Does anybody have a standalone copy of GLCD MATE?

[TimB]

Hi

Only a few years back I was using GLCD Mate by Dave Stirk to convert BMP images to Cdata tables. It was a plug in for the standard IDE but I no longer have the plug in or use the standard IDE.

Has anybody got a copy of a BMP converter that produces Proton Cdata table?

This is what it was producing

Code Select Expand

' Samsung, Vertical Direction Byte - 100x128 Pixels - Data Bytes(1600)
' Graphical - 8 Pixels Per Byte
' SprintImage Yline,Xpos,SQI_Logo_5
' SprintImageY SQI_Logo_5,Yline,Xpos,Invert

SQI_Logo:
CData $00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,_
      $00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$80,_
      $80,$80,$C0,$C0,$C0,$E0,$E0,$F0,$F0,$F0,$F0,$F0,$F0,$F8,$F8,_


[Dompie]

I have some old stuf GLCD mate Plus. Perhaps it is what you are looking for.

Johan

[Dompie]

Ohhhh and I forget this BMP converter. You have to place once CDATA in front of the values.

Johan

[TimB]

I have some old stuf GLCD mate Plus. Perhaps it is what you are looking for.

Johan

Thanks Johan

I have to fix some issues with it not opening but its a start

[Pepe]

I use this program

[DaveS]

To get GLCD Data Mate running it requires the VB IDE Plugin dll and can be found here
https://protoncompiler.com/index.php/topic,52.0.html

[TimB]

Thanks everyone

I'm still trying to solve this error

[DaveS]

Hi Tim
GLCD Data Mate is a Plugin and can be only launched from the Proton IDE, it was made that way.
mcPluginMgr.dll is a file belonging to the Proton IDE.

[TimB]

Hi Dave

Yes I know it runs from the IDE, and that is the way I'm starting it. I need to solve the issue still though.

Tim

[JohnB]

mcPluginMgr.dll is the ProtonIDE plug in manager.
It should come with Proton and should be installed in C:\Windows\SysWOW64.
If its not there I will send you the file.

[DaveS]

Hi Tim
Do other Plugins work?
No - mcPluginMgr.dll missing
Yes - Think GLCD Data Mate checks if mcPluginMgr.dll is installed and it can't find it.

[TimB]

Hi Dave

Looking in the IDE it turns out I only installed the GLCD mate plugins. There is not even the old ASCII table in there.

So I need to reinstall Proton IDE without overwriting the Positron stuff.

Thanks

tim

[top204]

The compilers installer does install the mcPluginMgr.dll. However, when running it from the IDE with windows 10, I get a windows error message:

"Run Timer Error lots of meanignless numbers. Class not registered"

Any ideas how to get it working?

I know john made some excellent plugins for the IDE, but I always hated the idea of the plugin mechanism because it relies on the IDE and/or windows doing what they are supposed to do, and reliance on a third party is a definate No No in my books now. :-)

Any possibility of you releasing the plugin Delphi sources John, so we can make them into standalone programs?

I know I created a Delphi program to make data tables from .bmp files many years ago for the Amicus platform, but I cannot find it on my drives anywhere. :-( I may have deleted them in my rage at "you know who" in my hours of desperation, but since my injury, my memory is not what it used to be, and my mind has blocked out a lot from my past memories for its own sanity. :-)

[DaveS]

Hi Les

No idea on the mcPluginMgr.dll problem all works fine on my windows 10.
Could try registering the dll in windows 10.

Personally I loved the plugin system, you could gather a lot of info from the IDE and use it without having to write your own routines, to gather info, it also made the IDE less complicated to maintain, because you are not adding more and more code to the IDE to substitute what the plugins provided.

And as for reliance on a third parties, you are always going to be reliant on third parties unless you write absolutely every tool yourself and then of course it may be to maintain.

