Re: general newbie questioins about AW5

[apple2pd@ground.ecn.uiowa.edu (ground.ecn AppleII Librarian)]

In article <1ebkgi3.1yoz0171e4xy0kN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz>,
David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
>John King <joki@eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>> On the IIgs I had to disable the ultramacros, otherwise it would crash to
>> the monitor.
>
>This might be due to AppleTalk being enabled.  UltraMacros is completely
>incompatible with AppleTalk, and crashes badly if you have both of them
>enabled at the same time.
>
>Since I was using AppleTalk for printing, this means I never bothered
>trying to use UltraMacros (apart from verifying that it crashed).  I
>still can't understand why the Timeout folks never fixed this
>compatibility issue.
>

Correct, but not so true.  I use AppleWorks/Ultramacros with my IIes,
MacLCs w/IIe, and IIGS (Rom 1) on a appletalk network (server & printer)
every day.  I had to patch Aplworks.system (one or two byte patch) to
enable UltraMacros with Appletalk, but it works flawlessly on the IIe and
MacLC w/IIe.  The IIgs presents only a small reluctance, but is stable and
flawless once AW is running.  (Sometimes AW5.1 will drop into monitor once
AW finishing loading, just after the ultramacros loaded message.  Just
keep rebooting until AW5.1 loads successfully. Or, run Proterm 3.1 first,
quit PT3, then run AW5.  AW5 loads correctly after PT3 for some reason
that I haven't divined.  My candidates are interrupts, and/or some bank
register isn't set correctly for handling interrupts.

I'll have to hunt for the patch.  The patch that comes with AW (RFP =
Randy's Free Patcher) does _not_ seem to work, and is in fact incompatible
with the patch I use.  I haven't tried the Texas II patcher, but I don't
think it allows Ultramacros with Appletalk either.  (I think the official
rule from Texas II is not to use Appletalk with Ultramacros.)

But, for the record, AW3.x - AW5.1, can be patched to work very well with
Ultramacros enabled and using Appletalk for servers and printers.  I have
never used anything but network printers with AW at work.  Only the IIgs
is a little bit persnickity (sp? Amer. slang), and a work around is easy.

If someone wants to try appletalk/ultramacros in AW5, email me for the
patch and I'll go find it again.  It should also be on
ground.ecn.uiowa.edu (try apple2/MiscInfo folder or
apple2/apple8/Appleworks folder).  If there is enough interest, I'll
repost the patch on csa2 also.  Nathan Mates was interested in fixing the
UM/ultramacros conflict in AW, but I don't think he ever did find the
problem before he left the A2 world.  Just checked ground and found the
patch in apple2/MiscInfo/Appleworks/aw4.atalk file.  In Aplworks.system
find the sequence EE 96 0A  (around byte offest +142B in AW4 and close to
that in AW5 if I remember correctly) and change EE to 2C .

Good luck!

  --Steve


-- 

 --Steve  (apple2pd@ground.ecn.uiowa.edu)