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- So let's begin:
-
- Well, I'd love to assume since you've got this file that you've got a
- modem..and since you've got a modem you no doubt have downloaded files
- before so you have Pkax and perhaps Arc, and from that I can infer you have
- Show and Less and probably Conman and Mackie, and thus PrefCh and Select...
- but I won't. You actually COULD be sitting there with the thing barely
- hooked together, boxes still scattered around, you've read the "manual" (I
- REALLY hesitate to use the word..) a few times, maybe hauled up the Notepad
- and wondered why, or rather, how the book could not be giving you the right
- directions. Maybe you've actually typed DIR in a CLI window only to be
- confused by a bunch of gibberish rolling by on the screen. And you're STILL
- puzzled about them using icons from religion, menus from a restaurant,
- projects from the office, the notepad off your desk and tools from the
- garage! It's called "Par for the course" in one language, "Welcome to the
- club!" in another. And then you get handed THIS by a friend.
-
- *
-
- Well, the bad news is that you still have to learn the manual. I'm only
- going to fill in the stuff they left out, or worded is such a way that they
- might as well as left it out. No offense to Commodore meant here; computer
- manuals are notorious for being poorly written. Somebody'll come along any
- minute now and tell me this one is one of the all-time greats. The reason,
- in case you were wondering, that the 500 manual and the DOS books are a
- little off the mark sometimes is because they're either not upgraded for
- version 1.2 or else they're just plain ol' wrong. Pick up the Bantam DOS
- book as recommended by the manual, and I'd recommend Compute's AmigaDOS
- Reference Guide, an excellent book, very witty command examples. Yes, you
- have to read them, yes, there'll be a test. By the way, it's very obvious
- which parts of the books are for us, and which aren't.
-
- I'm not going to tell you how to use the computer, as such, I'm going to
- help you get things set up so that when you DO use the computer, it'll be
- more comfortable and natural.
-
- *
-
- By the way, learn to type. That's right, with all your fingers. Typing
- isn't like learning to play the piano. Look at it this way: When was
- the last time someone had to show you how to hold your toothbrush? You just
- kind of learn how to do it and then never think about it again. I mention
- later that there's no better typing exercise than doing an Infocom (all-
- text) adventure, and it's true. Be pro. Be quick. Learn to type.
-
- *
-
- First, some basic definitions to make sure we're on the same page:
-
- device - The whole "container", like df0: or Ram: View them as
- different file cabinets if you want.
-
- directory- Just like a drawer in the file cabinet, it holds stuff.
-
- drawer - Workbench name for a directory. Basically, a drawer is
- a directory with an icon.
-
- file - Just a general term for any single thing that has bytes.
-
- command - A CLI instruction to do something to/for/with a file.
-
- program - A file that is Run, like the Clock.
-
- tool - In general, any program. Specifically, a program that
- performs a certain, individual task, such as the IconEd.
-
- project - A file that needs a tool to run it, like a Notepad note
- (the project) needs Notepad (the tool) to display it.
-
- textfile - A text document like this one that you Type.
-
- scriptfile - A text file full of CLI commands that you Execute. Also
- called a "Batch File" 'cause it batches commands together
- as well as a "Command Sequence File", but that doesn't
- count 'cause it's too many words.
-
- format - If I say something like "look in the Tool Types box for
- the correct format" I mean to check out exactly how the
- command or whatever is laid out; spaces, quote marks,
- capitals, etc.
-
- Format - The command in the System directory. Called Initialize
- by the Workbench, although no one knows why.
-
- Info - There are two Infos, you'll use them both. One's in the
- c directory with the rest of the commands, the other's
- from activating a program's icon and using the Workbench
- Info menu. You'll do a lot with this window.
-
- .info - Tagged on the end of a file name (tool, icon, disk, etc)
- means it's that file's icon. An icon is how you run
- a program from the Workbench; it doesn't need to be there
- for the program to run. Type "clock" in a CLI and up pops
- the clock, "bypassing", as it were, the icon. There
- will be programs you always run through the CLI and
- you'll delete the .info file (the icon). Other programs,
- mainly ones you download, you'll have to borrow or make
- an icon for because they were too cheap to include one.
