|||||| |||||| || || |||||| |||||| || || ||| || || || || ||| |||| |||||| || |||| Your || || || || ||| || || |||||| |||||| || || |||||| |||||| GenieLamp Computing || |||||| || || |||||| RoundTable || || || ||| ||| || || || |||||| |||||||| |||||| RESOURCE! || || || || || || || ||||| || || || || || ~ WELCOME TO GENIELAMP APPLE II! ~ """""""""""""""""""""""""""""" ~A2/PRO_ductivity: A2Pro Bits & Bytes ~ SOFTVIEW A2: Quick Click Morph ~ PROFILES: Meet Bret "Slixter" Victor, by Max Jones of Juiced.GS ~ HOT NEWS, HOT FILES, HOT MESSAGES ~ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//////////////////////////////////// GenieLamp Apple II ~ A T/TalkNET Publication ~ Vol.5, Issue 60 """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Publisher.................................................John F. Peters Editor...................................................Ryan M. Suenaga \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//////////////////////////////////// ~ GenieLamp IBM ~ GenieLamp ST ~ GenieLamp PowerPC ~ ~ GenieLamp A2Pro ~ GenieLamp Macintosh ~ GenieLamp TX2 ~ ~ GenieLamp Windows ~ GenieLamp A2 ~ LiveWire (ASCII) ~ ~ Member Of The Digital Publishing Association ~ GE Mail: GENIELAMP Internet: genielamp@genie.com ////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ >>> WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE APPLE II ROUNDTABLE? <<< """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" ~ February 1, 1997 ~ FROM MY DESKTOP ......... [FRM] FROM MY MAILBOX ......... [MAI] Notes From The Editor. Letters To The Editor. HEY MISTER POSTMAN ...... [HEY] A2/PRO_ductivity ........ [A2P] Is That A Letter For Me? A2Pro Bits & Bytes. SOFTVIEW A2 ............. [HUN] PROFILES ................ [PRO] Quick Click Morph by Doug Cuff. Slixter by _Juiced.GS_ LOG OFF ................. [LOG] GenieLamp Information [IDX]"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" READING GENIELAMP GenieLamp has incorporated a unique indexing system """"""""""""""""" to help make reading the magazine easier. To utilize this system, load GenieLamp into any ASCII word processor or text editor. In the index you will find the following example: HUMOR ONLINE ............ [HUM] Genie Fun & Games. To read this article, set your find or search command to [HUM]. If you want to scan all of the articles, search for [EOA]. [EOF] will take you to the last page, whereas [IDX] will bring you back to the index. MESSAGE INFO To make it easy for you to respond to messages reprinted """""""""""" here in GenieLamp, you will find all the information you need immediately following the message. For example: (SMITH, CAT6, TOP1, MSG:58/M475) _____________| _____|__ _|___ |____ |_____________ |Name of sender CATegory TOPic Msg.# Page number| In this example, to respond to Smith's message, log on to page 475 enter the bulletin board and set CAT 6. Enter your REPly in TOPic 1. A message number that is surrounded by brackets indicates that this message is a "target" message and is referring to a "chain" of two or more messages that are following the same topic. For example: {58}. ABOUT Genie Genie has pricing plans to fit almost any budget. Genie's """"""""""" services include email, software downloads, bulletin boards, chat lines, and an Internet gateway included at a non-prime time connect rate of $2.75. Some pricing plans include uncharged online connect time. As always, prices are subject to change without notice. To sign up for Genie, call (with modem) 1-800-638-8369 in the USA or 1-800-387-8330 in Canada. Upon connection wait for the U#= prompt. Type: JOINGENIE and hit RETURN. The system will then prompt you for your information. Need more information? Call Genie's customer service line (voice) at 1-800-638-9636. GET GENIELAMP ON THE NET! Now you can get your GenieLamp issues from """"""""""""""""""""""""" the Internet. If you use a web browser, connect to "gopher://gopher.genie.com/11/magazines". When using a gopher program, connect to "gopher.genie.com" and then choose item 7 (Magazines and Newsletters from Genie's RoundTables). *** GET INTO THE LAMP! *** """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" ///////////////////////////////////////// Genie_QWIK_QUOTE ///// / "Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm. Hmm. / / / / (That's my 'someone else please get more specific' hum, / / not my 'I'm bound by a non-disclosure agreement' hum." / ///////////////////////////////////////////////// D.CUFF ///// [EOA] [FRM]////////////////////////////// FROM MY DESKTOP / ///////////////////////////////// Notes From The Editor """"""""""""""""""""" by Ryan M. Suenaga, M.S.W. [A2LAMP] >>> LOOKING FORWARD AND BACKWARD <<< """""""""""""""""""""""""""" Before I became editor of this publication, I had a number of email conversations with Doug Cuff, my predecessor. One of the things that we discussed was his typing up some "notes" for me on how to put _GenieLamp A2_ together. A few weeks before the first issue of _GenieLamp A2_ that had my name as editor was to be published, Doug sent me his "notes" via email. I used Shrinkit to unpack them, saw that it was an Appleworks Word Pprocessor file, and used a macro I had written some time ago to load it into Appleworks and print it out, while I headed for my morning shower. I came back to see my printer had run out of paper. Turns out that Doug's "notes" were 128k of an Appleworks Word Processor file that printed out to 55 pages. All of this merely serves to point out again that Doug did a remarkable job as editor of this publication. I knew it would take a lot of my time to get GenieLamp together on a monthly basis, but I didn't think it would be quite _this_ much time. It was, therefore, a disappointment to me that I wasn't able to match the size of the previous issues of GenieLamp in my debut issue, nor was I able to reprint all of the messages that I really wanted to, largely due to the fact that I was surprised by the time constraints. However, as I've been known to say, "If it don't kill you, it'll only make you stronger," I enter my second issue as editor a little more prepared, a little wiser, and a lot more experienced. Work on GenieLamp this month is starting earlier than usual: in fact, it's starting on New Year's Day. I guess you could say my resolution is to make sure GenieLamp lives up to its quality standard. Now to see about getting the day extended to thirty hours. . . [*][*][*] Sometimes, you get Christmas presents from unexpected shores. As many of you know, _GenieLamp A2Pro_ is no longer being published. What you may _not_ know is that before there was a _GenieLamp A2Pro_, _GenieLamp A2_ covered happenings in _both_ the A2 and A2Pro RoundTables on GEnie. I had toyed with the idea of incorporating some A2Pro coverage into _GenieLamp A2_ again, but had thought that it might be best to first get my feet wet in trying to continue what we had going already before expanding. So it came as a very pleasant surprise when, on December 30, 1996, a package arrived in email from my favorite Australian programmer. I unwrapped it to find what turned out to be a special Christmas present for the readers of _GenieLamp A2_. Richard Bennett, the world famous programmer of _Express_, _GraphicWriter III_, the _Spectrum_ ANSI display, and an assortment of other Apple II products, had taken the time to skim the A2Pro Bulletin Board over the last few months and compile a selection of choice postings for presentation in GenieLamp. I was blown away by the effort he had made with his busy schedule. My thanks, Richard, and I'm sure that the readers of _GenieLamp A2_ will thank you as well. [*][*][*] It's been pretty common that _GenieLamp A2_ has had some great guest writers, but in this issue, we welcome a true celebrity to our electronic pages: Max Jones, editor and publisher of _Juiced.GS_, the Apple IIgs specific newsletter, has contributed a special column for this issue. I've been writing a regular column for Max since the first issue of _Juiced.GS_, and I had the pleasure of meeting Mad Max in person at Kansasfest 1996, along with a bunch of other Apple II luminaries. Max went from being a total newcomer on the Apple IIgs scene to a well-known publisher of a well-respected publication in less than a year. I'm sure he'd agree that life hasn't been the same since. It's been often said that the Apple II was the computer that changed the world. Publishing _Juiced.GS_ certainly changed Max's world, and writing for _Juiced.GS_ certainly changed mine. Here's hoping that Max's column in this issue changes your world too. [*][*][*] Another columns update: I had hoped to have the FILE BANDWAGON column back in this issue; it's not. I'm hoping to have it back again next issue, but whether or not that will happen remains to be seen (I don't like the taste of leather enough to have it every month). And Peter Brickell's still dealing with The Real World, so REAL WORLD APPLE continues on hiatus. -- Ryan Genie Mail: A2LAMP Internet: a2lamp@genie.com __________________________________________________________ | | | REPRINTING GENIELAMP | | | | If you want to reprint any part of GenieLamp, or | | post it to a bulletin board, please see the very end | | of this file for instructions and limitations. | |__________________________________________________________| ASCII ART BEGINS _____ _ _ ___ ___ / ____| (_) | | / _ \|__ \ | | __ ___ _ __ _ ___| | __ _ _ __ ___ _ __ | |_| | ) | | | |_ |/ _ \ '_ \| |/ _ \ | / _` | '_ ` _ \| '_ \ | _ | / / | |__| | __/ | | | | __/ |___| (_| | | | | | | |_) | | | | |/ /_ \_____|\___|_| |_|_|\___|______\__,_|_| |_| |_| .__/ |_| |_|____| | | |_| ASCII ART ENDS [EOA] [HEY]////////////////////////////// HEY MISTER POSTMAN / ///////////////////////////////// Is That A Letter For Me? """""""""""""""""""""""" by Ryan Suenaga [A2LAMP] o BULLETIN BOARD HOT SPOTS o A2 POT-POURRI o HOT TOPICS o WHAT'S NEW o THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE o MESSAGE SPOTLIGHT >>> BULLETIN BOARD HOT SPOTS <<< """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" [*] CAT 5, TOP 3 ....... The Prodigal Son returns [*] CAT 9, TOP 11 ....... The standards of SCSI [*] CAT 9, TOP 23 ....... Stupid Prodos 8 tricks [*] CAT 11, TOP 7 ....... Superdrive cards resurface! [*] CAT 12, TOP 8 ....... Deskjets, Deskjets, and more Deskjets [*] CAT 17, TOP 27 ....... The IIgs: ReFRESH me! [*] CAT 28, TOP 4 ....... The LemminGS are coming! [*] CAT 29, TOP 44 ....... At last. . . Jasmine [*] CAT 35, TOP 30 ....... More about A2 II [*] CAT 46, TOP 1 ....... Memory problems? Get Sirius! >>> A2 POT-POURRI <<< """"""""""""""""""""" DEFENDER ARRIVES ON GENIE Happy New Year to all! """"""""""""""""""""""""" A couple of days ago, someone (it may have been Mark Wade) posted a message in the BB about wanting to see the Defender of the World game demo uploaded here. I've had this game demo on my hard drive since it was released as freeware last fall by author David Ong Tat-Wee of Singapore. So, I packed it up in the proper format and uploaded to the A2 RT Library this evening (Wednesday). When it clears inspection, it should be available for download as file #28252. The game itself is far from finished, and it may never be finished. But one level is playable, and portions of the other levels are available for inspection. It =is= fun to tinker with. Too bad the author doesn't have time to complete the project. Enjoy! Max http://users.ids.net/~kerwood/juiced.gs (M.JONES145, CAT3, TOP25, MSG:146/M645;1) THE PRINT SHOP: STILL AROUND Does anyone know if Print Shop GS, or any """""""""""""""""""""""""""" other Print Shop spinoffs for the Apple II, are still available for purchase? I just got an e-mail from a teacher in Tulsa, OK, who had his original Print Shop GS disks stolen from his classroom. Apparently, no backups. He's wanting to know how/if he can get new copies of the disks. Max (M.JONES145, CAT6, TOP8, MSG:153/M645;1) >>>>> Tuesday, January 21, 1997 - 10:24 pm """"" Max, National School Products (800-289-3960 Fax; 800-627-9393 voice) has The New Print Shop, The Print Shop (original) and several add on Print Shop programs and disks in their current 94 page all Apple II catalog. I see Print Shop IIGS Expansion Library but not Print Shop IIGS itself. Sometimes they have things not shown in the catalog. Worth a call. MT Steve It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with. -- Martin Mull (S.BERNBAUM, CAT6, TOP8, MSG:154/M645;1) >>>>> Max, """"" I know an Apple dealer who had one on the shelf less than 2 weeks ago. I'll be over that way again within a week (or whenever my TranswarpGS is ready) and I can check if it's new or re-wrapped and verify the price. Seems I remember it being $25-$35. Email me if you want me to pursue it for you. Ed Staib - here till the lights are out... (E.STAIB, CAT6, TOP8, MSG:156/M645;1) TULIN TUMBLES Monday, January 20, 1997 - 7:57 pm """"""""""""" I received an email from Wing Cheung today in response to email that I had sent to Tulin. Tulin is no longer in the drive business. Wing is a former employee of Tulin, who has acquired their left over hard drive and floptical stock. He asked me to post his offering here. He is offering refurbished Insite flopticals for sale: $50 for a bare floptical drive, suitable for an internal drive or to put in your own case $80 for a fully set up floptical drive in an external case He also has some hard drives but requests people contact him specifying what they want and he will quote a price. He can be reached via email