This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (199 messages)
Wanted: 8520A
Message #166773
Looking for 1 or 2 8520A chips. -Jerry Thompson
"I don't know what anybody would do with a truckload of CD-32's, though. They'd be awfully hard to sell without a rock-bottom price…" Actually, the OEM types are dragging the rivers looking for CD32s. I've just been approached to do a project which would be perfect for CD32, but we…
#Where is marketplace?
Message #166560
Hey, I guess I've been away for a while. Where did the classifieds section go? I'm trying to find some 8520A chips. -Jerry
I reinstalled from my original 2.1 (Beta) disks and that seems to have fixed the problem. -Jerry
I downloaded some of the Alert patching programs and they seem to indicatte that OpenLibrary is crashing on dos.library. Isn't dos.library part of Kickstart? Would that mean I have a corrupt Kickstart? Or is OpenLibrary a function of dos.library, meaning that I am missing some other library which OpenLibrary is…
#ramlib func crashing
Message #42751
I am having a problem with some programs crashing on my A3000. Everything was working okay, but now some programs are crashing the system with a "recoverable" (not) alert of 0003 8007. It appears that the program "ramlib" is unable to open a library. I'm not sure if my kickstart…
The original Easyl 500 had a slap-on-the-side controller card and there was a plug in card for the A2000. -Jerry
#Prob. w/ PhonePak FAXing
Message #84589
I'm having problems faxing with PhonePak. The faxing never did work decently before. It usually took 3 tries to receive a page, very rarely received more than the first page of a multi-page fax, and about half of all attempts were completely unsuccesful. But lately, I have had almost no…
#150221-
JPEG and MPEG
Message #151154
"Unfortunately, a real-time, high-quality MPEG encoder with audio and video capability costs approximately $10,000 US." Yeow! $10,000! Where can I get a real time MPEG encoder for $10,000? That would be a great deal. I can't find anything for less than $20,000. -Jerry Thompson
You need to paint a smooth backdrop with that Ultimatte blue your ordered AND light it brightly and evenly AND use Imagemaster. Background color and bright, even lighting are really key. (Key, get it? ) I once used a stretched white sheet as a backdrop. Lit the hell out of…
I used to talk to someone from NuTek in Chicago who got a lot of Toaster support calls. -Jerry Thompson
#PAL Toaster
Message #145522
Re: PAL Toaster. The data in the Toaster framebuffer is a sampled composite NTSC video signal (like D2). This gives you less data to deal with and manipulate than RGB. The Toaster software actually calculates what the NTSC signal would look like at a particular point in time to write…
neat DVE's, breaks under the PAL color encoding system. A Toaster without DVE's or which only worked with black and white video would probably not be a big seller. Even in Europe. The external PAL transcoder is probably a better way to go. I'm sure SOMEONE in Europe has been…
Although encoding and decoding NTSC is very simple, it is very hard to do it right. Even the best of the off the shelf encode/decode chips used in the VGA to Video products do not put out anything that you would want to actually broadcast. And I'm sure Commodore was…
To get rid of their competition for pennies on the dollar. If the buying company can make it worthwhile for the management team, then the management will convince the shareholders that the sale is a good thing. Then they'll start dumping bodies. I know from first hand experience. -Jerry
If you are not afraid of ARexx programming, you could write scripts to do the two things you described. PhonePak has a very simple command sequencing capability by itself. It is very weird to program the PhonePak. You can't do everything through ARexx, so you have to write some PhonePak…
More than 1 meg of chip ram is not needed and won't buy you anything when running one or even 2 instances of PhonePak. Of course if you want to simultaneously run 3 or more copies of PhonePak AND open 3 or more hires FAX screens, then 2 meg (or…
I thought D2 WAS composite video. D2 is the composite video signal stored in digital form. This is what is stored in the Toaster's framebuffers. The Toaster manipulates "D2" type data in it's buffers. To write an RGB graphic to the Toaster's framebuffers, software calculates what the waveform of the…
PhonePak uses about 600K of disk space for all the files and default system sounds and messages. So 3 meg of free hard drive space before installation will allow a usable configuration. The program, Lineman, has to be running in order to automatically answer incoming calls and FAXes and it…
>>"We just need more lawyers to keep an eye on 'em" >> >Gag is right… Who's going to watch the lawers? My guess would be… more lawyers? Okay, maybe I should have put a smiley on that one. I hope no one coughed up a bit of lung or anything…
Gee, Gary, I JUST got graphics printing to my PostScript printer working a couple of days ago. I still can't get PhonePak to correctly print faxes to my printer. At least I should be able to save them as IFF files and print them that way now. I will keep…
There are many ways to manipulate the price of a stock and it is very easy to do if you are the management of the company. Companies pull sales, debts, depreciations, inventory into and out of quarter figures to inflate or deflate quarterly reports. "Distorting" quarterly reports is a standard…
Leslie, the PhonePak records about 9K per second. You can figure out how much space you'll need from how many calls you normally get and how long they are. There is a low quality recording mode that you can use when you are low on space or when you are…
I'm sure GVP was using Audix long before PhonePak came out, and Audix is designed to handle the needs of a large company. But PhonePak supposedly does multiple lines by using multiple cards in one machine. The manual describes software support to manage multiple lines. It is also able to…
Yes, I have PostScript printer set, but that's about the only setting that I'm sure is right. I guess I should have said that I can print text files fine. Long message about what the printout looks like, what I've tried, what didn't make any difference… deleted. I changed PostScriptPS/Graphics…
#PostScript Prefs?
