[Nasm-users] Example Avelanche!

[Frank K. <fbk...@co...>]

Hi, groups...

Wow! We may not have much to say, but the examples-bin is lookin' really 
pretty! Yeoh's been uploading Windows examples at a steady rate, and 
NuMIT_or just uploaded a flock of 'em. I just uploaded a couple Linux 
examples - rudimentary, as usual with me, but at least there's something 
there. Maybe we could get some Xwindows examples from somewhere (hint, 
hint)...

The "arabeske" example I posted isn't so hot. It "worksforme", but I 
have some questions about it. If I ask for a video mode higher than the 
driver supports for my card (apparently), it locks up the machine (I 
thought Linux wasn't supposed to do that - asm programs don't count, I 
guess :). This suggests that if someone tries it with a card that 
doesn't support even 640 x 480 x 256 with LFB, it'll hang there too(?). 
This isn't so great! Don't try it on a multi-user system without 
hollering "a.out" first!

The other thing that puzzles me about it, is that the speed seems to 
slow down periodically. It runs along smoothly (not that fast), but 
every few minutes it gets "jerky", as if it "stalled" every few frames 
(kind of a neat effect, actually - I may look into doing it on purpose). 
It doesn't *seem* to happen at any particular point in the program, just 
"every few minutes". After 15-30 seconds, it goes back to normal. 
Possibly something else running on my system - I don't know what. (I'm 
still pretty clueless in Linux, and probably shouldn't be attempting to 
program in asm, but "fools rush in...")

Another problem is that it has to be run as root. Unless I'm mistaken, 
there's a way to give the program root privileges, even if the user 
isn't root(?). I assume there are caveats. I'm kinda scared to mess with 
that...

It runs with just the default palette - it looks, judging from Jan 
Wagemaker's example that I kinda "went by", as if we've got permission 
to the ports, so the palette can be changed that way, as well as by the 
library calls. I may experiment with that next...

The other two examples, "hello2u" and "hamming" aren't 100% robust, but 
I guess they're okay...

Any comments or improvements welcome... as are more examples!

Best,
Frank