at: 104465.3171@COMPUSERVE.COM@INET# Be patient if he does not reply right away. We have exchanged two messages so far and it has taken him a couple of weeks to reply each time. MT Steve P.S. That's all I know. Contact Wing for further info. (S.BERNBAUM, CAT4, TOP40, MSG:58/M645;1) DO-IT-YOURSELF .FL FILES Don, Bob: Sometime when I first acquired the """""""""""""""""""""""" LaserJet (1/95?) I did upload a Harmonie .FL file for it but doubt that is what I am using today. I presently have TT/PCL mappings as follows: Courier/Courier(22), Garamond/Garamond(156), Geneva/Omega(3), Arial/Arial(19867), Monoco/UniversMed(4), Symbol/Symbol(23), Times/CGTimes(20), ZapfChanc/Marigold(18), ZapfDing/Wingdings(13), Aspire/Coronet(2418). The numbers represent IIGS font families in decimal. These typefaces now print instantly via Harmonie EXTERNAL without the long dreadful delays. Am sure the mix of built-in fonts is different on the InkJets, but the principal is probably the same. Basically each entry in the xxx.FL table looks like this: (For example, Aspire) byte 0-1 Family number in HEX 72 09 byte 2 Length of print command 0A byte 3-n Print command in CHAR (slp4116T Don't forget the GS's bizarre need for placing the L/O byte of family number in the rightmost position (as in 2418 = 0972 above) ;^{ You will need a block editor of some sort to set this up properly. Margot (18:30 PST - Sun 1/19/97) Spectrum v2.0/CoPil v2.55 (M.TAYLOR66, CAT40, TOP9, MSG:88/M645;1) <<<<< > to use Letter Gothic font instead of Geneva to tell the DeskJet """"" > to use Letter Gothic. I suppose if you could find a bit mapped or TT font for LetterGothic, you could simply replace the family ID for Geneva (03 00 in bytes 0-1) with whatever is correct for LetterGothic in the xxx.FL table you are using. See previous post. Margot (18:49 PST - Sun 1/19/97) Spectrum v2.0/CoPil v2.55 (M.TAYLOR66, CAT40, TOP9, MSG:89/M645;1) >>> HOT TOPICS <<< """""""""""""""""" SUPERDRIVES: HISTORY AND APPLICATION Is the SuperDrive controller card, """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" that's been mentioned, the same thing as the Apple II 3.5" disk controller card? Thanks. Dave Stewart Delivered by: Spectrum 2.1, and CoPilot v2.55 (D.STEWART2, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:18/M645;1) >>>>> Dave, """"" The manual calls it [Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card], so I'd say yes. -- Carl Knoblock - Telephone Tech cknoblo@delphi.com cknoblo@novia.net (C.KNOBLOCK, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:20/M645;1) >>>>> Jim and Dave and Carl, """"" >> The SuperDrive Controller Card aand the Apple II 3.5" Disk Controller >> Card are one and the same... I don't think that's true:( There is an "Apple II 3.5" Disk Controller Card" that is used for "non-SuperDrive" 3.5" disk drives. Godzilla (S.GOZDZIEWSK, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:21/M645;1) >>>>> I think that Apple made two versions of the 3.5 Disk Controller; """"" the first dealt with 800k drives, the later version handled 800 and 1.44 Mb disks. If memory serves, the =name= of the card didn't change, but I =think= the part no. did. Ed Lundberg (EDMUNDL, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:24/M645;1) >>>>> Steve, """"" >I don't think that's true:( There is an "Apple II 3.5" Disk Controller >Card" that is used for "non-SuperDrive" 3.5" disk drives. Yes, and it only supports the Unidisk 3.5. The card and manual I described is the SuperDrive controller card. I hav an AE HD 3.5 on it and can read AOL disks. ;) And erase them, and use them as ProDos 1.44M disks. -- Carl Knoblock - Telephone Tech cknoblo@delphi.com cknoblo@novia.net (C.KNOBLOCK, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:25/M645;1) >>>>> I have the Apple II 3.5 Disk Controller Card and it supports the HD """"" drive. On Page 2 of the manual it says: The disk controller card works with these floppy disk drives: - Apple SuperDrive - Apple 3.5 Drive - Apple II UniDisk 3.5 So there you have it. I bought this card from Shreve systems 6 weeks ago and they have since sold out. JB (J.COLE63, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:26/M645;1) >>>>> There was no name change or model number change when the Apple II """"" 3.5 Disk Controller Card went from supporting only the 800k GCR format to supporting both the 1.4 meg MFM and 800k GCR formats. This was documented in A2 Central. Ryan http://www.keystroke.net/~rsuenaga "There's no shortage of windmills to tilt at."--Logan ANSITerm and CoPilot v2.55 (A2LAMP, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:27/M645;1) <<<<< I'm looking for comments on my game plan. I plan to connect an """"" Apple SuperDrive to my GS. While using Netscape on my PC, I'd like to be able to download something (say a Richard Bennett driver), remove the floppy from the PC, insert in the SuperDrive, and install the driver on the GS. Is this doable? How will the stuff be packed and which machine will I do the unpacking? Any comments will be appreciated from the remaining audience. Dave Stewart Delivered by: Spectrum 2.1, and CoPilot v2.55 (D.STEWART2, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:33/M645;1) >>>>> > Is this doable? """"" Yep. > How will the stuff be packed and which machine will I do the unpacking? Usually, Apple II stuff is packed in a NuFX format, with or without a Binary II wrapper. If you're grabbing stuff off of the 'net, it is sometimes also Binscii'd, Binhex'd, or UUencoded (or otherwise textually encoded). A number of Apple II programs can handle some or all of these formats, including GSCII+, Speckie 2.1, and Binscii. And you ought to do the unpacking on a IIgs. Ryan http://www.keystroke.net/~rsuenaga "There's no shortage of windmills to tilt at."--Logan ANSITerm and CoPilot v2.55 (A2LAMP, CAT11, TOP7, MSG:35/M645;1) PRODOS 8 SLOT SWITCHING AND LASER BACKUPS Is there a way to make slot 7 """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" on an IIe be remapped as slot 5? I have an unusual need to be able to switch it back and forth without having to move the board in the slot. Thanks in advance. _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:2/M645;1) >>>>> Hans: """"" I am not certain, but I _think_ a strategic poke to the ProDOS device driver table at $BF10+ _might_ serve temporarily to remap a slot 7 device to slot 5. From what program (or environment) will you be making the change? Will it be from within AppleWorks, or a BASIC program, or perhaps from within a program allowing access to the Visit Monitor CDA on a IIGS? Hugh... (H.HOOD, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:3/M645;1) <<<<< I'd like to be able to make the change either from BASIC or the """"" "monitor". This is a IIe (actually, a Laser 128EX), so there are no CDA's. _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:4/M645;1) >>>>> Hans: """"" Please do something for me. After booting ProDOS and getting into BASIC.SYSTEM, get into the monitor (type CALL -151) and do a listing of the contents from $BF12 to $BF1F (type BF12L). Please let me know what the HEX contents of these locations are. This is the device driver address table for the slots that ProDOS uses. I _think_ we can re-map Slot 7 to Slot 5 with one POKE _if_ you are using ProDOS 8 on the program you will be running. Hugh.. (H.HOOD, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:5/M645;1) <<<<< Coming up... """"" from ProDOS 8 vers. 2.0.2: $BF12- 08 FD 08 FD 08 FD $BF16- 08 FD 4E C5 00 D0 0D C7 _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:6/M645;1) >>>>> Re: Changing slots in P8 """"" I feel I need to comment on what's going on here. Or, at least what I _think_ is going on here :) If the idea is to swap the entries in the P8 device driver list, read on... If it isn't, then forget the whole rest of this msg while I pull my foot out of my mouth :) P8 stores its device driver table at $BF10 thru $BF2F. If I recall correctly, the goal is to swap slot 5 with slot 7. The quick and dirty method is to take the contents of $BF1A/1B and swap them with $BF1E/1F assuming drive 1 in both cases. Depending on the device driver(s) in question, this might work. Here's the problem tho: The MLI sets up a command block (device driver parameter list) prior to calling the device driver. One of those parameters in the command block is UNIT NUMBER (found at $43) which is in the format: %DSSS0000, where D is the drive number minus one, and SSS is the slot number. OK? Keep this in mind. Next, let's take a look at the hardware side. Most external cards can be plugged into any slot and work. The easiest way to communicate with a card is to read/write at the slot hardware _base_ address, using the X-Register to specify the actual slot offset. For example, the assembly language instruction LDA $C080,X where X=$10 would access slot 1. If X=$20, then the access would be to slot 2, etc. So, the people who write device drivers, only need a base address ($C080) and where their card is at (loaded in the X-Reg). Now, let's put the two together. 1. The device driver needs the X-Register to be set to the slot number. 2. The MLI issues the slot number as part of the Unit Number. Hmmm...If you were a device driver, where would you get that slot number??? :) And everythings fine until.... someone _swaps_ the entries in the P8 device driver table and _doesn't_ tell P8 about it :( Say you have a 3.5 drive on slot 5, and a SCSI card in slot 7, and you swap the device drivers. =Potentially= you have the 3.5 driver accessing the SCSI card, and the SCSI driver accessing the 3.5 drive. +NOT+ what you want!!! AND- I don't even want to think about what would happen if the two swapped entries refered to different devices, i.e. a serial device and a block device. Yikes! So, I can be wrong on this, because not all device drivers are written the same way. Maybe it'll work for you, but I wanted to at least inform you that the results may prove disasterous. Also, since I'm jumping in here, maybe I drew the wrong conclusion about where this discussion was going to go, and in that case Sorry! BTW, I'm currently writing a P8 device driver to control an IDE HD with multiple partitions, which the user may map into unused P8 slots. (like the RamFAST). The basic theory is to fill the unused P8 device driver vectors with my device driver entry point and then translate the different Unit Numbers passed by the MLI into the correct partition, there by creating virtual drives. If someone tried to swap the entries, nothing would happen because the entries are the same-- it's the Unit Number that makes the difference. So, basicly, hot swapping the device driver entries is a BAD idea, in my opinion, of course :) -Sully (All miss-spellings are my own :) (R.SULLIVAN8, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:7/M645;1) >>>>> Hans: """"" Sully knows exactly what I was hacking to do, and makes great points. Don't worry though, I wasn't going to let you walk into the quicksand, at least not without adequate warning and protection. Currently, what cards are in slots 5 and 7, respectively, and how many devices are attached to each card? If slot 5 is the built-in diskport, how many drives are attached? Will the program from which you want to access the 'swapped' slot device address files on it from BASIC with BASIC.SYSTEM commands (e.g. LOAD X, S5,D1), or will it address it from machine code? BTW, before you even attempt to swap the $C7 0D for the $C5 4E with a few POKES, _everything_ needs to be backed up. Plus, unless Sully bales me out with the answers, I need to re-read Gary Little's explanation about the whole mapping procedure, as another location (Sully's $BF32,X) may also need to be massaged. Of course, if you're a curious sort, and a bit impulsive, and if you've _got everything backed up_, and your estate planning is in order, you can go ahead with the POKES anyway, and let us know what happens. Hugh... (H.HOOD, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:8/M645;1) >>>>> Hans, Hugh, """"" I whipped up a short program that will correctly handle the slot 5/slot 7 swap problem. This program applies a patch to P8 that will intercept calls to slot 5/7, fix the Unit Number, then passes (redirects) control to the opposite slot. When the program is launched, it will relocate itself between the BI and the buffers, so it is protected from other programs. The patch must be applied each time Prodos is launched, but never twice in the same session. I'm emailing you guys a copy of both the program and the Merlin source. I used GSHK with BinaryII, hope that isn't a problem. -Sully (R.SULLIVAN8, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:9/M645;1) <<<<< Hugh and Sully, """"" Actually, that's exactly what I want to streamline -- the HD backup process. Here's what I've got: The machine is a Laser 128EX with an expansion box, so I've got two available expansion slots -- slot 5 and slot 7. Each slot is controlled by a hardware switch. If I switch slot 5 "on", I can only access 128K of ram, and since I use AppleWorks a lot, slot 5 remains dedicated to ram. If I switch slot 7 "on", I lose access to any 3.5" drive connected to the external drive port (a 5 1/4" drive simply responds to s6,d2, but a 3.5" drive is addressed as s7,d1 -- same port). So the problem is that I have three "devices" (1 MB of ram, HD, and 3.5" drive) competing for two resources, but I only ever need any two of them at the same time. In normal use, I have 1 MB of extended ram tying up slot 5 and an Apple High- Speed SCSI card in slot 7. For the occasions when I need to transfer a file to (or from) a 3.5" drive, I simply set up a ramdisk, temporarily move the file (or disk) to the ramdrive, flip the switch, and reboot. Although this is fine for the occasional transfer, it's not conducive to making even a single backup. Backups to a 3.5" disk are not imposssible, but I have to physically move the SCSI controller temporarily to slot 5 first. I want to avoid having to move the controller back and forth. Up until now, I've done that at the expense of making any backups. What's frustrating is that when I use a program like Copy-II-Plus, the 3.5" drive activity light comes on for a moment as all the drives are polled, it just never shows up in the list of drives to be accessed until I switch slot 7 "off" -- but then I can't access the HD. After reading Sully's explanation of what needs to happen, I fear that remapping the slot won't provide a solution since that will probably remap the external drive port to slot 5 as well. :-( _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:11/M645;1) >>>>> Hans, """"" I had a similar situation with a Laser awhile ago. The best solution ended up being backing up to another device on the SCSI chain; I realize that might not be suitable for you, but it was the best I could come up with. Ryan http://www.keystroke.net/~rsuenaga "There's no shortage of windmills to tilt at."