-
- If you see JUST a ".info" when you Dir a directory, that's
- the window's "file marker" or something. Type "Dir Ram:"
- and it should be empty. Double-click the Ram icon to
- open the window. Close the window and "Dir Ram:" again.
- You'll see ".info" listed, the (newly-created) window's
- small claim to existence.
-
- *
-
- Basic assumptions:
-
- - You're using a backup copy of Workbench. I'm going to tell you to
- (gasp!) delete some stuff to make a little room, but don't worry, it's all
- faithfully there on your master. Actually, you're supposed to have a master
- backup of the master, even, so you never have to touch the original. Again,
- in theory, this holds true for EVERY good master disk you have; Bench, Paint,
- Processor, game, you name it. Blank disks are only a couple of bucks apiece.
- Can you see any OTHER part of your system that's that cheap? Live it up, buy
- lots and lots of disks. Put a master backup set of all the really good
- stuff in a closet somewhere, away from the computer. I like the Sony 2DD
- disks; they're reliable, have colored labels, and, best of all, the labels
- actually peel off months down the road and don't leave all this crap behind.
- That kind of engineering marvel is enough to sell me on a product any day.
- You think I'm kidding? You want put to labels on top of labels making the
- disk thicker, you want to have maybe a gummy edge roll back and have it get
- stuck in the drive, you go right ahead. I don't use White-Out, either, just
- because of the possibility of it flaking. When thinking about how to handle
- the disks and drives, the words "reverance" and "awe" spring to mind.
-
- - Whenever I give a command to type in a CLI window, I'll put it in
- quotes. There are very few times that you actually use quotes ANYwhere
- so I don't think we'll run into any confusion. If I list out a string of
- CLI commands, like so, I won't use quotes:
-
- Dir df0:devs
- Delete Trashcan.info
- Run Clock
-
-
- - When I capitalize the word "Type", it's the CLI command to type a docu-
- ment, or, more properly, a textfile. As mentioned in the ReadMe file, the
- very first program you should get is Less, which you will replace your Type
- command with, like so: "Copy Less df0:c/Type" which copies it to your c
- directory, renames "Less" to "Type", and in the process wipes out the
- original and quite worthless Type command.
-
- *
-
- So, one of the first things we need is a stripped-down version of Work-
- bench 1.2. This will be a good chance to go through the various directories
- and make the few odd mentions. Watch that byte gauge and hold on.
-
- *
-
- Demos:
- I've seen all kinds of "graphic hacks" now, and I rate these a "C-". Look
- at them, gawk in awe if you must, then delete the whole thing. You can
- either activate the Demos drawer icon then Discard with the Workbench menu,
- or type in the CLI "Delete demos all". Watch the little bar graph drop down
- a notch or two. Ah-h-h...elbow room. You also type "Delete Demos.info" to
- get rid of the needless drawer icon if you're using the CLI.
-
- Expansion:
- Blow that guy right out of the water. You won't need it until you get a
- hard drive and even then you won't want the drawer's icon hangin' around.
- The hard drive looks in the Expansion directory for its driver (a small file)
- but the Expansion.info file, the icon, is a separate thing and doesn't need
- to be there.
-
- Empty:
- You can keep it around for now; it's harmless and useful to make new
- drawers with. When you activate it then Duplicate it, it actually
- duplicates both files for you; the Empty directory and the Empty.info file,
- the icon. If you Dir in the CLI you'll see Copy Of Empty (dir) and down
- below the Copy Of Empty.info file.
-
- Trashcan:
- The general reason this doesn't have a place on the Workbench is
- this: Workbench is already jammed to the teeth, byte-wise, so if we've got
- something we just kind of want to let hang around a while before we decide
- whether or not to dump it, we don't want it hogging up byte space. It's
- much more practical to simply store it on a separate disk named "Misc"
- or something. We won't delete friendly ol' Trashcan (there are some great
- trashcan icons out there), we just won't use it much. Sorry!
