A couple of questions about the schitech-mgl files

[CodeVisio]

Hi,

I have a some questions regarding this project if you are still available to answer about it. :)

I've given a look at the code and more or less I was able to compile and debug it using visual studio.
I saw, during initialization, it tries to load the nga_w32.dll and the graphics.bpd (dll as well).
For those two DLLs, I used the ones under the drivers/x86 folder inside this repository.
However when the execution reaches the InitLibC() call (from graphics.bpd) it crashes.
I feel those two DLLs were built by using a different compiler compiler than msvc, anyway probably
with a different calling convention.
My intention at that point was to build those DLLs by myself and in debug version, but I couldn't
find any makefile rules for building them, that for the nga_w32.dll and graphics.bpd.

What am I doing mistakenly?

In addition it seemed that graphichs.bpd is binary equal to graphics.vbe file, but again I couldn't find
any makefile rule for the latter as well.

Could you help me?

Thank you!

[kendallb]

Oh man, it has been so long but yes the calling conventions are likely different as we always built all those DLL's with the Open Watcom compiler which you can still get and can probably still build with it. The DLL's are just binary portable DLL's (hence BPD) which uses our own custom C runtime library since it needs to be cross platform and it layers on top of the PM portability manager library. Hence all the BPD files are able to load on any operating system as the PM library is OS specific and provides all the OS level interfaces.

Looking at the code I recall now that we used the DMAKE makefile system as it was also portable so it could run on any of the platforms we supported.

So the main makefile that would build it all is this one:

https://github.com/kendallb/scitech-mgl/blob/master/src/makefile

But I always ran it from the batch files we created, but it has been so long now since I have built it I don't recall (20+ years ago).

[kendallb]

Looks like dmake lives on GitHub now also:

https://github.com/jimjag/dmake

and Open Watcom is here:

https://www.openwatcom.org/

Michal Necasek who I believe used to continue to maintain Open Watcom over the years worked for us for quite a while so may well remember some of this stuff.

[CodeVisio]

Oh man, it has been so long but yes the calling conventions are likely different as we always built all those DLL's with the Open Watcom compiler which you can still get and can probably still build with it. The DLL's are just binary portable DLL's (hence BPD) which uses our own custom C runtime library since it needs to be cross platform and it layers on top of the PM portability manager library. Hence all the BPD files are able to load on any operating system as the PM library is OS specific and provides all the OS level interfaces.

Looking at the code I recall now that we used the DMAKE makefile system as it was also portable so it could run on any of the platforms we supported.

So the main makefile that would build it all is this one:

https://github.com/kendallb/scitech-mgl/blob/master/src/makefile

But I always ran it from the batch files we created, but it has been so long now since I have built it I don't recall (20+ years ago).

:) Thanks a lot for your answer! I couldn't hope it!

I had a look at all code and could see the big picture of it.

What I couldn't understand however is how DMAKE & compiler, or whatever, builds the graphics.bpd and nga_w32.dll files.
Indeed even inside the makefile you wrote above there is no rule about building those two files...
I'm sure I miss something, but I don't know what.

Thanks for your support and time!

[CodeVisio]

Looks like dmake lives on GitHub now also:

https://github.com/jimjag/dmake

and Open Watcom is here:

https://www.openwatcom.org/

Michal Necasek who I believe used to continue to maintain Open Watcom over the years worked for us for quite a while so may well remember some of this stuff.

Thanks a lot!

[kendallb]

What I couldn't understand however is how DMAKE & compiler, or whatever, builds the graphics.bpd and nga_w32.dll files. Indeed even inside the makefile you wrote above there is no rule about building those two files... I'm sure I miss something, but I don't know what.

Right, the core issue is when I pushed this up a while ago I did not include all the private code we had for all the actual device drivers as a lot of that code was all developed under NDA. Years ago (I think back in 2007) I wanted to release it all as Open Source and many of the companies refused to release me from the NDA. NVIDIA specifically said hell no. Which is pretty silly given the technology is now almost three decades old.

I have to dig around and see if I still have any of the code. Almost tempted to just find it and throw it up as it's so old now and could be still quite useful for folks to look at.

[kendallb]

Ahh right, now I remember. I did actually dig up all the code and in fact have it on Git but its private. Years ago another developer wanted to see if they could clean it up for public release but nothing came of it. Perhaps you would like to take a look?

[CodeVisio]

What I couldn't understand however is how DMAKE & compiler, or whatever, builds the graphics.bpd and nga_w32.dll files. Indeed even inside the makefile you wrote above there is no rule about building those two files... I'm sure I miss something, but I don't know what.

Right, the core issue is when I pushed this up a while ago I did not include all the private code we had for all the actual device drivers as a lot of that code was all developed under NDA. Years ago (I think back in 2007) I wanted to release it all as Open Source and many of the companies refused to release me from the NDA. NVIDIA specifically said hell no. Which is pretty silly given the technology is now almost three decades old.

I have to dig around and see if I still have any of the code. Almost tempted to just find it and throw it up as it's so old now and could be still quite useful for folks to look at.

I knew, I felt there was something missing. I couldn't wrap my head around it...
Indeed I could compile and build only the static libs (mgl, tech, etc) with Visual Studio 6.0 and Open Watcom 2.0 portable. and using
your repo. I couldn't for example compile the sdk or using the stack allocation constant (instead of using register for passing parameters... etc etc)

[CodeVisio]

Ahh right, now I remember. I did actually dig up all the code and in fact have it on Git but its private. Years ago another developer wanted to see if they could clean it up for public release but nothing came of it. Perhaps you would like to take a look?

Yes, thank you so much.
By the way, I received your invitation with a (private?) link but I got a 404 error. I couldn't see anything.

Thank you in advance

[kendallb]

Hmm, I sent the invite to the private repo and I thought that is all that is needed. You still cannot see it?

[kendallb]

Oh sorry I renamed it :) It is here:

https://github.com/kendallb/scitech-snap-graphics

[CodeVisio]

Oh sorry I renamed it :) It is here:

https://github.com/kendallb/scitech-snap-graphics

No problem. It worked!

I'll give it a look!

Thank you!

[iconals]

Would it still be possible to obtain the files you listed privately, I am interested in building the snap-sdk and related files. Please and thanks.

[kendallb]

Would it still be possible to obtain the files you listed privately, I am interested in building the snap-sdk and related files. Please and thanks.

Sure, I enabled access

[iconals]

Thank you very much!