neil@hwcs.UUCP (06/09/87)
Here some of my queries and discoveries about the ST ... Neochrome --------- The only version of Neochrome that I have is 0.5 which I got free with the machine. While poking about in it (is this against the law? Yours or mine) I found that it tries to load a file called "NEO.MCP". Since I didn't have this file I assumed it was an authors hook "Master Control Program" ala TRON. I gave it a 1K NEO.MCP file and exepected it to crash. Nope! MCP I reckon stands for Multi Coloured Palette. I think the original palette is well organised but you can change it using this feature by giving it a 512 word file of colour values. Please excuse me if this has been documented in a later release as I have yet to see a release version. Do any later releases support medium and high res modes and what new features do they provide. I was interested in the animation hook someone found one version. Thrusteroids ------------ I have recently been investigating direct keyboard reading and found Megaroids method rather interesting. The current keyboard chip only sends key data on the control,alternate,left shift,right shift and any two other keys. If you play Megaroids and hold Z and X down you can't thrust. Also since the keyboard vector is switched at the start of the game you can play Thrusteroids:- 1. Select 1 game from the start menu 2. Hold down the thrust key '?' 3. Abort the game with F1 4. Restart the game and as long as you don't press '?' again its release code will never be sent the thrust will stay on. The same effect can be achieved with other controls but are not as exciting. Also notice that if you hold down and repeat a key before you start a game the key click continues during the game even after being released. This is due to the OS not getting the release code. C & Assembler -------- I am torn between two development systems. I have only recently (seems like I do everything recently :-)) started learning C using the Megamax Compiler. I like the Developers Kit AS68 assembler, which I have been using for over a year now, but find the C impossible after using Megamax. I think the Megamax assembler is trivial and not really intended for big assembly language programs. Having said that, someone recently (!) sent a program to the net that was completely written using the Megamax assembler. I take my hat off to him. When I started using Alycon C after Megamax I was stunned by its policy on carriage returns. I found that to terminate a scanf I had to use CTRL J! I couldn't find any #defines governing that anywhere. Have I missed something there? Ideally I would like to get my hands on a different/friendlier compiler which will accept my AS68 object files during linking. Does MWC do this? Will they ever produce an assembler? New ROMS and BLITTERS --------------------- Is anybody still talking about these? Since I like to write code that will work on all ST's I wouldn't make use of the blitter and take the Sublogic approach of rolling your own graphic routines. I therefore would like new && compatible bug free ROMS. Vectors ------- Is there any way of OS independantly restoring the default vectors other than resetting or switching off the machine? On my old BBC Micro the address of the default vector table was freely availiable in all versions of the OS and software protections made good use of it. I was reliably informed by Atari that changing the keyboard vector can't be done safely without introducing some OS dependance. I concluded that Megaroids does this and will only work on future ST's if Atari are content with their current keyboard handling. I for one am not but will suffer if they do change it. GULAM ----- Every time I try to use * for a wildcard I get the emacs [Mark set] message. If I use the * on the keypad I get a weird X. I presume that Gulam changes the keyboard mapping and that the new map makes * produce a character zero thus mark set. Is this due to UK and US keyboard differences? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I think all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!" - Monty Python (Vote for the Silly Party on June 11) Neil Forsyth JANET: neil@uk.ac.hw.cs Dept. of Computer Science ARPA: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk Heriot-Watt University UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil Edinburgh Scotland -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pes@bath63.UUCP (06/10/87)
Yes, Gulam appears to remap the keyboard into a US keyboard. (I presume this is an attempt to 're-standardize' it in case something run previously has munged it, but it's annoying. I seem to recall that uemacs 3.7i did/does this as well -- certainly one of the many uemacs'es around does.) Please, folks, when you write keyboard-driven thingies, leave the flipping keyboard alone -- if it's funny, it's probably funny because I like it that way -- or at least provide an easy hook to allow me to set it up the way I like it. While I did have some 30 years of US keyboard use, I've been using UK ones since I came here, and I **like** for all the keyboards I use to have the special chars in the same place.