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From: c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (Warner Young (WHY))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: PC DITTO REVISION 3.0
Message-ID: <5262@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 8-Dec-87 14:04:05 EST
Article-I.D.: zen.5262
Posted: Tue Dec  8 14:04:05 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 12:20:39 EST
Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu
Reply-To: c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (Warner Young (WHY))
Organization: Safety Seal Review Board
Lines: 61
Keywords: good revision free prompt etc.

[Wokka wokka wokka wokka...]  [GULP!]

	Once again, the Safety Seal strikes.  Yes, this means that pc-Ditto
v 3.0 has arrived!  The immediate consequence is a mini-review:

	PCD (as I will call it) v3 comes with two sheets of paper about the
bug fixes and enhancements in it, so I'll make it easy on myself and just
list these (with comments):

1)	PCD v2 used to have (very rarely) problems booting an MS-DOS disk.
	Sometimes it couldn't format a disk correctly, and copying with
	*.* sometimes corrupted the files or the disk.  [I've never yet run
	into these problems on either version.]

2)	PCD v2 failed on trying to access any hard disk partition above
	D:.  This has now been fixed.  [Without my hard disk, I cannot
	verify this.]

3)	PCD v3 now runs correctly with the Mega's.

4)	Under PCD v2, self-booting disks would not autoboot.  Fixed.

5)	RS-232 use sometimes locked up ST on old version.  Fixed.

6)	PCD v3 NOW WORKS WITH MONOCHROME!  You can "simulate" either IBM
	mono or color on the Atari mono screen.  It looks to me like the
	text font used for color is used here, but stretched out vertically,
	so that there are blank lines interleaved in the text.

7)	When you run PCD now, it will capture the time and date from TOS,
	so you don't HAVE to set it.

8)	And now, the mouse is supported.  Either of two mouse modes can be
	chosen:  Microsoft or Generic.  (Or it can be turned off.)  The
	Generic mouse merely generates cursor keystrokes when you move the
	mouse, and each button can be assigned to a character, so a button-
	click generates that.  The Microsoft mode requires a mouse driver
	(provided), and will allow the use of things like GEM and Windows
	now (though I have real doubts about running things like that at
	the speed PCD provides).


	Overall, I like it.  The revision was free, and mailed promptly.
There were README files on the disk which also cleared up problems such as
how to format 80-track single-sided disks.  And the pc_ddrv file allows
reading GEMDOS format disks (82-track, 10 sectors, too).
	The one big problem with pc-Ditto right now is speed.  I bought it
for a specific purpose (I needed to run some IBM programs to do homework
in a class), but aside from that, I'm not positive what benefits it
provides over the ST, especially now that the range of software has
expanded so much for the ST.

	It's up to you, though.  If you need it, it works well.

Disclaimer:  I'm not associated with		 \  /\   /arner
	the latest revision of SANITY.		  \/  \_/
Address: ucbvax!dorothy!c9c-eh			        |oung
	 c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU		     \__|

Warp 10:  it's not just a good idea,
	it's the LAW!