UV EPG / Prevue Guide

[tin]

Might be considered an app?

Does anyone have a disk image of either the EPG Sr software or one of the earlier versions of Prevue Guide? I have done some serious t'internet searching and while there is a very late version of Prevue Guide known about, it's not in the wild (yet), nor is it an old enough version for my (current) needs.

Anyone who has a Prevue setup could I politely request you take a look at your disks?

Also I may also be looking to purchase a complete A2000 prevue setup if someone has one they want to part with for the right price.

Many thanks
tin

[hit]

Jeff at Amiga.org had such a system in 2007. maybe he still owns the system and can give you the software.

if you have luck, please upload the software on EAb's zone or fileserver

- Edit #1: There is a Prevue Guide Simulator ( WiP ), based on the Junior Atari version - The Amiga had the Senior Version ( thats what i got from googling ).
The Autor AriX, also mentions Jeff from Amiga.org, he got the software from him.

[tin]

Originally Posted by hit

Jeff at Amiga.org had such a system in 2007. maybe he still owns the system and can give you the software.

if you have luck, please upload the software on EAb's zone or fileserver

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately Jeff is the source of the one ADF I know I could lay my hands on (I'm working with AriX who has the contact with Jeff). I haven't got hold of that ADF so far as I know there's nothing I can do with it yet, it won't do anything without the hardware in the box. It's version 9.0.4 Build 21 which looks pretty new.

Anyone else by any chance? We're persuing other avenues too, but thought it'd be worth asking here

[hit]

ah, you "found" the simulator page - well, useable or not, it must get preserved
i hope someone else has something more usefull.

[tin]

Originally Posted by hit

There is a Prevue Guide Simulator ( WiP ), based on the Junior Atari version - The Amiga had the Senior Version ( thats what i got from googling ).
The Autor AriX, also mentions Jeff from Amiga.org, he got the software from him.

LOL our posts crossed somewhat there

Yeah working with AriX, my approach is to reverse engineer the data formats the Atari version understands, and see if the same work when fed into an amiga - hence the req.

[hit]

hehe, yep, just edited the post, while you were answering
i've bookmarked your project page and will watch the progress

[LocalH]

Holy shit, a copy of a (admittedly late) version of the Prevue Guide software has been dumped?

You sir, tin, have just made my day. I have just registered over at the PS forum

[tin]

LOL, loveit

Hopefully some momentum will help us find other versions out there

[LocalH]

AriX sent me a copy of the ADF, and for the first time ever I actually ran my own copy of the Prevue Guide software. I was stoked shitless

As I mentioned over there on the PS forum, I plan eventually to do like Metalguy66 did with the EPG Jr. and hook up an old PC to my A2000, testing some live serial input. Also found some interesting additional options in the diagnostic screen. Still unsure how to trigger ads to appear, probably done over the serial input (so that the overall on-air flow can be controlled remotely, keeping local ads from popping up over the national feed).

[LocalH]

Ok, Ari gave me the OK to spread the ADF.

Have fun.

Minimum specs are: 2.x ROM only (graphical glitches with 3.x, and the disk is FFS so 1.x is right out), 1MB chip, 1MB fast. Any CPU should work, and the support hardware is not required. Given the 1MB chip RAM requirement, it's assumed that ECS is required - if booting with 512K of chip, the software will throw an 81000005 guru. If it were possible to boot with OCS and 1MB chip, then it'd probably work, as the software does run under a WinUAE A1200 quickstart if switched to 2.x, so feel free to try it out on an A1200 or A4000, as long as you softkick 2.x If you boot it with 3.x, it will "work", but with major graphical glitches. Known keyboard commands are listed here.

Interestingly, the master disk was made by taking a 2.1 Install disk and deleting a bunch of shit. I've already ran it through DiskSalv and all it recovered was a few icons that are on the 2.1 Install disk.

[tin]

Now that this topic is a bit alive (maybe!) anyone else had a ganders in their disk boxes for an older version!?

[LocalH]

For the record, I now have a modified "master" disk that will softkick KS 2.04 from DH0: if necessary and otherwise successfully boot. If anyone needs those modifications, PM me and let me know what your Amiga's primary HD partition is called, and I'll customize the startup for that and send you the necessary files to make it work (except for the actual 2.04 ROM, you'll have to find it yourself). It does work on my A2000, however. As mentioned before, it requires at least 1MB chip and 1MB fast, other than that, it's fairly lenient (my A2000 has a GVP Series II '030 accelerator and a busted 68000, and it still works fine, even with the '030 cache and burst enabled, both instruction and data).

If you're running an Amiga that uses an IDE interface as the primary hard drive (1200, 4000), then it might be slightly harder, as the 2.04 ROM has no support for such. An A3000 with it's bonus code should be no problem as the softkick can be done with a 2.x A3000 ROM. If you need such support, let me know and I'll try to figure it out. It might still be possible as no hard drive support is required past actually getting the disk booted under 2.x, so it might still work once the 2.x ROM is softkicked (although I might have to put SetCPU on the floppy, so that it's accessible after rebooting with no IDE driver).

[tin]

So I think given it's almost 5 years, I can legitimately bump this thread I presume pretty much the same people are on here that were here 5 years ago, but you never know might be someone out there who wasn't watching 5 years ago.

Additionally, I suppose, any of our US friends have people that work(ed) in the cable industry who might have contacts?

[tin]

6 1/2 year bump. Just on the off-chance someone's come along into the scene who has a collection of these fine machines

[rygar]

Someone posted video of EPG Sr. :
[ Show youtube player ]
Maybe you can contact him....

[tin]

Already in contact with that person, but thanks for the tip off!

[Amiga1992]

OK I had just learned of this thanks to this thread, it's amazing, I had no idea it was running on Amiga. Kinda wanna run my own system, is the above posted ADF all is needed to run it? Well besides the necessity of a genlock.

This search also took me on a rabbit hole that ended (for now) on this fantastic channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/PrevueChannelMusic

[edit] I managed to load it in WinUAE following the specs posted above, but how does one edit the information in the system? Is there an editor?

[tin]

Haha sorry for the delay in replying, somehow missed there was any reply to this thread. Yes I went down the same rabbit hole about 6 years ago and despite never having seen prevue guide I was pretty amazed. I know people talk about famous Amiga uses, but pretty much every local cable system in America having one presenting the guide at them 24x7? That's a cool use IMHO.

There was a lot of discussion in the early days (just after finding a copy of the software) about how to feed in listings and indeed some people have, including myself, under emulation, but at the moment it is an utter ballache to do.

In the original system some central computer talked to all the Amigas out there over a 2400-baud (AFAIR) modem signal transmitted over a Satellite audio subcarrier, and it's possible to feed information into an Amiga running the software by talking at 2400 baud to the serial port.

I hacked together some Perl scripts to rip the EPG out of a MythTV install and pump them into an Amiga (I think I got as far as running on a real 2000 but I can't remember)

The other way to do it was the Amiga cached a local copy of listings on disk in a file called curday.dat, and it's possible to edit that, but that's a hack and not scalable imho.

There's quite a lot of discussion and some information here: http://ariweinstein.com/prevue/ and http://prevueguide.com

I'm sort of interested in doing some more work on it soon, but time is a harsh mistress at the moment.

[tin]

Does everyone think that there are none of these setups in the EAB community? There must be quite a lot of these that got out into the community somehow. Any suggestions for where else might be worth an ask?

[tin]

Because it's come up in converstation recently I'm bumping this.

If anyone's come into possession of such a thing recently please let me know. Even if I could just get an image of a floppy, that would be cool.