exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

Dawn's grandma passed away last month But in the scheme of things I acquired this little TV from the house clearance.

I thought it was good because it has scart, HDMI,VGA,S VIDEO inputs. My pink TV does not have VGA input. Unfortunately ( but not unsurprisingly) VGA only works in high resolution. It would need more adjustment for high resolution but not spending any time on it right now anyway.

Considering the price of stuff these days and difficulty obtaining things. I think I cannot really grumble for a free TV. Certainly be a huge advantage when my pink TV dies for the third time (maybe permanently next time?) I can quickly swap it out and use the scart input on this new TV.

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[exxos]

Think I have solved the multiple refreshes problem now. Had to patch up some other routines (still need to fix and tidy up others). But its calibration is back up and running properly now.

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[exxos]

In light of me giving up with Bluetooth audio...I decided to chop a couple foot of my headphone cable and just repair those instead.
#RightToRepair.

So without further adieu. I present you exhibit A:

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First off to remove the cup which is just clipped on thankfully. It now reveals those sneakily hidden screws for opening the thing up.

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To my amazement the actually have a almost sealed rear chamber.

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Simply not PCB layout. Certainly not looking forward to separating the strain relief from the cable later!!

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Little bit more separation..

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The removal of about 2 foot of cable. I believe the faulty part is somewhere in the top section.

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To my amazement strain relief was not moulded onto the cable!! That probably saves two hours of work of not trying to drill it out and get the cable to fit inside it again without destroying the thing!

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You can tell these are 10+ years old by the fact the cable has more than two strands per core!

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Strain relief back on! then removed again because I need to insert the cable into the headphones first!

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Cable soldered back on.

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New cable tie

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Bit of a wipe around with my snot rag, and we are ready to go again!

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Time for some Billy Idol me thinks

#BringBackCables.

[exxos]

Been fixing another redraw bug in GB7. If the window was not on top, the graphics functions was corrupting the desktop Windows. That is now fixed however I now noticed the speed bars because they are literally drawn with VDI calls, they can end up on top of all the windows. Not really sure how it is supposed to work because clipping could be used but I don't know how you're supposed to get what parts of the window are exposed to the user or not. It does not really seem like a good method. Ordinarily boxes are done with the RSC file, but I am not so sure about boxes which have two different colours and sizes.

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The only way I could think it could possibly work is divide literally true 2 boxes Over the top of each other in the RSC file. Then just alter the sizes accordingly. That is probably my best bet currently I think. It would avoid the VDI calls altogether then.

EDIT:

Might be able to do it this way

http://toshyp.atari.org/en/007004.html#vsf_udpat

EDIT2:

Nope. Fill pattern, so only good for 16 pixels

[exxos]

I cannot find any way of manipulating objects in such a manner unless anyone else has any ideas?? Only thing I can do is use three boxes and just dynamically resize them for the results. It could potentially have its own issues but I don't see any other alternative.

Maybe just manipulating the memory directly on the object would work. But then I will have to do a whole drawing routine to do that

EDIT:
Now I think about it that would not be so simple because the number of bit planes would alter now would have to cover every scenario

Probably just easier to go with a three box idea and resize them otherwise this will be dragging on for months else

[exxos]

I have drawn the three boxes. The dotted background box. The red box which designates the "slowness" of the test. The black box denotes "speed up" results.

Now I look at it,I will probably have to set the X-locations of each box and the width.

Next up to actually write a quick routine to manipulate the boxes and see if the idea even works.

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[exxos]

After adding the objects tie saved the object list file and now all the objects have disappeared other than the main form names

So now I will have to restore the backup I did this morning (yay me!) And trying diagnose why the object names are vanishing.

Always has to be some bloody something going wrong with some software or something somewhere.

[exxos]

This is ridiculous. In WERCS If I load up the resource file save and save preferences (we should generate the BH file) it totally trashes it and only results in the form names. Even if I just click on the text fields they do not have the field names there either.

Looking back through various backups, it seems the HRD file has become corrupted at some point

[exxos]

GB700.RSC was the original. Then I went to 701 which was a experiment and abandoned. 702 was the one which got corrupted. So I had to go back to 701 and undo the experimental changes and then re-add the object boxes.

So hours later I am finally back to this point...

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[exxos]

Welcome to the 1990's I guess.

Warning - This video flashes a lot.





Width works as well. Will code up some new routines to control the bars properly next week.