America Online
APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
Tuesday, July 28, 1992  10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic:  Open Topic
Forum Leader:  Gary Jacobson (AFL GaryJ)

Sheppy     I'm trying to finish up a new version of one of my programs before
           leaving...
Sheppy     just emailed the latest revisions to testers today.  What a pain! :)
AFL GaryJ  Last minute fix ups on your program, eh?
Sheppy     No, actually whole new features.  That's the 
Sheppy     big "pain" thing.
AFL GaryJ  Oh, new features?  The kind of things you'll come back to in a month
AFL GaryJ  and wonder what you were thinking?
Sheppy     Probably.  Nah, it's something I've been thinking on for quite a
           while.  I
Sheppy     finished it today, but have to test it now.
JWankerl   I helped re-write Twilight II's heartbeat interrupt task at KFest...
           :-)
DanP18     Does anyone here have orca/disasm?
JWankerl   Yeah, I got ORCA/Disassembler.
Sheppy     I have orca/disasm as well.
AFL GaryJ  Do you have a question or comment about ORCA/Disasm, Dan?
DanP18     What have you disassembled?  I'm looking for System 6.0 pieces.
AFL GaryJ  Oh, you want to pick up some pieces :)
DanP18     actually, i want *any* pieces of *anything*.
JWankerl   System 6 pieces?  Those are already on the developer CD... :-)
Sheppy     Dan, just use an axe on your System 6 disks, and voila -- pieces! :)
DanP18     I'm trying to track a problem with the HS FST, and I need the low
           down
DanP18     dirt on System 6.0.  I'm working on the Drivers and FST's, but any
           help
DanP18     would be appreciated.
Sheppy     Oh, right.  I remember that now, Dan...
AFL GaryJ  GSBug/Nifty List to the rescue.
JWankerl   HS FST, huh?  I must admit, I don't think I've ever run into a need
           for that.
DanP18     I'm trying to port some GNU code, and my CD-rom source is ISO9660.
           Guess what
DanP18     won't mount?
Sheppy     Heh.
DanP18     So, does anyone have any Orca/Disasm templates to distribute?
JWankerl   I used to have some for some brian greenstone games, but i think i
           lost them.
AFL Marty  Dan... what format is your source code in?  ISO 9660 is just part of
           the
AFL Marty  translation process.
JWankerl   All the rest of my templates are for my stuff when source code got
           munched.
AFL GaryJ  Ouch, Joe.
JWankerl   Yeah, ouch.  :-)
DanP18     Marty, I don't understand your question.
AFL Marty  It's not enough to have just the HS FST.
AFL GaryJ  (Pretty bad when you have to reverse engineer your own software :(
Sheppy     Marty means: is the source ASCII text format?
AFL Marty  The CD ROM is (usually) divided into partitions of varying kinds...
AFL Marty  If the partition is ProDOS or HFS then you can read it.  
DanP18     It's a ISO9660 partition.
AFL Marty  If the partition is MS DOS you won't be able to do anything with it.
AFL GaryJ  KansasFest was last week (and I want to talk about that next)
AFL GaryJ  So, who here went to KansasFest last week?  (Any part of it)
AFL Marty  I went to the expo.
JWankerl   I was there - entered tuesday - left sunday.
AFL GaryJ  I'd like to hear people's impressions.... likes, dislikes, best
           parts, worst parts.
JWankerl   best part?  re-writing Twilight II!  :-)
AFC SteveB The colleges were cool...the hour-long sessions were cooler... :)
AFL GaryJ  Steve, can you be a little more descriptive than "cool"?  :)
AFL Marty  There were plenty of non-products for sale at the expo.  I didn't
           especially
AFL Marty  like that.
AFL GaryJ  Non-products, as in vaporware?
AFL Marty  Vaporware isn't entirely accurate...
AFL GaryJ  Or beta versions of stuff.
AFL Marty  I guess you could say there were promises for sale.
AFL GaryJ  (or Alpha, even :)
JWankerl   Oh man - the beta of Out Of This World is *AMAZING*!!!
