Curday.dat Data Format

[20CenturyFan]

@20CenturyFan: I wrote this curday.dat file manually with a hex editor.[/quote]

I think I located the source of your problem... you are VERY close, save one character in each of the Channel ID strings... after the six "null" characters following the six FF characters for the channel masking, you have the following four hex characters... 82 FF 30 30. You are missing an FF character. It should be 82 FF FF 30 30. You seem to have made this mistake in every channel. Try adding one more FF character in that section of your string for each channel and see if it works. So this section should look something like this:

Using LO (Ch3) as an example,
00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 82 FF FF 30 30

[woddfellow2]

Thanks, but now I get this:



(Text advert references the small text at the bottom of the xkcd main page)

[20CenturyFan]

Upload your modified curday.dat. I am going to give it a couple tests later and post my findings.

[woddfellow2]

http://ompldr.org/vYmEyaw
Thanks in advance

[20CenturyFan]

Channel ID errors: Too many "null" characters following the displayed channel name. The name can be up to six characters, and spaces not taken are taken by 00 (null) characters. Afterwards there are just two more null characters, then a channel tag (such as summary, hilite, etc) and the masking string. For example, for LO (CH3) it would say:

COX060 LO |yyyyyy :which in HEX should look like this:
43 4F 58 30 36 30 00 4C 4F 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 FF FF FF FF FF FF

the first four null characters after the LO (4C and 4F) are placeholders for the remaining available characters you can name a channel (the channel name characters + placeholders should always equal to 6). There are two more null characters after that, then the channel attribute tag and the masking string.

I fixed that and Channel 3 showed up, as did the channel name for Channel 4. However, the listings for that channel are showing channel tag info for following channels because you have errors in the listings themselves. You seem to have spaces (20) where "null" characters should be (00), and possibly vice versa. I would recommend checking these out as well. After the channel ID correction, however, your first channel is fine. I am sure that if your listings still appear this way, there is likely an error of this nature still existing. When I created my first scratch listing, I ran into the same issue, and it was hunt and peck until I managed to correct all of the errors (and the listings would show correctly). Let me know if you get it to work. I can upload the version that I corrected for you if you would like, but I am sure your intention is to learn to do it on your own as well.

EDIT: I would also like to add after all is said and done, only channel 4 and channel 8 have listing errors, and its one error each. In channel 4, there was a space where a null character should have been, and in channel 8, near timeslot 29 you missed a program tag, resulting in 4 numbers preceding the program instead of 5, causing a snowball effect on the rest of the programs. Also, channel 8 will not show up unless you have the "end of listings" string at the end of your curday.dat (I pulled one from a working file and it showed up). After these errors are fixed, your listings will run perfectly.

[woddfellow2]

Thanks, it is mostly working now:

Video: http://ompldr.org/vYmFxMA/out-1.ogv (Ogg Theora, 9.37 MB)
curday.dat: http://ompldr.org/vYmFxNQ/curday.tar.gz

I could not find the error near timeslot 29, but I know there was an error there because I viewed the CLU/PI with the h and j keybindings, and I saw an error there.

[20CenturyFan]

Thanks, it is mostly working now:

Video: http://ompldr.org/vYmFxMA/out-1.ogv (Ogg Theora, 9.37 MB)
curday.dat: http://ompldr.org/vYmFxNQ/curday.tar.gz

I could not find the error near timeslot 29, but I know there was an error there because I viewed the CLU/PI with the h and j keybindings, and I saw an error there.

where it goes 29 1 0 0, it should be 29 1 1 0 0. You had a 1 missing.
1 0 0 --> 1 1 0 0 --> 31 00 31 00 30 00 30 00 (Program title)

[woddfellow2]

It looks fine to me:

...though I did not change anything... o_O
I know there is an error because this happens:


Also, how do I re-PowerPack the file?

[20CenturyFan]

Look at timeslot 31... it shows 31.1.0.0. It should show 31.1.1.0.0. Maybe I was looking at the wrong line when I said 29... looks like it was actually 31. Sorry about that!! You should be ok after this... I don't recall seeing anymore errors when I got it to work here.

As far as powerpacking goes, I never actually bother with it... the program will work with the files whether it is powerpacked or not (at least from my experience). However, if you insist there are three ways I am aware of if you want to powerpack your files. (1) Powerpack them in workbench (I had a hard enough time figuring out how to unpack a file let alone pack one... you need powerpacker or something. I only used it twice so I am not even sure I got the name right ) (2) You could go to the "special settings" in ESQ's menu and "Save ALL to disk" (not sure how this affects other files, but there is definitely a stage involving powerpacking in this process, including the listings). Lastly, you can keep the emulator running long enough to where it will finally pack the files by itself (not sure how long this is, but when i leave it running overnight it tends to do it at about 5:24am). Space isn't really a concern with me since I am not exclusively running on the ADF anymore, so I have no reason to deal with powerpacking my files (I have an 8MB CF card that has outlived its useful life acting as a "hard disk" for my Prevue Channel, and my startup sequence was modified as such to reroute it to that drive so I can access it from Windows while it is running). The only thing that ESQ appears to refuse to read from the "hard disk" (thus I would have to put it on the ADF) are graphic logos/ads. I managed to fit everything including six graphics onto my ADF and still have 31K left (although if its on the ADF, I do recommend powerpacking. It works either way, but you might need the space). I hope this information is of usefulness.

[woddfellow2]

Thanks; it works now:


I asked about PowerPacking because this curday.dat file may eventually become large enough that it does not fit in the ADF. I tried the hard disk thing before, but it did not work...