Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mitel!cunews!dbuck
From: dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca (Dave Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: DumpToIFF (DKB) crashing
Message-ID: <1990Sep12.000420.9649@ccs.carleton.ca>
Date: 12 Sep 90 00:04:20 GMT
References: <1529@hslrswi.UUCP>
Organization: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 60

In article <1529@hslrswi.UUCP> jean@pogo.UUCP () writes:
>
>The DKB (ray tracer) software is (slow but) great! I was even
                                             ^^^^^^
Thanks.

>able to compile it for my IBM compatible and happy to see that
>the same .dis file was created.

Yup.  It also works on various UNIX systems, Iris's, and even Cray's.

>Unfortunately I could not manage to run DumpToIFF...
>[stuff deleted]
>When running DumpToIFF from data.dis to data.ham the picture
>is displayed (so nice) but when writing to the diskette funny
>things happen (sometimes with the L path access) with the system
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sorry?  What are you referring to?

>which finally crashes with the famous GURU message.
>The file data.ham has a zero size and the diskette is corrupted
>(Diskdoctor message).

I haven't seen this problem with DumpToIFF.  If you have an older
version, that may cause problems, but if it came with the 2.01
distribution it's probably the right version.

Since it displays the picture on the screen, all the hard stuff has
already been done.  At that point, the IFF write routines just take
a snapshot of the screen. These IFF routines came originally from the
versions found on Fish Disk 64 with one or two small mods.  I haven't
had them fail before.

Two suggestions have been made by another poster.  The first was that
DumpToIFF may use the '881 - not likely since (if I'm not mistaken),
DumpToIFF doesn't even use any floating point calculations.  The other
suggestion is a possibility - the stack is too small.  That's probably
the first thing you'd want to try.

Try writing the IFF file to the RAM disk to see if it makes any difference.
Also, if you are rendering at 320x400 (or higher) try rendering at 319x400.
To simplify things in Ham, I kept the left border black, so you really only
have 319 pixels across.

I'd like to hear the outcome of this problem.  Feel free to mail me directly
at dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca.  I'm more than happy to answer questions or
problems with DKBTrace.

Incidently, I'm putting a file on alfred.ccs.carleton.ca (134.117.1.1)
called DKBBugs which summarizes all bug reports to date.  That file
should be up within a few days.
 
David Buck
dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
| David Buck                    | My employer is not responsible for|
| dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca         | my opinions.  I'm not even sure   |
| David_Buck@carleton.ca        | I am.                             |