@12BALL SOL}P3BALL SOLRDNA FIGNEBC-12 FOR  EBC-12 TOC# hMYZ80 MSG- @QUOTE ENVA Z`ROADKILLMNUC+d SILENT ARTn58T4LIFE 001 ycTHANK YOU A Solution To The 12 Ball Problem Statement of the problem: You have 12 balls, one of which is heavy or light. In 3 weighings, determine which ball is odd and whether it is light or heavy. Label the 12 balls 1, 2, etc. to 12. Perform the following 3 weighings: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 4 8 9 2 3 11 12 3 7 9 12 1 2 5 10 If the left side goes Up, Up, Down, then 1 is light Up, Down, Down, then 2 is light Up, Down, Up, then 3 is light Up, Up, Even, then 4 is light Up, Even, Up, then 5 is heavy Even, Up, Up, then 9 is light Up, Even, Even, then 6 is heavy Even, Even, Up, then 10 is heavy Even, Up, Even, then 11 is heavy Down, Up, Even, then 8 is light Down, Even, Up, then 7 is light Even, Down, Up, then 12 is light Changing all words Up to Down and Down to Up (and leaving Even alone,) the 12 other possibilities are given by changing light to heavy and heavy to light. Note: There are many other ways of presenting the solution to this interesting problem. The one above reflects the particular way it came out the way I did it. I suppose I could have stated it so the right hand side always read light. This of course would mean I would simply have to change the 5th weighing for example to read Down, Even, Down, then 5 is light. etc. How I came up with the list above is a complicated thing to explain. Basically, I tried to remember how many balls you need to use on each side (for this problem was given to me many years ago and I have seen the solution; I played with 3 on each side for a while and then decided 4 on each side was needed.) Then I decided listing the unique Up/Down/Even possibilities would be useful. Then it was a matter of starting with the first weighing (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8,) and arbitrarily deciding ball 1 was light (my first Up/Down/Even code happened to be Up, Up, Down, (or UUD in code form (see musings, below))) and this would happen provided ball 1 was light and I put ball 1 on the left side of the scale in the second weighing and on the right side in the 3rd. So that's just exactly what I did. The next Up/Down/Even code in my list similarly "generated" where ball 2 would need to be placed in the last two weighings. Instead of wasting many hours using my brain, guesswork etc. etc. I realized letting the three letter codes generate the placement of the odd ball was the way to go. In the whateverit'sworth department, doing all this reminded me of DNA, the four "bases" ATCG (Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine) and how this 4 letter code dictates the helix of life and I eventually convinced myself that UUD, UDD, UDU, UUE, UEU, EUU, UEE, EEU, EUE, DUE, DEU and EDU were the building blocks of the 12 ball problem and well ... Problem solving is truly amazing ...  A Solution To The 3 Ball Problem Q: What do you do with an Elephant with 3 balls? A: Walk him and pitch to the Hippopotamus. [ Hippographic goes here ] (Threw you a curve on that one, didn't I?)  From: "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid," by Douglas R. Hofstadter, page 176. Vintage Books, 1980 This is the 12th, and final, issue of Eight Bits & Change, The International Computer and Humor 'Zine. Enjoy! - Lee Bradley, Editor and Publisher. For hardcopy of this and/or any of the other 11 back issues, send $5/issue to Lee Bradley, 24 East Cedar Street, Newington, CT 06111  Eight Bits & Change Volume 2 Number 12 August / September 1992 Table Of Contents Silent Art Thought For The Day A Solution To The 12 Ball Problem A Solution To The 3 Ball Problem MYZ80 The Roadkill Cafe' Menu Thank You The front cover of this issue shows a photograph of a hanging pot of impatiens, hand painted in pink and green. A hand stamped blue hippopotamus appears in the middle of page 8. Page 9 has an ad from The STAUNCH 8/89'er. The environment quote appears between the SILENT article and the Thought For the Day. Finally, a graphic from "Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" which shows a huge DNA type molecule appears in the middle of the 12 Ball Problem piece. To obtain this or any of the other 11 issues of Eight Bits And Change, send $5/issue to Lee Bradley, 24 East Cedar Street, Newington, CT 06111. Mesg: 389 (R) Date: 28 Jun 92 Fldr: General Time: 11:40:27 Subj: MYZ80 From: Howard Goldstein To: Russell Boyce Thanks for the info on MYZ80. Really sounds fascinating and I think it may be just the thing for me as I will eventually have to get an AT. Knowing Z-System as well as I do, I have lots of questions. Not having access to CPMTECH (and not being willing to call Australia), I wonder if you could answer them or pass them on to someone who can. First, will the BDOS be CP/M 2.2 or 3.0 compatible? If 