Prevue Guide Forums

Thanks so much!

hen7713 wrote:Thanks so much!

Hey, sorta off-topic but I saw your 'Peargrid' stream and I just wondered how the heck were you able to insert a video feed?

Bolt96 wrote: Hey, sorta off-topic but I saw your 'Peargrid' stream and I just wondered how the heck were you able to insert a video feed?

I'm not exactly inserting a video feed, I'm chromakeying the top half.

AriX wrote:I have some good news for all of you Windows folks, which is that over the next little while I'm going to be putting up a centralized listing server on prevueguide.com and I'll be figuring out a solution for Windows users to be able to receive listings on their emulated Ataris and Amigas, provided they can forward their ports to allow some UDP packets to be forwarded straight to their computer.

Just an update on this front. In the past few days, I have designed a backend database schema for storing program, channel, and machine information, and written a bunch of PHP scripts to grab TV listings in XMLTV format and convert them into Prevue-compatible data formats (split data into programs and channels, calculate day codes, timeslots, etc.). I have also ported my C sender program to Linux (seems that Debian GCC is much more strict about memory management than Apple's GCC) and I've started to rewrite it to use my new database format.

So basically what I have left is to finish rewriting sender and work on a web interface to manage the whole system, and then of course work on porting my Mac-based UAE and Atari800 clients to Windows. When it's all set up, we'll figure out a system for assigning select codes, and once I register them in the database, you guys will be able to use to the web interface to set up your machine's configuration however you want. The sender will use a carousel system much like United Video used to in which it will continually send out all of the channel lineups, then all of the programs, then all of the settings, then all of the titles, etc. with clock updates in between.

AriX wrote:

AriX wrote:I have some good news for all of you Windows folks, which is that over the next little while I'm going to be putting up a centralized listing server on prevueguide.com and I'll be figuring out a solution for Windows users to be able to receive listings on their emulated Ataris and Amigas, provided they can forward their ports to allow some UDP packets to be forwarded straight to their computer.

Just an update on this front. In the past few days, I have designed a backend database schema for storing program, channel, and machine information, and written a bunch of PHP scripts to grab TV listings in XMLTV format and convert them into Prevue-compatible data formats (split data into programs and channels, calculate day codes, timeslots, etc.). I have also ported my C sender program to Linux (seems that Debian GCC is much more strict about memory management than Apple's GCC) and I've started to rewrite it to use my new database format.

So basically what I have left is to finish rewriting sender and work on a web interface to manage the whole system, and then of course work on porting my Mac-based UAE and Atari800 clients to Windows. When it's all set up, we'll figure out a system for assigning select codes, and once I register them in the database, you guys will be able to use to the web interface to set up your machine's configuration however you want. The sender will use a carousel system much like United Video used to in which it will continually send out all of the channel lineups, then all of the programs, then all of the settings, then all of the titles, etc. with clock updates in between.

Pretty cool news! Hopefully I can have all this amiga stuff figured out by the time you have everything set up.

AriX wrote:Well, as swest77 pointed out in his own video about the Saddest Prevue Guide that Ever Lived, the Amiga had the capability to control the audio card all by itself (when you went into the menu with the escape key). It's an interesting possibility though.

Correct. I haven't been able to follow the forum in any detailed sense lately due to time constraints. But I did see that nwgatwcfan discovered here that 0x03 is sent when pressing ESC in the software. FWIW, that does in fact appear to be a command from the software to the audio demod card -- specifically, the command which tells the audio demod card to switch to the C-band video transponder's instrumental theme music audio subcarrier. Pretty much any action that necessitates the theme music starting causes 0x03 to be sent (pressing ESC, pressing 'g', etc.). Also, 0x01 and 0x02 are the serial command bytes the software sends to make the audio demod card switch to the video transponder's main left or right audio channels (respectively). You can test this with the 'l' and 'r' diagnostic keystrokes (for forcing left or right audio) while sniffing the serial port. So all totaled: 0x01=left, 0x02=right, 0x03=subcarrier.

