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| Author |
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| 25 new of 198 responses total. |
keesan
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response 94 of 198:
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Nov 22 02:34 UTC 2000 |
Hi back to charcat! I have not been able to get Arachne 1.67 to switch
between the two Cyrillic fonts. Whichever one you install second is what you
are stuck with forever, even though I type in both of them on the accept
char-set line. I think it worked in version 1.60 but I cannot get that
version to work any more. Is there some other place I should be putting
information about fonts, so that the program will know to convert from Windows
CP-1251 to KOI-8 (used more in Russia)?
Jim picked out our oldest 486 computer, which has no Reset button, or
a power switch that resembles one. The ON-OFF is a large lever at the back.
This should give him a few seconds to think about what he is doing. Arachne
gets upset if you turn it off without exiting, and makes you do more
complicated things to compensate later. He got a 'bad' 120M hard drive to
work by removing UNIX from it and now it works with DOS. The computer has
a whopping 8M RAM and I figured out that to get the ISP to work with Arachne
you change the DNS numbers to the ones used by Bignet. Is there anyone good
at this who could help with the Cyrillic fonts? The author insists it works.
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keesan
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response 95 of 198:
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Nov 25 18:24 UTC 2000 |
Jim was unable to get two 40M hard drives working in a Northgate 486DX2 66
computer. He tried all the jumper settings (both work as drive 1), and did
CMOS setup. It would not recognize there was a second hard drive. Are there
controllers that cannot handle two drives? The second drive had worked
somewhere else as a second hard drive (he thinks). He tried another drive
as a second hard drive. He tried a total of three drives as 1 and 2 and the
computer only recognized drive 1.
Also does anyone know why my ATT keeps changing the floppy drive setting from
3 1/2 to 5 1/4 when I turn it off? It is not the battery. Would the problem
be in the cable, the floppy drive, or the (on-board) controller? If the
controller, we will replace the computer (we have plenty more computers).
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mcnally
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response 96 of 198:
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Nov 25 20:25 UTC 2000 |
You say it's not the battery, but it sure sounds like it's losing
the battery-backed BIOS preferences..
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keesan
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response 97 of 198:
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Nov 25 23:18 UTC 2000 |
No other settings are changing, including the time. Jim took out the battery
and measured the voltage. 'It read different on different scales - 2.5 and
1, could be low'.
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mdw
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response 98 of 198:
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Nov 26 03:17 UTC 2000 |
Were either of those "scales" a real voltmeter?
Your AT&T may have a bad clock chip, or a defective bios. Is the bios
upgradable? Is the clock chip socketed? A bad clock chip might have a
weak bit that works fine under full power, but when only powered by the
battery (typically 3.3V instead of 5V) isn't bistable anymore, and
flips. That *ought* to produce a cmos checksum error, which the bios
ought to tell you. From the sounds of it, the AT&T may predate the
common deployment of 3.5" drives, and it may have a stupid bug that
prevents them from working right in all circumstances. A bad bit in the
bios could also generate this error. Has it always had this problem?
The 40M drive problems sounds like a cabling or jumper issue. I assume
this is ST-412 compatible, not IDE, ESDI or anything else. Does a
different cable behave differently? Is the drive select set via a twist
in the cable or by jumpers on the drive? Do both positions on the cable
work? Is there any obvious damage to the cable? Also, silly question:
is the bios configured to look for two hard drives?
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keesan
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response 99 of 198:
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Nov 26 04:13 UTC 2000 |
The 'scales' were scales on a voltemeter. On the 10 volt scale it read 1,
and on the 2.5 volt scale it read 2.5, meaning it is possible that the
voltmeter needs calibrating. The date and time are correct so why do you ask
about the clock chip? The BIOS is in theory upgradable, and I have downloaded
the new BIOS, but in order for it to install itself it has to recognize one
of two possible on-board VGA chips, and the on-board VGA chips were yanked
out before Borders retired these computers so there is nothing to recognize.
The chip tells the program which of two models it is. The ATTs came with 3.5"
drives and date from about 1993. We will try other cables and floppy drives,
and a different battery, and then a different computer (we have about 10 more).
Is it possible for the battery to be low without affecting the time/date, but
low enough not to retain just that one setting for floppy drive?
The hard drives are IDE. 486 computers. The BIOS is configured for 2 hard
drives. Jim will try a different cable, nothing to lose he says (except time
that he could be working on debugging the little text editor he has been
debugging all week). One 40M drive is adequate for Arachne (5.5M is more than
enough) plus two chess programs (DOS-based) plus DOS, with 75% to spare, he
was just curious why two could not be made to work.
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scott
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response 100 of 198:
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Nov 26 15:41 UTC 2000 |
For people in the A2 area with old computers with those old 4.5V CMOS
batteries (the kind with the cable that connects to the motherboard), I'm
going to be ordering some 3-cell AA battery holders to replace a couple of
those in my own stuff. The official batteries are usually $10+ these days,
but I've found these little holders for about a buck each. Send me mail if
you want me to get some for you.