2.2, will NZCOM actually run in it? (There is a restriction in NZCOM as to the number of additional BIOS vectors that can be supported. NZCOM will not work on the ON! system, for example, because its BIOS has too large a jump table.) Does MYZ80 require a separate hard disk partition for CP/M files? If so, is it possible to have a program running under MYZ80 read or write a DOS file? If MYZ80 doesn't use a separate partition, can we still use CP/M's superior method of file date stamping? Finally, I'm wondering about screen handling in non-Z programs and the TCAP for Z-System. Thanks for any further info you can provide. Mesg: 493 (R) Date: 10 Jul 92 Fldr: General Time: 22:46:45 Subj: MYZ80 From: Russell Boyce To: Howard Goldstein MYZ80 is a Z-80 emulator; hence you upload any flavor Z-80 operating system and bios you wish to run. It comes with a p.d. CP/M 3.0 replacement called ZPM3 by the same author that is fully Z-system compatible. It is also available seperately and is self installing. MYZ80 allows up to 3 eight meg partitions on the DOS drive. You can use OS/2 and run several versions of MYZ80 at the same time with any flavor operating system in each window. The thing that exites me is that you can run all the oddball operating systems like Apple CP/M, T-DOS for the ADAM, TRS-80 LS-DOS, etc. to do development work at speeds never before possible. As for your accessing CPMTECH yourself I have posted several FidoNet BBS numbers near you. All you have to do is convince the sysop to carry CPMTECH off the FidoNet backbone. He is getting his echos there now and it is very simple to turn on another one. It does cost him the extra time and money but at 50 messages a night ZIPped at 1600 cps I am sure if you offer to help pay for it he will turn you down and offer it for free. It is their hobby and they enjoy having active BBS users.  "It looks as if two movements are gaining their peak now: the power to wipe out our environment; the power to love it." - Lois Crisler, Arctic Wild (1956)  From: UTRCGW::IN%"icottrel@emr.ca" 30-JUN-1992 04:35:09.28 To: IN%"MANNION@hsdwl.utc.com" CC: Subj: RE: Cookbook Request Received: from emr1.emr.ca by utrcgw.utc.com (PMDF #12141) id <01GLSZG5QNVK0016C6@utrcgw.utc.com>; Mon, 29 Jun 1992 23:41 EDT Received: by emr1.emr.ca (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22388; Mon, 29 Jun 92 23:41:42 EDT Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 23:41:41 EDT From: icottrel@emr.ca (Ian Cottrell) Subject: RE: Cookbook Request In-reply-to: <01GLSPW24IFK002EMJ@utrcgw.utc.com>; from "Tom Mannion, Sr. Tech, x4346, Bldg 3" at Jun 29, 92 7:07 pm To: MANNION@hsdwl.utc.com (Tom Mannion, Sr. Tech, x4346, Bldg 3) Message-id: <9206300341.AA22388@emr1.emr.ca> X-Envelope-to: MANNION@hsdwl.utc.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL0] I certainly do remember you, Tom. It's nice to hear from you again. I'm glad to discover that we have this communication route open to us; it might save us all a little money! :=) I certainly remember the Trenton Flea Market fondly. I gave one of my Aztec supplies away to a good home and have already incorporated most of my other purchases into various parts of the electronic nightmare that's loosely known as my 'computer room'! I can hardly wait for next year! Below is the 'Road Kill Cafe Menu', which Stephen wanted. You may, of course, distribute it freely (if you really want to!) for all to enjoy (?). Stay in touch, Tom. There don't appear to be too many of the Z-System crowd who have access to InterNet, so those of us who do must keep the links open. Hope to hear from you soon......................Ian ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROADKILL CAFE YOU KILL IT ... WE GRILL IT! Meals Under Wheels Featuring Some of Texas' Finest Meals MENU ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eating food is more fun, when you know it was hit on the run! ENTREES Center Line Bovine.............................4.95 Taste real good, straight from the hood. The Chicken....................................3.95 That didn't cross the road. Flat Cat.......................................2.95 Served as a single...or in a stack. A TASTE OF THE WILD SIDE (Still in the Hide) Chunk of Skunk.................................1.95 Smidgen of Pigeon..............................1.95 Shake N Bake Snake.............................2.25 Swirl of Squirrel..............................1.55 Whippoorwill on a Grill........................3.30 Narrow Sparrow.................................0.55 Rigor Mortise Tortoise.........................6.75 Bag N Gag Our daily take-out lunch special - Anything Dead in Bread - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOU'LL EAT LIKE A HOG ... WHEN YOU TASTE OUR DOG! Slab of Lab....................................2.95 Pit Bull Pot Pie...............................1.95 Cocker Cutlets.................................3.95 Shar-pel Filet.................................5.95 Poodles-N-Noodles..............................5.95 Snippet of Whippet.............................4.50 Collie Hit by a Trolley........................3.95 German Shepherd Pie............................3.95 Round of Hound.................................4.25 GUESS THAT MESS A Daily Special Treat If you can guess what it is ... YOU EAT IT FOR FREE! LATE NIGHT DELIGHT Rack of Raccoon................................3.95 Smear of Deer..................................4.95 Awesome Possum.................................1.95 Cheap Sheep....................................0.43 Served fresh each night after dark. