Message-ID: <36CB1AF8.3098E6F9@cats.ucsc.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 11:39:37 -0800
From: Eric Berenson <ekb44 AT cats DOT ucsc DOT edu>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Allegro
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References: <8D53104ECD0CD211AF4000A0C9D60AE353FA0B AT probe-2 DOT acclaim-euro DOT net>
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Shawn,
 have a Gateway 2000 P120, no mmx, from 1995, with a STB Trio 64V+
graphics card, FREEBE VBEAF 1.0 driver,  and an Ensoniq Soundscape
Wavetable Sound card, and 16MB RAM, running WIN95. None of the sound
library routines work in Allegro, but that's a problem to fix later. If
I cannot get any graphics I have nothing to do.
    I switched from urboPascal/DOS/ASM to the "real world" of C. I have
so many things to port and look at. I actually wrote my own asm/pas
library for video/mouse/kbd/sound/complexmath that works kill-kill, esp.
the math, but it works in DOS MODE only; I shut the machine down to dos
and use 640K. Kinda sux for big programs, but I have been doing
things this way for many years very successfully. Being stuck on a 4.77
Mhz machine till 1996 caused me to learn how to
write really really fast assembly code and I have a heck of a lot of
amazing sci-visulization programs. I'd love to have other
people use my code; must be a nice feeling. ANYway, these die on my
machine.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

/* This program crashes unrecoverably in a power-down fashion. */
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "allegro.h"

int main()
{
   allegro_init();
   install_keyboard();
   if (set_gfx_mode(GFX_AUTODETECT, 800, 600, 0, 0) != 0) {  /* crashes
in set_gfx_mode bigtime */
      allegro_exit();
      printf("Error setting graphics mode\n%s\n\n", allegro_error);
      return 1;
   }
   return 0;
}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#include "allegro.h"
int main()
{
   int x, y, w=800, h=600;
   allegro_init();
   install_keyboard();
   if (set_gfx_mode(GFX_AUTODETECT, w, h, 0, 0))
   /* the line above produces an unrecoverable-powerdown type crash */
   {
     allegro_exit();
     printf("Modeset failure.\n");
     return 0;
   }
   for (x=0;x<320;x++)
     for (y=0;y<200;y++)
       putpixel(screen,x,y,x&y);
   do{
   } while (! keypressed() );
   allegro_exit();
   return 0;
}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

also ex12, ex23, ex40, any exXX using sound, tests\test, all crash.

compilied Allegro with all default gcc settings. Did not modify
allegro.cfg.
am using FREEBE VBEAF driver version 1.0;

Also, using Allegro and RHIDE, running the prog from RHIDE confuses the
keyboard stuff, right?
This is to be expected? The Allegro program exits and up/down arrows
gone, left/right have CTRL key stuck down,
have to exit using Mouse and restart every time program runs. This is
normal, correct?

Is there any interest in a fast absolutely minimal video/kbd/mse
library? A very quick and dirty library like the one I
wrote for 16-bit? My lib is like 3K. But I never needed anything else to
write tons of graphics programs. I would love to
contribute. It would be neat to be able to think "I wonder what it would
look like if I took a logarithmic derivative of a polynomial over C and
parameterized the roots using the mouse in one window and plotted
color=norm(the function composed a few times) in another window." and
sit down and write the program in 3 minutes and be looking at the damn
thing within 30 minutes of thinking of it. That is what my programming
world is like under DOS. But 64K limit sux and C is neccessary and I
learn to appreciate it more each day (C is weird...).

Let me know wasup. Keep up the awesome work.
Eric

Help. Thanx.