[Coco] VCC 2.0.1b Released (New Thread)

Sat Oct 3 18:36:31 EDT 2015

James, the whole problem from the beginning is that VS6 uses APIs that are (one-by-one) disappearing from the newer OS's and eventually losing support altogether. If we contimue to build VCC on VS6, we eventually become the "next" emulator that has to be run on ONLY older machines or in VM using older OS's, much like Jeff's Emu or David Keil's.
The idea was/is to move VCC forward, not backward, before it becomes as obsolete as the others.

Moving to any other "older developement platform (VS2005, 2010, etc)" will still eventually lead to the above as well as they are slowly losing support from MS as well.
My VS6 install already gives me warnings in Win Vista that it 
"may not run" and even stronger wanings in Win 8. So how long will this last? The same goes for VCC built from VS6... how long before you see (This application requires an older version of MS Windows and will not run on this system".

I have thought of keeping 2 separate builds of both old and new, but your talking about a lot of work and no one volunteering to help do it.

The original idea was to move the VCC sources to a "cross-platform" environment so it could be compiled to run on Windows, Mac, & Linux. I had people who said they could do it (given the sources) but now that it's open source, they are not stepping up. If this could be done, the whole MS VS versioning crap would go away. The biggest challenge in this is moving the MS DirectX portion of the code to something like OpenGL or SDL. Anyone?

As for Joseph Forgeone, he actually set up the whole project and posted the first 2015 conversion sources (converted by Gary Coulburn), but once again has seemed to disappear, but I have a feeling he'll pop back up eventually. He seems to come and go.

Bill Pierce
"Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull

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-----Original Message-----
From: James Ross <jrosslist at outlook.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sat, Oct 3, 2015 6:08 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] VCC 2.0.1b Released (New Thread)

Bill, I gave it a shot on Win XP and still get the same error: "C:\Program
Files\Vcc 2.0.1\Vcc.exe is not a valid Win32 application."

According this MS
site
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-2015-compatibility-vs.aspx
VS 2015 is capable of creating a Win XP app. 

However, I am curious as to why
is was decided to convert this project to VS 2015? 

I am not completely averse
to adding VS 2015 out of convenience, however, only as long as the project
continues to build under the original minimum requirements of VS 6 / DirectX 8 /
Windows XP. Plus I would even go as far as adding Windows 98 compatibility if
the original VCC 1.42 was not compatible w/ it.  

In the spirit of retro
computing, my idea is the official distribution continues to be built w/ VS 6 /
DirectX 8 and that addition of build directories could be setup for some of the
other newer VS's … starting w/ VS 2005 Express (which can still be downloaded
for FREE and no online registration to be able to use it) 

What are some of
y'alls thoughts on this?

What is the official word on Forgione? Is he really
working on this or not?  

For fun, I finally got around to setting this project
up Windows XP w/ VS6 w/ SP6. After cleaning up several issues and problems w/
the settings in the .dsp's I got the latest source 2.0.1b (beta) that you put up
on the release at github to compile using VS6. 

Here are the executables that
work on XP (& on Win 8.1) if someone wants to try them
out.

http://expirebox.com/download/d0f8cd96ca220cacf2ff2095962fac94.html  the
d/l expires in 48 hours – I can see about a permanent solution if someone is
interested.  Download VCC201b-Executables.zip  (MD5:
7D903B9A26DE2304ADEA9BAA4070B572 / SHA1
57F959DBDBC864818D00B4A3DB5B0E2A2996BE97) I checked all the files on
virustotal.com -- I didn't want any false-positives to show up and make it look
like I am trying to spread a virus.  

First install using Bills latest release
https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases

Then in the install folder overwrite the
dlls & exe w/ the ones in VCC201b-Executables.zip 

If someone is interesting in
the updated VS6 project files and source I will make those available too.  At
some point I may be writing a step-by step blog about it. Unfortunately, I do
not have a lot of time right now to devote to this – I just wanted to give it a
try.  I plan on working on it when I have the time. The first thing I want is
for it to scale using the correct aspect ratio when sizing. I will over the next
few weeks (months?) come up to speed on how everything works in the code.  The
DirectX stuff is quite complex – not trivial at
all. 

James

----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2015
12:49:49 -0400
> Subject: [Coco] VCC 2.0.1b Released (New Thread)
>
> Since my
last threat got hijacked almost as soon as it got started, I'm starting a new
one... let's see how long this lasts.
>
> I have uploaded another release of
VCC. Version 2.0.1b.
> This was an attempt to solve Robert Gault's WinXP
problem. I didn't work for him, but it did resolve an issue with mouse travel
while VCC was in Full Screen mode.
>
> It's been reported that the VCC installer
(and app) is running well on Linux and MacOS using Wine, so you Mac & Linux guys
can give it a shot as well.
>
> Again, I ask anyone using VCC to try this
version and see what happens. Run it through the guantlet. I especially need
someone else with WinXP to give it a shot to see if the WinXP problem is global
or just isolated to Robert's machine. WinXP seems to be reporting that vcc.exe
is NOT a Win32 application, but yet runs on anything Vista and higher (32bit &
64bit) with no problems (so far). VCC is being compiled as a Win32 app so it
should work. We are looking into it.
>
> Here's the link to the new download:
>
https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/v2.0.1b-beta
>
> Let me know how it
goes

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