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keesan
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response 101 of 198:
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Nov 27 03:05 UTC 2000 |
Anyone want to hazard a guess why Jim's text editor, which was monochrome
for many years, today became maize and blue? He has never programmed colors
so has no idea what command he inadvertently gave it. Written in Assembler
language (not Microsoft assembler, A86, $50 to register - would anyone like
to contribute by registering JIm's editor for $5?). His editor is 4K and
shows line feeds and other binary code characters as well as doing search
and replace, overtype as if tabs were 5 spaces, and other things that MS Edit
will not do. He can find and replace UNIX characters and strange things
that make WP51 text unmodemable. No extra charge for the maize and blue
variant! Registration gets you free upgrades for at least a year (let him
know how often you want to get the upgrades, they could be once a week). I
am told Microsoft makes their beta testers pay for the privilege. Jim is not
charging beta testers and promises that there will be plenty of bugs for all.
Let him know where you would like the warning beep near the end of the
viewable line (at 64 characters, or 78, or ?). Downloadable as mb64.com
(maize and blue, 64 characters). QUick before it changes names again.
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mdw
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response 102 of 198:
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Nov 27 03:15 UTC 2000 |
Sounds to me like it's a michigan fan.
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keesan
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response 103 of 198:
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Nov 27 04:42 UTC 2000 |
MB64.COM is temporarily to be found in my home directory but will be replaced
by the non-UofM version shortly, once another bug is conquered.
The program has been rebleached.
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keesan
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response 104 of 198:
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Nov 28 21:43 UTC 2000 |
Jim's editor has been posted at his grex website www.grex.org/~jdeigert.
The colors came in when he borrowed some code from a published example.
The computer which was not recognizing the 3.5" floppy drive is now
recognizing it. Maybe it was protesting against being kept too cold.
Can anyone tell me how to make a Cyrillic e-mail into something that will be
recognized as Cyrillic by a browser (what meta tag to add to tell the browser
to accept the character set koi8-r?) Someone wrote me, apparently in
connection with some volunteer work for medical purposes.
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keesan
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response 105 of 198:
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Nov 29 20:05 UTC 2000 |
To read Cyrillic e-mail, using Netscape or Arachne, after loading Cyrillic
fonts, convert the e-mail to an html file as follows:
<html><body><meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="test/html;charset=koi8-r"></body></html> (Don't know if you really
need to put in <body></body>.
The above is for the encoding KOI8-R, used by UNIX and more common for e-mail
from Russians. For Win CP-1251, substitute for koi8-r the phrase win-1251.
Then just access the file by name.
Netscape 3 also has a 'document encoding' feature in 'options' - choose Win,
KOI, or the third 8859-5 encoding and the file will display without first
converting it to html. Netscape 4 does not seem to have this feature.
With the proper software and fonts, Cyrillic can also be read with a Hercules
Plus card. You need some way to display the Cyrillic fonts instead of the
box characters (upper ASCII).
There are roughly 10 Cyrillic encodings, most of which are no longer used,
including KOI7, CP-866 (Dos alternative).
Can anyone explain how Unicode works?
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remmers
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response 106 of 198:
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Nov 29 20:13 UTC 2000 |
How Unicode works? That's a short question with a very long answer.
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keesan
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response 107 of 198:
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Nov 29 23:18 UTC 2000 |
But this is not the short answer item, so please start answering now.
I will download and attempt to read two Russian e-mails (encoding unknown)
and come back for the answer.
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keesan
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response 108 of 198:
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Nov 30 00:39 UTC 2000 |
I read both my emails. The first was in KOI-8. So I typed a meta tag for
KOI-8 on the second one (from the same people who sent me KOI-8 yesterday and
even labelled it). It was in WIn-1251 today. I ran it through a recoder (12K
free download) and now it is in KOI-8 and I could read it and they wanted a
free translation of it for some nonprofit in Russia so I did it. I cannot
wait for Unicode to become universal. What is the 'correct' name for the
characters 128-255?
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keesan
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response 109 of 198:
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Nov 30 21:28 UTC 2000 |
Today this same person thanked me for my trnaslation, and sent me his resume
in some Cyrillic format, in WORD. I have a little program for converting WORD
to ASCII, which I will then convert to htm and guess at its being Win CP-1251
and if it is not, recode to KOI-8R. To be nice, he wrote me the main part
of the letter in Latin alphabet (French style transcription). Confusing.
Jim has found a keyboard for our Russian friends in which the Enter key is
super-large, and the backspace key is not a little arrow (which can be
confused with the arrow keys) but simply the word backspace. Now we see why
there are so many versions of keyboards. What we need is an ASCII character
for left arrow. I tried the less than sign, but both Arachne and Newdeal read
it as html code (and omit it and everything following it until the next
greater than sign).
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gull
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response 110 of 198:
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Dec 1 00:13 UTC 2000 |
There's a code to put a < in an HTML document. I think it's "<".
