From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk Tue Dec 13 14:20:20 2011 From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:20:20 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs Message-ID: I've recently been tinkering with my Apricot PC emulator, QDAE. Part of this has involved experiments with the various versions of GEM for the Apricot that helpful people have dredged up over the years. One of the things I ran on it was a tool I wrote while developing screen drivers, which attempts to exercise various different code paths. It obviously worked, because it found two different bugs -- one only present in one driver, the other in all the drivers I tested. Accordingly, my page of Apricot GEM screenshots at is now rather longer. I think GEM may come to my rescue in another way, too: as far as I can see, Apricot MS-DOS does not have a full-screen text editor. Fortunately WRITE.APP might just fill that gap. -- John Elliott From ben at jemmett.me.uk Tue Dec 13 14:38:27 2011 From: ben at jemmett.me.uk (Ben A L Jemmett) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:38:27 -0000 (GMT Standard Time) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, December 13, 2011 10:20 pm, John Elliott wrote: > I think GEM may come to my rescue in another way, too: as far as I can > see, Apricot MS-DOS does not have a full-screen text editor. Fortunately > WRITE.APP might just fill that gap. Heh, flashbacks to stern warnings in magazines to 'turn off document mode if using a word processor' to edit plain text files ;) I wouldn't imagine full-screen text editors were standard equipment in that sort of timeframe; EDLIN was where it was at as far as MS-DOS was concerned, which is probably why the Amstrad machines came with RPED on the GEM Desktop diskette... Nice work, as always, John. Looking at the desk accessories (that alternate colour scheme is horrendous!), the 'voice input' option you mention is intriguing -- I can't find much about that with a quick scout around, so do you have any pointers to more information on it? (... aaaaand now I'm clicking around your vintage PC pages. Guess that's goodbye to the rest of the evening then *grin*) -- Regards, Ben A L Jemmett http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/ From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk Tue Dec 13 15:02:17 2011 From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:02:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: from "Ben A L Jemmett" at Dec 13, 2011 10:38:27 pm GMT Message-ID: > Nice work, as always, John. Looking at the desk accessories (that > alternate colour scheme is horrendous!) It may have been done to match Activity. Compare -- or perhaps Apricot's folks just had a strange taste in these matters. > , the 'voice input' option you > mention is intriguing -- I can't find much about that with a quick scout > around, so do you have any pointers to more information on it? The corresponding chapter of the technical reference is rather sparse (basically, "use the supplied driver and that's it"), but you can see it here: The driver is called SPEECHR.SYS, is copyright Dragon Systems Inc, 1984, and is about 46k in size. Physically, the hardware is a Hitachi 6301 microcontroller, which I haven't gone to the trouble of desoldering because I don't have a programmer that could read its contents. When emulating it, I implemented exactly as much of it as I needed to pass the self-test: on receiving command 9 (presumably, 'test yourself') return a 4-byte packet {10, 2, 0, 0} (presumably, 'all OK'). -- John Elliott From ben at jemmett.me.uk Tue Dec 13 15:42:59 2011 From: ben at jemmett.me.uk (Ben A L Jemmett) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:42:59 -0000 (GMT Standard Time) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, December 13, 2011 11:02 pm, John Elliott wrote: > > -- or perhaps Apricot's folks just had a strange taste in these matters. I fear you may be right! Oof, my poor eyes... > The driver is called SPEECHR.SYS, is copyright Dragon Systems Inc, > 1984, and is about 46k in size. Wow, that must have been one of their earliest efforts. Combined with being one of the first to ship with GEM, I guess Apricot saw being early adopters as a handy way to add flashy features to the spec sheet! -- Regards, Ben A L Jemmett http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/ From geneb at deltasoft.com Tue Dec 13 16:23:20 2011 From: geneb at deltasoft.com (Gene Buckle) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:23:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 13 Dec 2011, Ben A L Jemmett wrote: > On Tue, December 13, 2011 11:02 pm, John Elliott wrote: >> Some things cannot be un-seen. *cringes* g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk Tue Dec 13 16:32:39 2011 From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:32:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: