's list prices, then took $342.50
    off the total.  However, I had bought a printer there a few weeks
    before, so I may have gotten a bigger break because I am now a "regular
    customer".     
    
    I still can't believe I finally got this thing, after waiting 18
    months.
        John Sauter

I find the people at the Memory Location nice,
but the prices stiff at best.  I wonder how much the $5040 worth of stuff
would have cost from ABEL?  Of course, this lacks support... but I bet
it would only be about 60% of $5040.  Ouch!

    My wife brought home a replacement system box last night.  It seems
    to work fine.  She also picked up a printer cable--the printer now
    works except for skipping some space when printing graphics (I haven't
    tried text yet).  I remember a note in the manual about this, and
    also some information in this conference.  When I get some time
    I'll see about fixing the skipping.  I also plan to write a full-
    resolution preferences driver for it, to improve the appearance
    of sheet music.  That will take yet more time: I haven't even
    unwrapped the C compiler yet.
    
    The package might have cost less from Abel, but would it have been
    as easy to exchange a faulty system box?  I'm sure they'd have made
    the exchange, but probably not so quickly.  I plan to transfer all
    of my household computing to this system, so I want a nearby source
    of help in case it fails.
    
    By the way, I'm not as wealthy (or as free-spending) as this price
    makes me sound.  As I told Don, this represents two Christmases, two
    birthdays, and one IRS refund check.
        John Sauter 

    Speaking of printing sheet music...
    
    	Are you trying to improve the appearence from DMCS??   Good
    Luck!  I've tried a bunch of things, and most of them failed miserably!
    Seems that dmcs tries to do things in a pixel based manner, and
    doesn't pay any attention to the printer driver.
    
    You can make printer drivers easy through a PD tool PRTDRVGEN (on
    fish, but I can download if not already avail on-line)
    
    One other tool of interest is a little thingie posted to usenet,
    and on a fihs disk that intercepts the printer commands from the
    application, and allows you to change the printers "interpretation"
    (For lack of a better description) before the printer driver sees
    the rasterport.  I think its also on line...if it is, i'll dump
    it into MPGS::USER3:[BAEDER.AMIGA]
    
    (I can also try to give you more help offline)
    
    scott.
    

    I haven't yet tried printing anything from DMCS.  (So many things
    to try, so little time!)  Thanks for the warnings, and the advice.
        John Sauter

    I print from DMCS and I works perfectly (Brother printer w/ Epson
    driver).  Maybe DMCS is written for Epson type printers.

    sure it works, 
    
    BUT is the quality (size of notes, size of staffs,
    thickness of all lines of even width, etc...) acceptable???
    Can you scale the size of the output easily???             
    
    If you gave the output to a musician, would he think it came from
    a TOY! (unfortuantely, I think the answer is yes!)  Too bad the
    amiga doesn't have a better music publishing system...I think it
    would be a good complement to the Midi programs out there.
    
    In general, it seems to be very inflexable...thats all I meant...
    Using some of these "tools", yo can adjust things to make full use
    of the printers resolution, and scale the music output...
                                                  
    PS. The citezen 120 IS Epson compatable!

    For what it's worth, Commodore is supposed to be re-writing all
    the Preferences printer drivers so that they do some intelligent
    dithering rather than a straight bit-map.  
    
    Some programs, such as VisaWrite, have done custom drivers so that
    the large fonts don't look like dinosaur footprints.
    
    The new printer drivers are due out in December, along with some
    file system improvements.

    (FLAME ON) - (But I promise this is the last on this from me!)
    
    Thats great to hear, but DMCS is still going to be brain dead! 
    It makes the assumption that the size of the rasterport is related
    to the page size, and resolution, etc.  So if you tell it the "raster
    port" is x pixels wide, it uses that to determine spacing of staff
    lines, size of the notes, etc.  Then printer drivers take over,
    and try to map the rasterport to the page.  This gets in the way
    of having the control necessary to produce quality output!    
    
    FLAME OFF
    
    Sorry to rant and rave, but for the money, I expected more!

I finally got time enough to print the documentation for Dave Wecker's
    VT100 program from Fish #55.  I got Kermit running and moved some
    documentation files to the VAX.  To celebrate I then SET HOST to
    the VAXstation under my desk and fired up NOTES.  I haven't got
    the keypad figured out yet, but I am typing this note from home
    on my Amiga.  There's still a lot to read (the MIDI documentation
    is Greek to me) and lots more experiments to do, but I am making
    progress!  Maybe this weekend I'll try printing music from DMCS
    so I can respond to the more recent replies.
        John Sauter

    Can you provide some information about your hard disk, and about hard
    disks for the A2000 in general?  You got the Commadore controller and
    an ST506 type disk, right?  What brand is the disk?  What was its cost?
    What alternatives did you see to choose from?

