Prevue Channel System Disk

[AriX]

Thanks to Jeff of amiga.org, I now have an ADF format image of the final Prevue/TV Guide Amiga software. Everything on here is in bizarre formats, but I have succeeded at extracting some of it. This image includes (!) the "PrevueC" font (in the obscure Amiga bitmap font format), which is labeled:

Code: Select all

"Prevue font ©1993,94
Prevue Networks,Inc.
Designed by J. Bruette"

More details to come.

[Bolt96]

Wow that's great!!! Looks like we wont need my fonts after all

[AriX]

Unfortunately since the disk seemed to auto-update itself, I mostly only have TV Guide-related resources.
Here are a couple of the things I've been able to extract from the disk so far:

The banner that rolled around at the end of the listings cycle.
The background behind the title and description of whatever video was being shown.
A promo image for Movie Profile (there are promo images for each of the early TV Guide Channel's programs)
PrevueC.font.png A PNG of the "PrevueC" font (I have not yet been able to extract it into a font format), which includes several symbols and logos.

All of the images had an extension of ".UV" and were packed in "Power Packer 2.0" format. The images themselves were then in "ILBM" format.

More to come.

[AriX]

Here are pictures of the floppy disk itself:




More to come.

[Bolt96]

Thats simply AWESOME!!!!! Cant wait to see more!!!

[tin]

Hi AriX, Followed you here after our chat on Youtube.

For extracting the font to TTF, try Typesmith on your amiga emulator. I think the version from AFCD 3 will do it. You can get the CD from EAB file server (see http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633) directory Magazine Cover Disks and CDs/CDs/AFCD

I haven't tried the prog, as I don't have the font. So if you like, upload the .font file and I'll check it out.

Alternatively if you feel generous enough to share your adf....

[tin]

BTW i doubt the disk could update itself because of the amount of data needed to go through the air (although reverse engineering will reveal) so we could do with getting hold of older ones if by any chance they still exist.

[AriX]

Hi AriX, Followed you here after our chat on Youtube.

For extracting the font to TTF, try Typesmith on your amiga emulator. I think the version from AFCD 3 will do it. You can get the CD from EAB file server (see http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633) directory Magazine Cover Disks and CDs/CDs/AFCD

I haven't tried the prog, as I don't have the font. So if you like, upload the .font file and I'll check it out.

Alternatively if you feel generous enough to share your adf....

I actually haven't been able to get it to run in my Amiga emulator yet... Anyway, I'm not posting the ADF publicly yet (probably soon), but I could send it to you if you'd like. I can't seem to figure out which binary is actually the Prevue Guide program itself :p

EDIT: I figured it out, the binary is called "ESQ" and is located in /. The primary startup script, "Startup-Sequence" seems to then launch the script "uv-ver", which executes "uv-dev" if that exists (probably for development, on this configuration it doesn't exist, mentions something about "Mungwall and Enforcer" which seem to be debuggers), then executes "uv-startup" with the comment: "run ESQ, PGL, or LG w/ select code".

The uv-startup script (last updated 2/26/96) then launches ESQ with the argument GA24005 (which is similar to what's written on the disk, I assume it defines the unique serial number of the machine so that it knows which cable linup to use). I don't know what ESQ means or why it's present on this machine instead of PGL or LG. I can't think of what any of them would stand for, except PGL which could stand for Prevue Guide Lsomething. There don't seem to be many strings at all in ESQ, I'll look through it and see if I find anything.

BTW i doubt the disk could update itself because of the amount of data needed to go through the air (although reverse engineering will reveal) so we could do with getting hold of older ones if by any chance they still exist.

The reason I think it was automatically updated over the air is because it is a Prevue disk labeled 8.0.7 or whatever, even though the contents seem to be TV Guide and a later software revision. They obviously didn't just send them a new diskette, it was updated somehow.

[AriX]

I still haven't gotten the disk image itself to boot, but I was able to execute the software and got a few interesting screenshots. It seems the version of the software here is "Ver 9.0.4 Build 21 JGT". The strings present here must be compressed or obfuscated inside the binary, because I cannot read them from the file itself with the 'strings' utility. The strings involve "TV Guide Technical Services", even though the errors reported in the startup script still reflect "Prevue Technical Services".

Here are the screenshots:

[AriX]

tin, I tried using TypeSmith, however the version I had did not seem to be able to open a bitmap font... I'll keep looking into it.