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Ictari Issue 49
ICTARI USER GROUP ISSUE 49 August 1997
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* m a g a z i n e *
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I C T A R I U S E R G R O U P
G Greenway, 8 Denmark Road, Reading, Berks, RG1 5PA. 0118 756668
http://www.elis.demon.co.uk/ictari/ictari.htm
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INDEX FOR ISSUE 49
==================
ASSEMBLY Article on hacking / cracking
GFA GEM graphics functions
HISOFT BASIC GEM slider demo
MISC STOOP2 Beta -Falcon boot manager
STOS Stereogram creator
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EDITORIAL
=========
Hello again,
This issue has come out at just the time when next issue should have
done. This has been due to me taking a short holiday. I'll try to get
another issue out near to the end of the month, hopefully that should
bring things back on track. In the meantime, for anyone who hasn't heard
yet, there will be two more Atari shows. The Birmingham show will be at
the National Motorcycle museum on the 18th of October, the London show
will be on the next day at the Osterley Hotel, 764 Great West Road,
Middlesex. Call Goodman's on 01782 335650 for more details.
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CORRESPONDENCE
==============
To: ICTARI
From: David Comeskey
Re: Serial Ports and MIDI
Dear User group,
I am, at the moment writing a music editor program for the Atari ST,
in GFA BASIC V3.5. I have a problem in that I want to support a hardware
devide called C-LAB EXPORT for which the RS-232 port is used to drive 3
additional MIDI out ports, but since the highest baud rate I can set the
serial port to is 19,200 baud and the rate for MIDI is 31,250 baud the
EXPORT ports aren't fast enough.
I wonder if you have any knowledge either of the Atari serial port
chip or any fixes or programming "tricks" or books which might help me
do this. Certain sequencer programs like Creater and Cubase support this
device, so it is possible.
I have an assembly language development program and some programming
knowledge, so I can, if needed, run a machine language routine from
within BASIC.
Yours Faithfully,
David Comeskey.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: David Comeskey
Re: Serial ports and MIDI
I know very little about MIDI, but I think the only way you are
going to speed up the serial port is by fitting the RSVE modification
from Systems Soloutions. Have you tried contacting C-Lab ? Does Cubase
support the Export device on a standard ST ? C-Lab noticed a number of
flaws in the ST and Falcon, which is why they released the Mark X. Can
anyone else be more helpfull ?
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To: ICTARI (Via WEB-pages)
From: Ritchie Andrews drew2@primenet.com
Re: Scrolling in windows
Does anyone have a routine to do smooth scrolling within a GEM
window, is it even possible ?
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Ritche Andrews
Re: Scrolling in windows
I've yet to see a scrolling window. Is this for a game ? All I can
say is that the whole point of using GEM is to achieve compatability and
a degree of resolution independence. You will have to follow all the
usual GEM rules about window updates. I wonder if using the GEM STOS
extension GEMMA could help. The version that came with the last edition
of ICTARI is already out of date. If your program forces the user to use
ST low res, then the point of multi-tasking or using desk accessories
will be lost, and you might as well abandon GEM. It depends on what you
want to scroll and its complexity. To be worthwhile running under GEM,
your program will have to cope with different resolutions that have
different numbers of bit-planes. Can anyone help ?
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From: Andy Wilson
To: ICTARI
Re: Lattice C
I have just managed to get hold of Lattice C and, as a beginner,
would be grateful for any help or info that you deem might be of use to
me.
In particular I think I'm in need of a book which fully desribes the
principals in layman's terms. I'm finding the LC manuals hard going.
There are so many questions that I want answered, but don't know who to
ask.
I'm using a Falcon 4Mb TOS 4.04 and running LC from a 135Mb Syquest
cartridge. My machine has powerUp2, but to my knowledge no maths
co-proscessor is fitted. Do any of the above make any difference ? What
is the ideal set-up for C programming ? I feel that if I'm confident
with the set-up then that's one less thing to worry about. I hope this
isn't asking too much, and hopefully with a little help I'll be able to
contribute something to the group.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Andy Wilson
Re: Lattice C
You've asked in the right place. Your memory and HD space are more
than enough. -Just run the program on the install disk, and say you want
it to install everything. -You have enough space. I *can* recomend a
couple of books, "Illustrating C" by Donald Alcock (Cambridge University
Press, ISBN 0-521-42483-6) is a good introduction to the language, but
you might want some ST-specfic texts as well. Clayton Walnum's
"C-Manship Complete" goes into quite a bit of detail about ST-graphics
and GEM, but it is rather old. You might think about the "Atari
Compendium" as a complete ST reference (also available as a CD-rom).
Both these books might be rather hard to find, I suggest a visit to one
of the Atari shows, or try the FaST club.
I fitted a co-processor to my Mark-X so I could run Linux. (Sore
point, I'm still waiting for the CD...) I can't remember what PowerUp2
is ! Remember, if you want to use any floating point maths in your
programs, you must select the "software IEEE" option from the compiler
options menu. The default option is no maths libraries at all. There
have been plenty of C articles in ICTARI, and my efforts show what *not*
to do. Enjoy....
