[Coco] vef spec was Re: CoCo3 graphic file formats

[Paul Fitch]

The Bellingham Users Group Graphics PD disks 1, 2 and 3 have VEF files on
them.  The .dsk images are located here:
ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/USERGROUPS1/INDIVIDUAL/BUG/FILES/BUG1.ZIP
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com 
> [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Willard Goosey
> Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 5:15 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] vef spec was Re: CoCo3 graphic file formats
> 
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:34:15PM -0400, John Strong wrote:
> > Thanks.
> 
> No problem.  I'd typed all that up a couple of years ago, 
> when Boisy asked about the VEF format.  
> > 
> > VEF was one of the "etc" I was interested in.
> 
> Well, it's one of the popular CoCo 3 formats.  It's probably 
> THE OS-9 image format.
> > 
> > Know were to get a few VEF files for testing?
> 
> Oh, that's a tough one....  Probably the biggest collection 
> is on ftp.maltedmedia.com, in the old princeton/os9 archive.  
> Those will be CUTS encoded, you'll need to poke around a 
> little in the princeton files for your favorite flavor of 
> CUTS decoder (DECB, OS-9, generic C source).
> 
> I believe there are some VEFs lurking in the NitrOS-9 CVS tree.  
> 
> Give me a day or so to move files across various machines, 
> and I'll put the vefs I have on my homepage at 
> http://www.sdc.org/~goosey/
> > 
> > > I got a rare one for you! .hr0 .hr1 .hr2 .hr3
> > Surprisingly I remember seeing this one in Rainbow:)
> 
> AFAIK it's the only way to save a hi-res screen without 
> resorting to assembly.  Not a popular format, but I have seen 
> it used in a commercial video game.  I hacked it into the 
> BASIC Sample Program "Color Doodle", and used that enough 
> that I eventually wrote a little
> OS-9 program to convert hr* files into VEFs.
> 
> And I found another obscure graphics format for you:  Micro 
> Illustrator (an OS-9 LI graphics program) files are straight 
> PMODE 3,1 screen dumps.  To turn them into BASIC .bin files, 
> just wrap the header and footer onto them:
> 
> display 00 18 00 0e 00 > binheader
> display ff 00 00 ad fb > binfooter
> merge binheader illustratorfile binfooter > file.p31
> 
> (view likes it when you stick the .p31 extention onto it, 
> then it knows the file is PMODE3,1)
> 
> Willard
> --
> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
> Socorro, New Mexico, USA
> I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
>   -- R.E. Howard
> 
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