-
- Preferences:
- Rename this puppy "Prefs" so you won't have to type out "p-r-e-f-e-r-e-n-
- c-e-s" every time you want to open it. The book covers Prefs pretty well.
- When you Save in Prefs it saves the current screen/pointer/printer info to a
- tiny file called "system-configuration" in the devs directory. Make note of
- the difference between the SAVE and USE functions. When you get the program
- PrefCh (off a BBS) you'll only use the USE box.
-
- Utilities:
- This drawer might be more appropriately named "Tools", although either's
- fine. You can also use "Utils" if you like. In it we find a couple of
- standard tools, the Notepad and the Calculator. Notepad is only an example
- of a word processor; they make no claim to the contrary. ProWrite, the real
- word processor program, is made up of 143,624 bytes, whereas humble little
- Notepad is a paltry 54,548. You can use it to play around with, and I could
- spend a page on Notepad alone, but it would be a waste of both our time as
- you're definitely eventually going to buy a regular program like ProWrite if
- you're into writing at all. We don't want it on this particular disk so
- activate the icon and sayonara.
-
- What I will say about the Notepad is this: If you want more than one font
- in a document you have to have FLAGS=noglobal in the Info window's Tool
- Types. Also, check out a Notepad note's Info window for the layout of
- the font and window size formats in the Tool Types box.
-
- The Calculator is pretty straightforward if you've read the manual. We'll
- keep it around for now unless you know you don't want it.
-
- System:
- This drawer should be named "Misc", or "Catch-all" or "WhoKnows?", the
- stuff they've got in here. The IconEd is just another tool, so, with both
- the Utilities window and the System windows open, grab the IconEd icon with
- the left mouse button, swing it over to the Utilities window and drop it in.
- Do the same with the CLI icon. System means system, like the whole
- deal, not just some isolated tool. I suppose the CLI would technically
- belong in the System drawer, but for now let's just treat it like a tool.
-
- The manual covers nice ol' IconEd surprisingly in depth. The only thing
- that took me a bit to catch onto was: Let's say you have a neat icon, but
- it's a Project icon and you want it to be for some utility/program/tool (the
- words all kind of blend together after a while...) and you need the icon to
- be a Tool icon. To see what type of icon it is, you activate it and pull
- down the Info menu, right? In order for the Info window to work an icon
- MUST have an accompanying file, be it a tool, textfile or whatever. So if
- you had a lone icon and wanted to see its Info, you'd have to use Ed to
- creat a textfile with the icon's name (without the .info) first. The file
- doesn't have to say anything, there just has to be something there to back
- up the icon. You could also just rename something else temporarily to the
- name of the icon if that's easier.
-
- So you fire up IconEd and Load up a tool icon, any one will do. Now move
- to the next editing window and Load your neat project icon. Go back to the
- first window, erase the sucker (Undo Frame), bring the good icon over (From
- Frame), Save as you will and there it is. It's a tool icon because you
- saved through the window you loaded up that original tool icon in. No prob.
-
- Well...actually, yes, problem if you're having trouble with the Load and
- Save business; spelling out the correct name to load an icon, looking
- through various drawers for icons you've saved, but don't know where...
- This problem is called "pathnames", which you'll pick up pretty quick.
-
- GraphicDump works fine and doesn't need any further documentation.
- There's no need for it on this disk so give it the heave-ho.
-
- Say is definitely a kick. The pitch controls, etc, are fun but remember
- you HAVE to enter the pitch when you change the voice to have effect.
- Experiment with different settings.
-
- example: -r-p85
-
- default: p=110
- s=150
-
- I like: -p110-s120
-
- I've decided Say has a Canadian accent, possible Western Quebec. Great
- phonetic practice is to make Say pronounce Spanish words. It's tough but
- can be done quite well. Future project: Make up a whole bunch of Say
- windows ready to say all kinds of things, hook up the audio output to the
- phone line somehow and CALL somebody! Ha!! For now, give Say the axe.
-
- CLI opens up a new CLI window. There's a similar command in the c
- directory called, oddly enough, "NewCLI". Type NewCLI in a CLI window and
- you've got another. I'm putting all these commands, etc, in capital letters
- for your benefit, remember. DOS doesn't give a hoot.
