JVF 2010-A LED sign help

The JVF 2010-A is an LED sign that at it's heart is a 386 PC that runs DOS 5.0
You can get the main program for creating boot disks can be gotten here:
http://johniii.tripod.com/jvf.html

To create a disk, I recommend using Windows XP or below as Vista and above disabled the ability to create boot floppies. The resulting disk creates a 768 Kb Ramdisk and assigns it to C:.

Slideshows are a combination of images and scripts. Images are made by creating 16-color Windows bitmaps and using the utility program to convert them to DSN format. Slideshow scripts are text files ending with the .SHW extension. 

The more images you use for your slideshow, the longer it will take to load from the disk. I recommend Googling pkunzip for DOS (pkz204g.exe), unpacking it and copy the pkunzip.exe file to the root directory of the boot disk.

Creating a slidwshow script can be created with three simple commands:

DLY_DSN 5000 (This should always start the script)
DSN eyes01   (This loads the dsn image file)
AP           (This tells the LED board to display the image)
STOP 1       (This tells the board to hesitate for 10ths of a second. The bigger the number to longer the wait time)
DSN eyes02   (This loads the next image, etc).
AP
STOP 1


You can create animations from an animated gif. The resolution of the image should be 128 x 48. Each frame is converted to a bitmap. The bitmap should be as simple as possible to convert well, drawn images work best.

Personally, I use JASC Animation Shop along with Paint Shop Pro 6. I open the animated gif in Animation Shop, highlight all frames and paste them into Paint Shop Pro, which creates a separate image for each frame. From there, I make any changes to make it fit 128 x 48, reduce the colors to 16 and save each image to a Windows Bitmap file, each file with the number of the frame for easy reference (frame01, frame02, etc).

IF you use Gimp, you can convert them this way:

-------------------------------------------------------

For anyone who's interested, the way I'm making the animations in Gimp is as follows:

1) Load image and scale it correctly (128x48 ).

2) Make sure Image > Mode is set to RGB.

3) Set foreground color to black and background color to pure red (use HTML notation: ff0000). Reverse the foreground and background if you want to invert the colors.

4) Select Colors > Map > Gradient Map, which turns everything red.
(You could also use Colors > Colorize to accomplish this.)

5) Repeat the Gradient Map for all frames.

6) Select Image > Mode > Indexed.

7) Select "use custom palette" and click the palette button.

8 ) In the drop-down that appears, click "open the palette selection dialog" in the lower right.

9) In the window that appears, click "new palette." The palette editor opens.

10) Click "new color from foreground color." The color appears.

11) Right click the color, select "edit color," and make sure HTML notation is 000000. Hit okay.

12) Add another color, and set it to 880000.

13) Add a third color and set it to ff0000.

14) In the palette editor, click save.

15) Close the palette editor and drag your new palette from the palette window to the custom palette button in the Indexed Color Conversion window.

16) In the Indexed Color Conversion Window, set the dithering to whatever looks best (you'll have to try all of them).

17) Hit Convert.

Boom. You have a three-color image that reflects the color intensity of the original image.

------------------------------------------------------------

You can either directly copy the dsn files to the DSN folder on the floppy disk, or you can use PKZIP to create a .zip file which you copy to the root directory of the floppy.

Now create your .SHW script at the root directory of the floppy disk.

Using a zip file can cut down on the load time of the slideshow. Just edit the autoexec.bat file on the root directory of the floppy to this:

md c:\dsn
copy *.exe c:\
copy *.shw c:\
pkunzip slides c:\dsn
c:
jvff

This will create the dsn folder to the ramdisk and copy the main program as well. Then it will execute the main program. From there you can use the menu to launch the slideshow file you created.

I will update and create more pages as I learn more.

Too much Snake Oil - Not enough snakes...

As if I don't hate job hunting enough:

1. The opinionated resume templates people insisting you use, and EVERYONE has an opinion on how it should look, how long it should be, what should be in it., etc.

2. The cover letters - you must do research on each and every company you apply to and write a new, impressive cover letter to match said company. If I had that much time on my hands, I'd just as soon finish the two novels I'm working on and retire.

3. Suits - 'nuff said. Don't get me started. This is why I left the East Coast to begin with.

4. Job interviews - I don't seem to articulate and/or regurgitate the steps I take to do a particular job. I just do the job and do it well. For God's sake, if you want a list of previous employers and references, ask them!

Now I've got to deal with scam artists. So-called companies that contact you out of the blue, always starting their emails/phone calls with "We found your resume on Monster.com..." and always offering $3000 a month, with whatever their job title meaning, "sell insurance over the phone by cold-calling from home." If I Google your company name and the first suggestion comes up with the word scam on it, I should be allowed to report you for cash from the government. But these companies are allowed to exist for some reason. And if I Google your company's street address, chances are that the street view is going to show some non-descript, plain looking building with no name in front of it. Oh yeah, that looks legit. Especially from Florida, the scam artist capital of the world.

I hate, loathe and despise this kind of crap. And that goes for "job offers" that are really schools, with no actual job in existence. It used to be just headhunters, looking to fill their databases with jobs that don't actually exist, just so they can look good for their bosses.

I'm ready to retire. I've got better things to do.

Doing the damned-near impossible (as usual)

For the last five years or so, I've been wanted to digitize our family's collection of 8mm films. I've seen just about all the websites that talk about doing just that. Most of the people that participate mostly say either project the movie and record it, which was ok about a decade ago when I did it for VHS, or sending them off to a professional business, which in my case would be very expensive.

I've seen very inventive people using legos and flatbed scanners with software that they used themselves. Great results, but I don't have all the space necessary for such a setup (not to mention the price of Legos.)

But I kept thinking that there ought to be a way to do it with the technology I have. What I've found is two ideas I'm going to combine into one. The first is an instructable that modifies a desklamp arm to attach a webcam:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-cost-document-camera-visualiser/

And one instructable for modifying a webcam to see through a microscope.