wombat@claris.com (Scott Lindsey) (09/10/89)
Does anyone know anything about FTA & the Nucleus demo? It's a pretty impressive animation demo. I'm curious why they wrote stuff into the boot tracks of the disk to run it. It's possible they want total and absolute control of the machine. It's my guess that this comes from Europe, most likely France: they use the symbol for ENTER that's found only on international keyboards. This is, of course, by no means conclusive evidence. I've seen two minor problems with it so far: on my ROM-3 machine with 2 floppies, it gets confused about which drive the disk is in & I have to switch it then it doesn't eject the disk. On a converted IIe, there are some major problems with the sound. I've heard, though, that some of the early conversions there were problems with the Ensoniq chips... so this may just be that. Scott Lindsey |"Cold and misty morning. I heard a warning borne in the air Claris Corp. | About an age of power when no one had an hour to spare" ames!claris!wombat| DISCLAIMER: These are not the opinions of Claris, Apple, wombat@claris.com | StyleWare, the author, or anyone else living or Dead.
rewing@Apple.COM (Richard Ewing) (09/11/89)
Now I know what that strange character is at the bottom of Nucleus! You're right, Scott, it is the European "enter" key. I never could try this options because my IIgs at home is a converted //e, and I didn't bring an ADB keyboard home until this weekend. Now the enter key allows me to change the soundtrack. Neat! BTW, on my //e, the ensoniq chip sounds just fine; it must be something with your machine. See my earlier message about running Nucleus on a ROM 3 machine. -- __________________________________________________________________________ |Disclaimer: Segmentation Fault: Core Dumped. | | | |Internet: REWING@APPLE.COM-----------------------Rick Ewing | |ApplelinkPE & MacNet Soon!------------------Apple Computer, Inc. | |Applelink: EWING--------------------100 Ashford Center North, Suite 100 | |Compu$erve: [76474,1732]--------------------Atlanta, GA 30338 | |GENIE: R.EWING1--------------------------TalkNet: (404) 393-9358 | |USENET: {amdahl,decwrl,sun,unisoft}!apple!rewing | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
emerrill@tippy.uucp (09/12/89)
/* Written 2:58 pm Sep 10, 1989 by SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET in tippy:apple */ >I saw Nucleus at our Club meeting Friday night. Nice graphics and sound, >boots 800K into memory with impressive speed. Loading almost 800K in around 5 seconds _IS_ impressive! Does anybody know how they did it? I had Diversi-Cache installed and got a message in the upper left hand corner that said, "Destroying Cache..." Obviously, by the catalog listing (or lack thereof), it's not in a regular ProDOS format, but the disk itself is formatted in ProDOS... Hmm... _________________________________________________________ | | | Eric Merrill tippy!emerrill@newton.physics.purdue.edu | | | | Disclaimer: | | If you think I'm serious, that's your problem! | |_________________________________________________________|
lmb7421@ultb.UUCP (L.M. Barstow) (09/14/89)
In article <127500038@tippy> emerrill@tippy.uucp writes: > >/* Written 2:58 pm Sep 10, 1989 by SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET in tippy:apple */ >>I saw Nucleus at our Club meeting Friday night. Nice graphics and sound, >>boots 800K into memory with impressive speed. > >Obviously, by the catalog listing (or lack thereof), it's not in a >regular ProDOS format, but the disk itself is formatted in ProDOS... Hmm... First, as someone I think pointed out, the actual program is "only" 205K. From what I can see, it maintains the ProDOS file structure, but partitions off 410 blocks for its own use (including the boot blocks). Second, everyone should get a chance to watch this demo in action. It does more things at once than I've seen computers twice its power do... Everything is soft-coded (ie, only the bare minimum can be hard-coded...too much random and/or unpredictable movement on-screen. Later, Les Barstow -- Les Barstow |Bitnet: LMB7421@RITVAX "What about the R.O.U.S's?" |UUCP: ...rutgers!rochester!ritcv!ultb!lmb7421 "The Rodents Of Unusual Size? |ARPA: lmb7421@ultb.isc.rit.edu I don't believe they exist!" - Buttercup and Wesley, _The Princess Bride_
bh1e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Brendan Gallagher Hoar) (09/14/89)
Nucleus has a ProDOS directory that marks approx 400 blocks as used I assume that means that the demo itself takes up 200k on the disk, since the rest of the disk is free to have files added to. Hmmm...forgive that weak sentence...you know what I mean :) so its really loading 200k of data in 5 seconds... I wonder if they used compession on the data... anyone have any accompanying docs for it? I noticed that if I pressed tab (or something before or after TAB), I could get it to slow down dramatically (except for the clock). Both the animations and the music slowed down. :) Brendan Gallagher Hoar Carnegie Mellon University Apartment 517 Mellon College of Science 4614 Fifth Avenue INET: bh1e+@andrew.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (412) 268-8958
lbotez@pnet02.gryphon.com (Lynda Botez) (09/14/89)
In regard to "Nucleus"... >Loading almost 800k in around 5 seconds IS impressive! Does anybody >know how they did it? Well, I certainly couldn't tell you, but I asked my "guru" programmer friend who told me it's a direct disk access through the Smartport firmware. It's like the days of the 5 l/4 disk when you just read what you wanted into memory directly. [or something like that...]. Anyway, it sure sounded good. -:) UUCP: {ames!elroy, <routing site>}!gryphon!pnet02!lbotez INET: lbotez@pnet02.gryphon.com
JerryK@cup.portal.com (Jerry E Kindall) (09/14/89)
I don't think Nucleus is loading the ENTIRE 800K disk into memory at once.
