holli

O.k. When? Edit: PS: Nice "blah" site! ;-)

Hi folx, the server http://tihiy.ahanix.org is unreachable. Will it be fixed?!?

*lol* The Linux QEMU launcher told me it's an GD5446 PCI video card....what a cool emulater - it also emulates the hardware bugs. Edit: QEMU can emulate an other video card without this bug!

Hm, QEMU emulates a Cirrus Logic (5440?) PCI video card. And yes, the logo was displayed only in the first video bank, too. So that could be the problem.

But IF I sit in front of the PC I wanna see a beautiful logo... *lol* O.k. let's stop some off topic here. One question: In QEMU emulation (Windows and Linux host) the logo always displayed corrupt. It doesn't matter if WLL or SVGACOM. I think, that's a problem of the emulator and connot be fixed. Am I right? Be blessed, Holli

That's a very good idea. I can give you german versions of IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM from Win95 rev. A and B, Win98SE and WinME, if it's allowed. Otherwise ask google.de for +"startdiskette" +"deutsch" +"download" As I mentioned before: If I turn on the computer and go to get a coffee, I want the computer to be ready. I don't want to come back, press a key and wait five minutes until the computer completing the start up process. If I don't see an error message or a logo because I'm not in front of the pc, It doesn't matter... Thanks for your new release, I'll test it tomorrow, because it's late... Stay blessed, Holli

Why wanna do the work twice? Please have a look into the uncompressed RP7 package. You'll find the folder "logo" in it. Open it and you'll see some subfolders like 1031 (english), 1033 (german), ... containing IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM for various languages. Yes, but you don't see the error message or it disappears too fast for reading. If something wrong with the logo, it would be better none is displayed. I'm happy about you like my idea. This tool don't have to be programmed in assembler. E.g. you an use C, C++, Turbo Pascal, Delphi or any other language you like. I'm worry about not being a programmer. But please, give the unused bytes in the palette area a try...thanks for your work! GOD bless, Holli

I knew that, but I only wanna give some alternatives. No, you're not right. RP7 replaces IO.SYS with a version that doesn't contain a logo file. If I used an old or none logo file, the error message appears correctly all the time until WIN.COM blankes the screen. That's what I want. Hm... just an alternative: What's about a tool to store the animation information into the \LOGO.SYS? So you can check the parameters in this tool and you can keep the WLL.COM clean from it and the logo creator don't need to hexedit the bitmap. If possible, the logo creator can give this tool the logo name (a syntax like "logocfg <bitmapname>") and the tool stores it as \LOGO.SYS and backup an existing \LOGO.SYS as \LOGO.BAK (an old LOGO.BAK will be overwritten). O.k. such a tool is a lot of work, but If you want an easy handling for the user - violá! Stay blessed, Holli

Yes, your're right, BUT... ...the palette (starting at offset 36h) gives you LOTS of free bytes. Exactly 256. Every color in the palette is stored in 4 bytes: 1st: blue 2nd: green 3rd: red 4th: unused So that's why your first byte of the image (visible area) is at offset 0436h (1078): Header data area: 54bytes Fixed space reserved for color palette: 256 (colors) * 4 bytes = 1024bytes 54 + 1024 = 1078! Offset count starts with 00h, so the first byte of the visible area is at 1078. O.k. a free block of 5 bytes is easier to handle, but why not use bytes at 39h, 49h, 59h 69h and 79h (this order is easier to keep in mind instead of 39h, 3Dh, 41h, 45h and 49h) I'm worry I cannot change the source to use these bytes, so I cannot test it. I'll check this out. Be blessed, Holli Edit: Yeah, I checked it out and you're right. Now the program exits whithout erasing the screen. To implement this was really not that hard... ...thanks!

Ah, now I know why my bytes are empty: The WinXP-Logo is original a 4bit picture, increasing the colors to 256 may let some colors be 0000 (black), so I can use the offset 26h... Yeah, and here my idea: If vou create a new Logo, be sure to edite the first 6 colors of the palette to black, so you can put your information into the palette. Be sure that everything black in the picture uses the 6th color... Hm... I write 01h (8bit) or 0001h (16bit) instead 1h by habit. Every digit of the hex are 4bit of the binary. So, if you have to read some BCD code (often in PLCs), every hex digit is a digit of the BCD. So 0123h is 0123BCD ;-) It's also a habit...I like error messages when they displayed in "normal" reading order (top left). Why must the program blank the screen "after" it terminates? Cannot the program leave the screen how it is? WIN.COM needs some time before blanking the screen, thats time enough to read the error message. I tried to built in a delay of 2s, but I can't figure out where to find the time delay for progress bar moving and I don't know how it works. What about a boot disk (WinXP is able to create a WME one)? You also can use a bootable USB stick, if your BIOS can use USB media as boot devices. Or try a W98-CD to boot from. But it can be that your new computer don't contain a floppy drive. That's the biggest bulls***. A computer without a floppy drive isn't a computer... Return to topic: what's about a config file like logo.ini containing the neccesary information for the animation?

