About Ininuga

Ininuga is a PC program, intended for creation or improvement (minimization) of abbreviated lotto wheels. It allows any choice of parameters (v, k, t, m) in range 1..32. (See What are Wheels for explanation.) A typical time to do this job varies from fraction of a second to several hours, depending on parameters (and consequently the wheel size). A non optimized (far too big) wheel is made fast, then reduction goes ever slower. When started from scratch, the final size is not always impressive compared to some wheels I saw published on the Web (e.g. Peter's Wheels Page), particularly in well researched Pick-6 (k=6) area. But Ininuga may turn out to be strong in finding further reductions of wheels, made by other methods. (Not so in m=t area, at least I found no improvement to wheels from La Jolla - but I only tried a few.)

What Ininuga 2.3 (the current version, since Feb 23, 2002) adds to previous version is
a) representing combinations with their ordinal numbers (click here for explanation) and
b) displaying of covering percentage after testing. (The list of unmatched "ways" may still be clipped if too long, but the covering is tested all the way through.)

Ininuga 2.2 was identical to version 2.1, except for internal handling of the memory, which is more static. As a result, it may need more memory (which is not likely to be a problem on today's computers), but I'm told that it is more stable on Windows NT, where the previous version crashes (I failed to find out exactly why). However, you can still type "ininuga ver21" in DOS command line to make it work identicly as the previous version. ("ver21" in lower case, not "VER21"!).

Ininuga 2.1 is a DOS interactive user friendly program, developed with Borland Pascal and Turbo Assembler. It should also run on Windows95/98 DOS shell. Currently available (free) are now both DOS real mode and DPMI compiled versions. The 640k memory limitation of DOS real mode implies a limit of 2000 combinations (b<=2000) in any phase of the algorithm, typically meaning a final size about 1000. (If you have any reason to need this version, it can be E-mailed to you.) The DOS protected mode (DPMI) compiled version has a limit of 8000 combinations (final about 4000) due to segment structure of the memory.

I doubt I will ever bother to lift the 8000 barrier in a DOS version. Eventual Windows version (using virtual memory) should not have this problem anyway. (But sorry, not near yet.)

The 32 numbers barrier is a tougher one. I can hardly imagine lifting it with 32-bit processors. Some assembler routines are complicated enough without that. So, as you guessed, a 386 or higher processor is required for the current version. (Both DOS real mode and DPMI)

A 387 math coprocessor is not needed (without loss of speed, it's not used.)

The name "Ininuga" was chosen as the easiest to pronounce out of 70 random strings of 7 letters. If it means anything in any language, it is mere coincidence.

Program Ininuga was developed by Uros Boltin, Jamova 66, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Any questions, comments or suggestions are welcome at ininuga@go.to.
(Warning: E-mail address was changed - uboltin@usa.net is no longer available after July 2001.)