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The HomeBase Installation Program
HBINSTAL.EXE
Brown Bag Software
2155 South Bascom Avenue
Suite 114
Campbell CA 95008
Tel: (408) 559-4545
HomeBase Installation Program
HBINSTAL
The HomeBase install program, HBINSTAL, has been written
not only to provide easy installation of HomeBase but also to
allow existing installations to be modified without resorting
to a text editor and without the need for an advanced
understanding of the batch processor language. Our aim is
to produce a program that will allow even a first-time user
to install HomeBase on their computer. Comprehensive,
context-sensitive help has been provided. Just press the F1
key at any time and the current possibilities will be
explained in more detail.
HomeBase can also be configured by editing the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file directly, but the need for this should be
almost eliminated by use of HBINSTAL. There may be special
cases where the program cannot accommodate some new
requirement. In such a case, we shall always be available for
technical support at (408)559-4545. HBINSTAL will also be
changed from time to time to reflect these additions; the
latest version will always be available on our Bulletin
Board. Our BBS can be reached at (408)371-7654. It is a PC-
Board, running at 300, 1200, 2400 or 9600 baud - set your
modem to 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity. Technical
support is also available on the BBS.
When you first run HBINSTAL, it examines the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the default (current) drive, looking for
the lines which place HomeBase into memory (i.e., those which
start HBKERNEL, HBVSI, HBASYNC and HB). If it does not find
these lines, it asks you if you have another .BAT file which
starts HomeBase. If you do not, it assumes that you will need
to do a full installation (copying the files from the
original floppies to a working set or to a subdirectory on
your hard disk). Please turn to the section describing the
Initial Installation Procedure.
If HBINSTAL finds the lines to start HomeBase, it goes
straight to the re-configuration section, to allow you to
change the existing installation. At this point, you may wish
to edit some other .BAT file, create another .BAT file to run
HomeBase or make a new installation altogether (maybe to give
a pre-configured version on floppies to a friend). In this
case, simply refer to the third group of selections on the
menu you will be presented with. Please turn to the section
describing Re-Configuration of a HomeBase Installation.
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
INITIAL INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
Remember that you may always obtain further explanation
of your options or the meaning of questions by hitting the F1
key. There are three main reasons for using this menu:
1) to install HomeBase on your computer from scratch;
2) to produce a new set of floppies to run HomeBase
from; or
3) to create a new .BAT file to start HomeBase in a
different way, from an existing installation.
The third case will be discussed in the section on
Modifying an Existing Installation, below.
In the first two cases, you will first be asked if there
is a .BAT file on your machine which starts up HomeBase. You
should answer NO.
You will then be asked which type of media (floppy disks
or hard disk) you will be installing HomeBase on and whether
you will be starting from the original floppy disks (normally
the case) or not.
If you will be producing floppy disks to run HomeBase
from, you will need to have ready a diskcopy of your boot
disk (with at least 40k free space) and a blank, formatted
floppy disk. The installation will allow you to start the
computer from this copy of your boot disk with the second
disk in drive B:. This second disk must be in drive B: in
order to use HomeBase. Files will be copied from the original
HomeBase disks onto your disks; the program will prompt you
when it needs you to exchange disks. The files being copied
will be shown on the screen as the install progresses.
If you are installing on a hard disk your life is a
little easier. All you will have to do is tell HBINSTAL what
to call the HomeBase subdirectory (if you just hit [Return]
it will go into C:\HOMEBASE). You'll still need to swap
HomeBase Disk 1 for Disk 2 when prompted, of course. The
files being copied will be shown on the screen as the install
progresses.
In either case, after the files have all been copied,
the program will go on to ask a series of questions. These
questions are designed to ensure that this initial configura-
tion of HomeBase will work properly on as many machines as
possible, without the need for further customization. In some
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
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HomeBase Installation Program
cases, when you answer yes, you will be asked further ques-
tions (e.g., if you have other programs which use the
Alt+Shift key combination you will be given a choice of other
possibilities). Remember that you may get help at any time by
hitting the F1 key.
Finally, you will be asked if you want your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file to start up HomeBase. Normally you would answer "Y"es.
