Robot Helper ------------ Copyright 1993-1996 W.J. Montgomery VE3EC Last changed: 11-NOV-96 (see release notes at end) Introduction Robot Helper is a Mirosoft Windows 3.1 application designed to assist in the use of a Robot 1200c color scan converter. Robot Helper (RH) permits slow scan tv images to be stored on your hard disk and provides an easy to use disk storage manager, complete with thumbnail previews of all images. Images can be displayed in two on-screen full color preview windows before uploading them to the 1200c scan converter. A separate panel allows you to control the operation and mode of the 1200c directly from within RH. Robot Helper comunicates with the 1200c through a standard 8255 based interface. The interface port addresses are fully configurable from within the software. Robot Helper will also run in the background under Windows, permitting the simultaneous use of other Windows programs to provide paintbox and image processing functions. Images may be also stored on remote servers and accessed over a local area network (LAN). Clip-art images can also be loaded directly off CD ROMs. NOTICE: Robot Helper is a Shareware software product. You are encouraged to give it a try for a short period of time and to upload it (without changes) to any BBS or On-Line service. If you find the program useful and wish to continue to use it past the short (ie 10 days) evaluation period you are requested to register the software by sending a cheque or money order for $45 US funds to: William Montgomery VE3EC 482 Townsend Ave. Burlington, Ontario Canada. L7T 2B3 Registered users will receive a copy of the current release of Robot Helper and a printed users manual. Further development of the product is supported by your shareware registeration fees. New versions of Robot Helper will be made available through BBS systems and InterNet FTP sites. Current distribution sites include: o The Antenna Farm BBS, SYSOP Brian Summers VE3DUO, (905) 637-4026, 9600 baud V.32, & 2400 baud. o The 'Kookie BBS' at (419) 562-6327 [if BBS available] o The Dallas Remote Imaging BBS (214) 394-7438 o ftp.cciw.ca /pub/u124/sstv anonymous InterNet FTP site. o ftp.ucsd.edu /pub/hamradio/sstv anonymous InterNet FTP site. o CompUServe (GO HAMNET) The author can be contacted via Internet email at: William.Montgomery@cciw.ca Installation Notes 1/If you downloaded RH from a BBS... Unzip the file to a 1.44 meg (or 1.2 meg) floppy and run the setup program on the floppy from within the File Manager. If you have a RH.KEY file, place it in the same directory as you intalled RH.EXE. You should then have RH.EXE, RH.INI, RH.HLP, and RH.KEY together in the same directory. 2/ If you registered and received a setup disk... Insert the disk into a floppy drive. From within the Windows File Manager double click on the SETUP.EXE file on the floppy. Next, use the File Manager to copy the RH.KEY (Registration File) from the floppy disk into the directory where you installed Robot Helper (RH). The setup utility will update some of the Windows DLL files during installation. If you receive any messages during installation that file xxx.dll is locked or in use, you should quite out of any other Windows programs or drivers that may be using (& locking...) Windows DLL's. Notes: If your 8255 ports are not at the 'standard' 300HEX address you should change the default port settings (Edit Menu->Setup) before sending any images to the Robot. Just run Robot Helper and select 'Setup' from the edit menu. The ports dialog box also allows you to increase the data delay to the 8255 interface and Robot 1200. On some fast machines ( 486 and up...) you may have to increase the dalay value to obtain reliable data communications with the Robot. On fast computers it may also have to use fast (10 MHz) 8255A interface chips in both the Robot 1200 and the pc interface card, or add a 'wait state' to I/O cycles using your PC's setup program (Advanced Options Menu). Note: If you are running in 8 bit (256 colors) VGA mode you will notice somewhat long delays whenever Windows must generate a new color palette to try to match the real color images. Robot Helper is MUCH FASTER when used with a 16 bit HiColor VGA card or 24 bit TrueColor card. Image processing is poor at best on 8 bit cards. ........................................................................... Release Notes 14-NOV-93 Version 1.0b2 Initial release. 