Star Trek: The PC Demo Release: 1.10 Date: 3 August 1990 Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 David T. Chappell All Rights Reserved The program included is shareware. Feel free to make copies and pass them out to friends and BBSs as long as no fee is charged, the programs are not modified in any way, and this notice is not changed or removed. WARNING: YOU MUST HAVE AN 80286 OR BETTER PROCESSOR IN YOUR COMPUTER IN ORDER TO RUN THIS PROGRAM. INTRODUCTION ============ In the past few years, the computer world has been gaining interest in computer-generated speech and sound. In this area, the Apple Macintosh and Commodore Amiga provide built-in sound control so that their machines can play digitized recordings with little effort from the programmer. IBM, however, has chosen not to include advanced sound capabilities in its line of personal computers. The market has shown that relatively few people will buy speech or sound add-ons from either IBM or third parties. Until such hardware is standardized, speech software will encounter great difficulty in gaining acceptance. In this regard, however, mathematics, engineering, and software can come to the rescue: it is possible for a PC to play good quality sound without additional hardware. Over the years, several attempts have been made to play digitized sound on PCs without additonal hardware. Many have appeared in the public domain, but few are coherent. Commercial software has had greater success, but most of these programs produce rough speech. With the recent rise of interest in multimedia, some developers have produced good quality sound. Star Trek: The PC Demo (ST:TPD) rivals that of the best public domain and commercial successes. INCLUDED FILES ============== STARTREK.EXE Executable demo program STARTREK.SND Digitized sound data Sample Name Phase Stereo Volume Freq ------------ ----- ------ ------ ----- STARTREK.SND N N 0 8900 USAGE ===== To run the program, type the filename (omitting the extension) at the command prompt. There are no command-line switches. In addition, the sound file STARTREK.SND may be used with other programs that play digitized sound. LIMITATIONS =========== You must have an 80286 or better processor in your PC. Your computer system must have enough available RAM to load the sound file. ST:TPD relies on the system timer interrupt, so any other interrupt- driven software may conflict with it. Pressing keys, moving the mouse, etc. will put a buzz in the output. ST:TPD will not give proper results if the DOS 4.0 DOSShell has been run or if it is run in a DOS box under OS/2 or Windows; however, it runs well under the DOS 5.0 DOSShell. EGA or better graphics is required for the graphics display; only text mode is used on lesser systems. CONCLUSION ========== ST:TPD uses a special version of a general-purpose digitized sound player that runs on all PCs. If you are interested in a complete package of sound programs, write for more information. Richard E. Zobell wrote the file-loading routine. Ben Ezzell's book _Graphics_Programming_in_Turbo_C++_ helped with graphics. Star Trek is a trademark of Paramount Pictures. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, contact: David T. Chappell Internet address: 242 Stonewall Road david@catt.ncsu.edu Salisbury, NC 28144 (704) 633-7535