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keesan
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response 111 of 198:
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Dec 1 17:44 UTC 2000 |
When I simply type the < in a webpage, both lynx and netscape can deal with
them okay. Newdeal and Arachne cannot. I would think they should be able
to do so.
Last night we delivered the Russian news reading computer and copied the chess
games to it from the old computer, along with Procomm automated to dial grex.
First we checked procomm, and it would not connect to grex, which we learned
was down from 8 pm to 2 am to install the tape drive. This was unfortunate,
since I had set up Arachne to go to a special home page that I made our
Russian friends on the grex computer, with links to Russian websites. So I
typed in the URL of one site for him instead, and he happily read the Russian
article on Lieberman aloud to his wife. I put three URLS as hotkeys and wrote
down how to use them, but hopefully next time he turns on the computer and
arrows down to 'internet' and hits enter, it will dial with Arachne and go
straight to his special home page. Last night's lesson included how to use
Pg Dn (Pg Up will be for next time) and click on a link, and, most important,
HOW TO EXIT ARACHE (Alt-H, Alt-X, Y). If you do not exit before turning off
the computer, next time it asks if you want to empty the cache or exit to
DOS...., then you have several more questions to answer which he cannot
answer.
We showed him how to use the fourth of six chess programs on there, and then
attempted to teach him how to exit a chess program or start a new game. He
insisted that it was easier, although maybe not faster, to just turn off the
computer. For him, it probably is. TO exit Windows 3.1 chess took at least
five separate steps (Alt-G, X, Enter, Alt-F4, X or the mouse equivalents) and
the three other games were all different (arrow down to Q, enter, arrow down
to Q, Enter, Y, etc.) It does not seem to bother Windows if you turn it off.
Some day we may have to delete the temp directory for him. I set up Arachne
to use temp on a virtual drive and may do the same for Windows.
Making progress in the mouse department. We brought a less slippery mouse
pad that does not need to be turned over, andhe is now holding the mouse
sideways instead of upside down. A chess program that uses arrow key to move,
Del to select, Ins to place a piece was rejected - he wants all his programs
to work the same way, which means mouse.
His grandson, in 9th grade at Huron High, will show him how to use the
scrollbars and to click on links, we hope. Next time we will try to show him
how to change Cyrillic encodings, and to bake bread (Russian style rye).
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keesan
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response 112 of 198:
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Dec 1 19:35 UTC 2000 |
The author of the program that converts easily between three Cyrillic
encodings just sent me someone's program that transliterates from two of these
encodings to Latin alphabet. Can anyone explain what Lynx is using which
displays Cyrillic as the closest Latin alphabet character, but reverses upper
and lower case?
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keesan
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response 113 of 198:
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Dec 1 20:45 UTC 2000 |
OK, what is CP-1252, digital html? This is the website which crashes Arachne,
and lynx displays only code, not characters.
www.rusmir.ilm.net (same as www.geocities.com/flying_city/)
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keesan
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response 114 of 198:
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Dec 1 23:34 UTC 2000 |
Cp1252 is just Latin alphabet of some sort. This website (see previous
response) just displays as odd looking code with Lynx or Arachne, but Netscape
3.04 displays ? ?? ????????? ? ???. I was hoping to be able to fix the
English at this site (they are asking for donations of medical equipment for
a free clinic) but I really need to be able to read the Russian in order to
figure out what a curving consulting center might be. They asked for
volunteer translations as well as monetary and supply donations. If Netscape
4.08 (Win31) can handle whatever this is, I will take the time to somehow get
Cyrillic fonts into it.
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gull
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response 115 of 198:
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Dec 2 18:45 UTC 2000 |
> When I simply type the < in a webpage, both lynx and netscape can deal with
> them okay. Newdeal and Arachne cannot. I would think they should be able
> to do so.
--> They might deal with them okay, but there's no reason they *should*.
Having a single angle bracket without a matching closing bracket is not
correct HTML. That's why there's the special characters < and > to
display them.
Netscape and Lynx have a lot of behaviors that aren't strictly "correct"
because they're designed to make their best guess about the many broken web
pages out there.
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keesan
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response 116 of 198:
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Dec 2 20:41 UTC 2000 |
The Russian page that I cannot read is written in UNICODE. What does it take
to read UNICODE?
Thanks for the info about < and > .
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keesan
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response 117 of 198:
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Dec 3 17:26 UTC 2000 |
Viewed with lynx, the page is full of things like рс etc.,
which looks like the HTML code for the < sign. The author said he wrote
it in UNICODE with Microsoft Frontpage for IE. I could read it just fine on
the public library computer with the latest version of IE, but with Netscape
3 it is ? ??? ? ?? ? ? . Can I make Netscape 4.08/Win31 handle it?
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keesan
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response 118 of 198:
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Dec 3 17:49 UTC 2000 |
see czyborra.com for a long discussion of unicode, in which each character
of each alphabet in the world is encoded as 2 bytes which get compressed to
1 byte (how?).
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