If you already have an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, it will be
displayed on the screen with a flashing arrow on the left
hand side of the text. You should normally position the arrow
after the last line of the file, unless the last thing the
.BAT file does is to start up a program. In that case, you
must place the arrow on the line which changes to the
subdirectory for that program, or on the command itself, if
there is no change of directory. The HomeBase lines will be
inserted BEFORE the line designated. In some cases, in
response to your answers to the installation questions,
HBINSTAL will have made recommendations as to how to position
the HomeBase lines - these recommendations must be followed
if HomeBase is to work properly on your machine. You do get a
second chance to position the lines if you are not satisfied
with the way things look.
If you do not have an AUTOEXEC.BAT, one is created for
you.
If you are already familiar with HomeBase, then you may
wish to proceed to the re-configuration section immediately.
If you are not, we suggest that you stop at this point, reply
"N"o you do not want to change any HomeBase options, you will
be immediately returned to DOS.
Please remember that HomeBase will only be available
once the AUTOEXEC.BAT file has been run. Therefore, reboot
your computer.
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
RE-CONFIGURATION OF A HOMEBASE INSTALLATION
Normally you will be modifying the setup in your
AUTOEXEC.BAT, but the modification can be made to any .BAT
file selected with the "B" option. If there are no HomeBase
relevant lines in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file you will first have
been asked what the name of the .BAT file which starts
HomeBase is. You will have answered with the full name and
path of the file you wish to edit (e.g., C:\HOMEBASE\HB.BAT).
There is a third situation, in which you wish to create
a .BAT file which starts HomeBase in a different way from the
existing .BAT file. To do this, you must choose "I"nitial
Installation and go through the questions described above.
This .BAT file, is then the one operated on by the functions
in the menu you see now.
This menu allows you to customize HomeBase to a very
high degree. If you don't like the screen colors, the on-
screen clock, or the hot-key prefix or letter choice, then
you can just pick what you would like off the appropriate
menu.
The Main Menu leads you to several sub-menus, as
follows:
C - Colors for HomeBase Screens
N.B. Even on a monochrome screen, several alternative
screen effects are sometimes available; the differences
are readily visible by just calling up the selection
screen.
The color of each of the sections of the HomeBase
menus can be modified to your taste from this menu.
There are two stages for the definitions. First, choose
the section of the screen you wish to modify, using the
Up-Arrow and Down-Arrow keys to move the flashing arrow.
Hit the Return (or Enter) key to select, the arrow stops
flashing and the box cursor in the color palate starts
to blink. Now use the arrow keys to move the cursor to
the color combination you would like to try. The example
windows will change as you move the cursor. At all times
you can see exactly how the selected color combination
will appear.
K - Keyboard Options
These options govern the way the keyboard input to
HomeBase is handled. When you type on the keyboard, the
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
characters normally go straight to the processor and
then to the screen. If the processor is engaged in some
time-consuming task, then it puts up a dam, as it were,
to hold the characters you are typing until it is ready
to accept them. The standard "Keyboard Buffer" size is
12 characters. If the "dam" overflows, then the computer
sounds an error beep and subsequent characters are lost.
K - Keyboard buffer size and delay
When you hit a key, normally only a single
character is sent to the computer. If you continue
hold the key down, then after a brief pause the
character repeats and continues to do so at a set
rate until you release the key. You may change this
repeat rate if you wish. Maybe you'd like to be
able to move around your word processor screen
faster, for instance.
A word of warning, though. If you have both a
rapid repeat rate (short delay) and a large
keyboard buffer, and you try to do something with a
slow response (e.g., move to the next page of your
word processor document) then you run the risk of
overshooting. There could still be a queue of many
Page Down commands in the buffer when you see the
page you wanted and take your finger off the key.
For this reason, we would recommend using either
the standard buffer size, or even smaller, if you
are going to decrease the keyboard repeat delay.
Note that some programs, such as spelling
checkers and command line editors, do not like to
have the keyboard buffering altered. If you have a
problem then just hit K until Keyboard buffer
disabled appears. This lets all buffering be
handled by DOS, in the standard way.
B - Remember keyboard buffer across tasks
The normal way the keyboard buffer operates
(as described above) allows keystrokes to be queued
and passed on to the next task which runs. That is,
if you have commands in the buffer which first
start up a program and then execute some option of
the program, then those keystrokes are passed on
correctly. Sometimes you may not wish to pass on
further keystrokes. In other words, you want to
flush (empty) the buffer between tasks.
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HomeBase Installation Program
M - Novice/Expert mode
In novice mode, if you make an error, the
computer beeps and pauses with an error message on
the screen. The keyboard buffer is emptied and you
must hit the spacebar to clear the error and to
continue. In Expert mode, the computer just beeps.
