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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
P.O. Box 1343 Round Rock TX 78680
Phone 512-255-1512
Internet jkoloen@io.com
MicroReviews for March 1995 Micropendium
by Charles Good
By the time you read this it will almost be time for the next
totally free all TI and Geneve Lima Multi User Group Conference.
Lima, in northwest Ohio is only a day's drive from many places in
the midwest and eastern part of the United States and Canada. I
hope to meet many of you personally at this event Friday evening
and Saturday April 28 and 29. If you need more information about
the MUG Conference please contact me. My address is at the end
of this column.
Here are more public domain offerings from Bruce Harrison. We
certainly are fortunate to have him working for us for free.
Each software product described below comes on disk with
demonstration XB programs, source code, very well written
documentation, and something you almost never get with public
domain software...free technical help! Each documentation file
ends with the statement, "Should you need assistance, contact the
author directly", followed by Bruce's address and home voice
phone. Even if you don't need this help, phone Bruce some
evening and tell him how much you enjoy his software and the neat
uses you have found for his public domain products. Bruce really
likes such personal expressions of appreciation and
encouragement.
---------------
VIDEO TITLER UPDATE by Bruce Harrison
If you own an DOS computer you can purchase from the Damark
liquidation catalog (item B-4600-379944 for $160-- the cheapest
price I have ever seen for this sort of thing) a device that lets
you display your computer video on a TV or send the computer
video to a VCR for recording onto video tape. OR you can do the
same thing by running your 99/4A's monitor cable to the "video
in" of a VCR. You can then observe your computer's video on a TV
attached to the VCR while you make a video tape recording of the
99/4A's video. For a minimum of $50 you can purchase software
that will let you create custom title screens for your homemade
video tapes using the above described DOS computer board, OR you
can do the same thing with your 99/4A using Bruce Harrison's
recently updated free Video Titler public domain software.
I've reviewed Video Titler before in this column, but Bruce has
updated the product several times since. What I have in hand is
dated Dec 28, 1994. Bruce says in his letter to me dated Dec 17,
"Here's the final update (at least for this year) of the Video
Titler." He then sent me two more updates, each with added
features, before the year ended. What you do is load into memory
two TI Artist pictures or two pictures created with Bruce's
Drawing Program (also public domain and on the same disk as Video
Titler). You can then alternate back and forth between these two
images. You feed this display to a VCR (via the "video in" jack
on the VCR) to record onto video tape. If you want to record
more than two computer pictures onto videotape you press "pause"
on the VCR, load in another picture in place of one of the two
pictures in the computer's memory, release the VCR's "pause" and
continue to record.
The neat thing about Video Titler is the wide variety of ways
Bruce provides to alternate (wipe) betweem the two pictures in
computer memory. The updated software has a whole bunch of wipes
not found in the original. To wipe, just press a specific key on
the keyboard, as described in the documentation. Different
buttons produce different kinds of wipes. The following wipes
are available: fast from top to bottom, fast from bottom to top,
slow from top to bottom, slow from bottom to top, slow from left
to right, slow from right to left, slow horizontal from center to
edges, slow horizontal from edges to center, slow vertical from
middle to top and bottom, slow vertical from top and bottom to
middle, spiral inward from edges to center, spiral outward from
center to edges, venetian blind wipe top to bottom, venetian
blind from bottom to top, fast or slow speed random relacement of
192 (fast) or 384 (slow) separate screen areas till other image
is fully displayed, upper left corner to lower right, upper right
corner to lower left, lower left corner to upper right, lower
right corner to upper left, instant change to green (or black, or
white) followed by a pause then the other image.
Each of these will go from whichever picture is currently
displayed to the other picture in memory. You can toggle back
and forth between frames at any time with a keypress. The visual
effects are dazzling! I've talked to two users who think Video
Titler is superior to anything available for DOS (ie IBM
compatible) computers for making video tape title screens. Send
me $1 and I will send you the most recent update of Video Titler
plus Bruce's Drawing Program on one DSSD disk.
------------------------
HORIZON RAMDISK PASSWORD by Bruce Harrison
Both Bruce Harrison and a member of my local user group have the
same problem. They each have several indoor cats which like to
jump up onto the computer table and walk on the keyboard. To
deal with this difficult situation, Bruce Harrison created a
password program which won't let you access your computer unless
you type in the correct password. First set up Password on your
Horizon Ramdisk. Then every time you turn on the computer, press
the "any key" to get past the color bar screen, and you are
immediately prompted for a password. As you type this password
your typing is not echoed onto the screen so that nosy cats and
kids can't look over your shoulder and learn your secret. If you
decide to step away from the computer for awhile and leave it
turned on, you can reactivate the password feature. This
prevents the cat from messing up your work while you are away.
Password has only been tested on a 99/4A system with Horizon
ramdisks and may not work with other types of media. Send me $1
and I'll send it to you on a SSSD disk.
