djb1@ukc.ac.uk (D.J.Beckett) (06/13/91)
>>>>> About "Re: Eurodemos: why don't they work?", Randy said: Randy> In article <3999@beguine.UUCP> John.Carver@bbs.acs.unc.edu (John Carver) writes: >I have recently obtained some of the Euro demos on ab20. However, none >of them seem to work. > >Here's the situation: I can run about 50% of them on my friend's A1000. I >have a 2000 with an 68030 board, which seems to break ALL of the Euro demos. >... >These things seem to be clever enough that it looks like the authors >could make them run on other machines. > Randy> I've come to the conclusion that these people simply don't read the Randy> RKM's :/. ... Randy> (They) Randy> use the upper 8 bits of an address for flags, and this will cause Randy> an instant smashola on the 030. ... Randy> use self-modifing code Randy> don't dynamically allocate memory ... Randy> don't do an OwnBlitter() & WaitBlit() ... Randy> install their own interrupt routines in the Trap vectors Randy> grab any and all system resources ... Randy> Oh, yeah -- almost forgot sumfin! :). They also jump directly to ROM Randy> code! NAK! The above programming techniques show most of the forbidden stuff that is given in the start of the RKMs. The problems that I see here are that most of the demos are from Ex- CBM-64 programmers (lots of them from Germany) who used their new amigas like the old computer; hack it and see. It can also be a problem due to the cost of the RKMs - 30 pounds here in UK ie twice rate in the US. Also I'm sure that they are not translated into German! Considering the number of Amigas sold in Europe, the support is not pretty poor for programmers. The cost of getting the Native developers upgrade requires ordering from the US at a price of $60 including postage cf $20 in the US. This kind of crazy pricing cannot help developers here. With literally hundreds of thousands of the machines in Europe, you would think we could get some support! Randy> I guess your friend should consider himself lucky. After all, he can at Randy> least view some of the demos :). IMHO the Euro demos are rubbish usually. All the ones I have seen I have reformatted within 5 mins due to the endless scrolly-text and stupid bouncing objects.. yawn. If you have see one, you have seen them all (virtually). I must confess that I much prefer animations, since they are likely to multi-task, run *without* giving you a virus, and you may even want to look at them more than once. As an example of a decent animator in Europe, Tobias Richter is an example, producing many sets of good animation (The european Eric Schwartz :-) Dave Beckett Frustrated European Amiga System Programmer