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- WASH THAT GOOD FOOD DOWN WITH SOMETHING TO DRINK Snake Shake....................................1.25 Vanilla Armidilla..............................1.25 (strained or unstrained) Armadillo Sasbarilla...........................1.25 TITILLATE YOUR TASTE BUDS WITH THESE GREAT DESERTS Frog Lime Pie..................................2.25 Road Toad Ala Mode.............................1.65 (chocolate, vanilla, or orange sherbert) Pineapple Porcupine Split......................2.25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Cottrell, Senior Analyst email: icottrel@emr.ca Information Management Branch GEnie: i.cottrell Energy, Mines & Resources, Canada office: (613) 992-4917 588 Booth Street home: (613) 829-1650 Ottawa, ON, Canada BBS (Z-Node 5): (613) 829-2530 -------------------------------------------------------------------------  This issue of Eight Bits & Change is the last. I am sending up to 5 back issues to subscribers who've not received a full year's worth. I like to think that in EB&C's case, old news is just as good as new news. I hope this idea is satisfactory. As we silence EB&C, a discussion of the SILENT utility is fitting. At the command prompt, type silent anycommand and sit back while "anycommand" executes. All console output "anycommand" usually generates will be suppressed; anything else "anycommand" usually does will take place. SILENT was written in 1986 by Bruce Morgen for ON! Systems, Inc. Copyright 1986 by Zivio, Inc., it was released to the Public Domain in 1990. Recently, Steve Dresser found a use for it and sent it to Z-Node #12. Steve recently acquired a ram disk for his Ampro and is using RCOPY to copy files from his hard disk to his ram disk. If RCOPY does not use the Z- System quiet flag to suppress console output, the following command would. Wordy audit trails left by frequently used command scripts are prime candidates for SILENT. silent rcopy ramdisk.lst m: SILENT will suppress console output from a *series* of commands. A special command separator, like '&', is used to delimit the commands. For example, silent this command&that command&and the other command would be the way to kill the output of three commands. The ampersand is used by SILENT to parse its tail. If semicolons were used, the CCP would parse the line into three commands, which, as we will see, would only kill the console output from the first program. SILENT works by patching the bios CONOUT vector with a RET instruction. If it is invoked with no tail, SILENT restores the JP instruction. Simple! SILENT does the necessary bookkeeping, feeding the multiple command line with the first command in its tail followed by a semicolon and then by a copy of the name it was invoked with and any remaining commands in the tail. That is: this command;silent that command&and the other command Passing the buck to itself, SILENT whittles away at its tail, til there's nothing left but SILENT itself. The JP instruction is restored and you once again get console output. What if one of the commands in the command tail is in error? Since console output is gone, any error handler that might be installed will be quite useless! If you are familiar with ZERR, try imagining what happens when silent mispelled is entered at the system prompt ... ZERR kicks in to tell you 'mispelled' is misspelled. But the RET instruction effectively tosses the messages and your system quietly does nothing. The system appears in fact to be hung up. You hit keys like CTRL-C etc., trying to abort whatever is going on. ESC is the way ZERR gets cancelled, so CTRL-C does not help. One way to solve this problem might be to let SILENT install itself as an error handler, prefixing any that is already being used. Programs can tell if they are invoked as error handlers. In this case, an appropriate thing to do would be to restore the old error handler, patch the CONOUT vector back to a JP, *re-issue* the command that has the error and let the "real" error handler do its thing. I discovered a way to get command scripts to temporarily suspend the console output suppression. By defining the alias message