I sure hope this is cool, coz it took its time

[Pc72]

...I think we are getting a bit outside the topic here... I mean...has anybody of you tried it out?

[Dr_Davenstein]

I tried, but no dice. :-?

[axipher]

I downloaded at school, then forgot to unzip because it doesn't have winzip and window XP's built-in unzipper is disabled.

[na_th_an]

...I think we are getting a bit outside the topic here... I mean...has anybody of you tried it out?

I can't run MSDOS stuff on this linux box - at least this proggie didn't work with dosemu.

A port to fB is mandatory maybe that way a lot of people will be able to run it.

[axipher]

All programs should be ported to fb now, and if your computer is too old for fb, spend $200 on one that works, and Windows 98 so you can sue a memory stick, they work wonders. Now I know I use to prefer qb over fb, but now that my program needs more and fb offers what I need way easier, I'll stick with fb, and use qb to automatically capitalize all of the commands for readability.

[Z!re]

All programs should be ported to fb now, and if your computer is too old for fb, spend $200 on one that works, and Windows 98 so you can sue a memory stick, they work wonders. Now I know I use to prefer qb over fb, but now that my program needs more and fb offers what I need way easier, I'll stick with fb, and use qb to automatically capitalize all of the commands for readability.

Stop.. talking..

[axipher]

Lol, I am not that annoying, I could be worse and still be making more spelling and grammatical errors than non-errors, that would be annoying.

[Nemesis]

Try this delay routine...

Might work for you

Code:

SUB V13hDLY (seconds!) STATIC
'
IF seconds! THEN
  FOR inc& = 1 TO (SYS& * (seconds! * 18.2065)): NEXT
ELSE
  DEF SEG = &H40
  DO: LOOP UNTIL PEEK(&H6C) <> PEEK(&H6C)
  t = PEEK(&H6C)
  DO
   FOR clc& = clc& TO clc& * 2: NEXT
  LOOP UNTIL t <> PEEK(&H6C)
  SYS& = clc&
  I& = 1
  DO
   I& = I& * 2
   d& = clc& \ I&
   DO: LOOP UNTIL PEEK(&H6C) <> PEEK(&H6C)
   t = PEEK(&H6C)
   FOR inc& = 1 TO SYS&: NEXT
   IF t <> PEEK(&H6C) THEN
    SYS& = SYS& - d&
   ELSE
    SYS& = SYS& + d&
   END IF
  LOOP UNTIL I& >= clc&
END IF
'
END SUB

And switching to FB is your best bet to solve the win XP & QB compatibility
problem or wait until DOSforever is released
(DOSforever is a DOS emulator for WinXP. Guess what it's being programmed in?)
Also check your WinXP help files for compatibility options, that will usually let you run good old 16 bit applications. (If you have service pack2 winXP; NT version than your out of luck, unless you know your stuff.)

Cya,

Nemesis

[axipher]

Why did you post a delay routine, I thought we were talking about porting to fb???

[RyanKelly]

Don't use global vars/arrays.

Like everything else, the purpose for which a global variable is used is more important than stylistic conventions.
There are a number of very sane reasons for using a global variable.

1. The variable is truly used globaly in the program. If various routines all rely on a particular variable that is not functionally used as a parameter, it makes sense to use a global variable.
For example, if several screen output routines refer to some sort of color scheme, a global variable can be useful.

2. Speed and memory considerations. Parameters passed to a function or subroutine are placed on the stack. This takes time. Furthermore, to access variables by reference they must be dereferenced every time they are used, which takes time. If a routine is called rather frequenctly, replacing some parameters with global variables can save you many many many clock cycles when your program is executed.
As for memory, consider recursive functions.

FUNCTION EXMPL(X AS INTEGER, Y AS INTEGER) AS INTEGER
IF Y>0 THEN
EXMPL=0
ELSE
EXMPL=X+EXMPL(X,Y-1)
END IF
END FUNCTION

This rather useless routine (which recursively calculates X * Y for positive values of Y) needs 4 bytes of stack space for passing parameters every time it is invoked. If 1000 was passed as Y, that works out to 4000 bytes. But the X value passed to each iteration never changes. If a global variable had been used in place of X, for the same value of Y the parameters on the stack would only amount to 2000 bytes, effectively nearly doubling (the stack also contains other information) the upper bound on the Y parameter at which you'd have stack overflow issues.

Now it is true that global variables can make a program more difficult to read, and with poorly chosen names can cause conflicts with other code modules, but in certain contexts that are really useful.