In light of this discovery, my "deductive speculation" theory in this post -- specifically the portion about the audio demod card being commanded via "contact closure" style signaling on the grey and brown wires -- no longer appears valid. Everything else in that post, as far as I know, may still be valid "deductive speculation;" just not the part about the grey/brown leads. Evidently, instead, the audio demod cards were "smart" enough for bidirectional octet data flow. Which means those two wires are now a mystery again...

Incidentally, would somebody kindly remind me how exactly you set the date and time in ESQ under WinUAE? This knowledge seems to have sieved from my brain. In any case, I wanna try sending the official test string (from post #1 in this thread) to ESQ through WinUAE under Windows, and I've got the necessary software set up to do so. But it's no use if ESQ still thinks its 12:00 AM January 1, 1970.

AriX wrote:Also, I have some good news for all of you Windows folks, which is that over the next little while I'm going to be putting up a centralized listing server on prevueguide.com and I'll be figuring out a solution for Windows users to be able to receive listings on their emulated Ataris and Amigas, provided they can forward their ports to allow some UDP packets to be forwarded straight to their computer. Also, hopefully I'll have time to start documenting these newer commands pretty soon.

I'm pretty sure I've seen little freeware tools for Windows that let you patch a COMx serial port to a TCP/UDP socket... Wish I could remember them right now.

swest77 wrote:

AriX wrote:Well, as swest77 pointed out in his own video about the Saddest Prevue Guide that Ever Lived, the Amiga had the capability to control the audio card all by itself (when you went into the menu with the escape key). It's an interesting possibility though.

Correct. I haven't been able to follow the forum in any detailed sense lately due to time constraints. But I did see that nwgatwcfan discovered here that 0x03 is sent when pressing ESC in the software. FWIW, that does in fact appear to be a command from the software to the audio demod card -- specifically, the command which tells the audio demod card to switch to the C-band video transponder's instrumental theme music audio subcarrier. Pretty much any action that necessitates the theme music starting causes 0x03 to be sent (pressing ESC, pressing 'g', etc.). Also, 0x01 and 0x02 are the serial command bytes the software sends to make the audio demod card switch to the video transponder's main left or right audio channels (respectively). You can test this with the 'l' and 'r' diagnostic keystrokes (for forcing left or right audio) while sniffing the serial port. So all totaled: 0x01=left, 0x02=right, 0x03=subcarrier.

In light of this discovery, my "deductive speculation" theory in this post -- specifically the portion about the audio demod card being commanded via "contact closure" style signaling on the grey and brown wires -- no longer appears valid. Everything else in that post, as far as I know, may still be valid "deductive speculation;" just not the part about the grey/brown leads. Evidently, instead, the audio demod cards were "smart" enough for bidirectional octet data flow. Which means those two wires are now a mystery again...

Interesting, but I don't quite understand, how would the audio card receive data? It doesn't have a serial port or anything on it...

AriX wrote:Interesting, but I don't quite understand, how would the audio card receive data? It doesn't have a serial port or anything on it...

That's what I was thinking

Sigh. Talk about a senior moment. And me in my thirties. I completely mixed up which of the two cards had the serial connection on it!

Yeah, disregard. The software is sending those single-byte commands to the data demod card via serial. And presumably the data demod card then acts on those commands by signaling the audio switcher/demod card via the brown/grey connections ... per my "deductive speculation" of old.

Anywho. Any help for my enfeebled brain on setting that clock?

Sincerely,
Homer Simpson

No, no, hang on, it's starting to make some sense! I would lay good money that the demod and audio cards talk to each other over the ISA bus. No reason why they can't. Amiga signals demod card via serial, it signals audio card over the bus. Makes sense to me, especially as all other options (including the brown and grey wires, sorry) make no sense to me

As for the clock, sorry I found no way other than to set the host PC time to whatever time you require. However you say your winUAE comes up as 1970? Maybe there's a battery clock emulation setting in the UAE GUI (sorry I can't check I'm away from my proper PC)