This new discovery has caught my attention to the point where I have finally been able to return from my 6 year hiatus.
I have been on here off and on as a guest over the years, but long story short real life happened and I hadn't found much time to dedicate to hobbies such as this. That is until the last few months.
I have done some experimenting of my own with this version of Prevue since finding out of your discovery just over a week ago (this is exciting... 1994-1996 was my favorite era of Prevue). I have some theories I wanted to share.
The channel information contained in both DREV 3 and DREV 5 are exactly identical, with the exception of only two characters omitted in DREV 3 just before the final channel source code. The listings, as I saw mentioned earlier, are completely different. But this is where my theory comes in...
Version 7 gave us a functioning "listing" mode as opposed to grid mode, unlike version 9. But I am thinking that this is because of the DREV versions and not because of the software (as the option exists in version 9... But does not work). Think of the difference in format. I think the listing mode works with DREV 3 because of how everything is in strict half hour blocks throughout the entire curday.dat file (and listings mode is all in strict half hour blocks as well). With DREV 5 adding the timeslot as a program attribute, it most likely broke this feature in version 9. Looking at ESQ via hex editor suggests that each version is backwards compatible with prior DREV versions but I have yet to test my DREV 3 listing in version 9 (and whether or not this makes list mode work in version 9).
My second theory is with the 1.3 version of ESQ. I am still trying to casually find a way to get it to boot, but I think some additional reasons for that not working is that we would need to completely overhaul our system disk and replace all the files in the C directory with kickstart 1.3 counterparts of the files contained within (i assume it is KS 2.04 files and trying to run that while booting from KS 1.3 probably isn't expected to work). We would also need to find a way to rewrite the entire UV script to accept KS 1.3 and to make sure that commands aren't being used that are only available in 2.x and later. Its worth a try, but at this point I believe that unless we get a hold of a system disk from before 1996 we are hard pressed to get that version to boot. (I am curious to find out how it boots because I am not sure if the blue grid ran on A1000 or not, but I believe the A2-black list did. There is a supposed youtube video with a black list EPG from as late as 1995... So *maybe* we could see a black list from it?)
Anyway, nice to be back. I hope I got some wheels turning.