-------------------
CHECKTIME by Bruce Harrison
This is fun for software users, useful for XB programmers, and
seems to bring into question the true usefulness of some well
known XB programming techniques. Checktime accurately measures
the speed of XB programming code.
To use this utility first CALL LOAD it into low memory and then
OLD an extended basic program into memory. Insert a CALL LINK
into the XB program at the point where you want to start timing
and another CALL LINK into the XB program at the point where you
want timing to end. Then RUN the XB program, which will execute
normally. After the XB program finishes running or after you
manually stop the program with a BREAK you can display on screen
the duration of the timed operation rounded to the nearest
second, more or less accurate to 1/60 second. Then try modifying
your XB program so that timed operation runs faster, and check
out your modification's execution speed.
Since the early days of our computer we have read articles in
99er magazine, Micropendium, and user group newsletters about how
to speed up XB programs. Two techniques that are supposed to
accomplish this are using short variable names instead of long
names, and using multi line statements instead of single line
statements. Bruce includes a couple of demo programs that show
the effect of these two techniques using Checktime. Running a
for-next loop 2000 times into a variable 14 characters long
("ANYOLDVARIABLE") takes 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Renaming the
variable to only one character ("A") shortens run time by only 6
seconds. Repeating a for-next loop coded with four single line
basic statements 5000 times takes 5 minutes and 2 seconds.
Reprogramming this loop into a single multi line statement shaves
only 1 second off of this running time! Bruce also includes some
demos that show significant improvements in execution time by
using more efficient XB code. One is a very simple modification
of a bubble sort that improves sorting speed from 1 minute 14
seconds to only 18 seconds.
Send me $1 and I will send you Checktime on a SSSD disk.
-------------------
ULTIMATE DELAY by Bruce Harrison
Ultimate Delay is for use by XB programmers. This assembly CALL
LINKable routine will provide accurately timed delays in XB
programs irrespective of the speed of your computer. This means
that the delay is the same length of time for a program running
on a regular 99/4A, a bus modified 99/4A (32K internally on the
16K bus), and a Geneve.
You can use this routine in two ways. 1- You can insert an
unrestricted delay of any time length (timed in 10ths of a
second) anywhere in the program. During the dalay the keyboard
is ignored except for FCTN/= (Quit). 2- You can insert a delay
that will time out either after a period of time or when a key is
pressed. You have the option here of returning the ASCII code of
the first key pressed to a variable for later use by your
program. These sorts of things can be done with regular extended
basic using for-next loops and CALL KEY, but the delay lengths
will differ when the program is run on different types of
machines. Coding for delays is much simpler with Ultimate Delay,
and delay time is the same when run on different types of
computers.
To experiment you can manually CALL LOAD Ultimate Delay into low
memory and then play around with inserting the needed CALL LINKS
into various places in your extended basic program and observing
the results. Once you get your extended basic program working to
your satisfaction you can attach Ultimate Delay to your program.
You can then OLD and RUN your program without the bother of
separately CALL LOADing Ultimate Delay. Software tools and
directions for attaching Ultimate Delay to your extended basic
programs are included on the SSSD Ultimate Delay disk. Send me
$1 and I will send you this disk.
--------------------
RANDOM NUMBER by Bruce Harrison
This comes on a SSSD disk. It's yours for $1. It is a set of
assembly utilities for the XB programmer. that generate random
numbers much faster than XB's RND function. You CALL LOAD and
CALL LINK to the routines, or you embed them into your finished
XB program. Bruce provides several direct comaprison demo
programs that show how his routines assign 300 random numbers to
arrays in about 1-3 seconds, while using RND to do the same thing
takes 25 seconds.
One set of routines will randomly assign up to 500 integers
between -32768 and 32767 to an array variable such as DIM A(500).
It takes about 1 second to do this. You can specify the max and
minimum size of the randomly generated numbers within the above
range, and you can also specify with or without replacement.
Without replacement means that a randomly generated integer
number will not appear more than once in the array. With
replacement means that a randomly generated number will be put
back into the pool of possible numbers and may appear several
times, randomly of course, in the array.
Bruce provides a useful demo of random integer number generation
in the form of a card shuffling XB program. How may times have
you seen a TI card game say on screen "Please wait, I'm shuffing
the deck", and then make you wait awhile while this is done?
Bruce's demo program does the schuffling really fast! Random
numbers 1-52 are generated without raplacement and then displayed
in random order on the screen.
Another set of routines generates floating point numbers of any
size. An unlimited number of floating point random numbers can
be generated with these routines, limited only by the size of the
array where the numbers are to be assigned. Large arrays take up
lots of memory. It takes about 3 seconds to grind out and assign
300 of these floating point random numbers. You can specify the
max and minimum size of the nunbers to be generated and you can
specify whether or not to truncate the number at the decimal
point thus creating big number integers.
-------------------
ACCESS:
Bruce Harrison, 5705 40th Place, Hyattsville MD 20781. Phone
301-277-3467.
Charles Good, P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894. Phone
419-667-3131. Internet email cgood@lima.ohio-state.edu