-
- Diskcopy is just that. Workbench proceedure is to pick up the FROM disk
- with the mouse and drop it onto the TO disk, and Diskcopy does the rest.
- It will go bye-bye after you get MarauderII, a much-needed diskcopying
- program. As far as store-bought software goes, MarauderII is first on
- the list, followed closely by FaccII. MarauderII, besides allowing you
- to make copies of most of your copy-protected disks, has an extremely impor-
- tant diskcopy Verification feature. We'll always use it for important disks.
-
- Format will be much-used, but not from an icon. You'll usually type
- in Format and the name of the drive the disk to be formatted is in. You,
- the budding Amigalite, don't want any dumb Trashcan on your clean disk, as
- the Workbench's Initialize command demands on giving you, so the CLI allows
- you to format the disk clean. Handy little fella!
-
- Format drive df1: name Empty noicons
-
- Format is VERY particular as to correct usage, so write it down. As a
- rule you usually format in drive df1, just to keep it away from Workbench.
- Don't want any nasty accidents! The name is up to you but you have to have
- the word "name" there in the command. To be technical, the subcommand
- "noicons" should actually read "notrash", as it's really keeping the
- Trashcan directory from being created, with, of course, its humble icon. I
- don't want to "be technical" in this tutorial, but there are definitely some
- things we want to pay attention to. When and where directories are created
- being one of them. Especially, ahem, without our permission.
-
- InitPrinter: Don't have the slightest idea what it is and have never seen
- any documentation on it. All I know is my printer hates it. Send it to the
- Great Byte God In The Sky. If your printer doesn't work, THEN try it.
-
- NoFastMem is a seldom-used command. We're tossing it off this bench but
- just remember it in case some program wants you to run it first. Of all the
- progs, hacks and games I've run this last year, I have found exactly ONE
- program that used it, and it wasn't even documented, I discovered it by
- accident. If, or should I say, because you have a meg of Ram, the first Ram
- to be used up is FastMem, the expansion pack. It was only when I had a
- bunch of stuff up on the screen and a bunch of stuff stored in Ram that
- this certain program suddenly ran much faster. I made some room in Ram
- and sure enough the program was "slow" again. Having never had the chance/
- opportunity/need to use NoFastMem, it took me a little while to figure out
- what was going on and try it out. Which brings us to...
-
- SlowMemLast, which I never HAVE used. We automatically, as far as I know,
- use our FastMem first, which, unless I've misplaced my physics book, means
- that SlowMem would come after, or "last". Good-bye.
-
- SetMap you definitely can bomb. Way way down the road on a rainy wintery
- day you can dust it off and try to make it do something besides goof up
- your keyboard. DON'T, however, delete it until you've deleted the SetMap
- command from the startup-sequence. More on that soon.
-
- If there's nothing left in the System drawer you need an icon for (you
- don't need one for Diskcopy and Format), you can clean things up a bit
- with "Delete System.info", which will erase the System's drawer icon.
- The System directory will still be there, just not cluttering up our Bench
- with a useless icon.
-
- Well, okay, if you really want to keep it, go ahead.
-
- *
-
- I love icons, by the way, have tons in storage. If you want to keep an
- icon around just for fun, but want the disk space from the program back, re-
- member just use the CLI and Delete the program file, but not the .info file.
-
-
- Those are the directories that have/had icons attached. We'll make a small
- sidetrip experiment for a minute and then come back to the Workbench and take
- a good look (haul out that eraser!) at the files in the other directories.
-
- *
-
- Okay..feeling brave? We're going to take a tiny, hesitant step into the
- dreaded Interlace Land..
-
- Few dare to tread there! Few have survived to tell the tale...
-
- Turn down the lights and close the curtains. Serious.
-
- Pop open the Prefs (if you haven't renamed it "Prefs" by now, don't blame
- me), activate the Interlace box and Save that rascal. Now don't be
- scared..the first time I did this it only cost me $179 in the shop, a
- stiff warning from the store owner not to do it again and an afternoon in
- court due to the ensuing litigation from Commodore. Ready?
