Robot Helper Copyright 1993/1994 W.J. Montgomery VE3EC Last changed: 23-MAY-94 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 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 o The Dallas Remote Imaging BBS (214) 394-7438 o ftp.cciw.ca /pub/u124/sstv anonymous InterNet FTP site. o ucsd.edu /pub/hamradio/sstv anonymous InterNet FTP site. The author can be contacted via email at: William.Montgomery@cciw.ca, or AppleLink: CDA0635. 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. 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. -Dubble 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 laockup 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. ___________________________________________________________________ 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 TGA, TIFF, PCX, GIF, JPEG, HIRes, GEST, BMP, 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 - Frozed for release if no problems are reported in the B3 vesrion.