Mark J Cox | Home automation | Open Source Software | Security | Metrics

Mapopolis to GPX

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:20:00 GMT

When I'm in the USA I use the Mapopolis software for route finding when driving and also when geocaching. Mapopolis has the ability to log your route to a file, but it's in a plain text format and nothing seemed to be available to convert it.

I wrote a short bit of perl that will take the mapopolis log file and convert it to gpx, so you can load it straight into Google Earth for example and view where you travelled.

mapopolis2gpx.pl (July 2006)

Make sure you enabled logging in mapopolis. When you're ready, goto the GPS screen and view the logs. Select the complete format and save it to a file. The file will look something like this:

5/29/06  11:48:14 pm N36.13.025 W86.41.771 . 0 mph Alt: 449 ft Mcgavock Pike at Opryland Dr
5/29/06  11:48:19 pm N36.13.022 W86.41.766 . 0 mph Alt: 423 ft Mcgavock Pike at Opryland Dr
5/29/06  11:48:26 pm N36.13.022 W86.41.771 W 12 mph Alt: 410 ft Mcgavock Pike at Opryland Dr

Use the perl script and it will generate a GPX file ready for loading straight into your favourite mapping application.

One Time Passwords

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMT

I use one-time passwords to log into some services (one time passwords are great if you don't trust the machine you're logging into because capturing keystrokes won't help an attacker get back in). After swapping my Palm Vx for a IPAQ h4350 I couldn't find a one-time password calculator anywhere. Well, apart from a Java one. And getting a Java runtime onto a Pocket PC was more effort than it looked.

Source code for doing all the hard work already exists, from NRL (called OPIE) and is compatible with S/KEY. So it was just a case of writing a few wrappers and bunging it all together into an application. Fortunately, Microsoft provide eMbedded Visual C++ for free download, so it didn't take much effort.

So without further rambling, here is a one-time password calculator compatible with OPIE and SKEY for the Pocket PC 2003 (worked with a HP IPAQ and probably others). OPIE is under a BSD-style license and I'm not going impose any additional license on my small linking glue.

AWE OTP (23k, Jan 2004)

Download the file above, copy it to your Pocket PC, and run it. It will remember the entries for "Count" and "Seed" that you used last time to speed things up a bit. Any comments, let me know. (gpg signature).

AWE OTP Source Code (200k, Jan 2004)

Source code might work if you have an eMbedded Visual C++ environment, let me know if it doesn't. This is my first Windows program in over 10 years (the last being a network game) and now I have to spend the next ten years trying to erase all thoughts of CStrings and LCPSTRs.

Play

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT

I was fascinated with the sound and the PC speaker. It all started because I found a virus on one of the PCs in the computer lab at university. Whenever the computer was rebooted it played a sample of an advert for some sort of air freshener product (called, "magic mushroom", really). So since I knew it could be done, I researched into how to make what is a sample with 256 levels of volume information (8 bit) into something that could be put through the speaker (1 bit).

On 28th March 1990 Play was born. The first version just loaded a sample at a fixed frequency and played it through the speaker. It had to be hand crafted assembly code since my development machine was only a 10MHz 286. Version 1.0 was born, with only 440 lines of code, and a 1492 byte executable.

Play got a graphical user interface for DOS by April 1990, using libraries all coded in assembler. Later that month I worked on circuits that could do sampling through a A/D connected to the parallel port.

Play was given rave reviews by several UK magazines in 1991-2 and was included on magazine cover disks. In 1991, Play was distributed with the Activision game "Leather Goddesses of Phobos II".

Play v4.10 (75k) [Note: this program does not work inside Windows]

Computer Shopper Article, November 1991 (JPG, 125k)
99 percent of Public Domain and Shareware programs are utter rubbish. Netherless, the search for the 'free lunch' sometimes turns up some absolute gems .. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of Mark J Cox - he's got talent
Computer Shopper Article, April 1992 (JPG, 179k)
Play is a much more elaborate program for playing and editing music, Not only can you play them, you can select sections of the waveform to edit - shifting frequency, cutting and pasting sections, creating repeating loops and lots more
Infocom's Leather Goddess II brocure (JPG, 94k)
We have bundled a couple of sound utilities with the game .. courtesy of Mark J. Cox, a computer whiz from England

April 1991 saw the release of version 4.10, the last public version of Play. A friend took over development and added numerous new fetures, but the version was never released (see screenshot below)


Play 2.14 was the first to have a graphical interface, although it was pretty basic	By Play 3.50 the interface design had become stable

Play 4.10b was the last public version	Play 4.32 was never released but included multiple input and output support including stereo, new graphical file chooser, and a lot more

Modplay

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT

ModPlay was the first Protracker Module player that supported the PC speaker and soundcards other than the SoundBlaster. It let you play Amiga soundtracker, noisetracker, and protracker module files on a 10MHz 286 system or better. Modplay was written entirely in assembler code, running to over 11,000 lines of source code taking around 400 hours to produce. Modplay came with details and circuit diagrams for building parallel port DAC devices, amplifiers, and more. Although I didn't give out the source code, it was a completely freely distributable program.

Modplay v2.19b (101k)

Modplay v1.12 (10k)

The first coding on Modplay started on the 17th February 1991 and in April 1991 the first public version, 1.12, was released. Version 1.12 was pretty basic and didn't have an extensive user interface, but it did manage to do a good job of playing most mod files through a PC speaker or hardware attached to a parallel port.