16-NOV-93 Version 1.0b3 Fix for port setup in b2. Last minute directory default shuffle caused 1.0b2 to look for the RH.INI file in the 'Windows' directory instead of the default installation directory with RH.EXE. 19-NOV-93 Version 1.0b4 Includes new (updates) to THREED.DLL,SS3D2.DLL and SS3D3.DLL. This should fix the Gen Fault in user.com error that was sometimes showing up when clicking on the menu bar in the storage manager. Added bank switch buttons on the preview window control panel. * Note: If you get a "Function or Sub not defined" error message, you probably have an older version of 'SSTV.DLL' somewhere on your disk. This older version is about 4K and should be removed. 7-DEC-93 Version 1.1b2 Moved Robot controls to a separate panel. Added support for selecting Robot modes and speeds. Added Windows Help support. Added EPROM select to setup window (ports). 11-DEC-93 Version 1.1 First Release Version Minor changes from 1.1b2 ____________________________________________________________________________ 05-JAN-94 Version 1.2b3 Final 1.2 beta 1.2 includes: -Support for low resolution images. -Clear preview window buttons. -Brightness, Contrast, and Color controls. -Slide show. -Color Keyed Load/Save clusters. -Double click load support in Storage Manager. 15-JAN-94 Version 1.2.1 -fix minor shareware date timeout problem. -removed OLE2 references. 16-JAN-94 Version 1.2.2 -added support for a transfer delay. This should prevent very fast PC's from overrunning the input buffer in the Robot 1200C. -if you experience lockup problems when talking to the Robot you should use the setup panel (ports etc...) to increase the delay value. 386 machines can generally run with values of 0. -Note: fast PCs may require the use of an 8255A-2 PIA chip in both the interface card and the Robot 1200C. 11-MAR-94 Version 1.2.3 -now saves positions of the four windows in the RH.INI file -new splash screen. ___________________________________________________________________ *** Note: Starting with version 2, Robot Helper must be run on a 386 or greater cpu. 7-MAY-94 Version 2.0b1 - Version 2 now based on ImageKnife VBX. - Improved 8 bit color support. - Image autoscaling to 256 X 240 - Now does Targa (.TGA), TIFF (.TIF), PCX, GIF, JPEG (.JPG), HIRes (.HRZ), GEST (.IMG), BMP, and DIB images. (distribution: Beta testers only) 8-MAY-94 Version 2.0b2 - Added missing JPEGIO.DLL to distribution. - made load image error handler more verbose. (distribution: Beta testers only) 21-MAY-94 Version 2.0b3 - Revamped SetUp.EXE - Removed reference to DDEML.DLL in setup. (distribution: Beta testers only) 23-MAY-94 Version 2.0 - Frozen for release if no problems are reported in the B3 vesrion. ___________________________________________________________________ 01-OCT-94 Version 2.1b1 - Corrected problem with attempting to save images or generate previews to R/O media. - Fixed scrolling problem in FO_GRID - Added trap for double clickers in change drive control. (Double click to change directories, single click to select drive.) - Warn if you save an image with the same name as an existing image. - Added a brightness histogram display in each preview window. - Added centering buttons for preview slide controls. ( these double as processing indicators) - Added a 'sharpness' image control. - Fixed scroll bar corruption in sliders. - Added some image modifiers to the previews. ( Flip H or V, Rotate CW/CCW, invert color, Black&White, Blur, Clear to Black) - TX mode is now forced to the Robot when the [transmit] button is pressed. Cleaned up mode interaction. - Added 'turbo load' buttons to the storage manager. These load both the preview window and the 1200 with a single press. - Slideshow control cleanup. 08-OCT-94 Version 2.1b2 - Fixed Load 1200 bug in Preview 1 that crept in at the last minute. 12-OCT-94 Version 2.1b3 - Changed B&C processing 21-OCT-94 Version 2.1b4 - Corrected Martin Mode set problem and 'Q' clipping in mode speed labels. 01-NOV-94 Version 2.1 -Release Version ___________________________________________________________________________ 05-NOV-94 Version 2.1.1 -Fixed bug where save preview one would require two clicks after changing drives. 