[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: Is there a manual somewhere?
The short answer is "no, there is no manual." There is a manual which
went with version 1.0, but it's so outdated as to be almost totally
useless. Executor's user interface has changed a lot since then --
fortunately, it has gotten friendlier rather than more complex.
To get started, fire up Executor and take a look at how it's set up.
It's a lot like a real Mac. To open a folder, just double-click on it.
To close it again, click on the box in the corner of its window. To
start one of the demo programs (Lemmings is a popular choice),
double-click on it. It will start just as it would on a real Mac,
with pull-down menus to control the game and let you quit when you get
tired of playing.
Executor has a hotband across the top of the screen where you can keep
the most frequently used files of each type. It's controlled by the
set of small boxes on the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. The
sideways oval will show you your directory structure from the top,
including not only your Mac volumes but your DOS drives and any
floppies or CDs which may be loaded. The other boxes will bring
different sets of things into the hotband -- you'll learn what the
heiroglyphs in the boxes are supposed to represent as you experiment.
After you've goofed around with the demos for a while, you'll probably
want to install your own games and maybe even do something useful.
Executor can run programs directly from high-density Mac floppies, but
this is very slow. It's quicker to copy the programs to one of the
simulated Mac volumes on your hard disk. To do this, put the
high-density floppy in your drive and select "Check for floppies" from
the pull-down menu under "File." Now select the overview of all
volumes by clicking on the sideways oval as above -- the floppy you
just inserted should be one of your choices. Double-click on the
floppy icon to open it, open the volume you want to put it in, and
drag the program icon from the floppy window to the window of the hard
disk volume.
Sooner or later you'll need to make a new Mac volume or two to contain
your files. To do this, you need to use the makehfv.exe utility at
the DOS prompt (or the makehfv utility under Linux). The syntax is
makehfv newvol.hfv NewVolume 100
where newvol.hfv will be the name of the DOS file, NewVolume will be
the name of the file as Executor sees it, and 100 indicates that your
volume will use 51200 bytes.
That should be enough to get you started. A lot of specific questions
you might have (about downloaded Mac files, for instance) are answered
in the FAQ in your docs subdirectory, and you can always write to
questions@ardi.com if you have any trouble.
-Melissa
References: