ftp.whtech.com/ftp.whtech.com.tar/ftp.whtech.com/articles/reviews/03MIC95.TXT

Text File | 2006-10-19 | 14KB | 237 lines

     ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MICROPENDIUM
     P.O. Box 1343  Round Rock TX 78680
     Phone [phone]
     Internet [e-mail]

     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 [e-mail]