It is assumed that you will know what caused the
problem, so no error message is displayed.
O - "One-handed" hotkey entry
Some people do not like to or cannot press
three keys at once to go to a particular section of
HomeBase. They would rather hit Alt+Shift at the
same time and THEN hit the letter to select the
task. "Sticky" hotkey mode, as this is affec-
tionately known, seems to be used mostly by the
disabled and by programmers.
G - General HomeBase options
Some of the ways the screen appears and behaves can
be changed from this menu.
C - The clock
The clock may appear in 24hr or in 12hr
format. If you have a system on which you set the
system clock by hand, you may want to keep the
clock off the screen until you have set it.
Actually this is normally easier to achieve by
putting the TIME command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT
before the HomeBase section.
Some programs, such as Lotus 1-2-3, do not
like to have the clock interrupt modified. If you
have any problems, one of the first things to try
is turning the clock off completely. Note that,
even then, you can still get the time on the screen
by using Alt+Shift+T without causing the same
problem.
U - Clock update frequency
The default refresh rate for the on-screen
clock is once per second. If you scroll rapidly in
some programs this may cause flickering of the
clock. If you find this too distracting, either
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
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HomeBase Installation Program
turn the clock of as the default or select the 18
times per second refresh rate (which will very
slightly slow your computer).
Z - Window zoom
The movement of the HomeBase screens as they
open has been designed to provide visual clues as
to the function and operation of HomeBase. When you
close a screen it very often leads you eye to the
next available response. We believe that the
zooming is a real help, it does not speed up the
program to disable it but you may do so if you
wish.
S - Screen saver
If you do not use your computer for a period
of time, but leave it turned on then you will
probably want to turn the screen off. This avoids
burning patterns into the screen phosphor. HomeBase
can do this for you automatically, the length of
time before the screen is turned off is variable.
Just tapping the Shift key (or any other) will
return the screen instantly.
D - Directory path to HomeBase files
If you wish (we recommend not, since it makes
support more complicated) you can place the
HomeBase data files in a separate subdirectory.
HomeBase will expect to find certain files other
than the NoteBases in this subdirectory: HB.HLP,
HB.NDX, HB.MNU, HB.MDX and HBALARMS.*. You will
also probably wish to keep HBPRINT.* and HBTEMPLT.*
there.
# - Alarm reminder duration
Normally the box notifying you of an alarm
will show on the screen for 7 minutes. You may vary
this as you wish. Musical alarms sound at half-time
and at full-time.
A - Advanced keyboard options
You may already have a program which uses the
Alt+Shift combination or find yourself in a situation
where hardware or software restrictions limit the hot-
key combinations available. For this reason we have made
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
it possible to change any of the key combinations used.
Just be sure to remember what you changed them to-
making changes here does not affect the printed documen-
tation! We would not recommend making changes unless
absolutely necessary. If you do ever really forget,
though, you can just run HBINSTAL and see what it says.
There are four different options for the
hotkey identifier (default Alt+Shift), one of these
will certainly answer your needs.
The task identifier letters have been chosen
to be easy to remember. To make a change, just hit
the letter shown on the left against the function
to be changed and then hit the key that you would
like assigned to this function. Do not assign the
same key to two functions! This is not checked for
in the program.
H - Advanced HomeBase Options
The most important entry here is the control of
swapping. This is what allows HomeBase to take only 80k
as a permanent allocation. To put it simply, this is
achieved by using the top 180k of the 640k for pro-
cessing ONLY when required, by writing the contents of
this area to disk at call-up of HomeBase and restoring
it from disk when HomeBase terminates.
S - Swap mode
You can turn swapping on or off. Off is faster
but requires 180k of memory permanently allocated.
Swapping is slower but requires only 80k. You must
also specify where the swap file is to be kept.
Normally this is disk C: or whatever your hard disk
drive is called. If you have a RAMdisk in extended
or expanded memory, you may speed things up by
swapping to the RAMdisk, just specify the appro-
priate drive letter and make sure that the disk
exists when the HB line of HomeBase is run.
D - Diagnostics
This is really something left in from debugg-
ing, but all sorts of people are interested in such
things!
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
K - Duplicate key handling
We do not recommend that you allow duplicates
as the default. Normally each NoteBase entry in
HomeBase must have a unique index entry (or key).
Occasionally, especially in converting NoteBases
from earlier versions of HomeBase, you may find
yourself with a "duplicate key" error. Just go to
the options menu of the mane HomeBase menu, allow
duplicates then find and correct the problem.