Barnabas   What's that?
Sheppy     Really?  I've heard of it, but don't know what it is.
AFL GaryJ  Tell us about it, Joe
AFL Marty  The most prominent one in my mind was the AE Floptical Drive.
AFL Marty  (I'll wait my turn)
JWankerl   It's the new game from Burger Bill - uses polygon animation to get
           some
JWankerl   realy really groovy effects.
Sheppy     Bill strikes again, eh?
JWankerl   I've been playing it for the past hour or so... addictive!
AFL GaryJ  Marty, continue on about the AE Floptical (or wherever you left off)
AFL Marty  Well, I saw the case.
AFL GaryJ  That's something.
AFL Marty  I can't say I saw the drive actually work though.  
JWankerl   I think the floptical's a piece of junk - it needs its own special
           driver - so
JWankerl   if you ever go to a new platform you'd better hope there's a driver
           for it.
AFL GaryJ  And they were taking orders for these things?
AFL Marty  AE seemed to have forgotten to bring a CD floppy.
AFL Marty  They were taking orders.  $479 show price...
AFL Marty  avilability August 15th (they claim)
DanP18     What's the capacity?
AFL GaryJ  August 15th, and they didn't have one there that worked?
AFL Marty  Reads and writes 800K disks, 1.44 MB disks, and 21 MB CD floppys.
AFL Marty  (21 mb CDs is dinky, BTW)
AFL GaryJ  What's the transfer rate?  Any statistics on that?
JWankerl   20ms?  30ms?  something like that.
AFL GaryJ  Not too bad.
AFL GaryJ  anyone else have any favorite part of KansasFest they'd like to
           mention?
Nuzz       I have a quick Paul Statt story..
Nuzz       I was talking to Paul in the Marriott Lobby when a guy comes
Nuzz       up and says to Paul "Hey, I know you, you're in that magazine,uh,uh"
Nuzz       and I said to him, yea, he's the guy from GS+ :)
AFL Marty  LOL!
AFL GaryJ  HAHA!
Sheppy     Ooooooooh. :)
Nuzz       You had to see Paul's face
Sheppy     I can imagine! :)
Nuzz       One of the German guys there had a IDE controller for the GS. He was
           looking for a
Nuzz       manufacturer
AFL Marty  I know something that will tickle ADV types!
AFL GaryJ  Go for it, Marty!
AFL Marty  Nate Trost is working on an animation toolset for the ByteWorks.
AFL Marty  I don't exactly know what that all means, but it sounded important so
           I
AFL Marty  figured I'd mention it.
AFL Marty  This is his own creation, not a continuation of Mensch's work.
AFL Marty  I didn't at the time.  Seemed to me to be more efficient to build on
AFL Marty  what was already done than to reinvent the wheel again.
AFL GaryJ  Marty, was there any prototype of the animation toolset there?  Any
AFL GaryJ  idea what is going to be in it?
AFL Marty  There may have been at the conference, Gary.  I only went to the Expo
           part
AFL Marty  though.
AFL Marty  Steve?
AFC SteveB No demo of them in the college.
AFL Marty  I didn't get that impression.
Nuzz       THere was a guy there who had a neat beta version of a Mario Bros
           clone game
Sheppy     No, seriously, I'm sure _somebody's_ working on them.
AFL GaryJ  Are any of these neat new programs under development going to get
AFL GaryJ  distributed?
AFL GaryJ  (Sold?  Shareware?  Whatever)
AFL Marty  Well...
AFL Marty  Foundation was selling...
Nuzz       Anamasia 3D will make it out. It's well along the way..
AFL Marty  and so was SoundREM
Nuzz       SoundREM is a rSound editor for Foundation
AFL Marty  You should read Triad's message board more often. :)
Nuzz       THe "roast" of Roger Wagner was super. I laughed all the time
Nuzz       and an excellent salesman at that
AFL Marty  Funny... I could only sell stuff when Mike went away from the booth.
Nuzz       LOL Marty, thats why I stayed away so long
Sheppy     That's normal, Marty.  It's called "Watching Boss Syndrome."  I had
           that all
Sheppy     the time.