--Logan ANSITerm and CoPilot v2.55 (A2LAMP, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:12/M645;1) <<<<< Much as I hate to, I may just abandon the expansion box and mount """"" the SCSI controller in the open from the side of the machine. At least that way I won't need to physically move the controller to change slots -- I'll just need to flip switches. I tried to see if I could just add a jumper or two to make one of the slots in the expansion module act the same as the slot in the side of the machine, but I didn't see any obvious way to do it. _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:14/M645;1) >>>>> Hans, """"" You have an interesting situation there. I'm not sure why CopyII+ doesn't see your drive. I'm with Ryan, tho- The easiest way would be to connect another scsi device for backups. A Zip drive would be my recommendation. -Sully (R.SULLIVAN8, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:18/M645;1) <<<<< Sully, A Zip drive on a IIe (or clone)? You mean I can just unplug """"" my ZIP from my Performa and move it over to my Laser? Can I just use an AHS utility or ProSel-8 to format a ZIP disk? _____ / \ )=====( \___+_/ ..:... Hans (H.HAUMANN, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:20/M645;1) >>>>> Sure, why not? I had a Zip Drive running on one of my //es :) """"" > You mean I can just unplug my ZIP from my Performa and move it over to my > Laser? Provided you have a properly working existing SCSI chain and follow the usual SCSI rules, sure. One caveat: watch out for the limit of 14 Prodos devices. > Can I just use an AHS utility or ProSel-8 to format a ZIP disk? Yeah. . . use Chinook SCSI utils. That'll work fine. If not, use the AHS SCSI utils. That'll work too, but Chinook's better. Ryan http://www.keystroke.net/~rsuenaga "There's no shortage of windmills to tilt at."--Logan ANSITerm and CoPilot v2.55 (A2LAMP, CAT9, TOP23, MSG:22/M645;1) RAMFAST, PRODOS 8, AND FLOPTICALS Is there any way to set up a RamFAST """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Rev.D with the latest ROMs so that P8 programs such as AppleWorks will be able to use a Floptical drive? I have tried to figure out the slot mapping, but my RamFAST manual has taken a walk, and as I recall it wasn't very helpful. If I don't map slots, and try to launch AppleWorks, I get a text error panel that says to insert /HD.PGM/, which is the name of the hard disk partition that has my copy of AW 5.1 on it. If I map slots, AW doesn't recognize the Floptical drive. Ideas? Don V. Zahniser Delivered by CoPilot for ANSITerm (D.ZAHNISER, CAT20, TOP13, MSG:154/M645;1) >>>>> I don't have (8-bit) AppleWorks, but I do have a Floptical and the """"" same RF as you. Here are a few tips that might help: * Cold Boot with a disk in the Floptical drive. RF acts a lot better when it knows about the Floptical from the start. * Once you're booted up, go into the RF Utilities and make sure your Floptical disk is recognized, and that it's marked as ACTIVE. At this time you can also note your SCSI IDs. I believe the problem is the manual mapping. I wrestled with this problem while trying to get my PCT to work w/the Floptical. ProDOS seems to re-map volumes upon entry to P8. What I noticed is that ProDOS replaced my Floptical with /RAM3. (Using a CDA such as File-a-Trix is handy for listing what volumes are considered on-line when you're in P8) The only solution is to arrange your SCSI IDs in such a way that the all of the volumes (Floptical, HD partitions, etc.) that you NEED to appear in P8 do so with auto-mapping and don't exceed P8's 12 volume limit. This eliminates the need for manual mapping. How much changing you have to do depends on your setup. :/ I set my Floptical ID between my boot drive and my 2nd (bigger) drive. Since there are 3 partitions on my boot drive, the Floptical appears as the 4th volume and shows up in P8 just fine. _/\_/\__ / o o\___ // \________/ // \ Wily (P.CREAGER, CAT20, TOP13, MSG:160/M645;1) <<<<< Wily (and anyone else with a RamFAST) """"" Playing around with Wily's recommendations, I stumbled upon the following procedure for getting RamFAST to automagically recognize any disk in the Floptical drive under P8. It has interesting implications for users of other removable media drives, I am sure. 1) Shut off the GS 2) Insert an unformatted disk (or disk from an inactive FST) into the Floptical drive. 3) Boot the GS into the RamFAST Utilities by holding the zero key down. What you should see on the right-hand side is your usual list of volumes, except that for the Floptical drive, you should see a generic volume name based on the SCSI ID of the Floptical device. On my system, this generic name is CVTECH.ID4.A (The device name is CVTECH.S7.F). 4) Map the generic volume name into an empty slot. What you will find at this point is that any disk that you put into the Floptical drive will be mapped to the same slot to which you mapped the generic volume name. I stumbled into this when I put a HD disk from GNN into the Floptical drive. Curiously, Finder polled the drive, and did nothing with it. No Icon, no error message. I went into RamFAST Utilities, and there was the generic volume ID. Further analysis with UniverseMaster and UtilityWorksGS seem to indicate that the disk name has 'illegal' characters that aren't recognized by the MS-DOS FST. I have 2 AOL disks with the same syndrome. I have been able to format these with RamFAST Utilities where GSOS programs won't. I was able to reproduce the sequence above by deactivating the MS-DOS FST prior to shutting off the GS, and using an MS-DOS disk in the Floptical drive when I booted it into RamFAST Utilities. Don V. Zahniser Delivered by CoPilot for ANSITerm (D.ZAHNISER, CAT20, TOP13, MSG:161/M645;1) <<<<< I just found out there may be an intermediate step missing from my """"" previous post. It _may_ be necessary to go into SCSI Utilities while in RamFAST.Util and click on the device containing the 'unrecognizable' disk prior to mapping the generic volume name to the slot. Here are some alternate instructions to try: 1) Launch RamFAST Utilities. 2) Insert media that is known to be not recognized by Prodos or installed FSTs. 3) Click on SCSI Utilities, then click on the device containing the media. One or more generic partition IDs should appear on the right side of the screen. Click 'Quit' to return to the main RamFAST Utilities panel. Depending on the contents of the media, one or more new volumes (one or more of which should be generically named with the SCSI ID - e.g. CVTECH.ID0.A, CVTECH.ID0.B, etc) should appear. 4) Click on the _first_ (e.g.- the CVTECH.ID0.A partition) and map that to a slot. 5) Quit the RamFAST Utilities, which should prompt a reboot. I just used Compton's Encyclopedia (which is an 'unknown' format) to map my CD-ROM drive to a slot. Now, for the first time, I can directly access GO.Prodos on the Golden Orchard CD-ROM from within AppleWorks. Don V. Zahniser Delivered by CoPilot for ANSITerm (D.ZAHNISER, CAT20, TOP13, MSG:162/M645;1) DELPHI AND INTERNET ODDS & ENDS If you are thinking about venturing onto """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" the Internet, or have general questions about how to do things out there, I have a recommendation for you. Use Lynx (see below for help with this) and visit the following site: http://people.delphi.com/THE_WAVES/ From there, follow the link to the ROADMAP lessons. These are the original ROADMAP lessons by Patrick Crispen that have been updated for Delphi users. You can read these lessons online, or have them emailed to you, or print them to the screen and capture them that way. If you have questions about listserv, email, usenet, telnet, ftp, gopher, or the world wide web, this is a good place to begin getting answers. To use Lynx from Genie, go to page 5000 and follow the links to Lynx. You will need VT-100 or ANSI emulation and full duplex to use Lynx. Once you are inside Lynx, type G (for GO) and a prompt will be available near the bottom of the screen. Type in the address given above and press return. Once you are there, follow the links as I've said above to get to the list of lessons. I suggest that, unless you are looking for specific information, that you begin with lesson 1. When you are looking at the lesson, if you want to capture it to read offline, press the P key. That will give you a print menu that will include emailing the lesson to your account or printing the lesson to the screen where you can capture it in your buffer or to an ASCII text file on your disk. Make your choice and follow the prompts. Happy surfing! :) Charlie (A2.CHARLIE, CAT35, TOP29, MSG:138/M645;1) >>>>> A2 access in Delphi via Netscape Navigator is now operational """"" (actually, I kind of like it, and I usually despise graphical web browsers, so that says something :) Both the Forum and Conference areas are working right now. Ryan http://www.keystroke.net/~rsuenaga "There's no shortage of windmills to tilt at."--Logan ANSITerm and CoPilot v2.55 (A2LAMP, CAT35, TOP30, MSG:318/M645;1) >>> WHAT'S NEW <<< """""""""""""""""" BYTEWORKS GIVES US THE FAX New FAX Number """""""""""""""""""""""""" -------------- Growing concern over e-mail security is causing a lot of folks to want to fax orders to us. We've added a fax line for exactly that purpose. The Byte Works fax number is: (505) 898-4092 Please send bug reports via e-mail or snail-mail (on disk). I don't want my typos getting in the way of your bugs! It's also nice to have a way to get back to you with bug fixes. Mike Westerfield (BYTEWORKS, CAT45, TOP1, MSG:31/M645;1) JASMINE JOINS THE FRAY The long-awaited Jasmine front-end for Genie for """""""""""""""""""""" the Apple IIgs has arrived!! Now available as file 28274 in the A2 Library, is the final beta test version of Jasmine. Due to various Genie problems, it's looking like we'll never be able to actually finish Jasmine, but we thought it would be a good idea to release what we had so far, to give folks an idea of what could have been. I have opened a set of topics in Category 29 (Topics 44 through 50) for discussion of Jasmine. Although we won't be officially supporting it due to its pre-release status, many of us will still be wandering through from time to time and will be happy to answer questions, and many of you will be able to share your experiences with Jasmine to help each other get the most out of it. In any case, keep an eye on Category 29, Topics 44 to 50, for discussion of Jasmine, and feel free to post there if you have a question or concern. Regardless of being a "pre-release" package, Jasmine is still pretty impressive as it stands, so I'm sure you'll want to try it out, if you haven't already! I'm a little late getting these topics opened... Jasmine was actually uploaded to the library about a week ago. In that week, it's already had 81 downloads! Dave Miller - Apple II Programmers RT betatesting coordinator (JUST.DAVE, CAT3, TOP36, MSG:60/M645;1) CHARLIE HARTLEY'S HTML HELP FOR APPLEWORKS Just stopped by with an """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" announcement... I have created a set of AppleWorks' macro task files that display HTML help screens. These are available at my web site located at: http://www.iglou.com/qwerty/ You can use page 5000 here on Genie to use Lynx to download the file. Just follow the links to the Apple II software page. The macros are in the first file listed. BTW, it is named htmlhelp.bxy . Be sure to read the READ.ME.FISRT text file included in the download. These macros do use dot commands which require Ultra 4 or better. Please direct any correspondence about these macros to my internet address: hartley@iglou.com Charlie (A2.CHARLIE, CAT17, TOP 28, MSG:1/M645;1) COPILOT 2.5.6 FOR ANSITERM RELEASED """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" ############ NEWS FLASH ############# CoPilot for ANSITerm version 2.5.6 has been uploaded to the A2 Library. If all goes well, it should be file # 28292. This is a maintenance release of the ANSITerm scripts, in a complete package. Those of you who