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VK2ZRG > TPK 13.12.04 11:34l 92 Lines 5195 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 987_VK2ZRG
Read: GUEST
Subj: Makelist and other things
Path: DB0FHN<DB0MRW<DB0SON<DB0SIF<DB0EA<DB0RES<ON0AR<ZL2BAU<VK6HGR<VK5UJ<
VK5BRC<VK5ATB<VK2AAB<VK2WI
Sent: 041213/0808Z @:VK2WI.#SYD.NSW.AUS.OC #:56369 [SYDNEY] FBB7 $:987_VK2ZRG
From: VK2ZRG@VK2WI.#SYD.NSW.AUS.OC
To : TPK@WW
VK2ZRG/TPK 1.83d Msg #:987 Date:13-12-04 Time:8:06Z
Hello Ian and TPK users,
Sorry to be a trifle tardy with this reply to your
bulletin Ian, I've been distracted from packet radio over the last month
by a 100 year old diary of a Boer War soldier. More of that anon.
The script file way of controlling TPK that you mention will of course work.
(I must admit that I had forgotten about that at the time I was playing around
with the programme.) You would of course need to synchronise the PC clock and
the time switch clock, but that's not a real problem
Re DOS for TPK...That's what I use here. I run IBM DOS 6.1 on the PC all the
time. Windoze is too unstable for my liking, besides which, windoze can't show
the ohms sign (ASCII 234 = ê) correctly. One thing with TPK to watch out for
is, when you use the BR MSG_PRIV E DAYS nn line in the CONFIG.TPK file.
There seems to be a bug in TPK that causes new private messages to overwrite
old ones, if all private messages listed in the RXMSG.TPK file are not down
loaded in the one session of TPK. Well that's my experience anyway.
Re my little programme. This was just a programming exercise for me, with
a by-product that it helped out with my friend's TPK problem. I've never even
thought of putting it out on packet. It would need a lot of work doing to it,
plus a DOC file to be written. My latest transmission line designer programme
is not yet finished. That one certainly has more priority.
I outlined the concept of the programme in my previous bulletin to TPK so that
anyone with some programming skill could make their own version. I'll run
through it again though.
First you have a part of the programme hooked onto the PC timer interrupt to
count the 55 mS timer ticks. Then you need to get the delay time and characters
to go to the keyboard buffer from the command line or a config file. The delay
time is converted into an equivalent number of timer ticks and compared with
counter. When the numbers are equal the characters get injected into the
keyboard buffer. The final part is to have your timer programme call TPK, or
what ever, so that what goes into the keyboard buffer affects the called
programme.
Calling another programme is exactly the same action as occurs when you shell
to DOS with the F3 key in TPK. I used some assembler code to put the characters
into the buffer. From memory, it is function 05h of the BIOS 16h interrupt that
does the trick.
Now about the 100 year old diary. I came to read it when I offered to go
through a draft electronic transcript to fix all the `typos'. It turned out
to be quite a job as there lots of typos. However it got me interested in the
history of the second Boer War and I've done a lot of reading on the subject
since. I previously knew of concentration camps being used in the war, but not
the details.
It was Lord H.H.Kitchener who instituted the concentration camps in the last
18 months of the war, after the Boers resorted to guerilla tactics. These camps
were for the civilians...there were separate POW camps for the Boer fighters.
There were something like a total of 40 POW and concentration camps across the
country.
The numbers associated with the war are astounding.
The British forces numbered well over 400,000. Boer fighters numbered around
50,000 maximum. There were 9000 block houses built with 8000 kilometres of
barbed wire entanglements in between. The concentration camps held a peak of
154,000 civilians, 20,000 of whom died from disease and lack of food in the
early part. Those that died were mainly women and children.
British dead were 6000 from fighting and 16,000 from disease. Boers lost
around 6000 dead from fighting and many thousands in the POW camps. Native
population killed was estimated to be around 50,000. The war cost Britain
223 million pounds (1900's pounds, not todays values.)
I've spent a lot of time trying to find all the places mentioned in the diary,
on S.A. maps. This was quite difficult as some of the spelling of place names
was phonetic and a lot of the places don't appear on my 2,000,000:1 map.
Also some names such as Reitfontein and Waterval are (or were) very common.
Some of the names may have been names of farms. I'm still trying to find where
`Onverwacht' in the Ermelo district is. There was a `Waterval' near Ermelo too,
not more than 30 km away, that I can't find...So still a lot more study to do.
I came across some interesting names during my reading. One Winston Churchill
was a war correspondent, as was A.B.(Bamjo) Paterson. Banjo Paterson was the
author of the poem `The Man From Snowy River' and the song `Waltzing Matilda'.
Churchill was said to have ridden a bicycle through Johannesburg at night,
before the town was fully in control of British forces.
Arthur Conan Doyle, of `Sherlock Holmes' fame, wrote a book about the war.
I think that he may have been in South Africa, but I'm not certain.
Rudyard Kipling was there too, of course.
Fascinating stuff, this history. Just started reading `The Fatal Shore'.
Merry Cricket, Ho Ho Ho
73s from Ralph VK2ZRG@VK2WI.#SYD.NSW.AUS.OC
/ack
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