Another Signal Manager (DOS, Windows, Linux version) version 1.1.1 , Sep 8 2007 By Erwin Waterlander Contents: 1 What is ASM? 2 History 3 User interface 4 Hardware/Software support 5 Wishes/To do 6 Known bugs 7 Copyright 8 Contact/Download ====================================================== 1 What is ASM? ====================================================== ASM is a program for digital signal processing for educational purposes. This is a port of the original version made in 1993 by Edwin Zoer and me on an Acorn Archimedes computer running RISC-OS. ====================================================== 2 History ====================================================== AIM : ANOTHER IMAGE MANAGER also known as Atari Image Manager, Archimedes Image Manager, Amiga Image Manager. The image processing program AIM was originally developed for the ATARI-ST by Frans Groen and Robert de Vries. Since the first version of AIM, the improvement of this public domain image processing package has become a joint effort of a number of people from the Delft University of Technology and the University of Amsterdam. AIM has been ported to the ARCHIMEDES (Arthur version) by Robert Ellens, Damir Sudar and Alle-Jan van der Veen. Ed Doppenberg was successful in the port to RISC-OS. AIM has been written in the C-language. AIM is limited in functionality as well as in flexibility. The main purpose of the program is to experiment with digital image processing. The latest version 3.15 (1995) for Archimedes RISC-OS can be downloaded from http://wuerthner.dyndns.org/others.html On the Polytechnic of Enschede the Archimedes RISC-OS version of AIM was used in practical lessons in image processing. Polytechnic of Enschede (Hogeschool Enschede), the Netherlands, is called Saxion hogescholen (www.saxion.nl) today. ASM : ANOTHER SIGNAL MANAGER In 1993 the idea came to make a program like AIM, but then for signal processing: ASM for RISC-OS. The task of our final examination for the Polytechnic of Enschede was to create ASM for RISC-OS. We made ASM at and with support of the Technical University of Delft, faculty Applied Physics, Pattern Recognition group (Tom Hoeksma), and with support from the Technisch Physische Dienst, Delft (Ed Doppenberg). Our starting point was a stripped down version of AIM made by Ed Doppenberg. It was only one window with a command line interpreter. In 1993 Edwin and I had only basic knowledge of ANSI C and no knowledge about making user interfaces for RISC-OS. Our goal was to put as much as possible functionality in the program in only three months. With the first RISC-OS version we created it was possible to generate signals and do some basic processing on them. The program was made for use during practical lessons in digital signal processing at the polytechnic in Enschede. The original intention was that other students would develop ASM further. But it was Ed Doppenberg who did a thorough revision of the source code and added some professional functionality. That version of ASM (for RISC-OS) is not free available for the public domain. In 1997 I ported the first version of ASM for RISC-OS to DOS using DJGPP 2.01 (gcc 2.7.2). See djgpp.txt. I used the Allegro 2.2 graphics library. Allegro is a library intended for use in computer games. It was initially conceived on the Atari ST. See allegro.txt. In 1997 my primary goal was to port the program to a working version on DOS, for the fun of programming and because I had no Archimedes computer. That means I only changed the graphical interface. I tried to keep the source code as much as possible the same. There are large changes in file plotutil.c. Files aim.c and command.c have been replaced by asm.c. Allegro development went on, supporting more platforms. In 2007 I build ASM also for Windows and Linux. I replaced some deprecated Allegro api calls with new ones, and build ASM for DOS, Windows and Linux. A few minor problems have been fixed. For the rest it's the same version as in 1997. ====================================================== 3 User interface ====================================================== Graphical interface ASM for RISC-OS has a windowed interface. One command line window and each signal shown in a separate window with scroll bars. Due to the limitations of DOS (no window environment) I had to change the graphical interface. ASM for DOS can display only one signal at a time. Other signals stay resident in memory. Command line interface ASM has the same command line interface as AIM. Commands can be abbreviated as long as they stay unique. Parameters are separated by spaces. If you don't give all the parameters that are possible on a certain command ASM will take default values. Sometimes ASM will ask for a necessary parameter because it has to be given or it was out of range. A handy feature is to give a single question mark `?' (without quotes) as parameter. ASM will now ask interactively all the parameters and show the default value and the range. ====================================================== 4 Hardware/Software support ====================================================== ASM 1.1 will run on a PC with a 80586 CPU (Pentium) or higher and an SVGA card which supports 800x600 resolution with 256 colors. ASM is available for multiple platforms. dos32bit/asm.exe DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98/ME. win32/asm.exe Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP linux/asm Linux For more information see allegro.txt. ====================================================== 5 Wishes/To do ====================================================== - The source code needs great revision. - Better and more support of wave sound fils (RIFF WAV format). Read, write, play. ====================================================== 6 Known bugs ====================================================== - If the signal image is wider then 64K (2^16) pixels the signal may look garbled. This does not mean that the data is corrupt. Scaling the image down with the xscale command solves the problem. The cause of this problem is a side-effect of the Allegro line drawing function which has been optimized for speed. Allegro is intended primarily for game coding. It can easily be solved at the cost of drawing accuracy. If this bug is a problem let me know. - System will become unstable if you read a file which is not an ASM file. You get warnings first. ====================================================== 7 Copyright ====================================================== ASM is Public Domain software. ====================================================== 8 Contact/Download ====================================================== ASM and a manual in PDF or PostScript format can be downloaded from: http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/ Erwin Waterlander Zeelsterstraat 59B 5652 EB Eindhoven The Netherlands e-mail : waterlan@xs4all.nl Remarks are welcome.