have CoPilot 2.5.5 for ANSITerm and have installed the update scripts already have part of this package, but there are lots of minor tweaks and changes in this release, too. Among the more interesting: + The archive is _not_ a disk archive, so you can unpack it to any hard drive partition, floppy disk, or RAM disk that has enough space (642K). It unpacks to a folder named 'ATCOP.Install'. + The CoPilot application has been patched to allow you to paste addresses into the mail address field. You must copy the address to the clipboard prior to selecting GE mail from the Message menu. + The CoPilot documentation has been edited to include information about the ANSITerm version. Other editing has been done to update this file; it includes the changes added in version 2.5.6. A companion document called 'AT.delta.DOC' is laid out in parallel to the CoPilot documentation, and explains where the ANSITerm version differs from the documentation that applies to the other CoPilot versions. This file also contains a complete list of all the tweaks, bug fixes and changes that have been made since the initial release of CoPilot for ANSITerm v2.5.5 in the summer of 1995. + The main action scripts have been modified so that you can edit a few lines near the end of the script, and choose what colors are displayed for the foreground and background. The color settings are listed in a table at the end of each of these scripts. + Some of the menus accessed from the CoPilot Main off-line menu have been rearranged to agree with the CoPilot documentation (and to be the same as the other CoPilot implementations). + The scripts have 'hooks' for all of the additional ANSITerm scripts that I have uploaded to the A2 library, _plus_ an additional script hook that was in the other implementations of CoPilot, but not in the ANSITerm version. See the AT.delta.DOC documentation for a description of how these script hooks work. + If you have Attached Mail waiting and skip it, you will get a message each time you log on reminding you that it is there. This message will disappear the next time you download Attached Mail. Enjoy! Don V. Zahniser - CoPilot for ANSITerm Support Delivered by CoPilot for ANSITerm v2.5.6 (D.ZAHNISER, CAT29, TOP18, MSG:145/M645;1) OLRIGHT! UPDATE """"""""""""""" OLRight! News... I have spent a bit of time today working on OLRight! Today's activities, combined with things I have done since the first upload, lead me to believe that the next upload will be for/with WriteAway, probably by next week-end. First, some reports: Joachim Nelson has had difficulties in installing OLRight! so that the scripts would run. He got a message that corresponds to a bad pathname error. The 'fix' was to make a fresh installation of ANSITerm and install OLRight! again. Joachim had put OLRight! in the same folder as his CoPilot installation. I have not tested this configuration, so don't know if there is a compatibility problem. Skip Helbig reports that the scripts broke on a line that reads: as bk de * Destructive backspace I have not gotten confirmation from Skip yet, but I suspect that he is running a version of AT earlier than v2.13b, which is what I have. Since this is not a critical setting, I am commenting it out where I find it. Skip also reports a perceived increase in system instability, especially in using Hermes, since installing Instant Replay. I have offered some thoughts, but don't know Skip's situation yet. UPDATES IN THE WINGS I have the following up and running on my system: -- Instant Replay scripts -- o Converted several scripts for use with Write Away. Conversion consists of substituting Command-\ for Command-S or Command-H for save/save as; and substituting Command-W for Command-K to close windows. Minor tweak to the find/unmark script. Hermes scripts will be included in the next archive in a separate folder. o Script to 'select all' and set font to CoPilot 8 o Extract (cut) highlighted text to a new archive file with user-defined name. Script is in both :OLR:Archive:Mail and OLR:Archive:Forums folders, so you can select where the text is archived. o Print highlighted text. The text is copied to a new (unsaved) file and printed; user has to close file at conclusion of print (at least so far). -- Message Searches -- The Off-Line setup menu now has routines for setting up forum 'searches'. The current options are: o Reset pointers in a SIG for last fifty messages or to a specific message number. Useful when setting up a new SIG. o IGNORE all messages having a common subject (actually, a specific word or words in the subject) in a forum. Useful for suppressing messages for threads that you are not interested in. These settings are kept until you change or delete them. o Read a specific message number o Read messages resulting from a search. Options include combinations of: Search all messages or a range of messages Specify author of message Specify starting date for search Specify text to match in subjects (threads) of messages Specify entire message, or # of lines of each message to retrieve o Read all messages in a thread. -- Login/Logoff -- o If you telnet in, the scripts can log you off (You need to edit the .EX and .TN scripts for your ISP prompts/commands). o Message displayed that password was sent (cosmetic). o Changed timeout for each dial to 2 minutes (was 1 minute). -- Conferences --- o Added missing quote which broke script o Changed references for A2 and A2Pro to non-custom o Added 3-second pause before asking for which room, since dialog may cover the room number. -- Globals -- o Added check/finish ASCII receive to global-c. This is for when scripts break. It closes open files and finishes any receives in progress. o Fixed global-q to properly exit conference o Deleted global-x, global-p, which were for CoPilot There may be more... :^) Don V. Zahniser Delivered by CoPilot for ANSITerm (D.ZAHNISER, CAT29, TOP41, MSG:5/M645;1) >>> THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE <<< """"""""""""""""""""""""""""" THE LEMMINGS ARE HERE! As of the end of 1996, the completed "Brutal """""""""""""""""""""" Deluxe's LemminGS" game is in the hands of the beta test team. Once they've had a chance to thoroughly put the game through its paces and then give us the go-ahead, we'll start to ship it. We expect to get the 'beta team thumbs up' in the next few days... Of course, if any last minute problems are discovered, they'll have to be fixed first. >> When it is released, do you intend to distribute it 'electronically' to >> those who have purchased "Convert 3200"? When it is released, "Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS" will weigh in at nearly 2 megabytes in size, and that makes it just much too large to transmit electronically. It will ship on three 3.5" disks. As stated all along, Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS is a "limited edition game" that will only be available to those who have purchased Convert 3200. There are, however, a few exceptions... Those Genie members who attended the Brutal Deluxe RTC in March, 1996 will be eligible to acquire the game from SSII for the $5 s/h fee. Olivier Zardini kept a list of those who attended that RTC, and he'll be sending me that list soon. SSII conducted a Desktop Publishing Contest last year, and winners of that contest were awarded copies of Convert 3200. Those winners are also eligible to get Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS from SSII for the same $5 s/h fee. Joe (JOE.KOHN, CAT28, TOP4, MSG:192/M645;1) <<<<< >> So, what is the price for Convert 3200 and LemminGS? """"" Convert 3200 costs $15. Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS is free, but Brutal Deluxe has authorized SSII to charge $5 to cover the cost of disks, labels, mailers and postage to anywhere in the galaxy. So...for 20 bucks, you can get the fastest graphics conversion program ever released for the IIGS, and a phenomenal game. Such a deal!! Joe Kohn c/o Shareware Solutions II 166 Alpine St San Rafael, CA 94901-1008 (JOE.KOHN, CAT28, TOP4, MSG:197/M645;1) <<<<< >> That's all?? I thought it was about $50 or so. """"" 50 bucks? FIFTY DOLLARS?!?? Well then, I guess you're not that familiar with SSII's way of doing business. One of my goals is to offer great Apple II products dirt-cheap. Up until a few weeks ago, 50 bucks could have gotten you 17 shrink-wrapped games. Or, it could presently get you about three years worth of newsletters or 1.5 years worth of DOMs, or 10 copies of the Fast Eddie beta, or ProSel-16, or... Such A Deal ;-) Joe http://www.crl.com/~joko [ <--- The almost complete SSII catalog ] (JOE.KOHN, CAT28, TOP4, MSG:205/M645;1) <<<<< The past 48 hours have been a bit nerve-wracking, as the "final" """"" version of Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS crashed my system within 10 seconds of launching it. A flurry of e-mails to Brutal Deluxe ensued, and I was in contact with a number of the beta-test team, all of whom swore up and down that the "final" version of LemminGS worked just fine. Since none of the other previous 20 versions misbehaved in the least bit on my system, a bit of detective work was required. I finally spotted 3 files that had been modified since the last beta version, and noticed that one of them was 5 bytes shorter. I insisted that Brutal Deluxe look at that file, and sure enough...those 5 bytes were critical to the program. I just downloaded the update, and... Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS will start to ship on Monday, January 13, 1997. It's completed, it works great, and I think it's the most enjoyable game I've ever played on my IIGS! I think you'll agree... Joe Kohn (JOE.KOHN, CAT28, TOP4, MSG:229/M645;1) >>>>> I spent some time playing the LemminGS demo last night and it's """"" just great! Normally when I'm doing my file releasing chores I'll take a quick look at the program to make sure it works, get back to Genie and release the file, then go back and play some more if I liked it. Well, ummm, ::cough::, this time I played all 10 demo levels before I suddenly realized that I'd better go release the file so others could check it out. For those of you who had to wait a few extra hours for the demo (even though you would never have known without me telling you this), I apologize. :) Being a Second Sight owner, I have very little use for Convert 3200 even though I hear it's a great program. But LemminGS looks so darned good, and is so fun to play, that I'm going to buy Convert 3200 anyway so I can play the remaining 80+ LemminGS levels. - Tony (A2.TONY, CAT28, TOP4, MSG:231/M645;1) >>> MESSAGE SPOTLIGHT <<< """"""""""""""""""""""""" Category 2, Topic 7 Message 358 Wed Jan 01, 1997 H.MOST [Hindmost] at 02:04 EST Well, gang, this is my last night on Genie. After something more than 8 years, I'm leaving. I was tempted to post this with my original DISPATCHER account (which has had a name change to SOAPY.SUE and is being used by The Lovely Susan). (Come to think of it, the ORIGINAL name on that account was G.UTTER.) I want to talk about all the good times I've had here, I want to reminisce about so many of the friends I've made here (many of whom left a long time ago), I want to say a LOT of things, but there doesn't seem to be much point. I'll just start crying, and won't be able to read the screen anyway. I'm on Delphi now, committed to Delphi now. I'm over there because I believe very strongly that Genie is doomed, that Genie will die in mere months. I can't bear to watch. It's been hard enough already. If Apple II support has a future, its on Delphi. Genie only has a past. That's a hard thing to say, and many of you won't want to hear it, or accept it, but I think it is true. (I certainly wouldn't leave if I didn't.) I don't know what I mean to say here, and I know I'm not doing it well, but this is HARD people, REAL hard. I'm not going to say how much I'll miss you all, because I really hope that you all will join me on Delphi. GO COM A2 APPLE II FOREVER!!!! Gary R. Utter....................................utter@delphi.com [*][*][*] While on Genie, do you spend most of your time downloading files? If so, you may be missing out some excellent information in the Bulletin Board area. The messages listed above only scratch the surface of what's available and waiting for you in the bulletin board area. If you are serious about your Apple II, the GenieLamp staff strongly urge you to give the bulletin board area a try. There are literally thousands of messages posted from people like you from all over the world. [EOA] [A2P]////////////////////////////// A2/PRO_ductivity / ///////////////////////////////// By Richard Bennett [RICHARD.B] >>> A2PRO BITS & BYTES <<< """""""""""""""""""""""""" NO BUFFERS AVAILABLE What kinds of things can cause the NO BUFFERS """""""""""""""""""" AVAILABLE error under ProDOS? Can anythign besides lack of free memory cause this error? A guy named Adam Myrow is randomly seeing this message as he is writing an Eamon adventure. He is blind and uses talking software. The Eamon program uses a machine-code extension that resides in protected space at the top of free RAM. I'm guessing that the talking software is conflicting with the Eamon ML extension, but the problem surfaces randomly and Adam has not seen any patterns that would point to anything specific. He says he has seen it when FRE(0) shows 6K of free RAM. I don't actually expect to work out a solution here, and Adam says he can live with it, but I am posting in case someone has