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Amiga Games Extra 1996 June
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Amiga Games Extra 1996 #6.iso
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1993-10-06
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Cuckoo V1.2
-------------------
By Anders Melchiorsen
on 06-Oct-93
Cuckoo will play a nice 'cuckoo' sample if started at ??:00 or
??:30. This way you can have your old grandfather clock sort of
emulated on your Amiga :-).
Cuckoo will read the clock and cuckoo the right number of times.
If Cuckoo is not started exatcly at an hour or at a half hour it will
exit silently (only my name is printed :-). Because of this behaviour,
Cuckoo is most useful together with Reminder or a similar 'cron'
utility (that's a program that can execute programs at specified
times), and therefore no icon is included.
There isn't much to say about using Cuckoo, just start it at ??:00
or ??:30 and see (hear) how it works (you CAN, as an alternative, set
the clock to e.g. 12:00 and then start Cuckoo within a minute - then,
afterward, set the time back with 'SetClock LOAD').
Perhaps I should say that Cuckoo can be breaked by sending it's
process a ^C. There are several ways to do this, the simplest is to
press Ctrl-C when you've started Cuckoo from the Shell. If you know
of, and prefer, other ways, then you're welcome to use them as well.
Why use Cuckoo instead of just a regular sample player? Well,
there are several reasons. Just to mention some:
1. Cuckoo will figure out how many times to play the sample all by
itself.
2. You don't have to find the sample yourself :-).
3. Sample is inside the executeable. This gives faster loading
along with less CPU and diskdrive overhead.
4. Cuckoo can be made resident.
I have included the source, which isn't that much of a deal anyway
(but, who knows, perhaps it was just what you needed :-). If you want
to use a diffrent sample, you must edit the file 'Sample.a' to include
the sample you want. I believe it can be any length, as long as it
will fit in your CHIP memory (I've tested upto a 365 KB sample) - the
only restriction I know of is that it must be a 8SVX file (is checked
by C source) and it must contain both a VHDR and a BODY chunk - THIS
IS NOT CHECKED, as I didn't want to include a lot of checking. As the
sample is contained in the executeable it just have to work once to
work always, so checking would actually be pretty much waste of code.
If it's not a 8SVX sample, Cuckoo will always quit, which makes it an
(even more) dull program.
This package can be distributed as a whole or limited to Cuckoo
and Cuckoo.Doc, though I would prefer that all files are included.
Please don't delete Cuckoo.Doc, as it isn't obvious what Cuckoo does
(and, besides, I want my name to be spread :-). You're welcome to use
the source for your own projects as much as you like (if you dare).
And finaly: If you like/use this program I would like a short
letter from you - no money, just a letter :-). Suggestions are more
than welcome, too. You can contact me in three ways:
Anders Melchiorsen
Gammel Skivevej 39
7870 Roslev
Denmark (yeah!)
Phone +45 97 57 19 99
Fido: 2:230/314.10
History
---------
26-Jun-93, V1.0: Initial release
24-Jul-93, V1.1: Cuckoo now turns the low-pass filter off while
playing the sample. Don't get scared when your
power LED is flashing while Cuckoo is playing;
it's only Cuckoo, not a software failure.
03-Aug-93 : When using the Find8SVXInformation() in another
program, I found that it was buggy. I fixed it
and (of course) placed the fixed one in Cuckoo as
well.
13-Aug-93 : Cuckoo would cause a software failure if it
couldn't allocate an audio channel. This actually
was a bug in PlaySound.c, which I had stolen
(morale: det betaler sig ikke at stjæle :-).
06-Oct-93, V1.2: The return code (to Dos) was random on normal
exit. Now only flashes the power led once (not
once for every cuckoo). Cleaned PlaySound.c up
(uses a proper Wait() instead of busy-loop when
the sample was longer than 131000 bytes and some
redundant code was removed). Added ^C check.