Hi Drugwash, nice work, I love it! I took your source and made my "Windows XP" logo. But...uh, 5 ugly pixels in the top left corner! So I did a dirty thing. I searched a place in the header where I can put the neccessary information in. At offset 26h I find four 0000h blocks. The needed 5th block was 0001h. I was very bad and overwrote the 0001h. I can't notice any visible glitch. So I changed the source readvalues: mov ax,4200h ; set move pointer mov bx,[Handle] mov dx,1078 xor cx,cx int 21h to readvalues: mov ax,4200h ; set move pointer mov bx,[Handle] mov dx,38 xor cx,cx int 21h and it works fine. At this point I've got a tiny question: why do you use 1078 instead 0436h for the offset? Or can both be used? (Hm...don't I wrote some posts ago I cannot put any assembler code here?!? ) Thank you very much for your great documentation! A dummy like me can very easy work with it. But...only one tiny thing... *ggg* must be Your're amazing! The shaft length in the picture is 118px wide (that's WinXP logo standard - I don't altered it). With your formula I must give a shaft size of 120px. If I don't, your code decreases the number of passes by 1. It's cool. But I must remember that if I build a new logo, otherwise I'll wonder why not the full shaft size is being used... ;-) Thats all folx. I hope, my explanations are use- and helpfull. Stay blessed, Holli Edit: I commented out the keypress code and changed the row and col coordinates to display the text in the top left corner. But when the program terminates, the text was deleted. How can the program terminating without erasing the text? I tried the program on my Compaq Armada 1750 laptop and the visual glitches of the animated bar are already present :-(

I'm happy that programming needs a lot of mathematics, so I can help you without understanding some assembler code. I made this XP startup logo (it really looks the same like the original - there's no difference!). And if I saw the progress bar, I noticed, how it works. Without the three blocks of the progss bar it is really hard to realize how it works. I used your source and it's awesome! The animation runs on my laptop (the original source won't do this). You also created a nice logo. But there are a few things: 1. The size of the progress bar (14px) seems not optimal for animating. Try to think in three blocks spaced by 2px regarding the terms above, you should use 13px or 16px. If you use 13px progress bar, use progrstep=5 (3px block + 2px space) or progrstep=6 (4px block + 2 px space) for 16px progress bar. Then you need a progrmax=progrstart+progrstep*X where X = (lengh of animation + 2 px / progrstep) - 2. To explain the formula: I used the XP \LOGO.SYS and figured out the relationship of the animated witdh, the animation width, the progrstep and the 13. You can do your own brainstorm and you'll find the same formula. So, I decided to enhancd the animated block with 2px and set "progrstep = 6" the animation lengh of the startup.bmp (180px) don't fit with this parameters, so I enhended it with 4px, so X = (184px + 2px / 6px) - 2 = (186px / 6px) -2 = (31) -2 = 29. The resulting "progrmax" line is: progrmax = progrstart+progrstep*29 Please note: check out the parameters progrstep, progrwidth and X before you create your startup logo. 2. Threre is a visual glitch by moving the progress bar: on my notebook (ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics) the animated progress bar is a block of foreground color (magenta) , on my desktops the correct bar is moving, but the background color (black) switched to the foreground color (magenta) after redraw the progress bar. Hope I was helpful for this progress bar stuff... GOD bless, Holli Edit: I checked out your error messages. But I don't like to press a key while starting up my system ('cuz I often turn the computer on and go to get a coffee... ;-). It is possible to put out an non centered massage in the first two lines like this: Thanks! ___ The "XP" \LOGO.SYS seems so real! I shocked some people with using it as a screensaver under XP. (If you also want to shock someone, take my attachment and store it into C:\WINDOWS of a Windows XP system. Then import the "screensaver.job" file into your scheduler (just drag and drop) and activate it. Every time, when the system is idle for more than 5 minutes, Windows XP "reboots". To stop rebooting and return to Windows XP press any key.... ) XPLOGO.ZIP

Hi Drugwash, the answer, why 13 "steps", is easy to know: If you replace the original "Windows 98" \LOGO.SYS with a screenshot of a "Windows XP" startup logo, you'll fast know, what I mean. The Progress bar of the Windows XP startup logo contains a progress bar witch have three blocks of 6 pixels spaced by 2 pixels (that's why "8"!). To move the three blocks of the progress bar from left (1 block shown) to the right (also only one block shown), you need 17 steps. Have a look at the lines "progrbegin" and "progrend": progrbegin = progrstart-8*3 progrend = progrmax+8*3 "progrbegin" starts three -8*3 steps before the visible animation, "progrend" stops three steps after the visible animation +8*3. progrmax = progrstart+8*13. So you have 13+3+3 = 19 steps, 17 visible and two steps where no block is shown. You can get a 640 x 480px scaled WinXP startup logo by the google picture search. Mostly you have to move the Progress bar to the first position, but that's not that hard... By the way both ("Windows 98" and WinXP) progress bar sizes are 22x9 px. Thanks for your welcome. I hope, I can help... Sorry that I don't try your source soon, but that's my second step after I downloaded a program to handle 7zip archives... *g* Be blessed, Holli

Hi folx, first at all sorry for entering so late... I tried to compile a WLL.COM and a SVGACOM.COM, but I had to learn how to use the compiler first. Now you can see that I'm not the man to code any source in assembler. I don't understand assembler code, but I think I'm able to understand some logical coherences. If I could help in this project, then it can be only something like brainstorming about some logical things and no coding instructions. Sorry. But I'm happy that someone wants to help fix the issues in WLL.COM. If you'll help us to resolve the problems with WLL.COM, you'll get your bugfixes... So let's do it! Stay blessed, Holli