Hello Mark, Thank you for your order for the Registered Version of DMC & DMC DELUXE. Please take the time to read all the instructions fully to make the best of DMC and to find out how to get full use of all versions. I hope you use DMC to produce some great disk mags etc. and don't forget to send me your first production to let me see it - please. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you for sending the Registration Fee for DMC. I have sent you the latest version (V1.3) which was completed during June 1994. It has some bug fixes and now the Printer option works better than in previous versions of DMC. Two disks have been packed onto this disk using Disk Masher (DMS) (Not to be confused with DMC !) The two disks are DMC (REGISTERED) and also Crunch-Mania (SHAREWARE). To unpack the disks all you have to do is double click on the icons. Follow the on-screen prompts. The disk(s) you are going to unpack onto do not need to be formatted. ie. You can just use any disk whether it is a new disk or one of your old PD Games etc. ALL the data on the disk(s) will be destroyed !!! Please make sure that you don't use one of your important disks ! Please make sure this disk is Write-Protected for safety reasons !!! Always remove this disk when promted as accidents can happen :( ------------------------------------------------------------------------ V1.2 updated version of DMC <<<>>> (Many major improvements over V1.1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now a little tech note about my NEW Printer Routine: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You do not need to read all of this as it may confuse you. Then again, it still confuses me ! heheheheheh ;-) Please note that if you do not have a printer ... DO NOT USE THE PRINTER OPTION AS ERRORS CAN AND WILL OCCUR !!! I have tried many different printer routines in the code, some of which won't cause errors if no printer is connected etc., but the NEW printer routine seems to work 100% better than any of the others ! (Except it won't check to see if your printer is ready or connected !) So why is it better ? Well the other routines I was using seemed to use up loads of memory when printing large files. Sometimes just under half a meg was required to print very L A R G E files ! :( It's all to do with all the text being printed from memory and not from disk. So if you had a huge text file loaded into memory, the old printer routines were reading all ASCII text characters from a memory location before sending them to the printer ! To read all the text file in memory a memory buffer had to be used so that the whole text file could be read. Obviously the memory buffer had to be the same size as the file loaded into the meory location. If it was smaller only some of the file would be read and printed. (If there was enough memory left for printing !) In other words if you had a huge file in memory, before it could be sent to the printer, a memory buffer LARGER than the same size of the file was required ! This was no good as the file was already using up memory by being previously loaded into a memory location ! :( eg. A text file of 80000 bytes (80000 ASCII text characters) was already using up 80000 bytes of memory. Before it could be read, a buffer of a further 80000 bytes is needed. So that is now 160000 bytes of precious memory used before printing ! (160000 bytes = 160K of memory !) This may not seem a lot of memory at first, but imagine a text file of 200000 bytes !!! Altogether this would need 400000 bytes (400K) and that is nearly half a meg of memory used !!! (Files of this size and larger can be loaded into DMC.) Up to 4800 lines of text * approx 80 charcters = 384000 bytes !!! Files of that size would require well over half a meg to be printed using my old routines ! :( So what was the solution ? Well over 3 days were spent trying to fix out the problem. (Not to mention the amount of paper I wasted too !) Eventually after trying everything that I could think of, I decided to opt for a simple printer routine that printed each character as it was read from memory. So not much memory is used this way and no buffer is required as only one character is read then printed at a time. The upshot is that HUGE files can now be printed without using almost double the memory of the file size. The print out is O.K. using the printer driver on this disk. (Epson Compatible) The major downfall of this routine is that I couldn't include all the features like: Check Printer is online Check for Printer errors Check Printer is still printing etc. It was a hard decision to make in the end but, I think I can live with this simpler routine even if it is not so good at error handling ! Overall I think that the new routine is better as far as conserving all that precious memory goes. Don't you ? End of Tech Note ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MASTERDISK: script fault Fixed: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On previous releases of DMC the script file that creates the unpacked copy of DMC for you was not 100% !!! It unpacked the disk o.k. but it didn't set-up the latest version of DMC onto it !!! I have now corrected this silly mistake and all is now 100%. So all you have to do is double click on the DMC icon on this disk to unpack all the data onto a blank floppy. Easy stuff ! :) Crunch-Mania now works when unpacked onto a floppy ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Other Updates ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some new code changes which were needed. Mainly to do with hiding the mouse pointer and checking it's colours against fading screens. Now and then the mouse pointer would fade too !!! NEW on screen messages for: PRINTING DOC LOADING DATA ERROR !!! using a neat KARA FONT. NEW PANEL which I simply altered the palette in DPaint to achieve. NEW 'Encryption' Routine for REGISTERED USERS name. Now hackers etc won't be able to change your name without cracking my encrytion code ! They would waste their time single stepping through this program at machine level. Not worth their time or effort anymore. So now your name is SAFE as the authorised Registered User. (I challenge you to change it dudes !) Printer Driver on the DMC disk is now Epson Compatible to suit mostly all printers. (You can change it if need be - Please refer to you WBench manual for details - Write to me as a last resort) Some new Error Traps added for extra safety ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEW release of DMC --- V1.3 The Final ! :( Yes this will be the final version ever !!! For more details please see the ReadMe doc on the DMC disk. That's about all for this release and I do not plan to update the code any further at this moment in time. I am now moving onto other projects as I feel that I have spent enough time on DMC. It should be final now unless I get serious bug reports etc. Once again I thank you for the Registration Fee and please send me your productions using DMC as I want to see it being put to good use by you. Look forward to seeing your releases soon. Andy Gibson ;-)