24-DEC-94 -Fixed slide show latchup bug. -Minor fix for image sliders during preview. ___________________________________________________________________________ 20-MAY-95 Version 2.2b1 -added buttons lock out during TX operation and 'ON AIR' display -fixed bug where thumbnail scrollbar would not show. -during slide shows Preview 1 is now brought to the front. -fixed autoscale in preview 2 in 1024 X 768 VGA mode. -added user settable 'Auto Grab' feature. -corrected histogram display generation algorithm. -added code that forces the top few lines to be filled with grey scale bars when selecting 'Scotty' or 'Martin'. -some users have reported that if an older version of file VBRUN300.DLL is present, the 'newer' VBRUN300 that comes with Robot Helper will not get installed. If this should occure you should delete the 'older' VBRUN300.DLL file on your hard disk and reinstall Robot Helper. -slide show now causes the thumbnails to track with the show. -added Copy and Paste functions in previews. This currently only supports copying DIB (Device Independant Bitmap) clippings. These are the most common clipboard objects when dealing with image processing and (advanced) painting programs. Future versions may support DDB clippings also. If no selection rectangle is drawn, the whole Preview image is the source or target of the Copy/Paste operation. When pasting into a preview window clippings are scaled to fit the selection rectangle (if any). - Note: I would like to have Robot Helper run under Windows 95 in the future. The current versions are mostly functional under Windows 95 final Beta with the following exceptions: 1/ the installer may complain a bit but seems to work, 2/ selection rectangles are not visible (may be the VGA driver on my Win95 test machine.) 22-MAY-95 Version 2.2b2 -fixed slide show problem. (Not related to Windows 95. ) 26-May-95 Version 2.2b3 (internal) -fixed problem with display of directories with only one image. 31-MAY-95 Version 2.2 Release Version 05-SEP-95 Version 2.2.1 Release This is basically a 'bug-fix' version. A somewhat nastey bug was introduced in version 2.2 whith the addition of the [ON AIR] display and lockout of buttons the could talk to the Robot 1200. The basic idea works but RH had to read the front panel status during TX to determine when TX was done. This seemed to work fine (or at least the beta testers didn't catch it...) but some clones had major problems with slanted pictures during TX. On further investigation it appears that all 1200s have increased 'jitter' in the image during TX. It appears that the 1200 gets upset when you request front panel status on a regular basis while it is trying to TX. Version 2.2.1 changes the TX lockout routine so that instead of requesting status from the Robot it uses a simple timer to determine the TX status. Bill DeWitt W2DD has also pointed out that RH will not handle all of his HiRez (.HRZ) images. It appears that there is a second HiRez image file format that is similar to the GEST C1 format and uses about 138K instead of the (Raw) 184K. Bill is sending me some files for testing and I expect to support the compressed (packed) HiRez files in a future release. 22-FEB-96 Version 2.2.2 Release This is just a bug fix release to address the preview window selection rectangle problem. Under Windows 95 the copy/paste selection border would not show up. This has been corrected. 21-AUG-96 Version 2.2.3 Release This is just a bug fix version tha corrects a problem when saving minimized window locations under Windows 95. 11-NOV-96 Vesrion 2.2.3a Install Correction When building the setup program for version 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 several DLL's used by setup were replaced by the newer Windows 95 versions. This caused problems when installing RH under Win 3.1 or 3.1.1. The DLLs have now been replaced with their Windows 3.1 versions which should work fine when installing under Win 3.1, 3.1.1 (Workgroups), or Win95. The DLLs involved are: (compressed form) COMMDLG.DL_ SHELL.DL_ VER.DL_ For those wishing to 'update' their RH 2.2.3 distribution disk without downloading the full .ZIP file you can just FTP the above .DLLs from ftp.cciw.ca/pub/u124/SSTV and copy them over the files on your distribution disk (or a copy of your disk...) NOTE: This problem does not affect Windows 95 users.