ColorTerm/Amiga -- A Color Terminal Program For The Amiga January 24, 1987 ColorTerm is actually a type of C64 emulator; that is, it accepts and correctly responds to the C64 formatting and color codes and graphics characters. I saw all the colors and effects on a C64 running the PC Worlds BBS right here in town (605-348-2357--and keep trying), and was amazed. It seemed strange that the Amiga, with all its mighty graphic power, couldn't do something like that. ColorTerm was the result; if there is a demand for it, new versions may be produced on machines like the Mac (in black and white, but with all the cursor moves and graphics characters) and Atari ST. Writing something like this to work on the less graphically powerful machines like the Apple II series or any of the MS-DOS machines I leave up to those who enjoy it; of course, it's already available for the C64/128. What we have here, folks, is a sort of "micro" graphics standard. Installation To run ColorTerm, you must install two 8-point fonts into the fonts directory on your bootup disk: c64upper and c64lower. To make this process simpler, just Execute the included "execute.me" file. By the way, the fonts may not be exactly like those on the 64. I laboriously drew them in with Fed from the 1.2 Extras disk, and keep finding little screw-ups. They are pretty close, though. Note that this version of ColorTerm has almost no error checking. If the program can't find its fonts, allocate enough memory, or some run-time error occurs, it will very likely crash (some of the crashes are rather impressive, too). If I get real motivated, the program will be made more robust in the future. As things stand, it seems to work ok most of the time. Usage Notes ColorTerm uses the Exec Wait routine to wait for characters from the keyboard or serial port; that way, it doesn't eat processor time that other programs might need. In other words, it is set up to multitask, although the lack of error checking dictates that you save your work often. The function keys are implemented as the C64 color-control keys, and they follow the same patterns. For example, F3 changes text to red. You can use either CTRL or SHIFT to access the "upper" colors, like orange (shift-F1). F9 and F10 are RVS on and off, while the ESC key is used as the HOME/CLR key. The arrow keys act normally. Key Defintions +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ Shifted |Orange | Brown |Lt Red |Dk Gray|Md Gray| | | | | | | Unshifted | Black | White | Red | Cyan |Purple | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ (Note: RVS On Shifted |Lt Grn |Lt Blue|Lt Gray| | | and RVS Off | | | |RVS On |RVS Off| perform the Unshifted | Green | Blue |Yellow | | | same with and +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ without the F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 Shift key.) +------+ Shifted | CLR | | | Unshifted | HOME | +------+ ESC When you're ready to quit ColorTerm, either select Quit from the menu, type right-Amiga-Q, or click in the invisible, secret, hidden, close gadget in the upper left corner of the screen. Design Credits ColorTerm was written in Amiga Multi-Forth, from Creative Solutions. If you like Forth, you'll love Multi-Forth, and it goes for only $89. The serial communications and keymap conversion words were based on ideas I got from looking (mostly) at ATerm1.3, an early Amiga terminal program by Michael Mounier. The video and other stuff (yecchhh) is all my own. Special thanks for lending me equipment and books go to John Fassbender and Burt Landman, nice guys both. If you get Multi-Forth, be sure to get ConMan to use with it. I also reccommend Aedit for a general-purpose editor. ConMan is shareware from Bill Hawes; Aedit is 57K of very tight 68000 assembler, an industrial-strength editor by Joe Bostic. It is available from DRM Programs, 1329 Arthur Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89101, (702) 457-9489. Flaws (other than the lack of error checking) Screen scrolling is slow, especially in 80-column mode. This is because the Intuition routines MakeScreen and RethinkDisplay are used to sync up the display (if you have a non-flickering alternative method, please, please send it to me!). Using the simple ScrollRaster routine caused all the odd-colored characters on the screen to flicker to white during a scroll, and this caused severe eye strain. I decided to live with the slow version. Baud rates higher than 2400 are unsupported, not because they are any tougher to implement, but because even 2400-baud C64-type BBSs are exceedingly rare. If there is a demand for higher rates, I may put them in. Whatever. Receiving and "printing" a CTRL-G (bell) character only flashes the screen. This is mainly due to laziness on my part, although I also really hate it when somebody puts 400 CTRL-Gs in a message and it beeps at me for ten minutes. The source code is, well, ragged in some places. It's still not too bad overall. Please send suggestions, mods, and questions to me at the address below. Letters that include a SASE are more likely to get a reply. There are still some mysterious insects lurking in there. I'm not sure whether they are the fault of Multi-Forth, AmigaDOS, or, more likely, myself. If you think you've found one, try to find a way to reproduce it, and let me know. Yours Truly My name is Warren Block. To make a living, I write articles and reviews for magazines like INFO, Amazing Computing, and (back when they still covered interesting machines) BYTE. (Note that, unlike most, that's ALL I do--I don't work for a software company, nor do I accept "free" software from manufacturers). If you like this program or my writing, feel free to correspond with me at: 1921 Fifth, Apt. 3 Rapid City, SD 57701 (605) 342-1632 Better yet, send me a few bucks, or write to the magazine of your choice and tell them I ought to get a big raise and a company car. Status ColorTerm is a "shareware" program; in other words, just like public domain, freely redistributable and all, but I hope that people will send me a little money for the effort I've put into it. (If you're in a quandary over the amount, may I suggest $15 or $20?) Please feel free to upload it all over the place. Both the program and this file are Copyright 1988 by Warren Block, and I thank you for your support.