The Cookie Monster
	------------------

Back in the old days, there was a famous program known as the "cookie
monster."  This program would sit quietly inside a computer until a
specified time, when it would clear the screen, print this message:

	Give me a cookie!

and lock the system until the user typed "cookie".  The cookie monster
has now been given the power of speech.

To run the cookie monster, simply type "monster".  The cookie monster is
a memory resident program, occupying about 5K.	The cookie monster waits
until a timer runs out, then interrupts the current program and asks for a
cookie.  The user must type the word "cookie" to continue.

This pre-release version watches the DOS idle interrupt, int 28h.  This means
that the cookie monster only wakes up when DOS is issuing int 28h's.  Many
programs sit around waiting for input using the BIOS keyboard interrupt,
and therefore int 28h never happens.  A future version of this program
will have more robust pop-up code, enabling it to interrupt a wider variety
of programs.

File		Description
----		-----------
readme		this file

monster.exe	the cookie monster executable
monster.asm	cookie monster main program source
monvoice.asm	speech data (cookie and yum) in .asm format

cookie		various speech data in binary format
yum
yum2
munch
burp
thanks
play.exe	program to play one of the above files
form.exe	program to put speech data into .asm format

voice.doc	document by Alan Jones describing the digitization process

Notes on the cookie monster source code
---------------------------------------

To create monster.exe, do this:

	masm monster;
	masm monvoice;
	link monster monvoice;

The length of the fuse is controlled by an equate near the beginning of
monster.asm called 'fuselen'.  On an 8 MHz PC, each increment of the fuse
corresponds to about 90 seconds of DOS idle time.  The default setting is
20, which means about 30 minutes.  This may be too small for faster machines.
Note that the first wakeup happens after only one tick of the fuse.

Alternate monvoice.asm files may be constructed.  Several files containing
appropriate messages have been included.  To create a new monvoice.asm
file, run the speech data through form.exe like this:

	form burp > burp.asm

and edit the resulting file to include the header and trailer information
present in monvoice.asm.  You also have to give the data a name, the default is
"speech".  Note that the current cookie monster needs two messages, Giveme and
Yum, and the "cookie" file is the only one included that is really suitable for
the Giveme role.  All the others are Yum messages.  I will take requests,
if you need a "Give me a quarter!" or "What's the password?" message.

This cookie monster was written by Tom Holroyd (CompuServe id [74017,3112]).
The speech digitization hardware and software were designed by Alan Jones,
and the hardware was constructed by Mark Todorovich.