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1990-05-19
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EGAINT 0.94.13 EXECUTABLE DISTRIBUTION PACKAGE
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; see the accompanying GNU
General Public License for full details. You should have received a
copy along with this program (see the file COPYING). If not, write to:
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Massachusetts 02139.
See the included file MANIFEST for the contents of this distribution
package.
--
eric ng 1906 milvia street berkeley california 94704
...!ucbvax!irss.njit.edu!erc ...!ucbvax!ocf!erc
erc@irss.njit.edu erc@ocf.berkeley.edu
WHAT'S NEW WITH THIS RELEASE
The biggest improvement in version 0.94.13 is the addition (after
numerous user requests) of support (albeit largely untested) for the
Hercules and EGA monochrome graphics adapters. SINCE I NEITHER OWN NOR
HAVE ACCESS TO EITHER OF THESE GRAPHICS ADAPTERS, I CAN PRACTICALLY
GUARANTEE BUGS FOR HERCULES AND EGA MONOCHROME USERS. Please try to
report these bugs as time permits. (If you have a color EGA or VGA,
never mind, this doesn't apply to you.)
In addition, pit depth and show guide options were added, requiring the
modification of both the options screen (including the addition of a
bullet cursor) and the scoring.
Version 0.94.12 contains an extremely inelegant implementation of
user-definable EGA/VGA palette settings. After running egaint 0.94.12
for the first time, your configuration file should contain an entry
which looks like "palette=0,7,63,47,49,25,27,10,50,44,37,39,36,38,55,62"
or so. Using an external editor (if you don't have one, EDLIN or even
DEBUG will work; consult your MS-DOS manual for more details), it is now
possible to have egaint use your favorite colors out of the 64-color EGA
palette instead of the above defaults. For more information, consult
a manual for one of the following languages:
Microsoft QuickBASIC or GW-BASIC (BASICA) 3.x, see "PALETTE"
Microsoft C or QuickC, see "_remappalette()"
Borland Turbo Pascal, see "SetPalette()"
Borland Turbo C, see "setpalette()"
In addition, the source code distribution contains the source code for a
quick and dirty EGA/VGA palette editor written in Turbo Pascal. Also,
if you don't have a color monitor, this won't apply to you.
KEYBOARD ENHANCERS
Egaint uses conventional BIOS calls for keyboard reads, meaning that it
should be compatible with TSR keyboard enhancers. In fact, egaint
actually plays better with them: if you have a keyboard enhancer which
adjusts the typematic rate, you will notice that egaint has a more
responsive feel, something which should, in most cases, be more to your
liking.
I personally use this archaic program (circa 1986) by Skip Gilbrech,
kbfix2. Though it's old, it's still quite versatile: I have yet to
find a keyboard enhancer which offers more useful features than kbfix2.
Unfortunately, I got it several years and computers ago and have since
lost the documentation, so I can offer no information on it.
DESQVIEW, OS/2, AND WINDOWS
Users of graphical interfaces will most likely encounter difficulties in
coaxing egaint to perform properly; this is due to the fact that egaint
does some "greedy" things with the EGA/VGA display (like using both of
the two available video pages and changing the palette to use better
colors than the original, mucky sixteen which users are given).
I have personally attempted to run egaint under both OS/2 and Windows:
the results, I am pleased to report, are, for lack of a better term,
amusing.
Windows/386 spit out several angry messages, hemming and hawing about
how egaint is an "exclusive" application (among other epithets). Once
finally into egaint (with all other applications idling), I discovered
that Windows/386 had commandeered the EGA/VGA palette, producing
interesting results. If you insist on using the Windows/386 interface,
I suggest that you investigate Klotz, a nicely-implemented Windows-based
Tetris from Germany (I liked it, but I don't run Windows much).
OS/2, on the other hand, runs egaint fine (albeit not in a little
window); I seem to recall it being called a "DOS box" or something along
those lines. A warning: do not exit back into OS/2 while egaint is
still running, because OS/2 will commandeer one of the video pages
(without restoring it to its previous state), producing an almost
psychedelic effect upon return to egaint (if your machine is fast
enough).
As for DESQview, for those running DESQview 2.2 or higher, it has been
reported to me that the following settings provide optimal results:
"virtualization" off, "writes directly to screen" on, "runs only in
foreground" on, "displays graphics information" on, and "uses its own
colors" on.
Later versions of egaint will probably malfunction in exactly the same
way, as I will stubbornly refuse to support graphical interfaces which I
do not possess. In fact, X is the only interface with which I possess
any intention of supporting in the future.
CHECKSUMS AND SUCH
For those of you who are virus-weary (like myself), here are some
statistics about the executable file under various compression schemas
(nota bene all were executed with the "plain vanilla" add function and
no other options enabled):
Final Reported
Compression Schema Size % CRC
-------------------------------------- --------- ---- --------
Nogate Consulting's Pak 2.10 45,235 44 6af7
Fabrice Bellard's LZEXE 0.91 45,753 43 n/a
PKWARE's PKZIP 1.10 45,774 44 62b2b300
Haruyasu Yoshizaki's LHarc 1.13c 46,284 42 6af7
Miki/Okumura/Masuyama's LArc 3.33 52,382 35 6af7
PKWARE's PKPAK 3.61 59,507 27 6af7
Dean Cooper's DWC A5.01 59,531 26 n/a
SEA's ARC 6.02 61,393 24 6af7
Rahul Dhesi's Zoo 2.01 61,764 23 6af7
In addition, here are the values returned by both McAfee Associates'
Validate 0.3 and Rahul Dhesi's Brik 2.0 file integrity programs for the
executable file:
Validate Brik -Gb
Check Method 1: 6af7 CRC-32: 2639088895b
Check Method 2: 15a9