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Loadstar 241
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2022-08-26
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u
THEY CALLED THE STORM
K A T R I N A
by Dave Moorman
You've got to give it to Kevin
Barrow. He just keeps coming up with
ideas! Kevin used to live in Lamar,
about 30 miles from Holly. We would
meet for coffee and computer talk at
the all-night truck stop about once a
week. But he moved to Denver to get an
education in computer systems.
But we still talk, thanks to free
minutes on cell phones. And he keeps
me going with new ideas for C-64
software. So, last night he said, "You
know, a Tribute to the people in New
Orleans would be timely."
And I had to agree, though 241 was
completely laid out, ready for linking
and mastering. But I searched the web
for some pictures I might use, then
found appropriate music and -- here it
is!
You can press any key to move
through the text and pictures (except
when the drive is operating), or just
wait. The presentation has been timed
so the visuals match the music.
TECHNO-BABBLE
-------------
It didn't prove as easy as I had
assumed. I wanted to put as many
pictures as possible with the music.
But the darned pix were huge (memory-
wise). And I don't know yet how to
keep the music playing while loading a
file.
So everything had to load up at
once, which wasn't hard, thanks to Lee
Novak's Linker and Packer programs.
The real problem was that the Enhanced
SID player is
1. ancient code, and
2. only assembled to one location.
ESP loads to page 192, and extends
through 203. But our Unpacker routine,
only two pages long, lives at 201. A
conflict! I spent an inordinate amount
of time trying to re-code Unpacker,
without success. Frustration won
another one!
Then I recalled that I had
overcome this very problem once
before. But where? Ah-hah! Media
Meister unpacks SHP graphics without
stopping the music. Maybe I should
just use it for this Tribute.
But the pictures were too large to
easily fit in MediaMeister's 16-page
blocks of memory. But I did grab the
Unpacker used in MediaMeister --
UNP.89 32. The 32 means that is the
page where it loads. It was not a very
convenient page, but now I had two
assemblies of Unpacker.
Which meant I could use Jeff
Jones' ML MOVER to create a third. I
put Unpacker at page 206, clearly out
of the way of Enhanced SID Player.
I wanted to use five pictures, but
to get the fifth, I would have to put
it under I/O and Kernal ROM. And when
I tried to do a Copymem to move it, I
found another conflict with Enhanced
SID Player. And I was running out of
time. So I just dropped the extra
picture, and decided to go with what I
had.
Other than the ordinary bugs one
must swat while programming, I found
one more problem with Enhanced SID
Player -- at least with the copy I
had. The SYS to turn off the IRQ
interrupt didn't work, causing all
kinds of problems when returning to
LOADSTAR's Presenter.
This time, I didn't panic. The ML
code to change the IRQ vector back to
normal is simple, and just 13 bytes
long. I used the ML Monitor to write
it, then put the values in the BASIC
program as a DATA statement.
One last note: There is a new
Windows program called "Project One"
which will convert a GIF to a Koala
image on the PC. It is fast and fairly
effective, though a few bugs still
remain. I still like using GoDot when
I have time -- or when Project One
won't do what I want. If you are a
cross-platform person, look it up on
the Web.
DMM