💾 Archived View for mirrors.apple2.org.za › archive › apple.cabi.net › Graphics › VOC3200.SHK.txt captured on 2024-06-16 at 14:02:28.
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
VOC3200 - 3200 color picture viewer that supports the Video Overlay Card. This program will view Brooks format 3200 color pictures and will work both with or without a VOC installed. To use a VOC, you need TOOL 33 installed and your VOC in slot 3; otherwise the motherboard will be used and the VOC's display will be what it is when you run other people's 3200 color viewers. Also if you are not actually using the VOC but it is plugged in and TOOL 33 says it is there then your motherboard display will be wrong because the colors will be synchronized to the VOC! The system Installer script "VideoMix" will install TOOL 33 for you (or you can do it yourself). In theory, the VOC should work in slots 1-6 of a ROM 03 and TOOL 33 appears to support that -- but until I can safely detect which slot the VOC is really in, MOVE YOUR VOC TO SLOT 3. (I have to go direct to the card to do 3200 without an accelerator. I don't like this but unless I can get apple to add a few things to TOOL 33 there is no other way. I could replicate the TOOL 33 code for detecting the VOC and which slot it is in, but the real solution is to fix the tool.) This is a _prototype_ release, which will be cleaned up and given a real desktop interface, and made FreeWare. I have experienced some memory scuzzies but I think that is due to repeated runnings of it from ORCA. In any case, this is definitely alpha quality only; be careful when you start using it and let me know if you run into any problems. VOC3200 allocates all the sensitive stuff it needs from the memory manager, and will abort with a message like "Ack! PEI buffer." if it cannot allocate a memory block that it must have in order to display the pictures safely. I suspect Orca of unsafe memory practices, but I don't know for sure. Caveat Usor. There are three files in this archive -- VOC3200 itself, an icon file with my 3200 color pic icon, and this readme file. VOC3200 is an EXE that can be run as a shell command (if you dare!) from ORCA/APW or PROSEL or whichever shell you like to use. Running VOC3200 with no arguments prints a Usage: message, otherwise the arguments are filenames of 3200 color pictures to view. VOC3200 uses a spiffy front end I developed that allows the same EXE to accept finder messages; hence the icon file. "voc3200.icon" is set to expect VOC3200 to be located in your system folder, so either put VOC3200 there or edit the icon file. Then you can select and/or double click on BIN/0000 files ending in ".3200" and VOC3200 will view them automatically. (I really wish the finder let you map icons yourself, rather than forcing people without icon editors to clutter up their system folders and boot disk volume directories because there aren't any other guaranteed pathnames.) Once you are in the viewer, just hit a key to see the next picture or Escape to exit. Sorry, it only reads Brooks format pictures right now. I'll add loading code for the "French" format and the Apple-defined formats (yes, there really ARE Apple-defined 3200 formats!) before the FreeWare release. (Does anyone use "Brain" format? It's really screwy and I'd rather not support it unless there's a demand.) Some thanks are in order (sort of) for info on the 3200 color formats: Jonah Stich, Jason Anderson, Parik Rao, John Brooks, and Scott Gentry. (Hey Jonah, your info about the palette order is _wrong_ -- only the colors are in reverse order. The palettes themselves are stored in scanline order. Don't worry, I didn't waste too much time figuring this out; I wasted more time forgetting to allocate my file buffer with attrNoSpec and having it prevent me from securing the palette area in bank 1 ...) Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu TPW @ CITDEIMO.bitnet AOL: Toddpw