Hello, all, and I trust everyone had a joyeux noel. My C-64, two Vic
1541 drives and 1701 monitor still operate just like they did when new
35 years ago. (I'm surprised that the 1541 spindle motor drive belts
haven't disintegrated after all that time!). I hauled out my copy of
John Henry Software's "Christmas Carols" because of the nice hires
screens displayed (accompanying SID music just has an organ sound) .
Does anyone know of an easy way to capture those screens and store them
in a Koala or other CBM recognized format? Thanks for your time and
comment. Sincerely,

PS - I'm also surprised that after 35 years my 5.25" floppies are still readable.
--
J. B. Wood e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

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On 12/27/18 11:31 AM, ArcadeAge wrote:

This sure was harder than I had thought it would be!

Thanks, for the detailed reply! Didn't expect one same-day, especially
given this time of year. I also tried with the screen utilities
included on the Final Cart III but with no success. Clearly these
screens are seasonal and at least the original software disk still loads
on my 1541. Considerable artistic and coding effort was probably
expended by the software house. (I was always impressed by what could
be done just using the CBM character set - the classic CBM Xmas sales
promo is a fine example IMO)

It's good to see some folks with under-the-hood experience are still
looking at this ng. BTW, Ian Coog was one of the most CBM software
savvy folks I've ever encountered on this ng. Cheers,


--
J. B. Wood e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Thursday, December 27, 2018 at 12:49:54 PM UTC+1, J.B. Wood wrote:

Hello, all, and I trust everyone had a joyeux noel. My C-64, two Vic
1541 drives and 1701 monitor still operate just like they did when new
35 years ago. (I'm surprised that the 1541 spindle motor drive belts haven't disintegrated after all that time!). I hauled out my copy of
John Henry Software's "Christmas Carols" because of the nice hires
screens displayed (accompanying SID music just has an organ sound) .
Does anyone know of an easy way to capture those screens and store them
in a Koala or other CBM recognized format? Thanks for your time and comment. Sincerely,

PS - I'm also surprised that after 35 years my 5.25" floppies are still readable.
--
J. B. Wood e-mail: arl_[...]@hotmail.com

This sure was harder than I had thought it would be!

I tried both, saving from Action Catridge Plus's menu, and from VICE's "Snapshot->Save media file..." option, but each time I tried, the bitmap came out garbled. It _is_ located at $2000, this I check "by hand", but somehow the automated image savers
fail.

What I ultimately did was: Save the VICE media file in BMP format, then open it
in Gimp (with gimp-cbmplugs installed), and export it in .koa format from there.

However, things are still a bit tricky. Let's pick the first song, Angels We Have Heard On High, as an example. What we have is a multicolor bitmap image, overlayed with single-color (hi-res) sprites (the music notes), and a vertically split screen, text
mode at the bottom.
We cannot export this from Gimp as a Koala file without doing some adaptions: First I cropped the image to 320x200, removing the border. Next I placed a rectangular selection around the text area, then picked a big brush to overpaint the whole area in
background color (i.e., white). Then I scaled the image down to 160x200 (interpolation: none!), and back to 320x200 (again, no interpolation). Now the image is ready for exporting in .koa-format...and indeed, Koala Painter had no trouble opening and
displaying it.

While doing some research for this issue, I came upon a forum discussion where someone mentioned a program named "koala2ppm.c". I was unable to obtain such a file or program text. Does anyone reading this know anything about this?
See
http://gimpforum.de/showthread.php?p=132185
(in German)

The packaging to both of John Henry Software's products, Christmas Carols and Party Songs, features screenshots that are not from the Commodore 64 version --
at least not the one published. The font is different and there's no glitch at the edge where
text borders on graphics. What computer system could these screenshots have been taken from?
See
http://www.mycommodore64.com/2013/12/14/xmas-carols-on-your-c64/

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ArcadeAge wrote to J.B. Wood:

While doing some research for this issue, I came upon a forum discussion where someone mentioned a program named "koala2ppm.c". I was unable to obtain such a file or program text. Does anyone reading this know anything about this?
See
http://gimpforum.de/showthread.php?p=132185
(in German)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Since I am german, I visited the link you mentioned (regarding koala2ppm.c) but
in the post they only mention the C file which they "got off the web". I did some further research and found out that on Ubuntu Linux there is a GIMP Add-On
package called "gimp-cbmplugins" and comes with the rather useless description "plugins for The GIMP to import/export Commodore 64 files".

Maybe that info helps?!



Greetings, Niels Haedecke

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.11 (GNU/Linux-ARM)
* Origin: Wintermute BBS (2:240/8002 2:240/1895 75:49/1895) (2:240/8002)

On Mon, 31 Dec 2018 11:36:24 +1300, Niels Haedecke wrote:

ArcadeAge wrote to J.B. Wood:

While doing some research for this issue, I came upon a forum discussion where someone mentioned a program named "koala2ppm.c". I was unable to obtain such a file or program text. Does anyone reading this know anything about this?
See
http://gimpforum.de/showthread.php?p=132185
(in German)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Since I am german, I visited the link you mentioned (regarding
koala2ppm.c) but

Me too.

in the post they only mention the C file which they "got off the web". I did some further research and found out that on Ubuntu Linux there is a GIMP Add-On
package called "gimp-cbmplugins" and comes with the rather useless

description

"plugins for The GIMP to import/export Commodore 64 files".

I don't quite understand why a paint program would also convert media
images.
--
Andreas

My random thoughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

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ArcadeAge <wwww.leser@gmail.com> writes:

While doing some research for this issue, I came upon a forum
discussion where someone mentioned a program named "koala2ppm.c". I
was unable to obtain such a file or program text. Does anyone reading
this know anything about this?

Knowing history helps, Pbmplus and later Netpbm didn't usually name
converters with a "2" in the middle, they used "to". And what do you
know, Google coughs up https://github.com/nafmo/koalatoppm. Old code
from 21 years ago but seems fairly simple so should be compilable and
usable today.

Same guy has done an artstudiotoppm converter as well.

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