kim@spock (Kim Letkeman) (06/29/90)
In article <10865@hydra.gatech.EDU>, gt3070b@prism.gatech.EDU (Jeff Watkins) writes: | I am still working on the Documentation files for my units and will | distribute them as they become available. I am using windows Write | to compose them and will post both the .wri and .txt files to | attlab.gatech.edu when they are done. I would prefer commented modules and procedures. But if you insist on writing documents, please post to the net. That's where I got the code. | So, if you feel the uncontrollable urge to argue about the | merits/definitions of hackers, please do so under a different | heading. Someone may have an actual question about the units and as | I have gotten into the habit of killing the subject, I would never | get to answer. All right. Why are there so many interrupt 33 calls in the init routine for the mouse unit? I commented out half of them and things still worked fine. As well, a new interrupt is issued every time a single data item is polled. Would it not be better to provide an interface to allow the user to sample the mouse and then poll the information items? Saves a lot of real time (I checked with Turbo Debugger - the call to dos is quite expensive.) Also, just curios, but what does the video mode have to do with a mouse unit? Your write to low memory in the init procedure seemed a bit misplaced. Is one of your other units better suited? I would have really appreciated the ins and outs of intr $33, since I have been unable to find the info in the usual sources (e.g. Norton.) | My time is VERY EXPENSIVE (long distance from West Palm Beach to | Atlanta) and I don't like wasting it reading postings by people who | disagree, especially over such a trivial subject as whether a hacker | is an expert programmer or a lousy programmer, or whether any given | hacker would prefer an assortment of dried fruits or a 1lb bag of | Nachos. Sorry about wasting your time Jeff. But imagine, if you will, that 100 people on the net took your code and began trying to work with it. Since the code is undocumented, and pretty mixed up in places, they all spent a couple of hours trying to make sense of it. I doubt that you wasted 200 hours wading through the discussion. And I doubt that many of them carried on with the units, as the lack of traffic might suggest. Now, before anyone wants to flame me all over again, forget it. I already agreed with most of you on what a hacker is or is not. -- Kim Letkeman mitel!spock!kim@uunet.uu.net
gt3070b@prism.gatech.EDU (Jeff Watkins) (06/30/90)
The documentation will be posted to the net as well as available via ftp. Please do not misunderstand, I do not mind calling and spending the time to answer questions, return my mail concerning the units, etc. I just have in the past read all the messages subjected: More Units... and have usually found that they are concerning my stupid postscript. A few dollars here and there will not kill me. You are right though about the undocumented code, it is inexcusable. My only answer is that there is really nothing I can do except provide the documentation. As to the convoluted code... The interrupt 33h's are the interrupt to the mouse driver. I will take a closer look, but I don't think that they will work quite as well if commented out. There is, however, a good chance that I am wrong as I wrote the mouse unit three years ago and have not touched it much since. The reason for the write to low memory is to fool the mouse driver (logitech version 4) that I have into accessing the rows above 25. Without convincing the driver that it is really in mode 3 (80x25) the mouse simply disappears after row 25. For graphics that is not needed. I am really sorry about wasting all of your (plural) time with the `orribly uncommented code; but they ought to work without too much modification. In the process of documenting I am cleaning up the code considerably, so that perhaps when I repost everything, you will not be so disappointed... ciao jeff -- Jeff Watkins gt3070b@prism.gatech.edu "All opinions are mine... so don't even think of keeping some to yourself!"