The Quantasm Floating Point Library (QFPL) is an assembly language library from Quantasm for performing general floating-point operations. Though reentrant and ROMable for 8Ox86 embedded systems, the library is also suitable for adding floating-point capabilities to MS-DOS applications requiring speed and compactness. QFPL allows you to add floating-point capabilities to assembly language programs or replace C library emulator routines. It is faster and smaller than most C floating-point libraries.
Additional QFPL features include: single-and double-precision IEEE floating point format; the ability to convert to and from ASCII; the ability to convert to and from integers and long integers; customizable error handling; and the ability to add, subtract, multiply, divide, negate, and find absolute values and powers of ten.
Zoran Milenovic of Zoran Computing in Chicago told DDJ, "QFPL is unbelievably fast--much faster than C libraries--and also small. And that's all that's important."
QFPL's price is $99.95; with source code, $199.95. Reader service no. 20.
Quantasm Corp. 19855 Stevens Creek Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 408-244-6826
NNET-EVAL is a new NeuralTool technology platform evaluation package from D.I.P. The NeuralTool platform includes software and hardware that uses neural nets targeted for industrial control applications. Applications which require user expertise to set up and tune conventional controls can take advantage of a neural net's ability to learn from the measured system dynamics. In some applications, neural nets have been applied to systems which cannot be successfully defined or controlled using traditional approaches.
NNET-EVAL is written in C++ and includes a set of neural network object classes that will perform closed loop control over user-defined analog control points. The user may control setpoints, limits, and learning coefficients and load or store network profiles. A graphical trending package is included to provide a visual indication of performance. NNET-EVAL can be linked with user-supplied I/O interfaces, thus allowing the neural network to monitor and control factory floor devices. A hardware evaluation kit is also available from D.I.P. for testing sensors and actuators in a neural net environment.
The price of NNET-EVAL is $895. Reader service no. 21.
D.I.P. P.O. Box 9550 Moreno Valley, CA 92552 714-924-1730
Soft-ICE/W, a systems and applications debugger for Windows' enhanced mode, is now shipping from Nu-Mega Technologies. Soft-ICE/W can debug applications, device drivers, and virtual device drivers for Windows and applications, TSRs, and loadable device drivers for DOS, all at the source level, separately or concurrently. Soft-ICE/W provides hardware-style break points on memory locations, memory ranges, I/0 port accesses, and interrupts.
The debugger features back trace ranges for tracking down UAEs and system crashes. The back trace range logs every program instruction executed in a programmer-specified range, allowing you to single-step backward to find the exact location of the problem.
Soft-ICE/W retails for $386. Reader service no. 22.
Nu-Mega Technologies Inc. P.O. Box 7780 Nashua, NH 03060-7780 603-889-2386
Interactive Software Engineering has announced that MS-DOS, OS/2, and Atari TOS versions of the Eiffel language are now available. The new release, Eiffel/S, was developed by SIG Computer (Braunfels, Germany) and is a compiler for Eiffel that translates to C source code. The current version implements Eiffel 3 and features a set of libraries, basic classes, I/O classes, persistence classes, and data structures.
Eiffel/S runs on 286, 386, and 486 machines with at least 2 Mbytes of RAM. The DOS version sells for $595, OS/2 for $1200, and Atari TOS for $185. Reader service no. 23.
Interactive Software Engineering 270 Storke Road, Suite #7 Goleta, CA 93117 805-685-1006
The InControl Toolbox for Windows, a set of DLLs that allow you to include professional input validation for Windows 3 applications, has been released by MantaSoft Partners. InControl Toolbox defines 13 new classes of controls for Windows. There are two controls to display the time and date, and 11 input controls for controlling the information entered by the user. The input controls include formatted and numeric controls, which allow entry of zip codes, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates, integers, floating-point numbers, and dollar amounts. A third group, the free format controls, accept any input and try to determine whether that input corresponds to a legal value.
InControl Toolbox retails for $179; with source code it costs $249. Reader service no. 24.
MantaSoft Partners P.O. Box 203551 Austin, TX 78720 512-335-3497
Now shipping from TaraVisual is apE III, a UNIX-based visualization and animation technology for converting computer data into 2- and 3-D representations. apE III facilitates transformation of scientific, business, or medical data into photo-realistic images and animations. Applications include computational fluid dynamics, MRI and CAT scan imaging, plasma physics, theoretical modeling, atmospheric analysis, terrain mapping, creative design, and real-time animations.
The environment is icon based, with an enhanced user interface. Interactive data manipulation and coloring features allow patterns to stand out for analysis; new modules simplify the description of data types, formats, and grids for importing data; and new axis and labeling features with fonts are included.
Marty Lobdell of the Ohio Supercomputer Center in Columbus, Ohio, told DDJ that she chose apE III "because of its superior visualization capabilities and simple method of transferring data to the still store for taping, or to the Solitaire for slides and photos."
apE III costs $1495, or $3795 with source code. Academic discounts are available. Reader service no. 25.
TaraVisual Corp. 929 Harrison Ave. Columbus, OH 43215 800-458-8731
Quintus has announced a Prolog runtime generator that allows you to run applications developed on UNIX and VAX workstations on 386 and 486 machines. The generator includes a basic development system with a 7-port debugger and an incremental compiler; a Prolog compiler; and a link editor, which links the compiled files into a standard 32-bit extended DOS executable. Quintus's Prolog runtime generator is integrated with Watcom C and Microsoft Windows (through the C interface). It has a 32-bit address space that supports virtual memory up to 32 Mbytes.