	Figure 1: Users could move around directories and select which module to play. In later versions it displayed more information about a module and let you tag them in order to be played
	Figure 2: When playing, a simple bar graph would appear showing the four channels and the instruments being played

By September 1991 we were up to version 2.0 with a user interface and spectrum analyser display. I coded the analyser whilst I was meant to be studying for my degree, but it came in useful as a whole question on fast fourier transforms came up as one of my final paper questions.

The final public release was 2.19b which had the addition of a VGA graphical waveform viewer, configuration file support, and the ability to play mod files in the background. A customized version of ModPlay was also distributed with Covox soundcards in the USA, until they went bust and with the Infocom game "Leather Goddesses of Phobos II"

Infocom's Leather Goddesses manual [JPG, 96k]

Figure 3:
A text based real spectrum analyser that could even keep up on an old 286 processor

I still did some work on Modplay every now and again, and internally I had version 2.49 released in August 1992 which had better handling of the mod commands, conversion from a .com to a .exe (thats a big internal change), and more configuration file work. I also added a mode to dump a mod file to a stereo WAV file so that I could convert mod files to listen to in my car CD player.

	Figure 4: The main user interface. Text boxes would pop up to give help or change output device
	Figure 5: When playing a file the bar graph looks similar to version 1.12 but with the addition of a scrolling music chart (like one of those automatic pianos)
	Figure 6: You could load any GIF file and have it as the background whilst watching the graphical waveform display, here each channel is shown seperately

By 1992 sound cards had become cheaper, and Windows was getting popular, so working on Modplay didn't make much sense. Many friends spent time helping out with bits of Modplay, testing it, or making suggestions; particular note goes to U4ia (Now called f8), whose mod files inspired me and tested ModPlay to destruction, also Paul Sutton and Phil Copeland who shared a student house with me whist all this was going on.

Review from the "Soundblaster Book" [ Page 1, JPG, 69k], [ Page 2, JPG, 79k]

Modobj

Mon, 01 Apr 1996 01:01:00 GMT

Modobj is a linkable C-Pascal-ASM .OBJ file for loading and playing MOD files through a variety of devices and soundcards. It's free to use in your public domain programs and comes with sample source and programming details.

ModObj has been used in over ten commercial games and numerous freeware and shareware titles. A company recently distributed ModObj in their game and refuse to acknowledge it.

ModObj v0.06 (32k)

Other authors: If you are dealing with Visionaries Ltd. or their parent company, International Computer Entertainment Ltd. please contact me for more details.

From April 1996, Internet users can download a fully registered version of ModObj for free. Please read the file README.1ST that comes with the distribution. Please do not make this file available anywhere else; just tell people the URL.

ModObj Registered (28k)

Programming the Disney Sound Source

Wed, 01 Feb 1995 00:00:00 GMT

The Disney sound source is very similar to a standard DAC on a parallel port but it requires extra programming effort to send DAC bytes to.

The Disney DAC cannot be reliably auto-detected. Ask the user which LPT port they have it attached to and then look up the BASE_PORT for that LPT port from the BIOS data area (0040:0008..). For a majority of PC's 0x378 is LPT1.

The Disney sound source runs from batteries. To save battery drain you must always turn the sound source on before you use it, and off when you have finished with it.

Turning it on

Send the value 0x04 to BASE_PORT+2

Turning it off

Send the value 0x0C to BASE_PORT+2

Sending a value to the DAC

Send the unsigned DAC value to the BASE_PORT as normal.
Send the value 0x0C to BASE_PORT+2
Send the value 0x04 to BASE_PORT+2

Conn4

Fri, 01 Jan 1993 01:01:00 GMT

Conn4 was a simple connect-4 like game designed to demonstate multiplayer gaming for Winsock (Windows 3.1 TCP/IP API) written with Paul Sutton in 1993. We even had reports of it working inside WABI, and when I visited Microsoft people there remembered it!

Conn4 (29k)

Modres

Tue, 01 Sep 1992 01:01:00 GMT

Modres was written for the initial versions of Modedit allowed playing of mod files from your own programs. Has found its way into lots of demos, freeware, shareware and commercial programs. It installs itself as a TSR and can be called from virtually any language. For new programs, use the ModObj library instead.

ModRes v2.10 (82k)

ModEdit

Tue, 01 Sep 1992 01:01:00 GMT

Modedit is a mod file editor written by Norman Lin. Modedit uses Mark's sound routines for playback of the mod files. Early versions used the Resident ModRes program and newer versions used ModObj.

Modedit v3.01 (360k)

Resplay

Wed, 01 Jan 1992 01:01:00 GMT

Resplay is a memory resident program that will play samples from C, Pascal, ASM programs to the PC speaker or to a parallel port DAC device

Resplay (69k)

Fitspress

Mon, 01 Jan 1990 01:01:00 GMT

Wavelet compression of FIT format astronomical images. Mark converted it to the PC for the Robotic Telescope Project (initially by William Press). The software is used to compress the images downloaded from the telescope. The compression method is the best we evaluated, getting 30:1 with only minimal losses.

Fitspress Unix (Unix source, 42k)

Fitspress PC (DOS Diffs and Executable, 147k)