Sheppy     It turns you into worthless rubbish until the boss leaves.  Then you
           make the
Sheppy     $10,000,000 sale.
Nuzz       Oh, there was a PBS film crew there taking pictures. KFest will be on
           PBS
Nuzz       when, I don't know
Sheppy     Mike!  Really?  Cool! :)
AFL Marty  Ooh yeah!
AFL Marty  I forgot all about that!
AFL Marty  They filmed the Foundation people, Roger Wagner, DreamWorld
Nuzz       Yea, SoundREM was filmed :)
Sheppy     Sure is.  When it happens, let us know and I'll actually watch PBS
           once!
Nuzz       Marc Collins is supposed to tell me when its on. When I find out,
           I'll pass it on
AFL GaryJ  Post a message in ADV in the Forum Business section, when you find
           out.
AFL GaryJ  I will look for it.
AFL GaryJ  Jim, what was your favorite part of KF?
AFL GaryJ  (Everyone else has been saying what they liked about it)
AFC DYAJim Probably dorm life again :)  like getting stuck in the elevator ;)
AFC DYAJim Staying at the dorms is the best part..
AFC DYAJim And getting 3 hours of sleep each night :)
AFL GaryJ  So Jim, did you have any neat Apple II Development type experiences,
           or
AFL GaryJ  was the best part exploring the elevator? :)
AFC DYAJim Let's see..  I puzzled Matt and Dave with a few Twilight bugs..
AFL GaryJ  Did ya figure them out?
AFC DYAJim I stayed up (with friends) 'till 3-4 for two nights hacking on
           Twilight II.
AFL GaryJ  That's what JWankerl said was his favorite part.
BCS Frank  KFest is an alternate reality... beyond the ken of the
           undigitized....
Sheppy     So, have we heard everything exciting about KFest?
DGum       GS/OS 6.0.1 with MS-DOS FST maybe
DGum       Tim Swihart said it currently works read-only, read-write is the goal
BCS Frank  Is "Switch-It" released yet, or when?
BCS Frank  ... and was the Avatar shown?
Sheppy     Avatar isn't built yet.
Nuzz       It was talked about Frank
AFL GaryJ  Heck, I'd take read only at this point (but read/write would be best)
AFC DYAJim Greg Branche is working on the MS-DOS FST in his spare time.
Sheppy     I think read/write is important, although the MessyFST is really
           needed badly.
AFC DYAJim Bill Heineman was taking advanced orders for Out of this world GS,
           and demoing
AFC DYAJim it..  it is truly fantastic... polygon graphics are here!
AFC SteveB I've got a question for you 8-bit programmers...
DGum       <-- 8-bitter
AFC SteveB I'm just trying to do some simple text output... I send $15 to
           COUT...
AFC SteveB then call HOME...
AFC SteveB then I call a little routine that runs through a pointer until it
           hits
AFC SteveB a null byte...strange thing is, the text is flashing and only the
AFC SteveB uppercase letters print correctly.  The hi bits are stripped off of
AFC SteveB the text, BTW.
Barnabas   Did the text originally have high bits set?
Sheppy     Text printed to COUT have to be high-ascii, don't they?
AFC SteveB Nope Greg, I'm not sure, Eric.
Sheppy     I'm pretty sure it does.  ProBOOT converts text to high ASCII when
           printing
Sheppy     to get it to look right.
Barnabas   That's the problem.
DGum       Steve, running on IIgs?
AFC SteveB On a IIc+ and a IIgs, DGum.
Sheppy     Doesn't matter, going through COUT.
Barnabas   What you send to COUT gets AND-masked, then sent to screen.  Thus,
           you must
Barnabas   have high bit set for normal text.
AFL GaryJ  Text from $0 to $3F is Inverse
AFL GaryJ  Text from $40 to $7F is flashing
AFL GaryJ  and Text from $A0 to $FF is normal.
Sheppy     Right.  That's probably your problem, Steve.
DGum       if you haven't done a jsr $c300, you may be accessing II+ character
           set