Shattering Error

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg, ClockWise

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KnuddlMac
Granny Smith
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:32 am
Location: Southern Bavaria

Shattering Error

Post by KnuddlMac »

Ladies, Gents,


To come over these interesting pandemic challenges, I arranged for my dream in the electronic bay. The suspect is the original version of Microsoft FoxPro for the Mac.

With great enthusiasm, I installed the new version on my newly established SheepShaver paradise and started to program stupid things for personal finance.
Out of sudden, I noticed an extremely strange behavior entering float values in a database. By simply entering values by keyboard, they got rounded-up. Completely useless, especially for financial applications. I am lost as without FoxPro source code and Customer Support capabilities long faded ago, I am absolutely stranded!

Sure, same calculations could be simply done with Numbers in the real Mac a finger tipp away, but that would be too easy! On top, this is not what this forum is about.

Knowing, that the FoxPro team had their quality challenges these days, I could not belief such an error passing QC.
So I installed the same version on QEMU and here it works? - Usually I start to look at my turf and try to find the initial error with me, but so far I wasn't successful.

People into the nitty-gritties might be able to point me what's wrong.
Before I start sending you an avalanche of my boring system configuration, I start asking this dump question as maybe there are obvious things.

A screenshot says more than thousand keyboard strikes:
http://www.sealog.de/Mac/FoxPro_error_4k.mov

Hint: Mac 68K installation works fine. PPC installation instantaneously amends entered values (eg.: 7.49 => 8.0).
And no, I am not using a demo version.


Any idea appreciated and please stay confident,

Knuddelmac!
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adespoton
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Re: Shattering Error

Post by adespoton »

SheepShaver has improved speed because it cheats in a number of areas, including floating point calculations. Sadly, if you're doing math where accuracy is important, using BII with 8.1 or using QEMU without the floating point hacks is a significantly better choice than SheepShaver.

Have you tried using FoxPro in Executor2000 yet? ARDI tended to do pretty good FPU emulation.
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KnuddlMac
Granny Smith
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:32 am
Location: Southern Bavaria

Re: Shattering Error

Post by KnuddlMac »

Thank you for confirming, that there are FP issues, indeed.

Sure, super precise float 14 digits deep I don't need, but adding usual € cents precise would be great and fully sufficient (at least for me).

No, 1st time I noticed Executor2000 and I just flapped around to read about the Executor fork described by ClockWise here in the forum. (Thanks!)
Rootless, so this sounds interesting. I'll put that on my list to be explored and I make a dash on my wall for a free beer for you!

But I need the € sign in the character set, clip board support (copy & paste of TEXT) and AppleTalk access, as my DB is on an Apple share in my net.
That's why I constantly push with BA II for etherhelper. J

I'd guess the AppleTalk access could be the bottleneck. However, with QEMU I currently can do what I want to achieve with my old FoxPro bits.


Thanks again to all helping hands,

Knuddelmac!
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KnuddlMac
Granny Smith
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:32 am
Location: Southern Bavaria

Re: Shattering Error

Post by KnuddlMac »

Oh, there are my three problems again!

I just forgot about QEMU and missing WiF support for AppleTalk. 8:[
(About OpenVPN, I already created an OpenVPN server, but Kanjitalk's etherhelper approach is much smarter and a green approach.)

@Moderators and of cause our experts: Where can I find information to compile SheepShaver with special caution on FP emulation/precision?
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