any insights on what might be going on and how to avoid it. TomZ (A2.TOMZ, CAT7, TOP7, MSG:84/M530;1) >>>>> No Buffers Available can occur if one of these commands (append, """"" cat, catalog, exec, open, or -[dash]) is used when eight files are already open, or if there is not enough free memory for a 1K buffer to be assigned. Charlie (A2.CHARLIE, CAT7, TOP7, MSG:85/M530;1) >>>>> NO BUFFERS AVAILABLE will happen any time you try to load data into """"" memory that's marked as USED in the global page. F'rinstance, if you try to load a file on top of BASIC.SYSTEM's memory (or ProDOS's memory), you'll get this error. Eric "Sheppy" Shepherd Logicware, Inc. http://www.logicware.com (SHEPPY, CAT7, TOP7, MSG:86/M530;1) THOSE WACKY JPEGS About a year (or so) ago, Tony Ward helped me figure out """"""""""""""""" how to determine the dimensions of a Jpeg. Shortly after that a crash took away the code and information, anyone have the file format information around? About all I remember is that it's something wacky where I had to loop around looking for some marker bytes, but that's about all I remember (and I'm not even positive I'm remembering THAT right, could have been another file format ) T'anks for any help --HangTime [Will Computer for Food] B-)> (HANGTIME, CAT11, TOP28, MSG:13/M530;1) >>>>> Well, at least this time the information will be permanantly """"" archived in a known location... :) Basically, you process a JPEG by looking for markers. You should first check that the file actually is a JPEG by looking at the very beginning of the file. It should start with $FFD8 FFE0 aabb 4A46494600 ccdd. $FFD8 is the beginning marker. All JPEGs should start with these two bytes. $FFE0 should come next (it does in all JPEGs I've seen, but I'm not sure if it's always the case.) aabb are length bytes that I'll explain later. $4A46494600 spells "JFIF" with a $00 terminator (call it a C-String if you like, but it's always the same in a valid JPEG.) ccdd is the version number ($0102 would be v1.2.) Once you've determined that the file is a valid JPEG, you need to search for the "Start Of Frame" marker. It will be a $FF followed by $Cn (it can be anything from $C0 to $CF =except= $C4 and $CC.) For our purposes, you don't care what n is as long as you find it (it defines the compression process.) The bytes immediately following $FFCn are as follows: 2 bytes: length 1 byte : precision 2 bytes: height 2 bytes: width 1 byte : number of components You are interested in height and width. Note that the 2-byte values are in MSB first format. Thus, $013C = 316 decimal. You may be asking "what if $FFCn occurs naturally somewhere in the data?" Well, that's where those length bytes come in. To properly parse a JPEG, you really should scan from the beginning looking for $FF markers and skip ahead the number of length bytes to find the next marker. An important point here is that the length bytes =always= directly follow the marker bytes and =always= include the 2 length bytes themselves. I'm terrible at explaining things. I hope you can make sense of all this. Let me try to sum up... 1) All JPEGs should start with $FFD8. 2) Directly after that will be another $FFxx marker. All $FFxx markers =except= the very first $FFD8 identifier will be followed by a 2-byte length in MSB first format. 3) Scan for the $FFxx markers, skipping ahead using the length bytes until you find a $FFCn marker and grab the data explained above. - Tony (A2.TONY, CAT11, TOP28, MSG:14/M530;1) FOCUS NON-ADB KEYBOARDS To anyone who can help! Hardware Hacker, Solder """"""""""""""""""""""" Slinger? I was just given a beautiful extended keyboard F1 thru F12. Made by Focus Electronic Co. Ltd. China (of course). All that was wrong was that the 3v Lithium Battery underneath was dead. A $3.00 Radio Shack purchase fixed that. Now the calculator and the liquid crystal display works. It has a 5 pin Din and the cheezy Apple keyboard of course has a smaller 4 pin Din. Can I replace keyboards on my Apple IIGS? If so how do I wire the change? Is it feasable? I guess that the IIGS won't support many of the keys? Looking forward to some info or some place someone has posted this change before! R. Randall13 Senior Solder Slinger! (R.RANDALL13, CAT12, TOP26, MSG:148/M530;1) >>>>> I'm not sure what you have, but it doesn't sound like an ADB """"" keyboard, so unless you're willing to develop a WinTell to ADB adapter of some kind, the best use for the keyboard is as a paperweight. ADB keyboards of the type used by Apple IIGS and most Macintosh computers all use 4 pin DIN connectors. My Compaq uses a 6 pin DIN connector, which I assumed was standard in the WinTell world. Maybe you're keyboard was supposed to split the difference. ;) Mike Westerfield (BYTEWORKS, CAT12, TOP26, MSG:149/M530;1) >>>>> >> I was just given a beautiful extended keyboard F1 thru F12. """"" >> MadeFocus Electronic Co. Ltd. China (of course). Mike pointed out that this was probably a Wintel keyboard and did not have ADB support. ADB is the Apple Desktop Bus, and it means that any device you plug into a IIgs (or Mac for that matter) ADB port, must have smart logic inside to support the Bus. Wintel keyboards support different logic... What you need to do is swap it with some poor Wintel owner for a Macintosh extended keyboard... Ewen Wannop Delivered by: CoPilot v2.55 and Spectrum 2.1 (E.WANNOP, CAT12, TOP26, MSG:151/M530;1) WINTELCROSOFTATES Who makes a Wintel computer? I've never heard of one! """"""""""""""""" Randy (R.RANDALL13, CAT12, TOP26, MSG:152/M530;1) >>>>> >Who makes a Wintel computer? I've never heard of one! """"" "Wintel" signifies Intel-based computers running Windows software. It has common usage among Intel- and Microsoft-hating computer users who, for various reasons, refuse to use "PC" to signify this type of computer. TomZ (A2.TOMZ, CAT12, TOP26, MSG:153/M530;1) MIME AT LAST Call to arms! Well, fingers to be precise... """""""""""" Don't know if there's a better topic for this, I may create one depending on the response. I've had a bit of feedback about how we don't have a MIME decoder for the Apple II. I'm assuming we still don't. Anyway, over the weekend I knocked up a very basic shell for a MIME decoder application with plug in decoders. I've also written a decoder for quoted- printable and will be releasing the source as sample code. So if anyone is interested in writing a decoder for any MIME types (eg. BASE64, BINHEX etc.) then let me know, as the shell is pretty much done except for niceties, and the plug-in module format for decoders is VERY simple, in the fact the shell does all the hard work for you. One last thing, this is in 65C02, so it'll run on //es and //cs as well as the IIGS. Now, where are all those programmers who said they had decoders but no application shell to drive them? I don't have the time to write any others, so we need these people to step forward. Regards, Richard (RICHARD.B, CAT16, TOP7, MSG:61/M530;1) >>>>> Richard, """"" > I knocked up a very basic shell for a MIME decoder application > with plug in decoders. I've also written a decoder for quoted- > printable and will be releasing the source as sample code. Excellent! > So if anyone is interested in writing a decoder for any MIME types > (eg. BASE64, BINHEX etc.) then let me know, as the shell is pretty > much done except for niceties, and the plug-in module format for > decoders is VERY simple, in the fact the shell does all the hard > work for you. I was planning on doing an Base64 decoder for 8-bit machines. I've started to pull together the references but I haven't finished the specifications (features, etc.). I once investigated doing a BinHex decoder for the IIgs (command for the ORCA shell) but I had trouble with the CRC value in the BinHex headers I was working with. I lifted C source code for 16-bit CRC from two different PC communications books and the CRC values I calculated never matched the ones in the header (I was doing this to ensure the integrity of the BinHex data I was about to process). Both examples, used precalculated values that were stored in tables for direct look-up. All of this C work was being done on the PC (because the development environment is easier and faster to work with) before it would be ported to the IIgs. > One last thing, this is in 65C02, so it'll run on //es and //cs as > well as the IIGS. That's good news. I was assuming that you or someone else was going to do a IIgs-specific Base64 decoder so I was planning on a 6502 version with an Applesoft front-end (because doing user interface from assembler has always been a pain for me). Erick (E.WAGNER.10, CAT16, TOP7, MSG:62/M530;1) <<<<< Well, I've done the base64 stuff... What else needs doing? """"" (RICHARD.B, CAT16, TOP7, MSG:63/M530;1) >>>>> BinHex? MacBinary (would this show up in the MIME stuff?) Actually, I think it would be rather nice if the base64 decoder could sense that the data was of a particular type (such as GIF, JPEG, TIFF) and automagically save the data with the appropriate file type and aux type. If my information is correct, GIF would get assigned to $C0/$8006, JPEG to $C0/$0081, and TIFF to $C0/$0080. Erick (E.WAGNER.10, CAT16, TOP7, MSG:64/M530;1) <<<<< The facility is there for the plug-in to decide upon the correct """"" type/aux. Oh btw, BinHex is almost done... (RICHARD.B, CAT16, TOP7, MSG:65/M530;1) HYPERTALKING Over Christmas I will be writing some HyperCard stacks on my """""""""""" sister-in- law's Mac. I want to use these stacks on four Macs here at my university, but HyperCard isn't installed on any of the university computers. What will it cost me to have "run-only" capacity on computers that do not have HyperCard installed? Users will be "browsing" or "typing," but not using higher levels. More on topic... how much trouble should I anticipate learning to use the Mac HyperCard after becoming reasonably proficient with HCGS? I'm talking about straight scripting, not XCMD-stuff. Eric ( o= =o === =ooo oo oo= == ) (J.SCHONBLOM, CAT18, TOP6, MSG:5/M530;1) >>>>> There is a HyperCard 2.2 Player over in the Mac RT. I couldn't find """"" any limitations on its distrubution in the (meager) documentation. Is that what you're looking for? John. (J.LAWRENCE9, CAT18, TOP6, MSG:6/M530;1) >>>>> That sounds like what I want. I'm pleased it will be so easy. """"" [ It's also nice to get a prompt reply in a category that has been idle so long. ] :) Eric ( o= =o === =ooo oo oo= == ) (J.SCHONBLOM, CAT18, TOP6, MSG:7/M530;1) FINDER EXTRA QUESTION I am currently writing a FE and have a simple """"""""""""""""""""" (perhaps) question: Does the Finder Say anything when a folder is opened using a double click? If not, is there a way of finding out the paths to the currently open folders?? thanks!! Chris (C.VAVRUSKA1, CAT20, TOP4, MSG:199/M530;1) BRUTAL BACKUPS Just thought I'd share something with you: """""""""""""" I read on csa2 that Brutal Deluxe lost the entire source code for their version of 6.01.1 or 6.02 via a hard drive crash. For some reason, I ain't buying it. With all of the problems with AWGS and Claris "misplacing" their source code, companies and developers have to have more than one copy. I'm sure those of you working on this project have bits and pieces of it while others have the entire thing. For Brutal Deluxe, a well known and reputable(?) GS software maker to have one copy of source code for a MAJOR project is downright absurd and assinine. Andy (L.MIDDLETON3, CAT24, TOP13, MSG:15/M530;1) >>>>> It's been pretty well known for some time that Brutal has said that """"" whatever source they had for their proposed system software update is on a now-dead hard drive. In fact, they discussed that in an RTC that was held in the A2 RT quite some time ago. I'm pretty sure Claris didn't "lose" the source for AWGS; it's just that the source was spaghetti. There's also the matter of whether or not QC felt it was financially viable to have someone work on it. . . > For Brutal Deluxe, a well known and reputable(?) GS software maker to > have one copy of source code for a MAJOR project is downright absurd and > assinine. For anyone to have only one copy of the source code for a major project is absurd and assinine. Ryan Coffee: Good for America (R.SUENAGA1, CAT24, TOP13, MSG:17/M530;1) INTEGER BASIC UPGRADED Integer BASIC 1.0.2 """""""""""""""""""""" ------------------- Integer BASIC has been upgraded. The upgrade fixes both known bugs in this small sample compiler. Integer BASIC is a small demonstration compiler written in Pascal and assembly language. It comes with source code and a book that gives a brief introduction to compilers. Just $30.00, it's worth the price for the classics disk, which revives old Integer BASIC programs--some written by Woz himself--running in compiled 65816 native code! The upgrade is $5 to registered owners of ORCA/Integer BASIC. The upgrade is free if you are ordering anything else. (BYTEWORKS, CAT36, TOP12, MSG:30/M530;1) >>>>> > Integer BASIC 1.0.2 """"" > Just $30.00 Somehow, I had formed the impression that the Integer BASIC compiler was more expensive than this. And, Lawsy me, Christmas is a-comin'... hmm. Doug C. (EDITOR.A2, CAT36, TOP12, MSG:32/M530;1) PROGRAMMING IN PASCAL QUESTIONS Hopefully, someone can help me out here. """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I'm slowly working my way through Mike Westerfield's "Programming the Toolbox in Pascal", and I've got a few questions. 