Version 2.65 Release Notes

Please Note: the Spectre program disk is a 10 sector disk - you CANNOT drag a disk image to disk image to copy the entire disk. To make a backup, select all the files and drag them to the backup disk(s).

New Stuff:

Mac Plus Numeric Keypad: The Mac Plus numeric keypad is now fully supported. Many programs, especially Microsoft ones, use the keypad for commands; it now works just like a Mac Plus. (It used to just generate "ordinary" 0-9 numbers,instead of "keypad" 0-9, and the Microsoft products knew it.)Note: The numeric keypad works just the way it does on a Mac Plus! We do this correctly, the way the the Mac software expects it; often this is not what you'd expect. Please check your manuals first before sending in those bug-report FAXes...

Quick Disk Detect: In 2.3K, when you'd put a disk into the disk drive, it would first try to read it as a Spectre (Atari) type disk, then if that failed, try it as a Mac (GCR)type disk. This process took awhile.
Doug had a neat idea which we implemented, called Quick Detect. When you put a disk in, it's very quickly scanned to see if it's GCR; if so, it goes straight to Mac mode, and is "mounted" very quickly; no more delay! If not, it goes to the regular procedure, so it even has a built-in backup if the quick detect fails.

Configuration Page: Ultra neat stuff. Press HELP while in Mac mode to get to a "live" Configuration Page, where you can change things about your Spectre. It works in every mode except 832K. Just press the labelled Fx function key to change something. Currently, you can select Mac 512ke/Mac Plus mode, select if Mouse is shift button or toggle (for Stacy), select if SLM-804 via ImageWriter II emulation is on, and other things. When you're done reconfiguring, press HELP to return to Mac mode, right where you left off.

European Laser Printer Support: A long awaited improvement: you can now use the standard A4 paper size, in addition to the usual American paper sizes, with the 2.65 software.
Many of our European customers had to hand-feed paper a page at a time. This should all be taken care of now. The A4 vs. US paper is selectable in the configuration page; it defaults based on whether you have a US or non-US keyboard table in your system.

Right Mouse Button: You can now make the right mouse button either be a SHIFT key (which is NEAT for shift-clicking lists of things, or groups of files), OR be a "toggle" for the mouse button. The second option is absolutely great for Stacy running in Mac mode; it's hard "dragging" files with the trackball setup. To "drag" a file, just right-click on it; the Stacy now thinks you're holding the mouse button down. Move to where you want to drag the file to,and click again with either button. It lets go. Easy!

Mac Plus Mode now Default: In 2.3K, we gave a "toggle" to make your Mac think it was a full Mac Plus, instead of a Mac 512ke. This was for programs like FileMaker and Prodigy, that explicitly check for you running on a Plus instead of the older machine. Anyway, we've gone ahead and made Mac Plus mode default now. Should any of your programs have a problem with that (most unlikely), just switch it back with the new Configuration Page.
Note: The only exception to booting as a Mac Plus is when you are using System 6.0.4, which always configures your machine as a 512ke.

Extended Parameter RAM: The new, larger Extended Parameter RAM is now fully supported by the Spectre.

Moniterm: For those of you with Moniterm monitors, you already know that's about the sweetest thing to mix with the Spectre.

Our 2.3K worked with the pre-release Moniterm driver (the one that goes into your AUTO folder), but not with the 1.0 driver. Someone at Atari changed physbase in the 1.0 version. Anyway, we've now compensated and now Spectre can even run with Moniterm 1.0. (I wouldn't recommend the 1.0 driver: it breaks other programs, too. Get the new 1.1.) It also works with 1.1.

Startup (Booting): The boot procedure has been changed to be even more flexible. If you start up and don't have "Boot from HD" selected, and go into Mac mode, it'll blink a question mark at you until you insert a floppy, or press F3-F10 for hard disk "insert" (if the floppy is write protected, be sure to press F1/F2 to tell the Spectre).
If you start up and have "Boot from HD" selected, if your first hard disk partition isn't bootable, you'll get the blinking question mark, then you can press F1-F10 to boot from any floppy or bootable hard disk partition. This is extremely useful for those of us who regularly use different System/Finders;just put them in different partitions, and boot off of whichever you need!
If you have "Automount HD" selected, it will still mount all the unmounted partitions. A reboot using ALT-UNDO, or "RESTART" from the SHUTDOWN or System Error dialog will also get you a flashing question mark, except when you have "Boot from HD" selected and your first selected hard disk partition is bootable.
Note: RESTART from the "Special" menu DOES NOT WORK; the Mac code executes a "hard reset" on the ST's hardware, sending it to the moon. We're trying.

60 hz VBL: Now, your benchmark programs should run accurately, all else being equal, and your sound should sound right, not 7/6 too fast. Many, many people, especially Mark Booth, asked for sound to "sound right", not higher-pitched than normal.

Xon/Xoff Serial Support: The serial driver now supports Apple protocol Xon/Xoff and RTS/CTS, so programs using that for modem transfers ought to work correctly now.

True Break: Terminal programs, if they allow the option (some don't), can now generate a true serial "BREAK".