    I was looking at the Abel hardware list to see what is available.  All
    the normal hard drives they carry seem to come with a controller,
    except the 20meg from CSA for $745.  (They also list a Hd. Drive Data
    Card Option, but I don't know what this is.)  Since a Supra 20meg drive
    for the A1000 is $723, and the A2000 controller is $280, I would expect
    to be able to get a 20meg drive without controller for something less
    than $700.  Is Abel just short of peripherals for the A2000?

	Paul

    Here are the prices on my invoice:
    
    A2090 hard disk controller, $399
    ST-251 Hard disk,           $500
    
    The ST-251 is a 40 MB hard drive with an ST506 interface.
    I don't remember the name of the manufacturer, or the access time
    but I do remember that the same disk with a SCSI interface is
    the same price.
    
    The controller has two ST506 ports and one SCSI port.  The SCSI
    port, unlike the ST506 ports, can be daisy-chained.
    
    If you want a hard drive without a controller, check out Memory
    Location.  My hard drive came in but not the controller, so I am
    still without.
        John Sauter

    Re: .-1

    Interesting!  $500 for a 40meg disk is starting to look more
    attractive.  Add on $280 for the controller (Abel price) and you get
    40megs for a lot less than anything I have heard of for the A1000.  I
    wonder why Abel has no similar disks?

    Question for someone:  I have gotten the impression that SCSI is better
    (performance) than ST506.  With the A2090 controller which supports
    both, would there be any reason to go with ST506?  It would save the
    SCSI port for something else, but if it can be daisy chained that
    doesn't seem to be significant.

	Paul

    At the time I was in Memory Location, the disks that supported SCSI
    also supported ST506, with the same performance specifications.
    I suspect these drives were engineered for ST506, then retrofitted
    with SCSI.  A drive engineered for SCSI might have better performance.
        John Sauter

    Dedicated SCSI drives supposedly yield about twice the performance.
    The Supradrive 20M contains a Microsci that is true SCSI. As you
    can get 20M 3.5 inch ST-506 drives for much less, I submit you do
    pay more. There are $99 converters out there which connect SCSI
    to ST506. They obviously won't get more performance than ST506.
    Maybe they are simply selling cheaper ST506 drives and swallowing
    the $99 (probably $60 to them).

    Yesterday my wife went to Memory Location and picked up the hard
    disk (a Seagate 40MB), its controller, and some home financial
    software.  With it she got a copy of the dealer workbench disk,
    which contains the hard disk driver, and a floppy of hard disk
    software.  Very little came with the hard disk in the way of
    instructions--I suspect they pushed this product out the door as
    soon as the hardware was ready.
    
    Curiously, when I looked at the system box last night I discovered
    an additional floppy drive had been installed in it.  My wife thought
    that it came with the hard disk, but that doesn't seem reasonable.
    She assures me that she didn't pay for it.  Maybe The Memory Location
    tossed it in as an apology for making me wait much longer for the
    hard disk than they had promised.
    
    The disk and card had been installed at Memory Location, and by
    the time I got home last night my wife had set the system up and
    was nearly all the way through the hand-written instructions.
    I completed the formatting and copied the software from the dealer
    disks onto the hard disk.  I then copied the additional fonts from
    the DMCS disk and my new printer driver from the old WB disk.  In
    trying to enable the new printer driver I discovered that there
    was no Preferences program, so I copied that from the old WB disk,
    also.
    
    I have copied DMCS to the hard disk, and I can run it from there
    but it doesn't recognize DF1: or DH0:.  I plan to look into that
    when I get time.  I didn't have much time last night because my
    wife came home and wanted to try out the home financial software.
    She worked with it until midnight, and I think she made considerable
    progress in getting our budget, etc., moved over.
    
    Tonight, if I can get close to the system, I will try to get more
    software loaded onto the disk, and see if I can't make DMCS work
    better on it.
    
    The IBM card isn't in yet, but I'm in no great hurry for it.
        John Sauter

    John:
    
    You can use a file editor such as 'NewZap' to go into the Electronic
    Arts programs that don't offer dh0: buttons and edit the file to
    change df1: into dh0:.  I've done this on all my EA programs on
    the hard drive.
    
    Some newer, smarter programs are offering intelligent file requestors
    that first poll the mounted devices, and offer a file requestor
    that reflects only the mounted devices.  CLImate does this.
    
    If you want NewZap, let me know and I'll post it.
    
    Ed.
    

    NewZap V3.1 is on Pauly"amiga"::

    re.18 I have DMCS running from my Supra HardDisk.  I put the music and
    the instruments in subdirectories called Music and Instruments.
    That seems to be the default location.  I haven't had any problems
    accessing DF1: or Dh0:.  I don't have NewZap.

    You're right about DMCS; I was thinking of DPaint, which puts up
    a requestor button called 'dh:'  This button must be edited to 'dh0:'
    

    I've got requestors for DF1 and DH0, but they are dim and can't
    be selected.  Maybe I made some sort of cockpit error--I'll try
    it again (and read the manual, too: maybe it says something about
    installing on a hard disk).
        John Sauter

    for dpaint try the assignment as..
    ASSIGN "DPAINT:"  hdDrive:DPAINT
    this works on dpaintII