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Converted Animation.GIF To .BIN file for Atari ST1BPP? for demo in the music keyboard


Galaxy76

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Hi everyone, I'm new here. I plan to do something interesting from my point of view. I have a 1998 Generalmusic music keyboard. Its firmware was designed around Atari.
I would like to be able to change the DEMO and then customize it.
the DEMO was certainly made with an 8-bit animated GIF for a 320x240 display. I can easily download the file within the software that takes care of this DEMO. It is a file called IMG_RES.BIN which is approximately 1.3 MB.
My question is:
how can I convert an animated GIF into a .bin file that is read correctly by my music keyboard? Again, consider the fact that the firmware / software is very similar to atari.
What do you suggest? where can i start?

I analyzed the original.bin file with the binxelview program (see image), and it is most likely in atari ST1BPP format.

 

If I can I would like to attach the original IMG_RES.BIN file of the DEMO, so that you can analyze it and understand how I could create one with the same characteristics.

Immagine.png

Edited by Galaxy76
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are you certain it's an animated gif?   There were other more common animation formats then on ST.

 

bin is kind of a generic name, it could contain the code that plays the animation, or it could just be the output file of whatever program made the animation

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no. I'm not sure. what were these formats? Any information could be valuable to me.

anyway now I put the original file. so you can analyze it yourself.
I have seen that it contains a set of images attached one after the other. but I could be wrong. maybe there is a hidden code.

anyway any idea how these DEMOs were made? what was used at the time?

 

the original file is attached. I actually have two of these demos. I put them both

as they are found within the software and within subfolders

 

DEMO A.SYS.7z

DEMO B.SYS.7z

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1 hour ago, Galaxy76 said:

no. I'm not sure. what were these formats? Any information could be valuable to me.

Well .FLI was a popular cross-platform animation format.    There was an ST program called Art and Film Directory from Epyx.  (Produced .FLM files).  I think NEOChrome had some animation options.  There are probably others as well.

 

1 hour ago, Galaxy76 said:

anyway now I put the original file. so you can analyze it yourself.

I've tried several tools to identify the format.   I have no matches so likely it's an obscure or proprietary format

 

1 hour ago, Galaxy76 said:

I have seen that it contains a set of images attached one after the other. but I could be wrong. maybe there is a hidden code.

If it is a set of images in ST 1 plane format,  it should be fairly easy to do a 1:1 replacement of those frames at least.   Did you see anything that isn't part of an image?  What about that noise in the lower right corner of the image you posted?    If there is anything like that, you would have to preserve it while swapping the image data.

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thanks. tried the programs you told me today.

 

the noise you saw is just one of the frames where a fade begins.

 

it would be nice to be able to replace it 1: 1 but I haven't been able to edit the file yet. being a .bin. i should have the source code. I'm starting to think it could be a sprites, what do you think?

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7 hours ago, Galaxy76 said:

thanks. tried the programs you told me today.

 

the noise you saw is just one of the frames where a fade begins.

 

it would be nice to be able to replace it 1: 1 but I haven't been able to edit the file yet. being a .bin. i should have the source code. I'm starting to think it could be a sprites, what do you think?

If it's just a stack of raw bitmapped images with no other data, then you should be able to create another file with your images as a replacement.

Although I'm wondering if it has a header since I noticed it starts with BM which might indicate BITMAP or something.

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On 6/15/2022 at 4:03 PM, zzip said:

If it's just a stack of raw bitmapped images with no other data, then you should be able to create another file with your images as a replacement.

Although I'm wondering if it has a header since I noticed it starts with BM which might indicate BITMAP or something.

 

I managed to replace the images in the binary. I have achieved my goal but it is really hard to work in binary.

 I still keep looking for a program that creates animated sequences in monochrome Bitmap, but still nothing. to process GIFs, however, there are lots of them. unfortunately for BitMap nothing. Gymp does something but doesn't go down to a monochromatic bit. it reaches 16 bits minimum.

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56 minutes ago, Galaxy76 said:

 

I managed to replace the images in the binary. I have achieved my goal but it is really hard to work in binary.

 I still keep looking for a program that creates animated sequences in monochrome Bitmap, but still nothing. to process GIFs, however, there are lots of them. unfortunately for BitMap nothing. Gymp does something but doesn't go down to a monochromatic bit. it reaches 16 bits minimum.

I find that I can do a lot of image manipulation with the imagemagick tools and a little scipting.

 

For the type of output file you are creating, a simple program that reads from a directory of images and writes a single large file should be fairly easy to create.

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