1. On page 86 in chapter 5, (the Windows chapter), at the bottom of the page, there is an example function to open a new window. In the constants section of the function is the following: const rWindParam1 = $800E; {resource ID} wrNum = 1001; {window resource number} The comments are what bother me, and I'm thinking it's just a semantics problem. It seems to me that rWindParam1 should be the window resource number (or resource _type_), and wrNum should be the resource ID, especially since on page 403, it shows the resource type being the second to last parameter passed. Are the comments on page 83 a typo? (I hope so, or I _really_ don't understand this stuff ;) 2. I'm trying to concurrently use DesignMaster to develop my resources for windows, menus etc, but when I create a window in DesignMaster, it wants to put the window title in a rPstring resource, which doesn't hurt my feelings any, but how do I make the NewWindow2 call from the pascal side then? 3. Can you freely mix and match hex and decimal in the resource definitions and toolbox calls? It seemed that when we were defining the menus in Chapter 3, we were using decimal numbers for the resource IDs, but when we got to the windows chapter, we suddenly switched to using hex numbers in the calls and definitions. Thanks for any insight you might have. ________ |homas (T.COMPTER, CAT36, TOP22, MSG:10/M530;1) >>>>> I'm not familiar with Mike's manual, however you are correct in """"" assuming that (rWindParam1 = $800E) is in fact a resource type, and (wrNum = 1001) is a resource ID. Unless of course Mike's trying hard to confuse the hell out of people, which I seriously doubt. :) As for DesignMaster, again Mike will be able to comment better, but it was designed as a prototyping tool (specifically for the Dialog Manager), and not a resource editor. If you can, try and find where you can buy a copy of Genesys. It's a little buggy, but not as buggy as DesignMaster, and was written with resources in mind. All toolbox calls accept hexdecimal values. It is at the compiler or assembly level where the base differs. For example, in pascal, the following two statements would be equivalent: myVariable := 10; myVariable := $0A; When the compiler generates code, the 10 is translated to $000A. So basically, you can use whatever base you're comfortable with, although we're taught to count in base 10, so why not stick to it. What you may have seen is an example where it is handy to use hexadecimal. For example, say you had a window with a control list, and the control list's ID was $00000001, you could group the controls for that list together by merging them with $0001, so you would have a list of control with IDs such as: $00010001 $12340001 $43210001 $10030001 Going back, you can easily see that they're grouped together. In decimal, their values would be 65537 305397761 1126236161 268632065 (OK, I specifically picked a horrid example. :-) You can define them with either base, but hexadecimal just makes for sense. Regards, Richard (RICHARD.B, CAT36, TOP22, MSG:11/M530;1) <<<<< >>> Richard.B """"" > I'm not familiar with Mike's manual, however you are correct in assuming > that (rWindParam1 = $800E) is in fact a resource type, and (wrNum = > 1001) is a resource ID. Whew! so I'm _not_ crazy! :) > Unless of course Mike's trying hard to confuse the hell out of people, > which I seriously doubt. :) I was further confused because it's the same way in the Toolbox in 'C' course as well. > If you can, try and find where you can buy a copy of Genesys. It's a > little buggy, but not as buggy as DesignMaster, and was written with > resources in mind. I'll do that, thanks. I take it that it's no longer available new? Thanks so much for your quick and helpful reply. The bit about the control list went a little over my head, but I haven't gotten to that chapter yet, so perhaps it will be clear when I do. ________ |homas (T.COMPTER, CAT36, TOP22, MSG:12/M530;1) [EOA] [SOF]////////////////////////////// SOFTVIEW A2 / ///////////////////////////////// Quick Click Morph """"""""""""""""" by Douglas Cuff [D.CUFF] Title: Quick Click Morph v1.0.1 Author: Mike Westerfield Price: $60 Required: Apple IIgs; System 6.0.1; 1.125 megs Recommended: accelerator; hard drive; extra memory Publisher: Byte Works, Inc. 8000 Wagon Mound Drive NW Albuquerque, NM 87120 (505) 898-8183 [*][*][*] If you've watched a transformation scene in a recent movie, commercial, or even a television show, then chances are you've seen morphing. Morph is short for metamorphosis--a complete change of form, structure, or substance. It's visually arresting to see something--animal, mineral, or vegetable--stretch and/or fall in on itself to form something new. The first time I saw morphing, it was a big-deal special effect in a 1988 film called _Willow_. A spell was cast, and a small object transformed into several animals--ostrich and lion among them--before settling into a human form. These days, you can see morphing on the opening credits for the TV sitcom _Roseanne_... still pictures of the principal actors from various seasons morph to show you how far they--or their cosmetic surgeons--have come. In 1995, at the same time _Roseanne_ proved that morphing was within the budget of a television program, Mike Westerfield proved that it was possible on the Apple IIgs with Quick Click Morph. I was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was to create a morph with QCM. I had been thinking of the process as complicated, and it really isn't at all. You load two pictures you want to morph between, then click a few times to establish boundaries for the morphing. QCM steps in and creates all the in-between frames. MORPHING 101 The thing to keep in mind is that morphing is just an """""""""""" animation technique. QCM allows you to focus on this one technique. It's as if QCM is one feature of an animation package, so naturally it's simple to understand and use. Practically the only concepts you have to learn are those of key frames, tween frames, and morph control point. Key frames are the pictures you load into QCM (IIgs format or TIFF, which is very popular on Mac and Windows platforms). Tween frames are the pictures between the key frames. Morphing involves two simultaneous techniques--fading and stretching. Morph control points look after the stretching. If you've seen any ads or demos for Quick Click Morph, you've probably seen the little girl morphed into a cat. To achieve this effect, it's important to have the cat's pointy ears grow out of the girl's head. You want to stretch a gentle curve into a triangular shape, so you create three control points at the angles of the triangle. All the complicated work is done by the computer. It compares each picture using an algorithm too complicated for my brain, and works out how much to fade and stretch a picture. Morphs over space have gotten all the noise--a girl transforms into a cat. Much more impressive to my eyes are morphs over time--like the ones at the start of _Roseanne_. The evolution morph included with QCM also demonstrates this well. Let me use a combination space/time morph to explain how Quick Click Morph works and how well it does its job. BEGIN METAMORPHOSIS Let's start with images of three generations--my """"""""""""""""""" father, myself, and my son. (I don't actually have any children, except for the purposes of this review.) The first key frame loaded is my father, the second is me, and the third is my son. We're going to be looking at family resemblance. The first thing to do is create some control points on the picture of my father. Control points for each of the eyes make a good start, then add more control points for the nose, mouth, and ears. That's enough to begin. As we move the cursor to each of these places and click the mouse button, QCM draws a small cross to indicate the control point. When you click to create a point, the cross is red. When you click to create a second point, the first cross turns green--the active point is always red. (I really wish Westerfield hadn't chosen red and green. I'm red-green color-blind, and that's a fairly common form of color-blindness. I can tell the difference when the crosses are on light backgrounds, but on dark backgrounds, there's a lot of squinting and even more wild guessing.) After you've clicked to create the control points on the picture of my father, flip to the next key frame and look at the picture of me. The control points are drawn on this frame too, but not exactly in the right positions. My father's face is a little broader than mine, so the control point for the left eye is fine, but the control point for the right is on my right temple. At this point, you should drag any errant control points so that they correspond to the correct positions. The morph will work a lot better if all the key frames are about the same size. There's almost no point is using a picture of my father that takes up the entire screen if my picture barely takes up a quarter of the screen. The transition wouldn't be smooth at all. The same objection applies to positioning of pictures, even if they are the same size. If my father's head is near the top of the frame, and my head is the near the bottom, that transition won't be smooth either. Fortunately, Quick Click Morph allows you to resize and reposition your key frames. The manual advises you that it's better to use a full-featured paint program to do this, but the program gives you the capability anyway. (One thing that a full-featured paint program does that QCM doesn't is allow you to eliminate background clutter. My picture of my father has a background of shelves of books, and my picture of me has a medium-gray background. I eliminated both backgrounds with Platinum Paint. It wasn't easy--it made me appreciate just how talented airbrush artists really are. Tip: Once I had turned both backgrounds pure white, I used a round paintbrush and the smooth mode to make my ragged airbrush technique look a lot less distracting.) Let's get back to our morph: we've created the control points on the picture of my father, and dragged the same points into the correct positions on my picture. The next thing to do is drag the same points into corresponding position on the picture of my son, right? Not quite. Each transition in a morph sequence must be handled separately. When you view the finished movie, it'll look like father morphing into son and then into grandson--beginning, middle, and ending--but it's really two sequences, father (begin) into son (end) and son (begin) into grandson (end). That means you have to place all the control points of my picture all over again. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut for this. You can't select all the control points from the end of the first transition, copy them, and paste them onto the start of the second transition. It is very important to think of each morphing sequence as its own transition, but it's a pity points can't be copied from one sequence to another. The concept of separate sequences is important. Just because father into son used 9 tween frames is no reason that son into grandson has to use the same number. The second transition could take 5 frames, or 13. Also, if my father and I resemble each other a lot, then perhaps 6 control points are all that are needed. If my son and I don't resemble each other as much, then 18 control points might be necessary to create a really smooth transition. Another aspect of each transition is the speed of each fade. There are three speeds--slow, normal, and fast--and both the outgoing image and the incoming image have a speed assigned. For photographs, the manual recommends "slow in, slow out". For line drawings (like most comic strips and cartoons), "fast in, fast out" is recommended. MEASURING UP How well does Quick Click Morph perform? Here's how to sum """""""""""" it up: it's fun, easy... and slow. To be fair, none of the parts that involve the user are slow. But the part that involves letting the computer work out its algorithm is very slow. Even with a ZipGS or TransWarp GS accelerator installed. We're talking hours. The main factors that influence how long a morph takes are the size of the frame, the number of control points, and how many colors are used. QCM allows for a creditable number of colors to be displayed--you're not limited to the 16 normally available in 320-mode or the 4 available in 640-mode. If you're using a TIFF graphic, you can have up to 256 colors (although you'd be unwise to go to that extreme). The number of control points greatly influences the speed of a morph, so it's a pity that there's is no way to tell how many points are used in a transition. Except by counting them on the screen. In a transition that uses many control points, they may be so close together that counting them isn't possible. When Westerfield wrote QCM, he seemed to be aware of the fact that producing finished morphs takes a long time. He allowed the user to interrupt the morphs and save them for another time. Saved morphs keep track of which frames have been morphed, so that they don't have to be re-morphed when the file is loaded again. As a morph takes place, each is frame is displayed on the screen to give you an idea of what the metamorphosis looks like so far. The manual also recommends a technique to help save you time. Suppose you have the key frame of my father, then 3 tween frames, and the key frame of me. If you move to the second tween frame, which is the exact middle of the sequence, and morph just that one frame, you'll get a rough