9640News

Oh, that's not a function key. Just press L to Login. Beery

OK, at that point, there are no function keys active. You, or a caller, needs to be logged in first before any function keys are active.

Function keys did not change. Are you trying at the main menu, or somewhere else?

Directory Manager is Clint Pulley's Disk Manager program (DM is typical program name) for running from MDOS. The program is written in c. Right now, it will catalog 750 files off the TIPI. Takes a bit of time to pull up that large of file listing, but it does. I am not sure at this point if I have pushed it too far for the other buffers like file copying until some other underlying code is working. Beery

Greg, Let me know if this fixes the multiple displays for the logging in triplicate prompt issue to the AfterHours version of your BBS from The Keep. I also included the source file (MAINMENU) if you and/or Wolfgang update your files. Beery AfterHours20201213.zip

And now, I can get a listing of at least 500 files. Looks like something in the upgrade process locked something on the TIPI side. It would still load files, but would not give me a directory listing. After rebooting the PI, all is well. Beery

Matt, Just a head's up on something I saw. I updated the TIPI last night and had been working on Directory Manager. I was beginning to think I had some bad source until I went back and retested an unmodified version of Directory Manager and it would lock up as well. I went into the tipi logs, and the last thing it recorded in the log files, was my loading of TIPICFG last night right before the update. After that, it stopped logging. I did not reboot the TIPI last night. After rebooting the TIPI, now at least an unmodified version of Directory Manager is giving me a listing of 128 files and the modified version has successfully listed a directory with 500 files. Beery

I am retesting the 256 and 500 filecounts. Turned out the latest TIPI upgrade stopped logging, and I needed to reboot the TIPI from TIPICFG as it would not even get a directory listing on an unmodified version of the program. This has been a fun challenge <grin> Beery

I think Tim pointed me in the right direction. The !MAKEFILE was assembling some older source before compiling code to source. After trying filecounts of 256 and 500 which both crashed, I am now trying 150 files. Starting to look like Directory Manager has pretty much maxed out available memory without rewriting the directory listing code. Beery

I asked Matt about that last night and he said there wasn’t anything he was aware. I know I have a separate DIR utility that can do a full read of all 3000+ the files, but it has no file management like Directory Manager. I was concerned about the buffer overrun myself, so I had looked at the where the program ended, and the free space down from the workspace, and subtracted out a 16 sector buffer for file copying, and there could have been room for upwards of 750 files. However, since it stops at 128, something else must be going on that has me stumped. DM2K I think gives me about 240’ish files and directories. Thanks for looking at the code. Beery

I'm hoping there are some "c" programmers out there that can take a look at the 2.63t DSK image above and have some comments. On about line 431 in DM1_C, there is a statement: while(nfiles<128) I have tried changing 128 to 500 so that while getting a directory on the TIPI with a folder having a large number of files, it may be able to get a larger file listing. Thus far, changing that 128 still only gets me 128 files. I'm not a C or c programmer, so if someone can look over that piece of code and see something obvious, it would be appreciated. I have copied two of the files below that should be viewable with TIDRI/TIIMAGETOOL so the whole DSK file would not have to be downloaded. Thanks for any help. Beery DM1_C DM2_C

Thanks Matt.

It should have only sent the sequence once as I had to do that to deal with the Windows telnet client to put it in full duplex mode. Ah, I know what it is now. Your side sent some characters, and I looped it back to to resending that sequence as it is interpreting whatever codes it is sending, as individual characters. I'll try and get a special release out for you this evening. Beery

This is a complete package with a 2 byte change to the source files to force the caller to select either 40, 64, or 80 column in the event their terminal sends some handshaking characters that blows past the selection. Wolfgang, Greg had this issue since he was opening a connection over to his BBS. Beery AfterHoursDistribution.zip

I think use Program Edit mode of MyWord.

Thanks for the files. It looks like you have Tim's latest DSK (2.63) image, which I am hoping, has everything in one neat package with the TIC compiler and other tools needed to assemble a clean package. I found a hard code value of 128 for number of files it will list, and then what looks to be a routine buffer = malloc(BUFSIZE) and another area where Directory Manager looks to be buffering 16 sectors for file copies. I'm going to play with the program and see what happens if I tell it to give a listing for a sub directory that may have 3000 files. I suspect at some point it will crash, and if my memory is correct with the "c" language, it will crash over-writing the program from the stack down in memory. if it does, then I will see how many files (500, 1000, 2000, etc.) it takes before it crashes.