Message #137672
What are the PostScript Preferences settings to print a graphic on a PostScript printer? I am unable to get any graphic screen to print to the printer, specifically DPaint and PhonePak FAX printing. Any help appreciated. -Jerry Thompson
Having said all that, I missed yet another FAX today – some kind of report on Commodore. My broker tried 4 or 5 times before giving up. I got one page of 7, 1 of 7, 2 of 7, then the third page before she, mercifully, stopped trying. Okay, so…
so I'm waiting until that is added (or something else significant) before I will upgrade. I would like to get a 14.4 modem, so I've been thinking about going with a FAX/Voice/Modem like the ZyXel, but I haven't had the time to convert over from PhonePak to a new system.…
Yes, PhonePak has an option to automatically detect voice and FAX. Although PhonePak has been 100% accurate at detecting FAXes, it has not been as reliable at connecting with them. I have had awful results using FAX back systems. I have to manually receive them and it takes 3 tries…
Well, I guess I can hope that Irving and Mehdi were just manipulating the stock to drive it lower so they can buy big before it goes up again. I can't believe I'm actually wishing some fat cats are manipulating stock prices to line their already overstuffed pockets. The reason…
Does this mean the end of Commodore, for real, final? Is CBU stock worthless? -Jerry Thompson
You aren't going to just drop that little bombshell on us without giving contact info for Geodesic Designs, are you? Too cruel. -Jerry Thompson
S-Video is the bw and color data separated out. Not quite as good as RGB, but very close.
I don't think you will have to go to PC file names unless you have to conform to the ISO 9660. Most Mac, Unix, and Amiga CD-ROM drivers will support longer file name formats like Mac HFS. There are service bureaus here in the US which can do this. Just…
There are many CDTV titles which will work on an Amiga equipped with a CD-ROM and a Xetec or Asimware driver. There is at least one encyclopedia and atlas, several discs on gardening, many games will work as well. I'm appending an old compatability list from Xetec's driver, but you…
"I have looked for your book in Software Ect and all the local Book Stores ever since you announced the book. Never saw it." Gee Michael, nothing an author loves to hear more than that, except maybe "they had a big stack in the remainders bin…"
I believe Lou Wallace wrote an Amigavision flow to run the Dragons Lair videodisc. I don't think the entire game was done and I don't know what became of the flow. I checked out the Fred Fish library through disk 500 and I didn't see it there. Anyone… -Jerry Thompson
I think CATS is doing this now, but only for CD32 discs. That's who we are planning to use. If you leave a message in the CDROM and PHOTOCD forums, the CD-ROM service bureaus will be more than glad to provide you with information and quotes. There are also several…
I do some ARexx coding, mostly for things like ADPro and AmigaVision. Actually you helped me with ARexx code about three years ago when I was doing a voice controlled Toaster project, which was a lot of fun. I was thinking more along the lines of blitter operations, copper lists,…
Here is what I have pieced together so far. The project I am working on has succesfully burned a couple of CD32 discs, but I have not created my own, so some of what follows may be incorrect assumptions I have made. But I think it will help give you…
"Our initial tests with Amiga based ISDN equipment allowed InfoChannel to transmit a 300KB file in less than 30 seconds!" Am I missing something here? That doesn't seem very fast. That's about the speed of a floppy disk. -Jerry
"the BuildCD software supports multisession discs, which basically allows you to practice again and again on a disc until you get your procedure down right. (That feature saved me lots of gold discs during development of the software" Ahh, that does sound good. I was a little worried about going…
Okay, Thanks. BTW, someone told me that earlier versions of the AVPro Player would allow you to pause the flow with the right mouse button. I have access to a very early AVPro and I am going to try the player from that. Bummer. Just when I thought I was…
Well, the rumours were that the Amiga OS was ported to a DEC Alpha (or the Alpha was emulating a 680×0). DEC supposedly had an agreement to sell Amigas as low end multimedia X Workstations or something and there were reports of people seeing Workbench running on Alpha processors. I…
Yeah, that's exactly what my program did, Forbid() then Wait(). Oops. -Jerry
Ah. I'm doing a Wait() right after the Forbid(). That explains that. I don't really want to tie up the entire machine with a busy wait, but I think that would do the trick. I found a program here on CIS called FREEZE which does halt a task. I changed…
I just got some preliminary information on the CD software and pressing services available from CATS. Sounds like a tremendous bargain compared to what I've seen on PC, Mac, and UNIX. This could be fun… Nah! With the way my luck has been going, it will probably be another nightmare.…
#Task halt w/ Forbid()?
Message #39626
I'm trying to halt all tasks. I tried using Forbid(), but that didn't seem to have any effect. Is there any way to take control of the system? Specifically, I want to halt AmigaVision on some trigger, like a joystick button being pressed. Any pointers to code appreciated. I thought…
…lengthy description… trashed. It's 3:30am. I better not try to recreate it. I think most of what I said was what not to use and why not with some useless history of computer sorting algorithms thrown in. Come to think of it, that may have been 3am as well. In…
Thanks a lot for the info on mastering and CD-ROM formats. That actually cleared up a lot of questions I was having. I'll check with Xetec and Asimware and see if their drivers support ISO Level 2 names. We may have to get a CD Writer to burn CD-ROMs for…
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