I believe it's more like 200K. When you consider that the MultiKache can
read an 800K disk into cache in 25 seconds, 200K in five or six seconds is
reasonable.
/\ Jerry Kindall | JerryK@cup.portal.com
\/ Death to COBOL | GEnie: A2.JERRY ALink: A2 Jerry
The answer that evades our brains, we only think we're wearing chains
-- Utopiahenrym@pro-europa.cts.com (Henry Malmgren) (09/16/89)
Comment to message from: claris!wombat@apple.com (Scott Lindsey) How did you get Nucleus to work in your ROM 3 machine? All the reports I've heard say that this is impossible. Have you added memory to it in addition to the 1.125 megs on the motherboard? UUCP: crash!pro-europa!henrym ARPA: crash!pro-europa!henrym@nosc.mil INET: henrym@pro-europa.cts.com APPLELINK PE DALAMAR11
wombat@claris.com (Scott Lindsey) (09/19/89)
In article <8909161059.AA27362@trout.nosc.mil> henrym@pro-europa.cts.com (Henry Malmgren) writes:
How did you get Nucleus to work in your ROM 3 machine? All the reports I've
heard say that this is impossible. Have you added memory to it in addition to
the 1.125 megs on the motherboard?
OK, here's all the various weirdness I've had with Nucleus. When I first got
it, it ran on my ROM 3 GS without any problem. I've got a 7.0MHz TransWarp
and a 2Mb OctoRam. I ran into the problem of having to swap disk drives
(and since I've discovered that if I only have one drive connected, it *still*
looks for a second). Now, it does the intro fine, but the sound gets totally
garbaged as soon as you try to continue with the demo. If I hit a key before
the intro music can start, the demo runs fine, but in silence. I'm still
trying to discover if there's some slot configuration or RamDisk setting that
I had that it worked correctly with. But it *did* run successfully on 3
seperate occasions.
I've also come to the conclusion that the TransWarp Speed Failure is probably
a joke, but whereas it used to toggle on & off. It now comes on (with Fan-
Shift-^@) but doesn't go off.
I've pretty much relegated blame to the Twilight Zone.
Scott Lindsey |"Cold and misty morning. I heard a warning borne in the air
Claris Corp. | About an age of power when no one had an hour to spare"
ames!claris!wombat| DISCLAIMER: These are not the opinions of Claris, Apple,
wombat@claris.com | StyleWare, the author, or anyone else living or Dead.rewing@Apple.COM (Richard Ewing) (09/19/89)
Your symptoms mimic mine to the letter regarding weirdness with Nucleus on a ROM 3 machine. I have a 6.25 MHz Traswarp GS with a 4 meg OctoRam. The machine boots fine (save the drive problems), but when you start the demo, the sound goes nutszoid. Unlike you, I can't duplicate being able to run the demo without sound, no matter how fast I press the keys entering the demo. -- __________________________________________________________________________ |Disclaimer: Segmentation Fault: Core Dumped. | | | |Internet: REWING@APPLE.COM-----------------------Rick Ewing | |ApplelinkPE & MacNet Soon!------------------Apple Computer, Inc. | |Applelink: EWING--------------------100 Ashford Center North, Suite 100 | |Compu$erve: [76474,1732]--------------------Atlanta, GA 30338 | |GENIE: R.EWING1--------------------------TalkNet: (404) 393-9358 | |USENET: {amdahl,decwrl,sun,unisoft}!apple!rewing | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^