[Coco] Delphi & Compuserve archives - Was: Re: Compressed pictures

[Joel Ewy]

coco at yourdvd.net wrote:
> Hello Arthur: I have wondered recently if there existed archives of the
> Delphi and CompuServe CoCo SIG's from back in the day. Are they online
> somewhere (perhaps at delphi or compuserve themselves? I suppose I
> could do some searching)... Thanks - Robert
>   
As far as I've been able to determine, the Delphi file databases went to
/dev/null.  I did find on one of my hard drives a list of files in
CoCo/OS-9 archives.  I've put this on Allen Huffman's Wiki: 
http://www.coco25.com/wiki/index.php/Internet_Resources  Scroll down
towards the bottom and look for "Old Delphi CoCo/OS-9 SIG File Lists"
What I hope for this is that people can see which files were out there
on Delphi back in the day, check the FTP sites at rtsi.com and
maltedmedia.com, and upload copies of those files that were on Delphi,
but are no longer available online.  Unfortunately, I was never on
Compuserve.  Maybe somebody else has a list of those files.  Compuserve
was bought by AOL, IIRC, so who knows?

As for the forum messages, I've found some of the content on
textfiles.com, specifically: 
http://www.textfiles.com/messages/ALANWESTON/ -- this has CoCo/OS-9/MM-1
stuff from Compuserve from 1990-1996, and from Delphi from 1993-1995. 
I've found some of my posts (as JOELAV) in the Delphi stuff archived
there.  It's far from a complete record, but it does preserve a little
of the history.

JCE
> P.S. I remember the program of which you speak, the one you wrote. I
> think it was the one I used to transmit graphics screens as ascii
> rather than binary many moons ago.. r
>
>   
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Compressed pictures
>> From: Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu>
>> Date: Sat, April 28, 2007 4:05 pm
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>>
>> It is unclear why you would find LOADMing a 6K screen "too much";  it
>> shouldn't
>> take much time to load, and the fact that it is 3 times longer than
>> the main
>> program seems to me not particularly relevant.  If you want to
>> compress the
>> picture, a decent algorithm is to use byte, rather than bit,
>> repetitions and
>> think of the screen as a series of 8-bit wide byte columns.  The same
>> byte
>> repeats very frequently in vertically adjacent positions in a typical
>> graphics
>> screen.  A program I co-wrote years ago, MAXCMP.BAS, uses this and may
>> be online
>> somewhere in a CoCo archive. (That one took the additional step of
>> converting
>> the resulting screen to printable ASCII bytes and embedding the resulting
>> encoding into a generated BASIC program that when run displayed the
>> picture.  
>> It was listed and written up in some issue of Rainbow, in one of Marty
>> Goodman's
>> columns.  It should also be in the Delphi archives, along with a detailed
>> description of its compression algorithm.)
>>
>> Art
>>
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2007, Diego wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> While writing some of my BASIC programs, I thought about adding a intro
>>> screen. The options were add the drawing commands to the program (slow,
>>> limited) or load a graphic screen. But even a PMODE 3 screen is 6Kb,
>>>       
>> a bit
>>     
>>> to much for a 2 Kb program So I came up with a very simple compression
>>> rutine. 2 bit for color, 6 bits for how many pixels of that color. Some
>>> sample simple screens came down to just under 1 Kb (I know that some
>>>       
>> complex
>>     
>>> screens can become a lot larger than the original) My question: Is
>>>       
>> there
>>     
>>> some format/way to get a screen picture+loader in less than 2 Kb thatls
>>> already out there somewhere?
>>>
>>> Diego
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Coco mailing list Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>>
>>>       
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