U - NoteBase index handling
Normally NoteBase indexes are unloaded when
the next NoteBase is loaded. This makes sure that
as much memory as possible is available in the
HomeBase data segment. If you wish you may prevent
this. It will make HomeBase slightly faster but is
not recommended since you will find yourself
running out of memory much more frequently.
R - Residency
HomeBase is designed to operate as a memory
resident program. It can be completely removed from
memory using the De-Install option of the Options
menu and choosing "Remove All". If you run HomeBase
non-resident, then HB.EXE will not remain resident
when you terminate the program (N.B. HBKERNEL,
HBVSI and HBASYNC WILL). This enables you to
repeatedly start HomeBase using just "HB -r" from
the DOS prompt.
If you run HomeBase in Desqview or Software
Carousel then you should load it non-resident in
this way.
Z - Re-queuing of alarms
Normally alarms set on previous days are
loaded automatically on start-up of HomeBase. You
may want to load the alarms from a particular
subdirectory on a network, for instance. First
start up HomeBase with alarms not remembered, then
use ALARM.COM to start up the correct set of
alarms.
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
Q - Orchid turbo board
This piece of hardware needs the special
support provided by this command-line switch.
N - IBM AT BIOS
A true IBM BIOS contains an identifier to tell
programs that they are running on an AT. Many clone
ATs do not have this, so there is the facility to
force this mode. If this mode is not set on an AT
there may be synchronization problems in keyboard
response.
V - Enhanced video options
The options on this menu affect the appearance of
HomeBase on the screen and the way it accesses the
screen memory and the space available for screen
storage.
B - Buffer size for window manager
All the windows in HomeBase are controlled by
HBVSI, the "Virtual Screen Interface". This keeps
track of the contents of all windows, the way they
overlay and allows them to scroll independently.
The larger the buffer size, the more windows can be
open at once and the more text can be in some types
of window (e.g., in QuickTerm you can scroll
through the session with Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn).
F - Screen display mode
Some color cards allow updating of the screen
without waiting for synchronization with the
raster, this allows much faster screen writing.
Other cards produce annoying "snow" in this mode.
HomeBase automatically sets "fast" for EGA cards
but you may have a regular color card which allows
fast updating in the same way. Try it!
C - Fill character for background
A - Fill attribute for background
Sets the way the screen background appears.
For an EGA try setting fill character = 255,
attribute = 7, you'll probably speed up screen
clearing a little.
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
HomeBase Installation Program
That leaves us with the last few options down at the bottom
of the list.
R - Reset user defined options to default
A last resort if you have made changes which cause
real problems and you can't remember what you changed.
Much better ways to recover are: First, copy
AUTOEXEC.OLD to AUTOEXEC.BAT (or whatever the file that
starts HomeBase is called), that restores the BAT file
to its state immediately before the last run of
HBINSTAL. Failing that, try the "D" option below to set
the automatically configured sections.
I - Initial installation
Use this to create a new set of floppies for
HomeBase, to put HomeBase into a new subdirectory or to
create a new .BAT file to start HomeBase in some
different way.
D - Define new hardware and software configuration
Repeat the initial set of questions which auto-
matically accommodate many programs and non-standard
hardware.
B - Current file being edited
Allows you to make changes in some file other than
the AUTOEXEC.BAT, or to switch the .BAT file being
edited to some other.
Last, but by no means least, we come to the "Escape"
key. If you choose an option by mistake you will be glad of
this key. It backs you out without having to make any
changes. Also, when you are finished with your editing
session hitting the Esc key lets the program know and it then
goes on to make SURE that you want to save the changes.
Once the changes are saved, you also have the oppor-
tunity to move the HomeBase-relevant lines within the .BAT
file. This may be necessary to resolve some software prob-
lems. There are some programs which must be run before
HomeBase and some which must be run after. In general,
HomeBase goes after any programs which hook to screen memory
(e.g., real-time spelling checkers), after any keyboard macro
programs (e.g., SuperKey, ProKey or KeyWorks) and before any
DOS command line editors (e.g., CED and DOSEDIT) and any non-
memory resident programs (e.g., your wordprocessor or
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
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HomeBase Installation Program
spreadsheet, if it starts automatically, or your menu
program). In some cases, though you will just have to
experiment. HBINSTAL makes this type of experimentation easy
and quick.
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Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources
All rights reserved worldwide
