New Stuff, More Hell and Decisions….Bad Documentation….Am I optimistic or what? :)

Well, it’s been just over a week since the April’s fools prank, and I wanted to say that some of the stuff in that posting was actually true (the stuff about the features that is)
Hopefully, I didn’t disappoint anybody too much. Anyways, now on to other things

I just finished a 2 week battle figuring out how open a file with windows file names vs. the old dos filenames. It took a look of googling and clever tricks.. At the end of the day due to some professor in Minnesota or something, I figured it out. The hassle was not helped by using Ralf Browns List of interrupts as a piece of reference material. The web link for those who are interested I shall provide below. That set of documents was the original source of a lot of my hassle with what turned out to be a really simple process. At the end of the day, that is a document that could really use some organization and maybe examples to clarity what R. brown is trying to convey. Due to my experience, I believe some of the information in that document is wrong but as I have explained above maybe it just the way the information is presented that leads to such confusion.

In other news, I have made the decision that from now on this web site will be updated once a week no matter what is happening (well almost anything). Things have mostly returned to normal and it is very difficult to get anything accomplished. An update will consist of at least a blog posting and a new version of the software that does something that is visible to the end user.

Speaking of.............

If you now open a command line window (look for directions below) and run crunch n pack with a filename after it will now attempt to open the file and report whether it was successful or not with “file opened” for access and “Err” for Error….Example follows:

CNP004 thisisyourfilename.wav

The latest download of crunchnpack will also be at the bottom of this posting.

On another note, When I have verified that I have figured out how to open, close and create files when using long files names I will probably post it on the internet due to the simple that that information on a simple process like this should not be hard to find and the only way to change that is to do something about it.

Till Later, Cheerz

BAZ

Latest Version of Crunch n pack

http://www.geocities.com/bpsheen/cnp04.zip

Ralf Browns Interrupt list….

http://www.ctyme.com/rbrown.htm

First Release (well for dos, anywayz) :)

So, months and months of coding have succumb to the finished product...

Features include:

Lossless Audio Compression of 4:1 guaranteed..(that's at 44.1 KHZ 16 bit )
Ability to compress other types of files (though the results will not be as great)
will run on a 386 :)

future features:

will run natively on windows and Linux (maybe even os x in the future)
scaleable compression (ie restricted by how many MIPS used per second for decompression for decoding on slower processors)
a port from assembly to c (so it will run on just about anything )
a plug in for winamp and hopefully xmms.
and many more to come

In the meantime

any of you windows users will have to run this in a command line window.

To access a command line window, do the following.

1. Click on Start Menu
2. Click on run
3. Type "cmd" and press the enter key.

when you get to the command line prompt. type crunchie to run the compression software.. Instructions will follow. Enjoy.

heres the download

http://www.geocities.com/bpsheen/crunchie.zip

gateway Sux, best buy Sux, life could be better,but hey, its the first download

More later....

In the meantime its Version 0.01 Alpha..... :)

It prints a message

life has been too difficult to concentrate on anything productive lately... But once in a while you get a break ... :)

heres the web link

http://www.geocites.com/bpsheen/cnp.zip

hopefully, life will settle down :)

Cheerz till then ..

Oh the fun of learning new software

Well, its been interesting, for the reasons below I have switched assemblers. I used to code in Turbo Assembler from Borland, but I have switched to Netwide Assembler.......

Reasons include:

1. Netwide assembler is available for DOS (or freedos), windoze, and Linux and probably some other versions of Unix like operating systems as well. This makes porting code a breeze in comparison
2. Netwide assembler is still being updated
3. Turbo Debugger has bugs... (what is the use of a Debugger that is buggy itself)
4. I need to change assemblers anyway and learn about new tools out there. hopefully I find another debugger with the features of Turbo Debugger.
5. Netwide Assembler has support (built-in) for mmx,sse and sse2 instructions which my new laptop supports....
6. Netwide Assembler is also free and open source... :)

but, the switch is not without its difficulties.........

I had some variables that I declared as Uninitialized Data, only to find out that when I tried to access them in my code, that Netwide Assembler decided that I had never defined them! (time to download the proper manual, I guess!!!! (instead of the one included with (a IDE for netwide assembler) ......

Ah and speaking of news, there is a new version available.... heh imagine that....

And now for a Whining Session... This one concerns gateways laptops....

one day, I found 800 dollars, and decided I would invest it in a new laptop. Since there was a gateway model on sale for about 550 dollars I purchased it, took it home and enjoyed my new
toy, only to discover it was loaded with awful software (think AOL and the like) .. So I did what any
tech would do and formatted the hard drive and proceeded to reinstall win XP along with win 2k.

ok, I ran into my first problem.... THE DRIVERS ARE NOT ON THE WINDOWS XP DISK (this was service pack 2 BTW)

grr, so I went to gateways web site and downloaded the drivers for the thing.....

THEY WERE ALL THE WRONG ONES,,,, grrr.........

Eventually, some gentlemen had bought the same laptop at another best buy and done exactly the same thing, he had found the drivers and after asking him to post the web links he did so and the situation was temporarily solved...

Now, the next piece of news with the laptop was

THE F*****ING DVD/CD-RW COMBO DRIVE IS faulty....

it would not read DVD's........ So finally best buy got a another one in stock (open box return actually, and I tested the laptop to be assured it could read DVD's, no problem) took it home
and proceeded to download lots of TV stuff from England (where I am from and born) and all that.

Guess what

on the new laptop, 2/3 times it fails to burn a CD with Nero (the included software) by the way..

The software has no problems burning the disc....(no buffer underruns etc) but as soon as it verifies the data it all goes pear shaped......

So this Sunday is my last day to return this laptop, since I cant burn anything onto CD, I hope that best buy has a Toshiba on sale for less then the price I paid for this laptop.....

Piece of advice, don't buy a gateway laptop.....

if you are curious my model is a mx6131. Do a google search and I am sure you will find the specs there.

anywayz, more ranting tomorrow, time to see whats new with that new release of NASM (netwide assembler) and read the documentation.

cheerz till l8r

baz

p.s.: so much for checking my spelling quickly, I know there are spelling errors in this document, but bear with me due to the fact when I click on check spelling nothing happens...

hmmmm... What was I saying earlier regarding buggy software
(whoops its me that buggy, firefox was blocking the spell check (it's a popup) ha ha!

Hello Welcome to my Blog

Hello, i am the developer for the compression project "Crunchnpack" and this is where you get to hear whine and complain about the development process and all the things that are involved on a day to day basis.. ( you would be surprised )

This blog will also outline my ideas for the Software and my progress in Implenting them.

Crunchnpack is a working title...... Whenever the software reaches v 1.0 i shall change the name to something that works well with the purpose of the software