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The Best of Windows 95.com 1996 September
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WIN95_09962.iso
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xrxlgo2b.zip
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1996-09-14
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This is the Second Beta Release of my Animated Logo Utility.
The only file required to run this version on a Windows 95 Machine
is XRXLOGO.EXE
If you have any problems with it, let me know (Email : xrx@nucleus.com)
The purpose of this utility is to set the correct bits in a 320 x 400 x 256
Color Bitmap to an Animated Windows 95 Startup Logo, and display the resulting
animation.
The version included has an expiry date, please check for updated versions at
http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/samplogo.htm
The following is slightly modified instructions from my World Wide Web page on
how to create Animated Logo Screens. Including a quick overview of how to use
XrXLogo. The page can be found at:
html://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/win95logo.html
Karl McMurdo
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Animated Logo Screens
As many people are no doubt aware, anyone can replace the startup logo screen
shown by Windows 95« with one of their own, the only problem has been that it
isn't widely known how to create an animated startup screen (Those pretty
moving blue bars at the bottom of the standard screen.) While some people may
not feel this is important, and many simply disable the logo screen completely,
with my extremely unstable system (Strange Hardware), it is important to me to
know the that the system is still doing something rather than just sitting
there during startup. Until now this has left me STUCK with the default startup
logo which has bothered me because I KNOW I'm running Windows 95«, and don't
need to be reminded every time I boot (Happens quite often). As it turns out,
creating an animated startup screen is a rather simple though time consuming
task.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's required:
1.The desire to get rid of that annoying Windows Logo.
2.A picture to animate, this should be a 256 Color 320 x 400 Windows BMP, this
seems a strange size because the startup screen uses a mode that puts that
resolution on the screen. I tend to do my designing on a 640 x 400 image then
scale it using a graphics utility, this makes it easier to get the proportions
correct.
3.A graphics Utility that can directly edit the Palette of an image. (I have
yet to decide what is the best for this, I've been trying out a few different
ones, and think the final choice will be either Paint Shop Pro or LView Pro.
PSP has the advantage because you can edit the image with it while LView Pro
has the better image manipulation tools.)
4.A hex editor. This is crucial, (Hopefully it wont be needed in the future as
I am working on a program that will allow manipulation of the bits changed to
allow this animation, and display the animation without rebooting.)
DONE! AniLogo.exe is the one.
5.Patience, getting all the right colors in all the right places can be time
consuming.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steps to create Animated Logo:
First a word about the 'animation' this is not true animation, this is palette
animation, this means that only the colors of areas on the screen change, not
the shape of the areas. This is accomplished by the manipulation of the
pictures palette, so far I have got 2 scenarios figured out, the first simply
rotates the palette from a selected starting point through to the end
continuously, this is the method used by the default startup logo. The second
seems to step through the palette to the end and back again. Designing an
animation using this technique can be a bit of a challenge.
1.Create, borrow or whatever, just get yourself a picture to animate. One of
my first attempts was a bitmap of flowers, simple but appealing. I
found a JPG that's 640 x 480 TrueColor.
2.Correct the size of your picture. Resize the image to 320 x 400 using your
choice of tools.
3.You will need a few unused colors in the palette to use for your animation.
So at this point you want to reduce the color depth of your image to something
under 256. I'm going to use the same kind of animation that the default logo
uses at the bottom of my image so I'm going to need 20 colors. (If you count
you'll find that there are 20 boxes across the screen) So I need to reduce the
number of colors in my image to 236. I find that doing this step after resizing
generally results in a better image.
4.At this point I generally go in and set the unused colors I'm going to be
animating (Must be at the END of the palette) to unique colors that are not
used anywhere else in the picture. This makes it easier to do the editing
because some editors will use the first matching color in the palette rather
than the one selected. This can get quite frustrating, you think you've set
that last box to a specific color to be animated, and it never changes because
it actually got set to a non animated color earlier in the palette.
5.Now add the elements to be animated to your picture, in this case I am
putting 20 boxes across the bottom of the picture, and setting them to each
successive color I set in the previous step.
6.Now go back and set those colors to what you actually want them to be. In my
case I started with black, faded to green and back to black in those last 20
palette entries.
