Dealer Workbench Demo Disk 1.0

[Jope]

Some of you may have read the A1000 Assembly Level Repair manual [1] and wondered about the Dealer Workbench Demo Disk 1.0.

My godfather had this a long time ago (he was working at the authorized importer) and I remember it well, as I played with the demos a lot as a kid.

Recently I was given a lot of old disks and it was there.

Unfortunately one of the pictures is missing from the demo disk, I can't remember whether it was like this with the disks my godfather had.. I'll borrow his disks when I see him the next time and make some images, hopefully he still has it. :-)

Anyway: http://jope.fi/amiga/dealer_workbench_demo_disk_1.0.zip

[1] https://computerarchive.org/files/co...-01_(1985).pdf

[OddbOd]

That's certainly a very interesting find and one I've not seen before, thanks for sharing.

There are some curious things about the main demo disk. As well as the temple picture being absent (I couldn't find any trace of it when I did a header block search, just a deleted screen-grab of the fields demo) the demo_load1 script which was used to prepare the original is truncated yet the file itself is valid, I wonder what happened?

The version of Boing mentioned on page 38 of the repair manual doesn't appear to exactly match what is on this disk, I've seen this 26kb one before as it's identical to the one hitchhkr added to Pouet when it was discovered that the more common version was actually a fixed build from 1996. I'm guessing the one in the manual might be [ Show youtube player ] as the name matches exactly, but the description is still "off" due to the absence of a close gadget and no evidence that the demo can have it's speed changed, it just freezes when clicked.

There's still a mystery here waiting to be solved.

[xArtx]

Nice Thanks for posting.
This is the first time I’ve been able to run the famous Robocity demo!

[Jope]

Hmm, I've never seen a boing that can be sped up and slowed down, it's always been the one that pauses the animation with a left click, even on my godfather's disk. The close gadget was always hidden, even in the version that the manual describes on page 38.

Intriguing. Then again we didn't get the Amiga until 1986 here in Finland, so it is more than likely that the importer also got a later version of the WB Demos.

I wonder if someone on a foreign forum has a copy of this disk with the Temple gfx intact.

[xArtx]

How can you tell what library it wants (Robocity)?
SnoopDos isn’t revealing, but in the Robocity file itself it seems to reference a library.

[Jope]

dos.library, graphics.library, layers.library, intuition.library

[OddbOd]

Originally Posted by xArtx

How can you tell what library it wants (Robocity)?

I read through a disassembly but they're just as easy to find by searching the binary for the word "library" with any editor.

Originally Posted by xArtx

SnoopDos isn’t revealing, but in the Robocity file itself it seems to reference a library.

This may be completely wrong but I think it's because Robo only uses the libraries in ROM i.e. it doesn't need to load anything from disk so SnoopDos doesn't catch this.

Can someone who knows for sure please provide a proper explanation?

[xArtx]

I know for sure that runs with only graphics.library present in Libs on the disk,
but don’t know other than Jope’s comment that it needs that (simply didn’t try).
There is a graphics.library in my Libs on main OS drive, but don’t know if it’s also internal to a 3.1 ROM.

I’m still fiddling with it, I can get it to start, but not bring the graphics window to the front.
I’ve tried “Break F 1" I think it was, which is supposed to click on a window level gadget.

[paul1981]

Originally Posted by xArtx

How can you tell what library it wants (Robocity)?
SnoopDos isn’t revealing, but in the Robocity file itself it seems to reference a library.

Have you ticked all the monitoring boxes in the Snoopdos config? This may show something up useful... worth a try.

[Jope]

Many of these old demos start with the screen in the background and you need to switch the screen manually. I guess it added to the wow effect when the demoer can drag the screen down to reveal a running animation.

[xArtx]

I had another play with it today, and just needed to add LoadWB first to begin the demo in front.
Also the demo runs without any libs directory on the disk at all, but ticking the option to log libraries opening in SnoopDOS,
it can be seen that three of the four libs you mentioned are opened from ROM.
The dos.library is the only one I don’t see.
The graphics.library on my disks’ libs directory is maybe be a later version.
It would be the first I thought the system might look for later versions on disk prior to loading from ROM?

Now just the issue of the mouse pointer on the screen. It would be nice for that to go away.
I think the programmer could have done it easy with SetPointer() function, but after
compile, I don’t know if it can be removed.

[OddbOd]

dos.library is deliberately ignored to avoid a potential deadlock, see the function New_OpenLibrary in snoopdos/patches.c for the explanation.

Originally Posted by xArtx

The graphics.library on my disks’ libs directory is maybe be a later version.
It would be the first I thought the system might look for later versions on disk prior to loading from ROM?

Nope because generally i.e. unless a specific path is passed, Exec's search order is ROM, LIBS:, current directory. The OpenLibrary() function takes two parameters, name and version, since all three calls in Robo specify a library name without a path and a version minimum of 31 (which implies that it was targeted at KS1.1) the ROM versions will satisfy that minimum requirement therefore it's unnecessary to load any libraries from disk regardless of the OS version. The only exception I can think of is if you are using an early A1000 that has KS1.0 or one of the betas.

The simplest practical method of hiding the mouse pointer is to use a utility like TMouse or MouseOff. Patching Robo would certainly make for an interesting code caving tutorial but is probably a little dull for any of the experienced guys around here, who knows maybe someone's up for it.

[xArtx]

Ok, that’s still interesting if a program being run can require a later library from disk.

I was all set to run an emulator and see what Amiga memory changed when variables
of interest changed. I can still do the A500 stuff with a CD32 and assume everyone has the same hardware, a stock 2 Mb chip RAM console.
Oh, yeah, the rest of the story is the updated Xcode will no longer compile the emulator!

[xArtx]

Or you could edit out the pointer in Prefs, and put the pointer file on the disk

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

The version of Boing mentioned on page 38 of the repair manual doesn't appear to exactly match what is on this disk, I've seen this 26kb one before as it's identical to the one hitchhkr added to Pouet when it was discovered that the more common version was actually a fixed build from 1996. I'm guessing the one in the manual might be [ Show youtube player ] as the name matches exactly, but the description is still "off" due to the absence of a close gadget and no evidence that the demo can have it's speed changed, it just freezes when clicked.

There was a later version of the Boing demo. It's on Silica Public Domain disk 1, one of a set of ten disks which Silica Shop bundled with Amigas they sold circa 1987. I thought I uploaded an archive of all ten disks a while ago, but maybe I never actually got around to doing that.

Anyway, with the later Boing demo you can click the right mouse button to speed up the animation, left to slow down.

File size of the later one is 21872 bytes, dated 13-Mar-86 on my Silica PD disk. The dealer demo version is 26340 bytes, dated 25-Nov-85. (Both datestamps probably correspond to when the disk was put together, not the original build date of the program.)

The Robo City executable on the Silica disk also has a different file size to the dealer demo version.

[Jope]

WBDemos 22-aug-85 has the temple pic intact. Now in the Zone, uploaded by stevsurv. Thanks!

Be sure to run nofastmem first. :-)

[erikarn]

... hey, I wanted to run this on the Amiga 1000's I have here when I goto retro events. Does anyone have a copy handy?

Thanks!

[Jope]

Browse the Turran FTP, go to the zone, 2016, download wb early demos and dealer workbench demo disk

[Snoopy1234]

Originally Posted by Jope

Browse the Turran FTP, go to the zone, 2016, download wb early demos and dealer workbench demo disk

Thanks too for the heads up. Always interested in A1000 demos.