from "Gene Buckle" at Dec 13, 2011 4:23:20 pm GMT Message-ID: > > On Tue, 13 Dec 2011, Ben A L Jemmett wrote: > > > On Tue, December 13, 2011 11:02 pm, John Elliott wrote: > >> > > Some things cannot be un-seen. *cringes* I need to find out more about Activity. Among other things, it seems to be device-independent, using GSX drivers for all its drawing. Except that the only driver I've looked at so far had a handful of GEM functions in there as well (vr_recfl(), v_show_c() ) plus some escapes I didn't see anywhere else. -- John Elliott From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk Mon Dec 19 16:21:15 2011 From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:21:15 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: from "John Elliott" at Dec 14, 2011 12:32:39 am GMT Message-ID: I wrote: > I need to find out more about Activity. Among other things, it seems to be > device-independent, using GSX drivers for all its drawing. Except that the > only driver I've looked at so far had a handful of GEM functions in there > as well (vr_recfl(), v_show_c() ) plus some escapes I didn't see anywhere > else. I've now had a closer look at Activity, or at least the way it interacts with GSX. The Activity drivers have half-a-dozen extra functions whose numbers match the ones in GEM (for example, function 114 is vr_recfl()). But, just to be difficult, they don't take the same parameters. Again taking vr_recfl() as an example, the drawing mode (replace, transparent, XOR) is passed in, rather than the system default being used. There are also places where Activity goes through hoops to do things that would be easy in GEM, because the functions aren't there. To draw a bitmap, for example, it has to break it into 16x16 squares, load each square as a custom pattern with vsf_udpat(), and then paint that square. And without GEM's mouse callbacks, it has to read the mouse by polling, using two GSX calls: one to find out if the mouse has been moved (which forces the pointer to the centre of the screen), and another to put the pointer back where it belongs. The extra functions used by Activity seem to be: * vsf_perimeter() -- behaves as in GEM. * vsc_form() -- cursor shape is passed in using the 'ptr1' pointer, whereas in GEM the 'intin' array is used. If the 'ptr2' pointer is nonzero, the previous cursor shape is copied to where it points. * vsf_udpat() -- as with vsc_form(), the pattern is passed using 'ptr1', and the previous pattern is returned through 'ptr2'. Also, the pattern is preceded by three words, probably the plane count and the foreground and background colour. * vr_recfl() -- Drawing mode is passed in 'intin'. Perimeter is never drawn. Activity drivers also provide: * v_show_c() } * v_hide_c() } which appear to match the normal GEM API. * vq_mouse() } and four extra escape functions: 0. Rreturns the driver ID as an ASCII string in INTOUT. 51. I don't know, but it looks as if it may be some kind of bit blit. 52. Set a user-defined line pattern. 'intin' holds the pattern. 54. Gets or sets a single pixel. 'ptsin' holds coordinates. 'intin' holds 0 to read pixel, 1 to write it. Oh, and regarding *that* screenshot: > > On Tue, 13 Dec 2011, Ben A L Jemmett wrote: > > > > > On Tue, December 13, 2011 11:02 pm, John Elliott wrote: > > >> > > > > Some things cannot be un-seen. *cringes* It's a bit calmer in 16 colours. (No, that's not done using any of the drivers that Apricot supplied :-) ) -- John Elliott From rtdos at hotmail.com Wed Dec 28 14:03:14 2011 From: rtdos at hotmail.com (Wood Jeff) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:03:14 -0700 Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks, John. I salivate at such screen shots. ;-) ----- Jeff http://www.rtdos.com > To: gem-dev at simpits.org > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:20:20 +0000 > From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk > Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs > > I've recently been tinkering with my Apricot PC emulator, QDAE. Part of > this has involved experiments with the various versions of GEM for the > Apricot that helpful people have dredged up over the years. > > One of the things I ran on it was a tool I wrote while developing screen > drivers, which attempts to exercise various different code paths. It > obviously worked, because it found two different bugs -- one only present > in one driver, the other in all the drivers I tested. > > Accordingly, my page of Apricot GEM screenshots at > is now rather longer. > > I think GEM may come to my rescue in another way, too: as far as I can > see, Apricot MS-DOS does not have a full-screen text editor. Fortunately > WRITE.APP might just fill that gap. > > -- > John Elliott > _______________________________________________ > gem-dev mailing list > gem-dev at simpits.org > http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.simpits.org/pipermail/gem-dev/attachments/20111228/ea0e6044/attachment.html From topcatdrc at yahoo.com Wed Dec 28 15:17:01 2011 From: topcatdrc at yahoo.com (Thomas Clayton) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:17:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1325114221.99037.YahooMailClassic@web181513.