-
- Okay, upon re-booting open the Bench window and see what you think.
- Looks like hell, doesn't it? Open the Prefs and pull the whole Prefs window
- down to the bottom half of the screen. Now we'll adjust the bench colors
- with the color slide gadgets. They go from 0 to 15, with 0 being at the far
- left. Click in the slide box to move the pointers one at a time, move them
- so they read:
- blue - 0 white - 6 black - 0 gold - 7
- 0 7 0 5
- 6 7 0 0
-
-
- Amazing, eh? #2's obviously the reason for the Interlace jitter. Not
- fiddling with the colors is the main reason most people think Interlace is
- for the birds..they just boot it up, go "Yecch!", and that's that. The main
- reason you don't see it in the stores is because of the bright lighting.
- This is obviously a low light, non-glare situation. I ran #1 at 0,0,6
- for a long time but recently moved it down to 0,0,5. The perfect Prefs
- setting just kind of evolves as you do. Save this setting. Pop open a
- few windows, your Directory Utility if you've got one, hey, twice the screen
- size! Room!! The Interlace mode, fairly unique, compliments of Commodore.
-
- For daytime viewing you might brighten things up a bit. I have a prefs
- setting called "daytime", colors 006/788/000/860, I use with the program
- PrefCh. Experiment!
-
- If you've got bad eyes even the toned-down Prefs colors may not be
- acceptable, in which case I'd suggest you start saving your money and look
- around for a high-persistence monitor that you can run in Interlace without
- the jitter. I almost dare to call Interlace a necessity.
-
-
- So now that we've got some room, drag the Workbench down to the bottom
- half of the screen and open a nice big CLI window in the upper half. Or, be
- incredible and make the entire screen one window.
-
- Type "Dir devs opt a" and you should see:
-
-
- keymaps (dir) - keymaps dir and all the keymaps within
-
- printers (dir) - printer drivers
-
- clipboards (dir) - empty unless you used Paste and Save feature of
- Notepad (this is where it saves it)
-
- MountList - for use with hard drives; Type this for a classic
- example of computerspeak
-
- narrator.device - part of Say
-
- parallel.device - parallel port (printer) controller
-
- printer.device - for printer
-
- serial.device - serial port (modem) controller
-
- system-configuration - information saved by Prefs
-
-
-
- Now, (heh heh heh..) for the deletion part...
-
- You don't need any of the keymaps, this isn't Sweden, so:
-
- Delete devs/keymaps all
-
- and it's good-bye usefulllessness. Don't miss them if you possibly can!
-
- Again, stick with me 'til we do the startup-sequence or there's gonna be
- problems. SetMap looks for one of these keymaps.
-
- Next (wringing his sweaty hands..), the ("NO! NO!") printer drivers! In
- my case I have an Epson EX-800 and the manual told me a JX-80 driver would
- do, so I kept that one and blew off the rest. If you have a printer but
- haven't deleted the unnecessary drivers yet, it would probably be quicker
- just to "Delete Devs/Printers all" then "MakeDir Devs/Printers" then copy
- the driver over from the Workbench master. Unless, of course, you have a
- Directory Utility. For the rest of you lugs, just "Delete Devs/Printers
- all" and be done with it. When you get the printer you can make the dir
- and copy the correct driver over from the master disk.
-
- We'll leave the Clipboards directory and device alone as other programs
- may want them. If you'll never have a printer you can bomb the printer.de-
- vice. Get rid of that terrible reminder of how much you DON'T know about
- computers by deleting the MountList and that's it for devs.
-
- Now "Dir l". We won't touch any of this stuff. A few programs down the
- road will kindly request we put some small handler file in our l directory..
- no problem, we're very generous and are glad to accomodate them. As long as
- they keep it under, sa-a-ay, a thousand bytes. I run a subroutine called
- Conman which has a handler file of a whopping 184 bytes, but I, wishing to
- set a sterling example for all Amigakind, generously, no, benevolantly allow
- a file that size to clog up my heretofore unsullied l directory.
