Curday.dat Data Format

[AriX]

On to the channel data format itself. A typical channel block looks like this on the ASCII side:

Code: Select all

[   2 ......CBS006.KCBS....................00...CBS006.

[/code]

what hex edit app are you useing to get the text?

0xED, but I'm on the Mac.

[swest77]

woot, Ari. Very nice work all around here. (And glad that big data entry job o' mine came in handy!)

[AriX]

woot, Ari. Very nice work all around here. (And glad that big data entry job o' mine came in handy!)

Thanks! It was quite fun

By the way, I just realized that since mode F commands seem to work on the Amiga platform, I should probably try to feed the settings block that nwgatwcfan discovered through it and see what happens - will let you know! Also, I'd love to try and figure out how to produce a working implementation of ADF editing on the Mac(/UNIX/Linux) platform. It would make a lot of things easier, like not having to have two emulated Amigas at all times in order to try to play with these files.

[tin]

Hey arix, sorry I've not responded to the PM yet, I don't even have my notes handy at this time to answer the question. I just popped in to say that I've had the guide running from emulated HD, under windows, so you can edit the cfg on the fly with your host OS (I know mac) and reload it in the emulated enviroment no problems.

I think I do have my s:startup-sequence here with me so I will post it......

[tin]

Okay as you might have guessed, make a new HD from a folder on your Host OS. Assign it DH2 (or change the script whatever you prefer) and change the startup sequence to the following:

;main startup script

failat 21
assign ENV: dh2:
makedir ram:T
assign T: ram:T

assign c: dh2:c
assign s: dh2:s
assign df0: dismount
assign df0: dh2:

newcli "CON:0/0/640/200/ Prevue" from s:uv-ver
endcli >nil

[AriX]

Okay as you might have guessed, make a new HD from a folder on your Host OS. Assign it DH2 (or change the script whatever you prefer) and change the startup sequence to the following:

;main startup script

failat 21
assign ENV: dh2:
makedir ram:T
assign T: ram:T

assign c: dh2:c
assign s: dh2:s
assign df0: dismount
assign df0: dh2:

newcli "CON:0/0/640/200/ Prevue" from s:uv-ver
endcli >nil

Great, thanks! Will give that a try... Will make this process much more convenient
Without the space limitations, I won't have to PowerPack the files

[tin]

Great, thanks! Will give that a try... Will make this process much more convenient
Without the space limitations, I won't have to PowerPack the files

Cool, tbh it was a step i took early on after looking at the Amiga disks, and it never clicked that I hadn't said anything, nor everyone hadn't done it yet

[tin]

Bit more (useless) information. The second field in the listing block sets several attributes for the program itself. This works in the same way as the first set of flags in the channel block.

1 = None
2 = Movie
4 = ALTHILITEPROG
8 = TAGPROG
16 = SPORTSPROG
32 = DVIEW_USED
64 = REPEATPROG
128 = PREVDAYSDATA

Note the only combinations used in the listings on our disk are

None = 1 1
Movie = 2 2
None TAGPROG = 9 1 + 8
None SPORTSPROG = 17 1 + 16
Movie TAGPROG = 10 2 + 8
None TAGPROG SPORTSPROG = 25 1 + 8 + 16

None of them really seem to do anything, aside from ALTHILITEPROG which turns the channel listing blue, like the ALTHILITE'd channels.

[AriX]

Bit more (useless) information. The second field in the listing block sets several attributes for the program itself. This works in the same way as the first set of flags in the channel block.

1 = None
2 = Movie
4 = ALTHILITEPROG
8 = TAGPROG
16 = SPORTSPROG
32 = DVIEW_USED
64 = REPEATPROG
128 = PREVDAYSDATA

Note the only combinations used in the listings on our disk are

None = 1 1
Movie = 2 2
None TAGPROG = 9 1 + 8
None SPORTSPROG = 17 1 + 16
Movie TAGPROG = 10 2 + 8
None TAGPROG SPORTSPROG = 25 1 + 8 + 16

None of them really seem to do anything, aside from ALTHILITEPROG which turns the channel listing blue, like the ALTHILITE'd channels.

Hmm. I don't understand what most of them mean, but SPORTSPROG was probably used for this.

I actually figured this out yesterday when looking through the decompressed ESQ binary with a hex editor - turns out these data structures are easily readable right there :p

[tin]

I believe (and I could well be wrong here) that they are for colouring the type of program as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Guide_N ... lor_coding although with the descriptions, perhaps not exactly the same categories.

However it seems to me that either the changes were done so the PC version could obey them, and the Amiga continued to ignore them, OR that changes were planned to the Amiga version that allowed that many colours, but the change was never done - or perhaps there's even newer versions of the software.

However I'm not sure at all about that one.. I'm interested you saw the fields in the editor, I spent all afternoon testing them! I will check it out in the editor again now

BTW I have a disassembly of the code, but I'm not at all sure it will be of any use as it's machine code not C