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Jeff, Did someone "steal" your website? ?I "went" to rtdos.com and I see LOTS of news references (URLs in a long list). ?Doesn't rtdos abbreviate (stand for) Real-Time DOS? Thanks. Happy New Year, everyone. Tom Clayton --- On Wed, 12/28/11, Wood Jeff wrote: From: Wood Jeff Subject: Re: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs To: gem-dev at simpits.org Date: Wednesday, December 28, 2011, 4:03 PM Thanks, John. I salivate at such screen shots. ;-) ----- Jeff http://www.rtdos.com > To: gem-dev at simpits.org > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:20:20 +0000 > From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk > Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs > > I've recently been tinkering with my Apricot PC emulator, QDAE. Part of > this has involved experiments with the various versions of GEM for the > Apricot that helpful people have dredged up over the years. > > One of the things I ran on it was a tool I wrote while developing screen > drivers, which attempts to exercise various different code paths. It > obviously worked, because it found two different bugs -- one only present > in one driver, the other in all the drivers I tested. > > Accordingly, my page of Apricot GEM screenshots at > is now rather longer. > > I think GEM may come to my rescue in another way, too: as far as I can > see, Apricot MS-DOS does not have a full-screen text editor. Fortunately > WRITE.APP might just fill that gap. > > -- > John Elliott > _______________________________________________ > gem-dev mailing list > gem-dev at simpits.org > http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ gem-dev mailing list gem-dev at simpits.org http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.simpits.org/pipermail/gem-dev/attachments/20111228/48474343/attachment.html From rtdos at hotmail.com Wed Dec 28 15:36:06 2011 From: rtdos at hotmail.com (Wood Jeff) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:36:06 -0700 Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs In-Reply-To: <1325114221.99037.YahooMailClassic@web181513.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: , <1325114221.99037.YahooMailClassic@web181513.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: lol. no. that's a temp site i created until i get time to fix it: http://www.rtdos.com/forum rtdos = recycled technologies device operating system ----- Jeff http://www.rtdos.com Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:17:01 -0800 From: topcatdrc at yahoo.com To: gem-dev at simpits.org Subject: Re: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs Jeff, Did someone "steal" your website? I "went" to rtdos.com and I see LOTS of news references (URLs in a long list). Doesn't rtdos abbreviate (stand for) Real-Time DOS? Thanks. Happy New Year, everyone. Tom Clayton --- On Wed, 12/28/11, Wood Jeff wrote: From: Wood Jeff Subject: Re: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs To: gem-dev at simpits.org Date: Wednesday, December 28, 2011, 4:03 PM Thanks, John. I salivate at such screen shots. ;-) ----- Jeff http://www.rtdos.com > To: gem-dev at simpits.org > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:20:20 +0000 > From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk > Subject: [GEM Development] Apricot GEM: Screenshots and bugs > > I've recently been tinkering with my Apricot PC emulator, QDAE. Part of > this has involved experiments with the various versions of GEM for the > Apricot that helpful people have dredged up over the years. > > One of the things I ran on it was a tool I wrote while developing screen > drivers, which attempts to exercise various different code paths. It > obviously worked, because it found two different bugs -- one only present > in one driver, the other in all the drivers I tested. > > Accordingly, my page of Apricot GEM screenshots at > is now rather longer. > > I think GEM may come to my rescue in another way, too: as far as I can > see, Apricot MS-DOS does not have a full-screen text editor. Fortunately > WRITE.APP might just fill that gap. > > -- > John Elliott > _______________________________________________ > gem-dev mailing list > gem-dev at simpits.org > http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ gem-dev mailing list gem-dev at simpits.org http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev _______________________________________________ gem-dev mailing list gem-dev at simpits.org http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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