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A picture of me racing my 911 in cheshire, england NiceHelmet before it got sold, sob, before i moved to the US.

Apparently this is my profile XNFP but as you`llsee you have to choose, so i went for ENFP i`m a 50/50

LOTUS

Colin Chapman knew what he was about, but he suffered as all little car manufacturers did, anyway currently i`m into the Elan M100, heres a link to get you started...

Ferrrari of Los Gatos - this is where i got mine, ask for Jack, he jumped through hoops to get me what I wanted.

TFX Amiga Latest 040 Beta 12/13/97 TFX Executable

Sorry both the 030 and 020 versions are in the same zip file i`m trying different compiler options, these executables *require* a real FPU. I`m still unclear on the 040 problems.. I`ve kind of run out of steam with this project, its getting harder and harder to support Amiga stuff. I don`t have access to a test dept. with lots of amigas anymore and most of the problems reported don`t happen on mine... Sorry..

TFX Amiga Latest 030/020 Beta 12/16/97 TFX Executables

PTC

Ptc is a cool little surface interface written in C++ and .asm, its available at www.gaffer.org/ptc/ its nicely put together, although i`d prefer it in C myself 8-) Anyway it works with watcom,vc,gcc,dos win32,linux. i modified most of the asm files to work with masm instead of nasm, you get better debug support and timing info etc. nasm also has slight problems with its .obj format....

PTC Masm asm files 0.72PTC masm files

Some Coding stuff. I`m going to add more of this as soon as i can, graphics functions, my photoshop quantizer, fast color matching algorithms, and some optimization stuff. I know its a little light at the moment, but i have a deadline with the game i`m working on 8-)

A link to my Copy and Clear Routine..

Read with pleasure

I`ve been tweaking some different memory routines, here`s the results from different CPU`s. (Pentium,MMX,Klamath,Pro)

Memory Clear Routines

I love optimizing and playing aroundwith the Pentium and Pentium Pro, I`ve written a vxd that allows you to switch on the rdpmc instruction of the Pro under 95/NT. Currently I`m playing around with the WC mode of the Pro, its pretty neat.  Also i`ve been writing up this work, unfortunately due to deadlines and stuff, i`m not getting through it as quick as i`d thought. Check back soon.

My Fractal screen saver ( for Windows95 ) this is in beta, it doesn`t crash or do anything screwy its just incomplete,use right mouse button with Netscape and select Save Link As (unzip it first GeoCities doesn`t allow .scr files)

FrakSaver ( install in windows/system directory )

I like these bar things... .

Mesa , the portable OpenGL* by BrianPaul, quite fab to , nice one Brian..

Brian Paul`s MesaHomepage

I`ve finished porting Mesa-2.1.tar.gz to MSDOS, yup thats right, just requires Watcom C or DJGPP.. Now can use 3dfx or scitechs svgakit.The MSDOS release is now included in the main Mesa tar file available from Brian`s homepage.

3DFX have released 2.1.1 glide so the 3dfx is back on, it should be available in the main release in a week or so.

Quite a few people have asked for dmake, and i forgot to give out my \etc\startup.mk so here it is. startup.zip

I built my dmake from the archive dmake38s.zip.

Changes required to make it compile for other compilers should be minimum,in fact i`ll add them ASAP, currently i can test watcom 10.6, and borland 3 i think, though i`m not sure about the exact borland version i have ... I`ve added support for DJGPP 2, this onyl works in mode 13 , however you can use svgakit and djgpp, i just found djgpp a nightmare to work with..

Hopefully the beta changes for the 3DFX will go in soon.. I know a couple of other people are working on this too.

Things that are working in the MSDOS version of Mesa.

Libraries

src-tk ( tk.lib ) is about 98% complete, it works.
src-aux ( glaux.lib ) is 100%.
src ( mesa.lib ) is 95%.
src-glu ( glu.lib ) is 100%.
I haven`t done src-glx yet, any volunteers ?

Demos

samples/ nearly all of the demos work fine. one or two don`t show adisplay.
demos/ mostly all, except glxdemo.c ( i haven`t done the lib)
book/ mostly all.

Heres a list of some demos that work already, olympic, nurbs (apart from mesa limits ), teapot, teapot, teaambient,
reflect, bounce, isosurf, logo, stars, wave, wave1, speed, accum, fog,dof, robot, bezcurve, depthcue, aim ..

That was just a list of some of the ones that work, there are othersi just can`t remember what they are called, mail
me if you want to know if a specific demo works. tri doesn`t work in rgbmode ? , dunno why yet, obviously.

FAQ/TroubleShooting

A few people have emailed me with some standard problems, so heres the results of those, most of the changes i`ll make into the makefiles to make life easier for us all..

Firstly you currently need dmake.exe to build the library in either watcom or djgpp, its all over the net, search for dmake38b.zip or dmake38s.zip, use the search engine below if you want, i`ll add a link to it when i find a good site, dmake requires a \etc\startup.mk to go properly, i`ve included mine above as startup.zip, edit the file before you use it, check the rules. Make sure the CFLAGS is set to what you want, unfortunately i didn`t strip out the extra stuff from my startup.mk so it includes lots of extra stuff, but i`ve documented the MESA CFLAGS at the bottom of the files.

