Dear Jim, Anyone who can write something that works as nicely as Electric Astrolabe can NOT be described by anyone (even himself!) as "stupid".
Although I am rapidly losing my few DOS skills, I can still get the program up and running in a new locality with a minimum of trouble. ----- Original Message ----- From: "James E. Morrison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 10:24 PM Subject: WAY off topic >I know this is way off topic, but there seem to be some pretty savvy >computer people out there who may be able to provide some insight. I was >encouraged by the recent thread about Vista. > > I've had a few people contact me because they bought a new computer or > video adapter and The Electric Astrolabe won't work on it. After lots of > digging I found DOSBox works fine, but with greatly reduce animation > responsiveness. > > The Electric Astrolabe supports standard VGA, 640x480, 16 color, four > plane graphics for one reason only; It's the only graphics mode supported > in exactly the same way by all graphics cards. The program does not use a > video driver, or you could say it has its own driver, because it interacts > with the VGA adapter at the internal register level in order to get the > needed graphics responsiveness. The text pages use BIOS calls, but they > don't seem to work either. I can't test it because it works fine on all > five of my computers (W95, W98, NT, XP) that I keep for regression > testing. > > Some reasons I can think of that would explain why people are starting to > have problems are: 1. Not all new graphics adapters support VGA, 2. The > latest operating systems intercept attempts to write directly to the > graphics adapter for some imagined security risk, or 3. The operating > system will not allow (or does not support) BIOS calls to set the graphics > mode. There's nothing I can do about any of these unless there is some > sort of setting that will allow "legacy" DOS applications to run on the > newest platforms. > > I would appreciate it if anyone with insight into this sort of thing could > send me a note. Off-list would probably be best since this has nothing to > do with sundials, just sundialists. > > FWIW, I'm working on a Windows version of The Electric Astrolabe. Don't > hold your breath. It's hard when you're old and fat and lazy and stupid. > > Best regards, > > Jim > > P.S. My book on astrolabes is out. See astrolabes.org/theastrolabe.htm. > > > > James E. Morrison > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Astrolabe web site at astrolabes.org > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