As for sources, I'm in the same boat as you, I can't find most of the stuff I wrote, years of work, all my 3 PC's packed in, I was given one of a friend, so back in action.
Searched 7 hard drives for source code for GLCD Data Mate which was written in VB6 (which was to complicated to convert to Delphi, I tried).
Also searched for Delphi GLCD App which I never released, also can't find source for that.

Not that I would release any of the sources, but I would of made them standalone.

DaveS

[JohnB]

@top204
Not sure which plugins would be most appropriate as stand alone.  e.g. Bookmarks and Library Manager don't make much sense stand alone. I'll try and dig out the Fuse Configurator code as a standalone but it will be from my archives from some years ago.  The only other standalone I can think of is the Macro Generator although I doubt it would be of huge interest now.  BTW, it the Macro Generator was the very first App I ever developed.

If there are other apps you can think of and I will see what I can find.

[DaveS]

Hi Tim

Did you get GLCD Date Mate working?
It has lasted the test of time up to now, it's at least 15 years old.

Reguarding PICD, just remembered you won't have the source yourself, I was given the source by the bloke (oops sorry I forget his name) that wrote the original version for you, with a message saying that I could do what ever I wanted with the source.
I have decided I will share the original source (which I have found, I think) , if that is okay with yourself, I was thinking Yourself, John and Normnet (who have been asking for the source), or I could chuck it out to the WWW your choice.

As I said before the main problem was the format of the lst files changing constantly, it was that bad that one version lasted 2 weeks, with a compiler update, and I gave up supporting it.

Dave

[TimB]

Hi Dave

No I have not got it running I have to find a copy of proton I can use for a fresh install. That will I hope fix the missing file issue.

I have another utility but preferred GLCD Mate.

Me and John dropped the idea of integrating P-ICD into Positron Studio as it would be too much work for little gain.

[JohnB]

@Dave-S I would still be interested in seeing the source as I don't think the version Tim has is complete.  If I do anything I would rewrite it to use the COF file if possible which should have a  more stable format.  I bought Understanding and Using COFF (O'Reilly), it has a fairly complete section on the Symbolic Debug System which I assume is what the compiler uses to generate the COFF. Would be happy to co-operate with anyone on writing a COFF reader and developing a PICD around it.

[DaveS]

@John
It sounds like already have it, I had to search the web for the components used and had to update them so they would be used with my version of ®Delphi at the time could of been D2007 or D2009, I did change the comport component to one that worked for me, that was a problem, also removed the dongle code and removed restrictions.
I eventually got it to compile but it wouldn't work, stepped though the ®delphi code, reading the lst file was the problem then, changed the parser code to pick up the info required to work with the latest compiler version outputted lst file at the time. Had to change a bit of code at the start of comport received and that is basically how I got it to run.
Note if you do get it to run don't replace it with ®TMS components it slowed it down, would use standard components.

@All
If I do decide to write a another app for GLCD Data what should the Data format choices be, I should be able to make it insert the data code in all ides Positron Studio, FineLineIDE, VSCode IDE and the Proton IDE.

Old Output are these still valid?
Original Samsung vertical bytes LSB First, Data across screen then next row
LabelName:-
CData Height in Bytes,Width in Pixels,_
'Data Table
$00,$F8,$FC,_ etc 
 
Original Toshiba horizonal bytes MSB First, Data across screen then next row
LabelName:-
CData Height in Pixels,Width in Bytes,_
'Data Table
$00,$F8,$FC,_ etc

The Samsung style output will have an option for Data down screen then next column 
I will all so add option for actual size in pixels width and height

Do I add this option
                                      'Data Table
Dim VarName As Flash8 = $00,$F8,$FC,_ etc

And are there any more variants I should add

Dave

[JohnB]

@Dave-S It was a mistake going with the TMS editor (ADVMemo) it is really slow.  I have the SynEdit control and am trying to understand how to go about the developing the highlighter for it.  There is not a whole lot of documentation around on SynEdit to get one started.