Ancient Backup Files Part 3

If you look back, you'll see I've mentioned some backup files that I've had laying around for a long time.  I had taken some backups of my Dos / Windows hard drives circa 1995 to tape, then DD'd the tapes to a Linux box circa 2002 and just grabbed the files.  I can't remember what software I used to create the backups, but I always assumed it was Norton Desktop.

Yesterday while I was wandering the internet I came across a mention of Central Point Backup.  I seem to recall having that at one point too so maybe that is what I used.

I did find a github project that talks about that format here https://github.com/RetroReversing/retroReversing/blob/master/tools/CentralPointBackupVisualizer.html#L31 and at some point I'll compare my notes with what that project says.  I just wanted to record it here so I wouldn't lose it :)

Someday I hope to create a program to read the files and extract the files in them to see if there is anything of importance in there (BBS System files I hope!).

Berkeley System's After Dark

Years ago, in the Windows 3.1 & 95 era there was a company called Berkeley Systems that had a screen saver.  Their most famous one was the Flying Toasters.  I personally liked the Looney Tune ones.  I had a few of their separate packages, Star Trek TNG, Simpsons, Games and others that I can't remember.

I did create a couple of AD modules but nothing super exciting.

One thing I'd really like to be able to do is strip the graphics out of the modules, however, I still haven't been able to find a way to do it.  The resource pullers that I've tried just don't seem to be able to identify them... one of these days I will try to dig though the programs again.

Every once in a while I'd poke at the install zip files but always found they were protected with a password.  I was never able to find one on the internet and I didn't have a zip password cracker so I just ignored it for a while.  I had a copy of my old "install" folder so I always just used that to poke around when I felt like it

Yesterday, I decided to poke some more and as I was browsing one the of install files (install.ins) I noticed text near the list of zip files that said "striketeam" and I thought, that's an odd phrase to be in there.  So I tried that as the password on one of the zip files and it worked.  Cool!

I am having an issue finding my other install disks, however, I did find the Simpsons install disks and it used the same password.

Now if I could just figure out how to pull the graphics... and sound would be nice too.  When poking through the module files, I see "CSTM" in multiple places like various resource files.  I would swear that was some kind of music / sound format but I can't find anything online that really talks about it much and I just can't remember that far back (almost 30 years!).

Ah well... at least I figured out the zip password, give me hope that I'll figure out the other stuff too.  

Psycho Chat

Years ago, a friend wrote an automated help chat program that the users would use to solve basic computer questions. He wrote it in Pascal (circa 1985). When I was running a BBS, he thought it would be cool to use his program to answer basic BBS questions, I agreed.

So I took his program, ran it through a Pascal to C converter and 'fixed' it and made a BBS door called Psycho Chat out of it. I hooked it to the Page Sysop feature of the BBS (circa 1992 running Wildcat!) and the transcripts were hilarious.

Years later (circa 2002), just for fun, I hand converted it to Delphi (which is based on Pascal... funny how the program came full circle). It worked OK but just wasn't the same.

On and off for the past 15 years I've been thinking of making it a web page using PHP and Ajax. My friend had the same idea yesterday so I decided it was time to actually do something about it. Took me a couple hours to hand convert the Delphi program to Javascript / jQuery / PHP but now its working. Still using the response files from the BBS.

It was a fun project and I don't know why I waited so long to do it.

This version doesn't record what is being said... hmmm... maybe I should add that just for fun :)

Calculated Image

A billion years ago I found a one liner in a magazine and it made a pretty cool image. Recently I found it again and thought it would be cool to try it on a modern computer. Below is the algorithm I came up with. Just drop a Picture Box onto a form, add an X, Y and Decimal (from .2 to .9):

// Created by Gregg Buntin
private void DrawImage()
{
    int sizeX = Convert.ToInt32(tbX.Text); // this is the X (width) of the image
    int sizeY = Convert.ToInt32(tbY.Text); // this is the Y (height) of the image
    int halfX = sizeX / 2;
    int halfY = sizeY / 2;
    calculatedImage = new Bitmap(sizeX, sizeY);
    Color tempColor = new Color();
    double num = Convert.ToDouble(tbDec.Text); // This is where you plug in the Decimal value
    for (int Y = -(halfY); Y < 1; Y++)
    {
        int Y2 = Y * Y;
        for (int X = -(halfX); X < 1; X++)
        {
            tempColor = Color.White;
            double tempR = Math.Pow((Y2 + (X * X)), num);
            double R = (10000000 - tempR) / 2;
            int intR = Convert.ToInt32(R);
            double roundR = Math.Truncate(R);
            if (roundR != intR) tempColor = Color.Black;
            int X1 = X + halfX;
            int Y1 = Y + halfY;
            calculatedImage.SetPixel(X1, Y1, tempColor);
            calculatedImage.SetPixel(sizeX - 2 - X1, Y1, tempColor);
            calculatedImage.SetPixel(X1, sizeY - 2 - Y1, tempColor);
            calculatedImage.SetPixel(sizeX - 2 - X1, sizeY - 2 - Y1, tempColor);
        } // for X
    } // for Y
    pbImage.Image = calculatedImage;
} // method DrawImage

AS400 / iSeries Fun

Where I work we still have some Cobol programs in use and I am the only one that supports them.  I decided that I needed an easy way to pull the source code to my PC so I could use a slightly more friendly way to review the code and figure out what it does (so I could replace it with C# code).

Turns out that old school is the way to go.  I FTP'd into the server, changed into the appropriate library and did a get on the source file I wanted.  Very nice and easy.  Then I decided why not just pull it all so I did an mget and it worked.  Very nice!  Dropped all the source onto a Linux box so I could grep it anytime I wanted.  Did a WC on it and found that we had about 1.5 million lines of code spread across 7000 programs.