7.Save your picture as a 256 color Windows Bitmap (.BMP), it will have to be
renamed later.
8.Save your original LOGO.SYS if any.
9.Load the file into 'XrX Animated Logo Utility', then set the number of colors
to animate, in the example above starting at 236, the number of colors animated
is 20. You can then select 'Test Animation' to view the animation. This works
best with the number of screen colors set higher than 256. At 256 colors you
can get the general idea of the animation, but most dont display quite right.
If you wish to see you logo full screen, Double CLick on the logo, click again
to return to the small view. New in this version is the ability to store a
description and author name in a logo file, this is available in the INFO tab
The file can now be saved over top of the original or saved with a different name.
If your C: drive isn't compressed, the logo can be installed from here as well.
I am working on compressed drive install. The reverse option in the Startup Options
window allows you to reverse the direction of the animation.
More new feature include the addition of a border that shows the border that will
appear on some systems when they boot (this appears to be working, but I am not
100% sure about it) In this version you can drag a logo file from the explorer
onto the logo utility. Another minor addition is hot links to the Internet, if
your system is Internet capable, clicking the blue underlined labels on the
info page will start either your mail program or your web browser.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a beta release, please report any bugs to XrX Computer Applications
via E-Mail at xrx@nucleus.com or via the Animated Logo Feedback Page on
the Sample Logos Web Page : http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/samplogo.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good luck creating your own logo's, I wouldn't mind seeing other peoples work,
or if you have any comments you can send me E-Mail.
Karl McMurdo (XrX) - kmcmurdo@nucleus.com
================================================================
Win 95 animated start-up logo installation instructions
================================================================
! *.sys file type is usually hidden in most people's computers
under Win95. Hence, you might have trouble in finding *.sys
files for copying files. To see these hidden files, you can
use either suggestion below.
suggestion a. go to Explorer
choose View menu, then select Options...
in the dialog, enable "Show all files"
suggestion b. use a DOS window, in which most *.sys files
can be viewed normally
----------------------------------------------------------------
0. Extract the new .SYS file to a temporary directory.
----------------------------------------------------------------
1. Move (backup) original "start-up" logo, "LOGO.SYS" from the
root directory of your boot drive, usually C:\ to another
temporary directory.
(If you are using a compression utility or cannot locate
the logo.sys file, please see the notes below.)
----------------------------------------------------------------
2. Use DOS window or Explorer to copy new logo file to the
root directory, renaming the new copy to "LOGO.SYS"
(If you are using a compression utility, please see the
notes below.)
Example of DOS command:
copy c:\temp_dir\xrxlogo.sys c:\logo.sys
----------------------------------------------------------------
3. Restart your computer and you're done!
----------------------------------------------------------------
=======
Note:
=======
* If you are using a compression utility on your boot drive,
you must put logo.sys in the host for that drive.
(For example, if drive C: is compressed and its host is the G:
drive, then logo.sys should be placed in the root directory
of the G: drive.)
* The default logo.sys is embedded in io.sys file.
If you cannot find logo.sys in your drives, including the host
drive (see above), chances are Win95 is using the logo that is
embedded in io.sys as your start up logo. In this case, you
don't have logo.sys to backup. Simply place the new logo.sys
in the root directory of your boot (host) drive.
Logo.sys in the root directory will take precedence of the one
embedded in io.sys file. To get back to the original win95
logo, simply rename the logo.sys to other name.
* To restore the original win95 logo, you must save (backup) the
file in step 1. Then just copy the original logo to the
designated directory.
* You can create your own Win95 logo files. They must be in
320 x 400 (256 colors) bitmap format. Although the real size
displayed is 640 x 400, Win95 will stretch these logo files
when displaying them. If you want to create an animated logo,
see my instruction page on the internet at
http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/win95logo.html
More animated Logo's can be found on the sample page linked to
the instruction page above.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Rob Chen whose instructions for installing Windows 95
logo files I have blatantly plagiarised.
----------------------------------------------------------------
* If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me.
Karl McMurdo kmcmurdo@nucleus.com
73230,2600 (compuserve)
XrX Computer Applications xrx@nucleus.com