silent;echo $* it can be seen that silent but deadly&message %>woops&clear out would run 'but deadly' with no visible output, emit 'woops' on the screen and then run 'clear out'. The trick is to see that the message alias has a silent with no tail in it. Stick a message in between an assemble and a link step in a command script and you'll be told when the assembly is complete but will not get the statistics normally seen when you run your assembler or your linker. For example silent zmac mypgm&message %>assembled&zml mypgm,mypgm.4om/n,t4ldr.hdr/p Consider silent eb&c In this case, eb&c might be a valid transient filename. If '&' were the special command separator, the SILENT parser would launch eb;silent c and, unless eb were a valid command, we'd be in trouble. I can't think of any transient command that has an '&' in its name, so the point may be moot. But, it's always a good idea to provide for even the remotest of possibilities. SILENT's special command separator is configurable with ZCNFG. We conclude by asking the interested reader the following question: Given aliases spr message %>peep peep ng message %>chirp chirp and a SILENT configured to use 'I' as its special command separator, what would silent spring do? Hint: I toyed with the idea of a totally blank cover for this issue but couldn't bring myself to do it. In fact, I hand-painted each cover with acrylics my brother gave me after taking a Polaroid picture with the camera Jim Taylor's wife gave me. It just goes to show you: you can automate just so long and something within says "no." Imagination and a little paint. That's what it's all about. SILENT relies on quite a few "black boxes," routines from relocatable libraries. These routines do well-defined things. If fed proper information, they deliver predictable results. After releasing version 1.5, which I thought was quite good and which I thought addressed the concerns raised by Howard Goldstein, Howard rearranged the algorithm, recycling certain buffers etc. and saved 42 bytes. The Z-System environment is a very well defined entity (although it, too, has changed, and may yet change.) It must be understood well and respected. We don't understand our "real" environment very well yet, but it's pretty clear we have not respected it. The Z-System environment contains addresses which point to data structures. Our "real" environment is not that simple. The rules which govern our "real" environment are much more dynamic, non-linear. Mess with a butterfly and suffer the consequences. For that matter, leave a butterfly alone, and they say down the road, its effect may be profound and unpredictable. I'm fascinated by perfection. What fascinates me even more than perfection though is this: SILENT16 is short, sweet, clever and the product of my friends and myself. And guess what? It has a bug! If the command tail has a multicommand alias in it, and one of the commands in the middle of the alias warm-boots, you can kiss console output suppression goodbye. chirp chirp peep peep!  Thought for the Day Copyright 3/19/92 (c) by Chip Bradley We are only human. Some of us carry heavier burdens than others. On certain days we tend to forget this. At those times we may think we carry "it all" and that no one would listen to the story we often have a hard time telling to ourselves. And yet, we are all very much the same in one respect. We are searching whether passively or actively within. We are looking for the right balance. The right way. The way that lessens the burdens we so often want to cast away. Others WILL listen but only if we choose first to acknowledge our suffering in silence. We always have a choice to feel and be better people both to ourselves and to others. We are only human. And this, being a most profound mystery, is all the more reason to live it, challenging the heart, the spirit, and the mind for answers to questions that DEFINE the mystery of our lives. And if we are willing to open our fragile souls to what "seems" too much to bear, then we are victors. Better yet, if we can share this delicate and honest living in the world, then we have come one step further. We have lessened the burden for someone other than ourselves. We have learned how to Love. z PITECO BAS |PRINTHLPEXE EJ#bPROCOMM1NOT n#T I would like to thank all the contributors to Eight Bits & Change for their support. The following people deserve special mention: Lee Hart, Chip Bradley, Jay Sage, Howard Goldstein, Al Hathway, Gene Pizzetta, Eric Palm, Jim Taylor, Kirk Thompson, Larry Schnitger, Ian Cottrell, Brian Nalewajek, Stephen Griswold, Chris McEwen, Curtis Anderson, Daryl Gehlbach, Bruce Morgen, Sigurd Kimpel, Walt Wheeler, Diane Thome, Tom Mannion, Tom Veile, David Goodenough, Russell Boyce, William Kost and of course, most of all, my wife, Linda Bradley It's been fun! Lee Bradley, editor 21 July 1992