Wanted to share how I did it for others:

cd (some folder here to store the source files)
ftp servername
Enter Username & Password
cd (library here)
prompt (to turn off prompting for each file)
mget source.*
(wait for it to finish)
quit

Enjoy!

One more Applesoft Program

I wrote this as two programs so long ago, I don't remember how they work :)

I thought for sure that I lost these, but stumbled across them today so I wanted to post them here for posterity.  I espcially like version 2.

If I get really ambitious I might try to write version 2 into assembly... not sure I remember assembly quite that well yet (I can read it well enough, but can I still write it???)

 1   TEXT : HOME

 2   ?  "Lo Res Graphics Fun by Gregg"

 5   ? "Which Version 1 or 2 (3 to quit): ";: GET K$

 6   IF K$ = "2" THEN 10

 7   IF K$ = "1" THEN 510

 8   IF K$ = "3" THEN HOME : ? "Bye!" : END

 9   GOTO 1

 10  TEXT : HOME : GR :T = 0:X = 1:Y = 38:C1 = 1:Z = 0:C2 = 2:XX = 0:YY = 0

 12 X1 = 19:Y1 = 20:C3 = 4

 13 X2 = 19:Y2 = 20:C4 = 6

 15  VTAB 22: PRINT "HIT ESC TO EXIT"

 20  COLOR= C1: HLIN X,Y AT X: HLIN X,Y AT Y: VLIN X,Y AT X: VLIN X,Y AT Y

 30 X = X + 1:Y = Y - 1:T = T + 1: IF T = 9 THEN XX = 1:YY = 38:Z = 1

 40  IF X = 20 THEN X = 1:Y = 38:C1 = C1 + 2: IF C1 > 15 THEN C1 = 1

 50  IF Z <  > 1 THEN 80

 60  COLOR= C2: HLIN XX,YY AT XX: HLIN XX,YY AT YY: VLIN XX,YY AT YY: VLIN XX,YY AT XX

 70 XX = XX + 1:YY = YY - 1: IF XX = 20 THEN XX = 1:YY = 38:C2 = C2 + 2: IF C2 > 14 THEN C2 = 2

 80  COLOR= C3: HLIN X1,Y1 AT X1: HLIN X1,Y1 AT Y1: VLIN X1,Y1 AT X1: VLIN X1,Y1 AT Y1

 90 X1 = X1 - 1:Y1 = Y1 + 1:

 100  IF X1 = 0 THEN X1 = 19:Y1 = 20:C3 = C3 + 2: IF C3 > 15 THEN C3 = 1

 105  IF Z <  > 1 THEN 20

 110  COLOR= C4: HLIN Y2,X2 AT X2: HLIN Y2,X2 AT Y2: VLIN Y2,X2 AT X2: VLIN Y2,X2 AT Y2

 120 X2 = X2 - 1:Y2 = Y2 + 1

 130  IF X2 = 0 THEN X2 = 19:Y2 = 20:C4 = C4 + 2: IF C4 > 15 THEN C4 = 1

 200 K =  PEEK ( - 16384): IF K <  > 155 THEN 20

 210  POKE  - 16368,0: TEXT : HOME : GOTO 1

 510  TEXT : HOME : GR :T = 0:X = 1:Y = 38:C1 = 1:Z = 0:C2 = 2:XX = 0:YY = 0

 520  COLOR= C1: HLIN X,Y AT X: HLIN X,Y AT Y: VLIN X,Y AT X: VLIN X,Y AT Y

 530 X = X + 1:Y = Y - 1:T = T + 1: IF T = 9 THEN XX = 1:YY = 38:Z = 1

 540  IF X = 39 THEN X = 1:Y = 38:C1 = C1 + 2: IF C1 > 15 THEN C1 = 1

 550  IF Z <  > 1 THEN 520

 560  COLOR= C2: HLIN XX,YY AT XX: HLIN XX,YY AT YY: VLIN XX,YY AT YY: VLIN XX,YY AT XX

 570 XX = XX + 1:YY = YY - 1: IF XX = 39 THEN XX = 1:YY = 38:C2 = C2 + 2: IF C2 > 14 THEN C2 = 2

 580  VTAB 22: PRINT "HIT 'ESC' TO EXIT":K =  PEEK ( - 16384): IF K <  > 155 THEN 520

 590  POKE  - 16368,0: TEXT : HOME : GOTO 1

Assembly is Fun!

It has been a LONG time since I seriously wrote any 6502 Assembly code, but I used to do it all the time.  I would write it out on paper first then type it in once I had it where I thought I wanted it.  Paper made it alot easier to see everything all at once (due to the tiny screens in the old days).  I think I still have a page or two of hand written code.  If I find it I'll scan and post it just for fun.

So, I was playing with this site: http://www.6502asm.com/

And decided to take an old Apple ][ Assembly program I wrote EONS ago and adapt it to work on that site.  Got it to work pretty well and even submitted it for their examples page.  I do have a Game Of Life I wrote once that I want to try and adapt, but not today :)

If you write anything cool, let me know.

Ah, the old days...

So, long ago I was deep into Apple ][ computers. I could hand code assembly directly into the monitor (until I got my hands on SC Macro Assembler).. A time when Boot Code tracing was the best way to get into the guts of a game and when windows were things you looked out of.

My buddy and I would figure out some cool piece of code and then share it. Each of us trying to be better than the other.

Once I figure out an easy way to link to some of the stuff we wrote, I'll post links to .bin files that will run in any Apple ][ emulator. Sure, its not up to today's standards but for the time it was pretty cool (20+ years ago!).

I miss the simplicity of the code & operating systems. Today's OSes just have way too much bloat.
Ah well... everything must pass to dust eventually