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From: ICTARI c/o Paul pickering
To: Everyone
Re: ST-mags
Does anyone have any copies of ST-Review or ST-user that they would
be willing to sell to Paul ? Offers to:
24 Leith Gardens,
Tanfield Lea,
Stanley,
Co Durham,
DH9 9LZ.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Stephen Bruce
Re: Monitor Cables
[For those who haven't been following the plot, Stephen had aquired an
Atari SC124 colour monitor with a mangled cable. John Nicholas Oakes was
able to offer a replacement cable, but by then a description of the ST
pin-outs in ICTARI and some inspired guess-work enabled Stephen to fix
the cable. Now read on...]
Hello, I've managed to find another WEB-site that deals with cables.
The ST section is still very much under construction, but as far as I
can tell, the pin-outs from the ST correspond directly with those of the
monitor. For those who care the WEB-site is at:
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/etext/hwb/hwb.html
I don't know how one would connect a video to the monitor, but here's a
description of a monitor to video SCART cable complete with naff ASCII
art:
Video -> TV Scart Cable (21 Pin Scart Male -> 21 Pin Scart Male)
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
_____________________________________________
/ /
| || || || || || || || || || || /
| / 21
| || || || || || || || || || || |
\_________________________________________/
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19
: TV : VCR :
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Audio Right Out : 1 : 2 : Audio Right In
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Audio Right In : 2 : 1 : Audio Right Out
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Audio Left Out : 3 : 6 : Audio Left In
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Audio Left In : 6 : 3 : Audio Left Out
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Audio Ground : 4 : 4 : Audio Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Red : 15 : 15 : Red
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Red Ground : 13 : 13 : Red Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Green : 11 : 11 : Green
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Green Ground : 9 : 9 : Green Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Blue : 7 : 7 : Blue
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Blue Ground : 5 : 5 : Blue Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Status / 16:9 : 8 : 8 : Status / 16:9
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Reserved : 10 : 10 : Reserved
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Reserved : 12 : 12 : Reserved
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Fast Blanking Ground : 14 : 14 : Fast Blanking Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Fast Blanking : 16 : 16 : Fast Blanking
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Video Out Ground : 17 : 18 : Video In Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Video In Ground : 18 : 17 : Video Out Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Video Out : 19 : 20 : Video In
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Video In : 20 : 19 : Video Out
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Ground : 21 : 21 : Ground
------------------------+------+------+------------------------
Hope that helped...
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From: Jason J Railton
To: Everyone
Re: SwingShot game demo
My SwingShot game demo ended up in last month's STOS folder. It's
actually written in machine code. The only STOS code was some routines
to generate the data tables used in the game (including the baddie
flight paths).
There's an awful lot of code in the .I and .S files that people might
be interested in.
Anyway, the copy I got on the ICTARI disk was corrupt, and froze
during loading. I hope no-one else had this problem.
I'm a little short of things to send in at the moment, but I did find
this Autostereogram generator I wrote in STOS several years ago...
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To: ICTARI
From: Mathew Bacon
Re: Graphics formats
[This letter was partially answered in Ictari 48, but I forgot to
include Mathew's original letter ! Here it is. Sorry, GRG.]
Hello,
May I start by saying, I was really impressed when I stumbled across
your site ! (thanks to Atari Computing!) well done! - ok I'll cut to the
chase!
I am a HiSoft BASIC programmer and have written several useful utilities
for the Atari ST/STe/Falcon etc. Now I realise that you do not suppo rt
HiSoft BASIC as such, but I am writing a web design suite called
"Web.Wizard" and have come up against some difficulties I'm hoping that
you may be able to help with !
The suite/integrated package will eventually consist of:
- Wizard function (similar to Home Page Penguin, but with more options!)
- HTML editor "Web.Ed"
- DTP web design (papyrus idea etc.)
- RTF to HTML converter
- Link checker
- Image map designer
The difficulty I find myself up against is that I cannot load a picture
format (GIF,JPEG,PNG) etc. so that I can manipulate it and display it on
screen.
Do you know of anyone who has the know how and would be willing to help.
I'm hoping to go semi-commercial with this (£8.99), so I would be able
to offer a cut for assistance etc.
Regards,
Matthew Bacon (Cadenza Software)
P.S What computer have you designed your site with ?
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To: ICTARI
From: Peter Hibbs
Re: Items for sale
63 Woolsbridge Road,
Ashley Heath,
Ringwood,
Dorset BH24 2LX,
Tel. 01425 474415
2-9-1997
Dear Giles,
Thanks for the disk with the previous issues of Ictari, it is nice to
see the group is still running.
Here is a list of Atari related programming books which I am selling, I
would be grateful if you could advertise them in the next issue of
Ictari as there may be some members who would be interested in
purchasing them.
Title Original Price | Price inc P&P
------------------------------------------------------------+--------------
GEM on the Atari ST 12.95 | 7
Atari ST Internals 12.95 | 7
Midi and Sound Book for the Atari ST 17.25 | 10
Atari Tricks and Tips 12.95 | 2
ST Disk Drives: Inside and Out 16.95 | 8
Atari ST 3D Graphics 16.95 | 8
Real Time Graphics on the Atari ST 16.95 | 8
The Atari Compendium 39.95 | 20
Assembly Language Sub-Routines for the 68000 17.95 | 8
68000 Reference Guide 12.95 | 5
Atari ST BASIC Source Book and Tutorial Unknown | 2
Your First BASIC Book 14.95 | 2
Compute Atari ST Volume 2 AES 18.95 | 10
Compute Atari ST Volume 3 TOS 22.95 | 10
68000 Assembly Language Programming 21.95 | 10
Good luck with the group,
Yours sincerely,
Peter Hibbs
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