-
- We'll leave the libs alone too. You never can tell when some program
- might try to access one. If your drive light comes on sometime when you're
- not expecting it, like if you're running a program out of Ram, chances are
- something's seeking a lib.
-
- The directory t is a backup for the Ed program. That's why it takes Ed so
- long to write what seems like a relatively small text file, because it's
- writing it twice. Just leave it be, somebody may want it. Including you.
-
- "Dir s" and there's our new buddy, the startup-sequence. Delete the
- "startup-sequence.hd" to get rid of the suggested hard drive sequence. It's
- really bad, of course. When you get a hard drive you'll look at this one,
- look at the manufacturer's suggested sequence, throw them both in the (real)
- trash and make your own like everybody else does. That's "everybody else"
- as in "Amiga/Atari owners", of course. "Everybody else" as in "everybody
- else" means people who just turn a switch on.
-
- We'll play around with the start-seq in a few minutes. By the way, the
- Clock is just another tool and can either be left where it is or dropped,
- literally, into the Utilities a.k.a. Tools drawer.
-
- Now the Big Daddy of them all, the c directory: Now unless you KNOW you
- need any of the following commands, in the CLI type:
-
- Delete c/Ask
- Delete c/BindDrivers
- Delete c/ChangeTaskPri
- Delete c/DiskChange
- Delete c/Edit
- Delete c/FileNote
- Delete c/Lab
- Delete c/Mount
- Delete c/Protect
- Delete c/Relabel
- Delete c/Search
- Delete c/SetDate
- Delete c/Skip
-
-
- Having a good time? The majority of those commands are advanced DOS
- commands which you might need as you progress in AmigaSpeak. They're
- right there, safely tucked away on the master disk for immediate copyage, so
- don't hesitate to wipe them out. Again, make sure you don't re-boot until we
- streamline your st-seq or it'll look for BindDrivers and stop.
-
- So let's do it: Type "Ed s/startup-sequence" and there it is. See the
- Esc key on the upper left of your keyboard? That's our main key for Ed
- commands. Your new buddies are the arrow keys, the backspace key and the
- Delete key. You'll eventually master these guys. Move to the line that
- starts with "echo A500...", etc, hit the Esc key then the "d" key, then
- Return. Goodby, advertisement! Do the same thing to worthless-unless-you-
- have-a-hard-drive BindDrivers.
-
- Now just to briefly pre-explain this next bunch of gibberish, "sys:"
- is like df0:, df1: and Ram: except it's kind of a wildcard. The line
- could read "if exists df0:system", "df0" instead of "sys:", and it would
- also work perfectly. Use df0 until you understand Sys a little better.
-
- Anyway, we KNOW the System directory is on df0, so we don't need all this
- yak. And, may I remind you, the commands If and Endif have to be read off
- the disk, so it's basically time-consuming and well as needless. The idea is
- to issue the command "Path System Add" if the System directory exists, which
- we know does. The "Add" is also unnecessary so those six lines get con-
- densed to:
-
- Path System
- Path Utilities
-
- The command Path can accept an extended string, so the final command
- ends up:
-
- Path System Utilities
-
- Six lines down to one! When we get done you'll want to time our new
- startup versus the master disk.
-
- The "Dir Ram:" is about the silliest thing we've seen yet. The idea isn't
- to "Dir" Ram, it's just to call attention to it so Workbench will recognize
- it and the Ram icon will load. ANY command that involves Ram will do, and
- gee, what's that right below but a "Path Ram:"? So wipe out the "Dir Ram:"
- and "Path Ram:" and change the Path command to "Path Ram: System Utilities".
-
- Put SetMap into hibernation. There may be some great use for it I've
- never heard or thought of so you're certainly welcome to investigate it for
- yourself. Find out about InitPrinter and SlowMemLast while you're there.
-
- You'll use AddBuffers until you pick up a copy, oops, 'scuse me, dirty
- word, pick up your FaccII disk down at the store and get it going. Briefly,
- when you run AddBuffers it takes storage out of Ram and allocates it for
- remembering the stuff that most recently took place. Then it calls it out
- of memory instead of having to re-access the disk, MUCH quicker. Using the
- Delete, backspace and arrow keys, change the 20 to 150 and delete all the
- rest of that crap. If you have a meg of Ram, change it to 300 or 350 or
- something (it won't hurt anything) and have fun. Make sure to leave that
- space after the colon before the number. Be incredibly generous and give
- grateful little df1 50 or so.