Fixes and Repairs:

Word 3.02: We found a long-term Mac memory management bug (readingh from 0) that was the cause of Word 3.02, Multifinder, and some other programs running out of memory. These are all fixed now. Word 3.02 used to die in "page preview"; no more.

MultiFinder: No need to be redundant. Remember those irritating "Out of Memory" messages in MultiFinder, the Desk Accessory foulups, and whatnot? They're gone. You can now consider MultiFinder to be up and stable for all practical purposes.
Do be careful. Even the most fanatical of Mac users exercises caution with MultiFinder. (My friend Alex calls it "MultiCrasher"). Apple's gradually improved it from its debut version; the 6.0.4 version seems to work pretty darn well.

MultiFinder Flashing A/B: Also, remember when MultiFinder would go look in both floppy drives, making you wait for the GCR to conclude that the (nonexistent) disks weren't really there? That's fixed, too. Now you can go straight to it. (Use either Set Startup to install MultiFinder, or CTRL-ALT-click on MultiFinder to switch-launch it.)

No More Mouse Locks: Used to be if you wiggled the mouse during bootup at just a critical point, it would "lock up". The machine would start and run, but the mouse and keyboard wouldn't work. Now it's fixed.

SLM-804 Emulator Tall Adjusted: Tall Adjusted printing on the SLM804 under our Imagewriter emulation is now fixed: there aren't white lines scattered through it.

Slow SCSI: Many hard disks, mostly Seagate "N" series with integral controllers (277N, 296N) cannot handle the rate at which we drive the hard disk over the SCSI bus. For them, we implemented the "Slow SCSI", that slows them down until they work. Over time, we've found that Slow SCSI was a bit too conservative, and thus have sped it up to some degree.

Note: For you accelerator fiends: You may have to go to Slow SCSI if your system was borderline before, as you'll be hammering in SCSI commands much faster.

Another Note: A few (not many) files are stored "odd aligned"; this means they are read or written at odd addresses. The Atari DMA disk hardware will not read/write to odd addresses, so we had to do one of our fancier hacks to compensate. It slows things down, however. If you run into this, it will seem that copy speed has slowed to mud. This is not a bug; this is the Mac OS asking the Atari to do something it can't, and we have to compensate.
I have found this most often in the System file and in HyperCard. Switcher used to load odd-aligned, but is seldom used. Please don't confuse this with the Slow SCSI bug.

ALT-F1 / ALT-F2: ALT-F1 and ALT-F2 no longer "instant mount" your floppy into GCR mode. They also never worked quite right. They're also not needed now that Quick Disk Detect is in there.
They tripped up something you need: CTRL-ALT-F1/F2 rebuild the desktop on a floppy, and are sometimes needed. So this option was taken out. (You won't miss it).

6.O.x Beeps: We're most of the way towards full support of the selectable system beeps in system 6.0.2/3/4. However, there's a fairly nasty IPL check in there causing some trouble. As a temporary measure, we've added an option to force all System Beeps (like error alerts) to the plain, normal system beep you're used to (like on powerup). That way you at least get a beep, which is better than being beaten with a stick and having no beep at all.
This means the Sound control panel CDEV temporarily doesn't support the different beep types. Wait until 3.0, ok? SoundMaster WILL NOT override the system beep in this case, because of how we had to do it.
This special, temporary patch is selected with "Sound - 6.0.x" under the Goodies menu. We've concluded that 22 khz sound can't be done without hardware support, like the STe's DMA sound; 11 khz slows things down enough as is... Anyway, if you are running System 6.0.x, and want System Beeps, just select "Sound- 6.0.x", and we'll take care of it for you.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes: A pile of bug fixes were made, to just about all portions of the program, from Zeus to the starter to... Some bugs date back to Spectre 1.51 days,or possibly earlier. (The fixes were the result of a younger soul going over code written by someone heading for senility.) The GCR formatter lost a bug that might cause it to hang forever, with the head stepping back and forth; the Zeus handler learned how to handle MOVE.L #'NIL!', 0: and so forth, and so on, and on Donner,on Blitzen.
Other changes to the program, like 60 hz VBL at IPL 6 instead of 70 hz at IPL 4, made Think's Pascal work.
In general, whenever we fix one program that fails because of a bug, we fix a lot of programs at the same time. We expect our compatibility to be much improved over the last version. Check out the new Compatibility List for all the programs now working!
Please bear in mind that Zeus in particular is a fix for Mac programs making terrible mistakes, and it's very hard to restart a completely crashed machine (which is what a zerostore actually causes). Probably every time you use the Spectre seriously, you hammer on the Zeus handler 10 to 20 times (just "starting up" gives you several!); get a bad program, and it can be in the thousands.  Yet "it keeps on ticking".  When Zeus finds something it doesn't know how to handle, it has the decency to crash - thus let you know there's a case it can't handle.  Hence, what fails is usually the Mac program, and our error recovery can't handle the problem; the Spectre  program didn't fail.  It just didn't know waht else to do.

     In other words:  "Chewie, it's not my fault!"



Scanned and Edited by : Doctor Clu

Last update  September 15, 2000