[Coco] Windows vs. Linux (was 512K upgrade)

[L. Curtis Boyle]

Wow, I must be tired... so many errors. Meant 'GetStat', not 'SetStat'. Not mention all my grammar/spelling errors. 
I may need to go grab a nap. :-)

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



On Mar 12, 2014, at 10:26 PM, L. Curtis Boyle <curtisboyle at sasktel.net> wrote:

> Well, it's kind of cheating, as he would have to pop into the main system data memory, and start hunting through the window and screen tables to get address... if anybody every did any major changes to grfdrv/Windint (is that still what they are called?), this would break. Bill and I wanted a "clean" way, so that programmers didn't have to worry about it, by making it a setstat call (we were returning # of blocks, etc., so it was possibly to add other graphics modes besides the standard ones that Windint/grfdrv supported as well.. Bill and I were thinking of adding the 224 vertical resolution as a mode, and the call would return that it took 5 8K blocks)
> 
> L. Curtis Boyle
> curtisboyle at sasktel.net
> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 12, 2014, at 10:13 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Curtis, this is exactly what Mike Knudsen does in Ultimuse3's piped graphics handler "Fran". But he did it before your calls were written (88 or 89) and from just KD patched OS9 L2. He just used system calls & set/getstats to their max and maps the 16k graphics screen into the program space and wrote his own graphics routines with no CGFX library used. I didn't see a single "illegal" call used. This why the Umuse3 score screens update so fast. I'm using this same system in my MShell project. You can write directly to screen with little effort from a piped cmd without using up your program's 64k workspace.
>> 
>> Gotta love OS9 :-)
>> 
>> 
>> Bill Pierce
>> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>> 
>> 
>> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
>> Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
>> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
>> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
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>> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: L. Curtis Boyle <curtisboyle at sasktel.net>
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 11:51 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Windows vs. Linux (was 512K upgrade)
>> 
>> 
>> Ironically, Bill and I did put some GetStat calls in NitrOS-9 (around 1.15? 
>> 1.16? Can't remember) that allowed one to get the MMU block numbers for any 
>> screens you were using, specifically for doing games. You can "legally" map in a 
>> screen created by VDGINT already, of course, which is what games like Koronis 
>> Rift use, but we wanted the best of both worlds (you could use "normal" display 
>> commands for graphics primitives like lines, bars, circles, text fonts, etc., 
>> plus windowing commands, the Multi-Vue GUI, etc.... but you could also map the 
>> screen in for direct access). Since you could allocate multiple screens, you 
>> could even do screen flipping games this way. The first version of Shanghai that 
>> Bill Nobel ported actually used this call, to make the direct screen writes 
>> "legal". Unfortunately, I believe this was later removed, and the GetStat as 
>> well. There were a few things removed (including transparency for hardware text 
>> fonts), which was disappointing... we wanted to exp
>> and the OS, not just keep speeding it up.
>> I don't know if these have been reinstated in the latest versions... hopefully, 
>> somebody still active in NitrOS-9 can let me know.
>> 
>> In other words, Nick - we were settings things up so that you wouldn't mind 
>> NitrOS-9 so much... :-p
>> 
>> L. Curtis Boyle
>> curtisboyle at sasktel.net
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 12, 2014, at 9:28 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wednesday 12 March 2014 23:27:30 Mark McDougall did opine:
>>> 
>>>> On 13/03/2014 1:39 PM, Bill Pierce wrote:
>>>>> Nick, I was going to stay out of this one (even though it started
>>>>> from my post :-) until you said OS9 is slow....
>>>> 
>>>> Can someone please pass the popcorn?
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Why, you think this is going to be a long show? :)
>>> 
>>> Cheers, Gene
>>> -- 
>>> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>>> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
>>> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
>>> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
>>> 
>>> 
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