Heres a rundown of what the libs require to build....

dos32 watcom mode13 320x200 /c /DDOSVGA
dos32 watcom Vesa SuperVGA Kit /c /DDOSVGA /DUNIVBE /IC:\scitech\include
dos32 glide /c /DDOSVGA /DGLIDE /IC:\glide\dos\include

Get the svgakit from www.scitechsoft.com, consider the MGL too.
Get the glide (3dfx) support from www.3dfx.com

I use 4DOS and I didn`t check out the makefiles under command.com, theres no 4DOS dependancy *but* it seems command.com can`t handle as long argument lists as 4dos, so either use 4dos or use a response file to generate the libs.

Error Messages

Linker error, etc can`t find _vga_setmode , likely cause wrong switches used or /c missing
Compiler error, wrong switches or wrong compiler, I`ve not been able to get it up and running with borland, the version I have only does 16 bit which isn`t good enough,..

djgpp: the ld sometimes runs out of memory , this is because it appears to use dos mem (640k) so you need gobs of dos mem to link, its pathethic really, also if you want to use SvkgaKIT with djgpp you`ll need an older version of , ld2.4 luckily scitech being scitech supply this for you...

Downloadable Demos of MSDOS Mesa

Heres a demo built from the msdos version of Mesa 2.1 uses a 320x200x256colour screen, it needs dos4gw to run. This is just here as temporary measure to show people what its like.. Its not optimal yet, i`m updating my version to Mesa 2.1 and hopefully going from there. It runs fine in a dos box inwindows or windows NT, in fact it should run in a dos box in linux too,as well as ordinary DOS too.. DOS4GW comes from a number of sources, games included, most people have it already.

Use -db for double buffer mode on SVGA, use -ci for colour index, -grid xsize ysize

WaveDemo 192K MsDOS Mode 13 ( will run under a NT dos box )
Wave Demo SVGAKIT Demo ( probably won`t run under NT dos box ) This is slower than the usual build for some reason.
Wave Demo 3DFX Demo ( dos, won`t run underNT dos Box)

If it generates a pow overflow try executing wave1 -grid 9 9 or justredirect the stderr output >& with 4dos. I`m not sure why this getsgenerated yet !!

Wave MSDOS is 320x200x8bit
Wave SVGAKIT is 640x350x16 bit
Wave 3DFX is 800x600x16 bit

The SVGAKIT wave demo is quite slow, this is nothing to do with SVGAKIT itself, its because the render is using the plot functions,so for every pixel you see, its being calculated and plotted, there are faster ways to do it, i just haven`t done it yet.

Things to do ( in no particular order )

Fast polygon functions for 3DFX cards, possibly verite too.
More speed !!
Include MGL Support
Wave demo sometimes generates a pow() overflow, this might be a watcom optimization problem..
* OpenGL(R) CosmoGL(R) are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc.

I`m trying to build a list of decent hardware and timings, so far the results i`ve taken show intel motherboards as being excellent, and tyan suck,, but heres some factoids from cachechk4..

CacheChk Results by Scott Wainner he`s put together the results people collect..

I`ve got some interesting machines here but i can`t publish results till i get the say so from the oems, however usually if they are bad results they won`t let me publish 8-) oh well, i`ll hassle them anyway...

Tyan Dual Pentium Pro Board with Latest Bios, and two PPro 200`s , 256 mb of EDO ram

Cachekchk results
L1 244
L2 231
Memory 67 -

What is that new chipset like ! over 600 Mb/s wow .. You know I`ve ordered one of those. Intel better get optimizing..

Links to other programmers web pages I like, no point reInventing the wheel...

Paul Hsieh, Excellent Site, Excellent Chap.

Mark Feldman, Author of WinPCGPE and Others, and another great guy.

Links -N- Stuff

Lets kick some american fighter jet butt, with the all new EuroFighter,I used to work at DID on TFX,Inferno,EF2000, Epic (japan) and TFX Amiga and some other top secret stuff. I decided to move on as DID got heavily into doing real military work, and that wasn`t in my karma quota.. They do the best flight sims in the world though . .

EF2000 / TFX / Inferno / Epic / TFX 3 Digital Image Design

I also spent a year at Team17 as Programming Manager, however I couldn`t drink enough beer, so i moved on, again, off to the USA this time,,

WORMS!/ World Rally Fever / X2  Team17 Software

Woof !

Look at this gorgeous example of a Team17 staff member.

After Team17 off to Dreamworks to work on Trespasser www.trespasser.com

Then a short jaunt at Universal Studios working on Xena Princess warrior, www.unistudios.com

I got sick of the Hollywood thing and moved upto Silicon Valley..

To 3DO www.3do.com I joined the libraries group to work on PSX,N64 and PC library stuff for the other groups to use, basically any cool machine we can get our sticky little hands on..

These will help your life as a programmer, and using Mesa.

Scitech SoftwareMakers of the fantabulous SVGAKIT/Display Doctor ( the artist formerly known as UniVBE ) and MGL.

3DFX Simply they Rule the current 3D card crop, Diamond thought so and dropped their ill fated card to use 3dfx instead. thank god for that.

Yoshi does indeed rock

But sonic`s got a cool hairdo

Link to miata.net Homepage of Miata.net for all things MX-5

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Who stole all the spaces 8-)

I`m exposing someone else ->

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this is me trying to look thoughtful , and thats Drew Grant,behind me..

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