PH Clock

What is this?

Requirements

1. This runs on MINT. Development was done on Mint 1,18, while lower MINT versions are not verified/tested on.
2. You also need to have zView's codec, by Zoro, correctly installed (the codecs and mem.ldg only). All these are available from the zView package (latest release 8). zView codecs requires a VDI with a valid EDDI (like NovaVDI, NVDI > 2.5 and fVDI, etc...).
3. Screen colours of 256 colours, but you can still use it if you have 16 colours only.

Installation

1. Extract and copy all the files into a folder of your choice. For example d:\phclock.
2. Make sure that the IMG subfolder is created inside the folder. For example d:\phclock\img. The filenames must be in either uppercase or lowercase. Do not mix uppercase and lowercase in the filename.
3. Make sure that the PNG images are inside this IMG folder.
4. For FireBee version, please overwrite the PRG with the one in the Firebee folder.
5. Copy all zView codecs into C:\GEMSYS\LDG\CODECS folder. Create that folder if you do not already have it.
6. Double click phclock.prg to run it !!

The App Window

The app window shows the time of the computer in a clock face. The clock face graphics is a PNG file that can be changed Options to display clock face markings & seconds hand. Colours of the hands.

Moving the Window

You can move the clock around your desktop. Click on any part of the clock and press until the mouse changes to a hand Now you can simple move the rubber band box to the new desktop location and release the mouse The app window will be moved there

Usage - options

Right click on the clock app window for a popup menu Click on Next Picture to cycle to the next clock face picture Click on Prev Picture to cycle back to the previous clock face picture Select configuration to get into the configuration window (see next section) The About displays.... well, the about of the app The left & right arrow keys also changes the clock face picture.

Configuration Window

Here you can make changes to the look of the clock and set the chime and alarm. Toggle Show seconds to show the second hand ticking around the clock. Toggle Show markings to show hours markings on the clock. Toggle Thin hands for the clock hands. Sometimes due to resolution, you may need thinner clock hands to get it to display. I don't know why, but I stumbled on to this solution. Toggle Use Bios time force using BIOS to get the time rather than localtime function. The seconds are incremented by 2 in this mode. This is a feature of BIOS time. Colours - click on the colour bar to change the colour for the following objects Hour hand, Minutes hand, Seconds hand and the face markings. Toggle the hourly Chime on and off. Toggle the Alarm on and off and enter the time for the alarm. The time is in 24 hours format.

Alarm mode, alarm sound and chime

Config and Clock face graphic files

1. You can use your own graphics for the clock face. Just add to the graphics files in the IMG folder, and follow the rules below.
2. The file type must be PNG. Any amount of colours can be used. The clock size is small at 120 x 120 pixel. Graphics file will be scaled down to this size.
3. Scaling of the graphics file may take several seconds. The included small graphic files already takes 2-3 seconds on my TT. So larger ones will take longer.
4. The filename must begin with CF followed by a numeric increasing sequence. CF stands for Clock Face in this case.
5. The numeric sequence must be continuous, if a number is skipped, it will stop loading at the skipped number.

Limitations

• Only 2 Atari themed clock face is available. Please make your own.
• Time zone information must be setup in your system (zic & tzinit) othewise the system will show UTC time.
• Clock face images filename cannot have mixed case, it will crash the application.

Fixes

1. Added choime and alarm function.
2. Fixed mouse cursor blinking

1. Silently exiting if RSC cannot be loaded when running off ext2 fs (or any fs which allows upper and lowercase).
2. Memory violation when exiting from a Memory Protected Mint.
3. Error getting object tree in MyAES.

Thanks

Future developements