-
- The bad news about AddBuffers, and why it's quickly going to end up on
- the scrap heap, is that it can't be "turned off" so you can get the Ram
- back. FaccII is a sophisticated AddBuffers, complete with OFF switch.
- Compared to every other piece of good software you'll buy, it's about the
- least expensive at around $25-$30. And by far and away the most-used, if
- not appreciated. An excellent program.
-
- Next on the list is LoadWB, which is the one that makes all the racket
- as the disk icons are loaded. As you may know, LoadWb isn't strictly
- necessary. If you're running certain animations, for instance, LoadWb isn't
- used. In that case we'd need a different st-seq but fortunately there's a
- great program out there in BBS/FredFish land called Select that will allow
- us to SELECT our st-seq at the very beginning of boot-up. Nice!
-
- Blow FailAt away. FailAt is for the command following it in the script-
- file, in this case SetClock. If you don't have the meg of Ram, and thus the
- real time clock, FailAt keeps an error message from flashing. If you don't
- have the meg, blast both of them.
-
- SetClock, perhaps amazingly, is fine just the way it is. You can puzzle
- out the difference between opt load and opt save on your own.
-
- Scratch Date, like, who needs it. It just spits out the date.
-
- Endcli is just fine too. That "> nil:" directs the "CLI task ending"
- message EndCLI flashes to zeroland. Same with the clock. Note how the ">"
- is next to the nil: in SetClock but a space away from it in EndCLI. It only
- shows that it doesn't matter. Nice of them to give us this little example.
-
- If and when you have problems with the st-seq, use the Echo command in
- front of every command to tell you what's coming next, so you'll be able to
- see where it fails. Something like
-
- Echo "Adding paths.."
- Path Ram: System Utilities
- etc
-
- *
-
- So gee, uh, didn't leave much, did we? Looks to me like we've got
-
- Path Ram: System Utilities
- AddBuffers df0: 150 df1: 50
- LoadWb
- SetClock > nil: opt load
- EndCLI > nil:
-
-
- Hate to say it, but that's all! Hit Esc, then "X", then Return to save it.
-
- *
-
- Reboot this puppy and check that startup time.
-
- And the semi-amazing thing is that it's the exact same startup result we
- had at the beginning, we just kind of streamlined things a bit.
-
- Minor Note: Always set the paths BEFORE LoadWb.
-
- *
-
- We're not keeping Notepad on this disk so:
-
- Dir fonts opt a ;to take a look, if you haven't
- Delete fonts all ;watch the byte gauge on this one!
- MakeDir fonts
-
- Wild, eh? It isn't that there's so many bytes involved, it's that
- whole bunch of sub-directories. When a directory is created, a certain
- byteage is kind of "assumed" for that directory, hence all the disk space
- needed for a bunch of truly bite-sized fonts. When you learn how to use the
- command Assign we'll get the space back AND save the fonts. For now get
- rid of them. If you're hooked on Notepad and want all the neat fonts, make
- yourself another copy of Workbench, call it NoteBench and use that disk
- for quote, word-processing, unquote.
-
- The font you see on the screen, like in a CLI window, is a default font
- residing deep in the darker recesses of the Amiga. Like the t directory, we
- may not use the font directory but we want it there just in case some program
- comes along looking for it. The font you see, by the way, can (naturally!)
- be changed with a BBS prog named NewFont. I'll mention it later when I list
- out the BBS/FredFish programs you'll need.
-
- *
-
- Okay! I'd say that's Step One; clearing some room on the Bench and
- straightening up the st-seq. Make a master copy of this disk named
- BlankBench. Whenever you make a master copy of something always boot it up
- just to be sure it works. This is especially true if you don't have
- MarauderII yet. Rename this disk "Workbench" and this is the one we'll use.
-
- *
-