idea of how smooth the transition will be. This is obviously much faster than morphing all the tween frames and then viewing the entire transition. You have to figure out for yourself which the middle tween frame is, and then you have to count carefully as you advance the frames one by one. The only way to find out which frame you're in is rather clumsy--choose Save Frame As... from the Frame menu, and notice the default filename that QCM has assigned it. Then click the Cancel button, since you probably don't really want to save the frame. As I said, this is clumsy. Even morphing that single middle frame is not quick--most frames I morphed were from 4 to 6 minutes. If you have a lot of tween frames--and frankly, 9 tween frames is not a lot--then you can quickly see how each sequence can take time to morph. And that's just for the transition from father to son. There's still the son-grandson transition to morph. SPECIFICS I hope this talk of how slow Quick Click Morph can be isn't """"""""" putting you off, because we're about to descend to specifics: The Apple IIgs graphic screen is 320 pixels by 200 pixels, or 640x200, depending on which mode you're in. Quite a lot of graphics are in 320 mode, so we'll look at that mode. Frankly, you'd have to be crazy to morph the entire 320x200 area. It could take a long time. So for our test, I've chosen an area of 140x145 pixels. All of our images--my father, myself, and my son--are grayscale (B&W) pictures, using a paltry 16 "colors" (grays) each. Let's create 38 control points for each of the two transitions. (That might sound like a lot, but it's not.) Let's have 9 tween frames for each transition, and create just the midpoint tween frame. In my example, with a 8 mHz ZipGS, it took just under 6 minutes to morph each frame, or 12 minutes for midpoint frames for both transitions. At this point--with just 3 key frames and 2 tween frames, let's save the morph file to see how big it is: 189K. Slightly less than a quarter of the capacity of a 3.5" disk (800K). We'll come back to this later. Neither of the transitions looks exactly right, so we'll add 8 more control points to each, making a total of 46 for each sequence. Since we've added control points, we have to morph the midpoint frame all over again. Those 8 control points have added a full minute to the morph--it took just over 7 minutes this time. But it was worth it! The morphs look much smoother now. We can now tell QCM to morph all the frames in all the sequences, and it will work away happily without any further input from us. We can walk away and leave the IIgs running. (One slightly quirky note: when creating a morph with 4 key frames, I was obliged to stop the morph during the third and final sequence. When I resumed, the display read "Sequence 1 of 3"--or possibly "Sequence 1 of 1"--instead of "Sequence 3 of 3". That worried me--I was afraid QCM had forgotten that sequences 1 and 2 were complete, and that 2 hours of work was being done over again. I shouldn't have worried. Despite the display, QCM was working on the third and final sequence. Phew.) Walking away from the IIgs is really a good idea, because it has 16 frames to morph at over 7 minutes a frame. (Yes, 16 frames. No, not 18. We've already morphed the midpoint frame, and QCM won't make us do it over again.) It's going to take roughly 2 hours to complete the entire morph--and it would have been 2 and 1/4 hours if we hadn't done the midpoint frames first. When I was writing this review, I was able to cheat on a grand scale: my wife had gone off to class, leaving her similarly-accelerated free for hours. I just set the morph going and continued writing on my own computer. But supposing I hadn't been able to cheat? Two hours is a long time to wait to get your computer back. With all the morphing done, let's save the 3 key frames and 18 tween frames to disk. The morph file has almost doubled in size--it's 360K now. Even now, we're not done. We've just created the morph. Now we have to turn the morph into a movie--an animation that anyone can see, even if they don't own Quick Click Morph. It is possible to view this animation without leaving QCM--if it's short and/or if you have a lot of memory. If you run out of memory--as I did when trying to view my 3-key-frame morph--you can save the movie to disk. (The movie is even larger than the morph--486K; over half the capacity of a 3.5" disk.) I'm delighted to report that turning a morph into a movie takes no appreciable time at all. If you've saved your movie to disk, you do have to quit out of QCM and run an animation player--or use an NDA animation player like ShowMe. There's a player included with QCM. It's a nuisance to have to quit, but animation has always been a memory-intensive process--this is hardly the fault of QCM. Creating a morph is a process that demands a long time and a fair amount of disk space. I feel I should emphasize that QCM is not slow when accepting input from you, the user. When you're defining your morph, QCM is quick and easy. When it's time to create the morph, it's very slow. Quick Click Morph makes it easy to create morphs--but that's not the same as saying it's easy to create good morphs. You could create a morph that just uses 6 control points, but it's probably not going to be very smooth. Even if you use a lot of control points, QCM has some limitations. Don't look for Hollywood-quality morphs. Sometimes the stretching effect takes a back seat to the fading effect. For example, in the well-known girl-into-cat morph, the cat's ears are supposed to grow out of the girl's head. That does happen, but not subtly enough for my taste. As early as the first tween frame--the frame immediately following the key frame of the girl in her natural state--the ears have started to fade in at approximately their natural height (though a quarter of their natural size). GOODIES One feature that makes Quick Click Morph particularly useful is """"""" the ability to save a morphed frame. This feature has three immediately obvious uses. First, let's say you've been working on a key frame, and have 50 control points placed. You suddenly decide you should have removed all the background detail--but you don't want to have start over and place all those points again. Just save the frame, import it into a paint program, and manipulate it. As long as you don't change the frame's size or position--very hard to do accidentally!--you load the altered picture back into QCM by using the Update Frame command. Second, you may find that a morphed frame makes a great key frame for another part of the same morph--or for another morph altogether! With QCM's save frame feature, you can save a tween frame for later use. Finally, you may want to use a morphed frame as a still picture somewhere. I took three pictures of myself from three different years, 1988, 1990, and 1994. My face changed a little in that time, but not a lot. The odd thing is that none of the three pictures is a particularly good likeness of me... but the midpoint frame from the 1990-1994 transition is! If I want a picture of myself that really looks like me, I can use the "fake" picture from "1992". I probably won't. But I _could_; that's the point. (Incidentally, Genie users can download a copy of the 6-year morph from the A2 libraries.) A feature that Quick Click Morph shares with its older sister, Quick Click Calc, is file encryption. If you want to keep prying eyes away from your morph in progress, you can enter a password as you save it. When you load the morph, you'll be asked for the password before you are allowed to continue work on it. MANUAL I like the Byte Works manuals, even though certain typographical """""" errors--such as "loose" for "lose"--drive the editor in me absolutely bonkers. This tiny flaw aside, the manual does a good job of explaining concepts. The tutorial section is a breeze to follow. Remember how I said that the programmer/program was aware of how long morphing frames takes? The manual seems to be slightly less aware. It encourages experimenting with the number of colors (16, 128, 256) and with the Fade (Slow/Normal/Fast, In/Out). The slowness of the program discourages morphing. A lot. If you are going to experiment, do it early on with small frames, few colors, and few control points. MOVIE PLAYER The Quick Click Movie Player has features I've seen in other """""""""""" animation players--slow down, speed up, stop, advance a frame at a time--but it can also create movie "scripts". This makes a great way to join separate animations into a longer show. The manual says that if you want an animation to play twice, just add it to the script twice in succession. That sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately the animation has be loaded each time, even though it's the same animation. If you're loading animations from anything but a superfast hard drive or RAM drive, the slowdown will annoy you. If there's ever an update, perhaps Westerfield will allow QCMP to check for replays of a movie already in memory. SUMMARY Quick Click Morph is fun, simple to use, and slow. The slowness """"""" discourages making changes and experimenting, but it's in the nature of the beast. No matter what computer hardware or software is used, animation is memory-hungry, disk-hungry, and time-ravenous. This isn't an "everyday" program--it's like a single feature of a larger animation program. Even movies that use morphing don't use the technique every five minutes. You'll probably want to use it sparingly too. Because you'll be using it sparingly, you might find that the slowness isn't too big a price to pay--after all, you won't be using Quick Click Morph every day. Consider this as well: if you need the morphing technique in your animations, you need this program. Quick Click Morph is the only game in town. [EOA] [PRO]////////////////////////////// PROFILES ////////////////////////////////// Who's Who In Apple II """"""""""""""""""""" by Max Jones [M.JONES145] An Interview with Bret Victor (C) 1997, Max Jones, _Juiced.GS_ All rights reserved Editor's note: Following is an excerpt from an interview conducted by _Juiced.GS_ with IIgs software author Bret Victor in late December, 1996. Victor will be the subject of a feature article in the upcoming issue of _Juiced.GS_ (Winter '97, Volume 2, Issue 1), which will be mailed to subscribers in late February. The complete transcript of the interview will be available on the _Juiced.GS_ Collection Shareware '97/Winter two-dist set. Details for obtaining the collection will be included in the next _Juiced.GS_, the Apple II world's premier IIgs-specific publication. (See details for obtaining new or renewal subscriptions to _Juiced.GS_ at the end of this interview.) >>> WHO'S WHO? <<< """""""""""""""""" ~ GenieLamp A2 Profile: Bret Victor A few dedicated software programmers remain in the Apple II world. Their work contributes immensely to the continued enjoyment those in the Apple II community get from using their computers. One of those programmers in Bret Victor, whose recent work for Softdisk Publishing Inc. has revitalized the _Softdisk G-S_ monthly on-disk publication. Victor has been using Apple II computers since the second grade. His parents bought him the first and only computer he's ever owned, an Apple IIgs, when he was still in elementary school. Through the years he learned to program the computer and is now the principal contributor to _Softdisk G-S_. Victor took some time during his recent winter break from college to tell _Juiced.GS_ and the Apple II community a little more about himself. ... Bret> Well, I grew up in a town called Castro Valley, in the East Bay in """" California. I guess I did a lot of stuff in high school: I became an Eagle Scout, I was a member of a computer users group and did volunteer computer tutoring, I played soccer and ran track, I did some programming, I played the piano, I got a four-point something GPA. A lot of that stuff ended up not mattering very much. Track was important, but a couple of hamstring pulls my senior year left me unable to compete, which was too bad since I was expected to go to the state meet that year. Piano became important once I dumped the classical music and started playing tunes out of fakebooks and improvising. Now I'm a sophomore at Cal Tech, where I occassionally attend classes and try not to work if I can help it. I think Caltech is a great place, but it costs way too much. I'm majoring in electrical engineering, which I whimsically decided after taking an EE class and finding it fun. Music is still a very important part of my life, and track probably will be too once I recover enough to seriously compete again. Juiced.GS> What got you interested programming for the IIGS? What was """"""""" some of your early work on the Apple II? Bret> Well, I'd always been interested in programming. I'd write cool """" little things in Applesoft on my IIgs, since I never had the attention span for any kind of major project. Major projects ended up being set aside for other smaller projects, and then abandoned as the smaller projects themselves were set aside for other projects. I have quite a few unfinished programs. Most of them, looking back at them now, are just as well unfinished, but at the time I was just a kid, and I was doing exciting stuff. The exception to all this was TextFighter, which started out as doodling in a screen editor while I was coming up with screens for some other program I was writing. I drew little