Each generator costs $4000. Reader service no. 26.
Quintus Corp. 2100 Geng Road, Suite 101 Palo Alto, CA 94303 415-813-3800
Version 2.0 of rtNET is now available from Project:artie. rtNET is a toolkit that allows Microsoft Basic programmers to access all Novell Netware API functions. Applications can be created that include the following capabilities: reading and updating bindery; attaching and detaching from servers, queues, and printers; finding and listing users on a network; sending messages; determining redirection lists; examining and controlling printer queues; getting server statistics; determining the status of NetBIOS, SHARE, and IPX; changing passwords; and more.
Complete source code for all routines and several Netware-related utilities are included. rtNET costs $195 and is compatible with QuickBasic 4.5, PDS 7.0, and PDQ 3.0. Reader service no. 27.
Project:artie 3232 McKinney, Suite 1100 Dallas, TX 75204-2429 214-871-3102
WindEXE, an optimization tool for Windows 3.0 development, has been released by IC Technologies. WindEXE uses the operational signature of code to modify code segmentation in such a way that the number of intersegment calls is reduced and the segments themselves are of uniform size. These changes improve an application's disk swapping capabilities, and thus, its performance.
WindEXE does not require source code modification on the part of the programmer and supports Borland C++ and Turbo Pascal for Windows, Microsoft C and Fortran, and TopSpeed C, C++, Modula-2, and Pascal. WindEXE is priced at $350. Reader service no. 28.
IC Technologies Corp. 6400 Riverside Drive, Building E Dublin, OH 43017 614-798-1091
Software Development Systems has released FreeForm (5.1), a C symbolic debugging environment for ROMable 68000 series applications. FreeForm allows you to incorporate the file system and tools of your host PC or UNIX system directly with your debugging sessions. The debugging process continues while you perform other tasks, such as editing source files, recompiling, or sending e-mail.
Five key commands allow you to choose the program to debug; set a breakpoint; start a program or continue it from a breakpoint; read the value of a variable; and write the value of a variable.
FreeForm is available for UNIX and DOS platforms. Prices begin at $1795. Reader service no. 29.
Software Development Systems Inc. 4248 Belle Lane Downers Grove, IL 60515 800-448-7733
Library Technologies has added EMS/XMS/virtual memory capabilities to C-Heap, its library for Microsoft C and Borland C/C++ compilers. Over 50 new functions allow you to use EEMS 3.2, LIM 4.0, XMS 2.0, and virtual memory without a 64K limit on memory block size. There is an automatic swapping mechanism to relieve the programmer of memory management tasks. The functions use EMS, XMS, or disk space, according to availability, but you can specify certain memory-allocation requirements if you wish.
Virtual memory I/0 is through up to four disk caches, the allocation of which you may specify in order to increase speed. With high-level functions, "dirty bits" can be cleared to avoid writes to EMS, XMS, or virtual memory when the data hasn't been changed, thus reducing execution time.
All functions are compatible with malloc( ), and C-Heap supports all but the tiny memory model. The price is $199, or $399 with source code. Reader service no. 30.
Library Technologies P.O. Box 56031 Madison, WI 53705-9331 800-767-4214 or 608-274-4224
New from Software Ingenuities is Style, a general-purpose C++ class library. Style manages all associations and links between C++ objects. The implementation is transparent to the programmer and allows you to develop applications quickly. You specify all classes and the associations between them with a few declarations. Bidirectional links between C++ objects are built using a small set of functions. Style manages the objects in a RAM-resident database.
With a single call, you can access distantly linked objects; collect objects that meet certain criteria; destroy selected objects; save and load objects from disk files; print selected objects or links between them; and search for a specific object.
Traversal functions navigate through the object database and perform pre-written or programmer-defined operations on the objects. Because traversal functions separate locating objects from performing operations on them, they are easily portable between applications.
Style supports Borland and Zortech C++; prices start at $250. Reader service no. 31.
Software Ingenuities Inc. P.O. Box 1586 Ballwin, MO 63022 314-391-7772
TurboPower Software has released Object Professional for C++ (OPC), a library of text-mode user interface objects. A straight port of the objects from Object Professional for Turbo Pascal, OPC includes text editors, dialog boxes, scrolling data-entry screens, and help systems. OPC features ready-made user interfaces and built-in calls that allow you to customize its behavior. OPC's utilities support interactive design and testing, and they automatically generate source code.
Object Professional for C++ costs $249. Reader service no. 32.
TurboPower Software P.O. Box 49009 Colorado Springs, CO 80949-9009 719-260-6641
Now available from Quinn-Curtis is the Huge Virtual Array and Numerical Analysis Toolbox, which allows you to make use of all system memory available when working with large numeric arrays. The toolbox uses low memory first, then extended memory, and finally hard disk memory. The virtual array size is limited only by the size of the hard disk.
Also included are numerical analysis tools with extensive matrix math support, solutions of large systems of linear equations, curve fitting, multiple and stepwise regression, Fourier analysis, Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, and general statistics.
The toolbox is available for Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Borland C++, and Microsoft C and Quick C. The price is $300. Reader service no. 33.
Quinn-Curtis 35 Highland Circle Needham, MA 02194 617-449-6155
Copyright © 1992, Dr. Dobb's Journal