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MEGMATIC.DOC
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1987-12-11
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MEGA-Matic (v1.11)
(c) 1987
T.I.F. Software
a division of
T&L Enterprises, Inc.
3826 W. Missouri Ave.
Phoenix, Arizona 85019
Author: Lloyd E. Pulley, Sr.
Disclaimer of Warranty and/or Liability
(aka..if anything goes wrong, it ain't my fault)
Try It First Software (hereafter known as TIF Software)
makes no warranty, either expressed or implied, as to the
usability of the enclosed programs, the documentation and any
other related items.
TIF Software will not be held liable for direct or
incidental damages resulting from any defect or omission in
these programs or the documentation. These programs have
been tested thoroughly but TIF Software can not be held
liable if it doesn't work on your system.
MegaMatic has been tested to run on the 520 ST, 1040 ST,
Mega ST2 and the Mega ST4. It works on an all floppy system
and on a system with hard drives. It works on the older roms
and the new ones. It works with or without the blitter
installed. I've even tested it on a 1040 ST that was running
2 1/2 megs and the new roms. But that doesn't mean it'll run
on your system. Long ago I reached a conclusion that "all
ST's are not created equal".
The documentation and programs included in this arced
file, are copyrighted by TIF Software. These programs are
NOT public domain, they are shareware.
Since MegaMatic is shareware, please feel free to make
copies of these programs for you, your users groups, BBS's,
ect. But please, make sure that you include these files
everytime you distribute it. There is nothing that I hate
worse, than not getting all the files needed to make a
program perform properly.
MEGMATIC.PRG
CONFIG.PRG
MEGMATIC.DOC
As I said earlier, MegaMatic is shareware. If you like it
and use it, send TIF Software a few bucks. If you don't
like, let us know why.
Now, on to the good stuff.
Page -1-
Introduction
(or "where did I come up with this idea")
When I first bought my ST, I didn't know anything about
the AUTO folder and how to use it. But before too long, I
had 5-6 programs in my AUTO folder that 'I just had to have'.
Between these 5-6 programs and 3-4 accessories, it was taking
forever to boot up my computer (even with a hard drive). So
to make life easier (and faster), I decided to take the best
ideas from each of these 'AUTO programs' and incorporate them
into one program.
The first problem that I ran into was that I HATE 'all-in-
one' programs. Usually there was only 1 or 2 parts of these
'all-in-one' programs that I used. All the rest of the
program (along with my computers memory) was wasted. So I
decided to make MegaMatic a 'all-in-one' program where the
USER (that's you!) could decide what parts of it THEY wanted
to use. In other words, much of MegaMatic is configurable by
the user. The parts that are not configurable (listed later
in the docs) do not take up any memory after boot up. Once
they do their job, they disappear from the computers memory.
Also, I HATE AUTO programs that 'asks questions' and then
sits there until the user gives an input. I want to be able
to turn on my system and go do anything I want and when I
come back, it's all up and ready to go. MegaMatic at bootup
has two areas where it asks for user input (more on these
later). At each spot, MegaMatic will wait for approximately.
1 second for an input. If no input is received, MegaMatic
will then continue on and just use the default input.
Since I don't know C, Pascal or Modula, I was forced to
write MegaMatic in pure 68000 assembly code (it was either
that or GfA Basic). MegaMatic was written with HiSoft's
DevPac Editor/Assembler. Since MegaMatic was written in
68000 code, you'll find it short (less than 4k) and fast.
Also, once MegaMatic has been booted and is running, it only
takes 1k of your precious memory to run (that does not count
the memory needed for the ramdisk or print spooler however).
To make the program user configurable, I also wrote a
CONFIG.PRG that goes along with MegaMatic. You HAVE to use
the CONFIG.PRG on MegaMatic before using MegaMatic. (more on
CONFIG.PRG later)
How to install Mega-Matic
(or "if you don't follow instructions, don't blame me")
ALWAYS make a backup of all the files before attempting to
use any of them.
MEGMATIC.PRG HAS to be configured with CONFIG.PRG before
using it.
MEGMATIC.PRG HAS to go into the AUTO folder first. (Sorry
guys, but I have to know what some of the lower memory
address's are before some other program modifies/changes
them.) If you are running a hard drive booter in your AUTO
folder, it can go in before the MEGMATIC.PRG.
Page -2-
Mega-Matic's basic features
(or "I thought that this part would never get here")
1) RESETTABLE RAM DISK **
I've heard the pro's and con's about the resettable
ram disks. To me, any ram disk that isn't resettable, isn't
useable. The resettable ram disk 'saved my bacon' more than
once. This ramdisk will survive a normal RESET with no loss
of data. But remember, this is not guaranteed!! 99.9% of
time it works properly but .1% of the time the system bombs
beyond repair and can corrupt the ram disk pointers or the
data on the ramdisk.
Resettable Ram Disks boot up a little different than
'normal' ram disks. They take two 'passes' to boot up. The
first time MegaMatic is booted by the system, it moves parts
of itself into high memory (right under the graphics screen).
It then modifies some of the lower memory pointers and does a
warm reset which then causes it to be booted again. It then
looks to see if it's been booted before (by looking for some
'magic' data in high memory). If it has been booted before,
it then finishes it's job by hooking some of the lower memory
vectors into the program that has been moved under the
graphics screen. At that point it returns to TOS and lets
the system finish booting up everything else.
This ram disk is configurable in size from 128k to 2
meg (minus 24k for 'overhead'...i.e. FAT tables, directories,
ect.) with the CONFIG.PRG.
Also at powerup, it can be te