text stick figures, and said, hey, I wonder if I can get these guys to move around? Once they were moving, that naturally led to, hey, I wonder if I can get these guys to hit each other? Promising myself that I would return soon to my previous project, I began to write a game that would end up going through several rewrites and taking almost two years to complete. Of course, I was only working during summer and winter breaks, and the occasional weekend. TextFighter is still one of the programs that I am the most proud of. I sent it Softdisk, they sent me $700, and it ended up co-starring on issue #171 with some card game. Rather anticlimatic. Maybe it was a learning experience, whatever that means. Up to this time, I had never learned IIgs-specific programming because I figured it would be a waste, since I didn't think I would be staying with the IIgs too much longer. But that changed after I had written a cool patch to ProSel-8 that made it display a random tagline on the screen. I liked it, but most people don't boot into Prosel-8 like I do, so I wondered if I could make a tagline appear on the GS/OS splash screen. I had never seen a line of 16-bit assembly in my life, but that didn't stop me from dissassembling the START.GSOS file and seeing if I could find a place to patch. (I remember that it took me a little while to figure out that I needed to put the Monitor in 16-bit mode.) In a couple days, I had written my patch. I had mostly used the Monitor and mini-assembler, and really had no idea what I was doing, but it worked. Then, I decided to put the part that would choose a tagline into an INIT file. So I pulled the source code to the "NO IBM" init off of A2Pro, saw how an init worked, and soon I had a preliminary version of Opening Line. Later, I saw that I could have it show a background picture file too (using the low-level loader that was for loading GSOS in the first place). Of course, all this time I had no reference manuals whatsoever, and everything I knew about IIgs assembly I had learned from hacking system software. So, I knew IIgs assembly and I knew how to make an INIT file. That was enough to let me do all kinds of cool things that I had always wanted to do but that I didn't because I thought that there would be effort involved in learning 16-bit programming. So near the end of that summer, I wrote lots of little INITs doing lots of cool, useless things. This was my uselessware series. I wrote them to ward off boredom and depression, and to hopefully make other people laugh or enjoy their computer more. After I got back to school, I wrote PuyoPuyo and some stuff for _Softdisk G-S_. Then during the summer, I wrote Operation Lambda and more stuff for _Softdisk G-S_. My total program count now is somewhere near twenty-five. And I still feel like I don't really know what I'm doing. Juiced.GS> You've also done extensive work as a graphic artist for """"""""" various IIgs multimedia publications. How did all that came about? Bret> As for artwork, the whole Power-GS art thing came as a surprise, """" since I never (and still don't) consider myself to have any artistic talent. PongLife (the precursor to Power-GS) had just come out, and fooling around in Platinum Paint for some reason one day, I came up with some cool-looking PongLife logos, and sent them to the editors. They liked them (or more likely, were simply desperate for artwork), and asked me to make more stuff for them. So I fooled around some more in Platinum. After a while, I had gotten pretty good at fooling around, and was able to make cool screens and logos. Which is what I did for Power-GS issues two through six, for the Opening Line picture packs, and for LiveWire IIgs. So I'm not bad at graphic design (whatever that is), but my artistic skills are still along the lines of the TextFighter stick figures. Juiced.GS> Your musical background is evident in your work. What all have """"""""" you done musically on the IIGS? Bret> Well, the first song in Operation Lambda was the first real song I """" ever wrote on the IIgs. The second Lambda song was my second attempt at computer music, and so on. After the five Lambda songs, I also wrote music for SurfBurgers and CrossHatch, which are two of my _Softdisk G-S_ games. The hardest part was finding instruments. The songs themselves didn't take very long to write -- I just sat down at SoundSmith and started typing stuff in. The object was just to make something for the game player to bounce along to while trying to figure out the game, and I think I achieved that pretty well. Juiced.GS> How do you go about composing music on your computer and what """"""""" hardware/software do you use? Bret> I write the songs in Soundsmith, typing all the notes in by hand """" because there really isn't any other way to do it. Well, I use the copy and paste options a lot too, which is pretty evident if you listen to the music. I don't have or use MIDI. Juiced.GS> Operation Lambda's sudden appearance seemed to catch the """"""""" IIgs community by surprise. Please trace for us the development process, from inception through implementation to the announcement that the program was for sale? Bret> Well, if that's the case, then I certainly hope the IIgs community """" recovers from their surprise long enough to send me some money. Anyway, I knew I wanted to write a IIgs game over the summer, and I knew I wanted it to be a logic/thinking game with lots of levels. Other than that, I was clueless. I started experimenting with ideas similar to "Brix" on the PC, changing and adding things until I eventually came up with various game elements -- lasers, mirrors, hostages, a little guy that walks around. The final project happily ended up not resembling Brix whatsoever. Once I had my game idea planned out, I simply sat down and programmed it. And drew the art and designed the levels and wrote the music and wrote the docs and sent it out to beta testers who liked it for the most part. Then I uploaded the demo, announced it was for sale, sat back, and prepared to be inundated with a veritable landslide of orders and letters from my hordes of adoring fans. I'm still waiting on that last step. Juiced.GS> You didn't think you were going to get through this without me """"""""" asking about your on-line screen name, did you? Tell us how the name "Slixter" came about. And while you're at it, what exactly is "Right Triangle Productions"? Bret> In seventh grade I think, I got into an insulting match with """" someone, and the worst he could call me was "slixter", deriding me for having gone heavy on the hair spray that morning. I thought that was a pretty cool name, and since I was getting into BBS's at the time, I used it as my handle. I always thought it would be awesome if people actually _knew_ me by that handle, and that dream actually came true after uselessware and Power-GS. I forget how Right Triangle Productions came about, but I used it on TextFighter, and every game I've written since then. Juiced.GS> You have been around in the Genie A2 Roundtable for as long as """"""""" I've been associated with the on-line service. When did you first join Genie's A2 areas, and how close contact do you keep with the RT now? Do you plan on migrating to Delphi any time soon? Bret> I joined Genie a long time ago, starting out with raiding the file """" base and eventually using CoPilot to peruse messages. Through my Power-GS connections I got the job as IIgs art editor for multimedia LiveWire IIgs, which provided me with enough Genie credit so that I was effectively using Genie for free, and still am. However, it's about to run out, so I'll probably be "migrating" to Delphi soon. I was pretty active in A2 during the summer, but I just don't have the time for CoPilot during the school year. Juiced.GS> You call some of your programs uselessware, but your """"""""" _Softdisk G-S_ programs are anything but. I installed PickQuick! on my system and use it quite a bit. I have also found myself using World Times Zones, especially when I'm on-line reading messages from folks in other parts of the world. These are cool as well as useful. The "Mighty" series of desk accessories also come to mind. Any more of these types of programs up your sleeve? Bret> No uselessware ever appeared on Softdisk. Uselessware was the """" name for a series of freeware INITs I uploaded to Genie in the late summer of '95. It included ShadyBar, Bender, Boinger, GravityMouse, Horoscope, and SlixLaunch. As for my future SDGS releases, I have no idea what I'll come up with next. I never do. I sure hope I think of something. Juiced.GS> Has SDGS already published all of your contributions, or are """"""""" there still some yet to come? Do you plan to continue developing software for SDGS? Bret> Oh, there's plenty more that I've written that they have yet to """" publish. Two more issues worth of stuff, at least. I plan on continuing developing software for SDGS as long as I'm too lazy to find something else to do that pays more. So that'll probably be quite a while. I'm even working on a new game right now. Juiced.GS> Does it seem to you that the IIGS market is shrinking to the """"""""" point where programmers and developers can no longer afford to undertake IIGS projects? Bret> No, programmers can still -afford- to undertake IIgs projects; """" they just can't expect them to be significantly profitable. I think it's been that way for quite a while. The IIgs has turned back into a hobbyist's machine, and the only reason to keep programming on it is because you enjoy it, or you like the IIgs community, or you're too stubborn to make the effort to branch out. There's still money to be made off of IIgs programs, but it's pocket change compared to what a good Windows 95 application or Java applet could bring in. I guess some of us just don't mind that. Juiced.GS> It's obvious you have a wide range of talents and interests, """"""""" and you seem to get many of them working together when you program the IIGS. Do you ever see yourself specializing in one of those areas (music, design, programming, etc.), or perhaps using one or more of them to launch a professional career in the computing industry? Bret> I'd like to become a rock star, but then again, who wouldn't? I """" think my college major is somewhere in the hardware design area, but I still have no idea what I'll be doing in the "real world". >>> HOW TO OBTAIN BRET VICTOR SOFTWARE <<< """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Bret's two commercial titles, Operation Lambda and Opening Line, are available directly from him. Operation Lambda can be purchased for $25; Opening Line is $12. Shipping and handling is included in the price. To purchase either (or both) of Bret's commercial titles, send a check or money order to him at the following address: Bret Victor 19253 Parkview Road Castro Valley, California 94546 For more information, write to Bret at the above address, or contact him via e-mail at bret@cco.caltech.edu An Operation Lambda Demo is available from the Genie A2 Roundtable Library and other on-line services, as well as various Apple II archives on the Internet. PuyoPuyo, the freeware game, is also available from the above on-line resources. Bret's new work can also be obtained through a subscription to _Softdisk G-S_. For subscription information and a back issue catalog, contact Softdisk Publishing Inc. at 1-800-831-2694. >>> ABOUT JUICED.GS <<< """"""""""""""""""""""" _Juiced.GS_ is a quarterly printed magazine dedicated to the people and products that keep the Apple IIgs going strong. In 1996, the magazine's inaugural year, _Juiced.GS_ went out to 283 paid subscribers in 42 states and 11 foreign countries. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: A 1997 subscription is available for $14 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; $20 elsewhere in the world. A set of the four 1996 issues is also available for $14 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; $20 elsewhere. Renewals: If you were a 1996 subscriber, your subscription expired with the last issue (Volume 1, Issue 4, Fall '96). If you have not yet renewed your subscription, or did not also subscribe for 1997 when you purchased your 1996 subscription, now is the time to renew so that reveiving your next issue will not be delayed. New subscriptions and renewals should be addressed to: Max Jones _Juiced.GS_ 2217 Lakeview drive Sullivan, Indiana 47882 Send checks or money orders in U.S. funds payable to Max Jones. Sorry, no credit cards or purchase orders can be accepted. _Juiced.GS_ now has a home page on the World Wide Web. Pay us a visit the next time you're cruising the web. The URL is: http://users.ids.net/~kerwood/juiced.gs E-mail to _Juiced.GS_ should be directed to: Genie: M.JONES145 Delphi: JuicedGS Internet: m.jones145@genie.com -or- juicedgs@delphi.com [EOA] //////////////////////////////////////// Genie_QWIK_QUOTE //// / "Mac's are known for 'unexpected' errors." / / "As opposed to expected errors???" / / "Type 11's almost an expected error." / /////////////////////////// CINDY.A, W.HELBIG, & A2LAMP //// [EOA] [LOG]////////////////////////////// LOG OFF / ///////////////////////////////// GenieLamp Information """"""""""""""""""""" o COMMENTS: Contacting GenieLamp o GenieLamp STAFF: Who Are We? GenieLamp Information GenieLamp A2 is published on the first of every """"""""""""""""""""" month in library 55 of Genie's A2 RoundTable (page 645;3). 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