[Coco] P-3

[Roger Taylor]

At 10:59 AM 4/6/2007, you wrote:
>You can't go wrong buying from Cloud-9! I would suggest a CoCo 3 with
>the 512K SIMM upgrade, Protector and 6309 CPU - Then you'll be set :-)
>(Roger T.'s awesome Projector 3 needs the 6309 and some other software
>as well. Certainly makes NITROS09 SHINE.) -r


Speaking of my Projector-3 viewer. Somewhere in time over the past 4 
years, the GIF driver apparently developed a bug in the Encoder 
routines.  Can someone please  confirm this to be true or 
not?  Someone reported that GIF images were being created that 
couldn't be viewed.

P-3 always rendered and created GIF87A and GIF89A fine so I'm not 
sure what has happened, but I want to fix it.

For those who are lost on this... Projector-3 is a 512k multiviewer 
for the CoCo3.  It requires a 6309 CPU upgrade.  P-3 can view MANY 
picture formats, then let you resave them into GIF, CoCoMax-3, 
ColorMax Deluxe, The Rat Graphics Design Package, IFF, and lots 
more.  You can even view the 4096-color Amiga HAM pictures (special 
IFF ILBM format), Macintosh pics, old Compuserve RLE pictures, and 
more goodies.  You can view text files, do printouts of your pictures 
in grayscale on EPSON ESC/P2 compatible printers (I think that's the format).

P-3 was my longest running CoCo project ever, taking more development 
hours than I will ever disclose or admit to.  I was a night owl.  A 
zombie.  I never slept, for years (just kidding), made it through a 
divorce and P-3 kept on ticking, every time I broke up with a 
girlfriend, I fell back into improving P-3, and the final result is 
now a free download on CoCo3.com.  It used to sell for $45 and did 
very well, but all good things die, so I went public domain with it.

It's also available as a Rainbow IDE project, and is included with 
the IDE!  This means you can write new CODECs for the system.  Robert 
Gault wrote a Windows BMP (bitmap) viewer, which is a drop-in file 
that P-3 recognizes when you boot up.  When I wrote P-3, I made it 
expandable.  It's really a graphics operating system, complete with a 
separate Video Array Driver, Codec modules, the main core, and 
external Print and Command modules.  The Command Modules are called 
when you hit ALT + the key for that module, as in mirror.ecm   The 
ec<m> means ALT-M will mirror the picture on the screen.  The .EC? 
files can be compact games or whatever else that calls on the 
graphics system's built-in routines for clearing the screen, plotting 
colors, setting the palettes, and more.

Have fun.



-- 
Roger Taylor