I looked on WHT and while the messages are there, there is not a file subdirectory like there is for the TI group. Thanks for the notes on the specific version of TIC. I know I have the source at home as I downloaded everything from the group, but was hoping to look over the code to see how much space Clint had available if the buffer could be expanded to include more files.

I know I have seen it somewhere, likely I have it at home from the file dump of the Yahoo Geneve library. Does someone have the c source code to the latest version of Directory Manager? Thanks. Beery

Fred, I'm starting to get some really great use of DM2K with the Geneve on the GPL/TI-99-4A side of things using the TIPI. Something I have seen, and I understand why it happens and it may not be addressable, is that on the TIPI, I have one directory that has 3000+ files. DM2K can only give me a directory listing of about 260 entries. In all truthfulness, any management I have done in the past on this directory has been on my Windows system connecting to this folder. I realize such large file numbers were never anticipated prior to the TIPI and likely a buffer to handle such large file numbers may not be possible. And, if one marks a large number of marked files for a copy/delete or other operation, where that list may be buffered. If you are buffering in VDP, I wonder if it may be possible to test for more than 16K VDP memory and utilize extra VDP to buffer more entries???? For me, it is not a critical issue, but I thought I have read other individual(s) creating vast libraries (likely hundreds of subdirectories) on the TIPI side of things that may also see a benefit. Just inquiring............... Beery

My out-patient surgery is on the 18th. I'm told I will be under some pain for a couple of weeks and I am sure I will have some good meds. I may be a bit restricted the first couple of days, but don't plan on being away from the computer "at most" for a couple of days. Once I have surgery, I may have unrealistic expectations. For the most part, I anticipate being away from work for ~ 4 weeks as I am restricted from lifting no more than 5 lbs for 6 weeks. During my "off time", I really hope to be enjoying this hobby. Strapping on a paramotor (80+ lbs) and going flying, or deer hunting will unfortunately is off the table for a longer period of time. Beery

Mike, Just for the record, I applaud your assembly efforts and I know I was able take a routine Lee wrote for the string search that worked to my benefit. I do want to say though that things I am suggesting are that, suggestions, on what you could implement to solve some issues that are presented. Myself, I am a Geneve user and will pretty much work "writing text, aka source code" with MyWord and it's 80 column editor and do not have any need for anything else for writing text/code for either the Geneve or TI-99/4A. While I have a TI/Sams/TIPI setup, it is highly unlikely I would use the program myself as I rarely turn the TI on outside of any BBS testing. So what I am saying is, take my comments as suggestions, not a wish list for something I would like to have for myself. Beery

Just a thought here. How about a function keypress that pops up a window that displays a list of available sequential pages you can go to, possibly a list with only those pages with contained text. Or, what TI-Writer does, it allows you to go to any line in a file. Much quicker than paging, especially if like some source files I am working on have 1000 plus lines of code. Paging 20+ lines during each page down to go to line 1000 means about 50 page down keypresses and 50 re-writes of the whole screen. Or, another route I would suggest some "tags" to create hyperlinks to other points in the file, however, that would require some major coding if you were inserting text and text in subsequent pages moved around. Or, maybe some kind of "bookmark" tag that after text insert, or upon first loading of the file, it rescans the files and builds a special bookmark page. Just throwing ideas out there for something to think about. Beery

Thanks for that info.

I tried to participate, just couldn't submit text. Beery

I'm at work now, and unable to test. Starting next Tuesday, I will have somewhere between 4 to 6 weeks off from work as I will have to quarantine in preparation for some outpatient hernia surgery (18th) and then be on short term disability then until mid January at the earliest. It is an umbilical hernia, and trying to get it repaired before it becomes significant. Hit me up with a reply Saturday, and we can try testing. Looks like Saturday may be a rainy day here, so I will be in the house most of the time, probably in front of the computer working on a couple of projects. Beery