AssiST 0.29a doc file. Updated : 7.6.1998. AssiST is completely free. If you want you can send me stuff but its up to you. Even if it's just an email ;). You are using this program at your own risk, so if something goes wrong don't flame/sue me out of it. That said, the chances of this destroying anything ever are about as high as your head spontaneously exploding. Quite why I'm writing this escapes me. I mean AssiST is _supposed_ to be completely self explanatory....but just in case ;) * History of AssiST. v0.1 The first version of this program was much more basic. It had little or no error checking and only supported PaCifiST up to version 0.34. That said - if you entered reasonable values and did not purposely try to crash it, it performed its task adequatly. v0.2 This was released about two weeks after the first version. It used a more user friendly file selector to choose the TOS image and the bootdisk. Unfortunatly before I could finish it properly my hard disk crashed and the code for it went bye-bye. It supported versions of PaCifiST up to v0.35. v0.25 For this version, I have pretty much recoded the whole thing from scratch. The file selector is improved somewhat, and a few small bugs have hopefully been fixed. As far as I know all the options included in PaCifiST v0.41 have been supported except for the ability to have multiple hard drives (I'll have that done for the next version). v0.25a This version is functionally the same as v0.25. There are a few small bug fixes (file selector now allows drives up to and including drive Z:) and the whole program has shifted into the high-res text mode so it no longer feels quite so cramped. Also the file selector has been spiced up a bit. v0.26 No major changes from v0.25a except that PaCifiST v0.42 is now supported, a small bug which resulted in corruption of the 'assist.dat' file has been fixed and the hi-res screen mode has allowed for a bit more spacing out of the options. Multiple hard drives are unfortunatly not supported yet. I know I said I'd have it done for this version but I have had so little time of late that I haven't got round to it yet. Next version will have it..I promise :) v0.26a This release is really just a bug fix for the above and nothing more. Thanks must go to Ben Fozard who pointed out the Colour/Monochrome bug. which resulted in the option not being saved properly. v0.27 This version is, perhaps the largest update of AssiST so far. Several new options have been added and most of the old ones have been improved or completely redesigned. Some of the screen flicker has been gotton rid of (I'm working on the rest), 2 scrollers have been added (one of which has been generously donated by a certain disreputable xenomorph) and a new intro screen has been done (no more jerky starfields ;) ). For a complete description of the new options read the instructions below. v0.27a Some minor changes in the way some things are displayed which I forgot or never thought about putting into v0.27. There is one small bugfix regarding the removal of a selected TOS rom ('d' key on the main menu still displayed the paths of removed TOS's). You can also mount up to six ST virtual hard disk now. Hmm..'a' versions are becoming a bit of a habit it seems ;). v0.28 The last DOS release :) This one doesn't contains any serious changes from the last one except and new intro screen and a few minorish bug fixes. Thanks to Matthew Prest for mailing me about them :). v0.28a The last DOS release? Famous last words... As far as I know this is definitly going to be the final version of DOS AssiST. Shortly after I released v0.28 I realised that the setting up of the ST disk images was umm...slightly incorrect. Anyway, not content with a bugged product I spent some time between working on AssiST 97 to fix up this DOS code and here is the result. There should now be absolutly no bugs whatsoever. If there is I'm going to go insane and delete the damn code once and for all :) v0.29 So much for 'definitly the last version' ;). New features include the ability to 'ESCape' back through menus, the ability to run PaCifiST from AssiST, several small display fixes, support for PaCifiST's 'midi' option, a few more validity checks, an option to read this file from within AssiST and an all new colour scheme system which lets you customise AssiST. There will be another version which will contain the last few things that I've been meaning to add/improve. Nothing serious though, so don't expect too much :). v0.29a 3 months later and I find a bug so stupid I should never have let the last version release with it. Basically, it concerned the mounting of a disk image into either A: or B:, that is to say you couldn't. Yeah, I know, incredible...the bug only turned up in the last release because I added the ability to define what drive you wanted to assign an image to. How did I fix the bug? I added a single space. It should all work perfectly now, and with a bit of luck there won't be a 'b' release of DosAssiST. v1.0 This is the newest version of AssiST. It's being coded for Windows 95 by myself and a friend and is the nicest looking one yet ;). It has a completely graphical interface & supports sound (if you have a windows supported soundcard.). It won't be released until the .ini file options have been finalized (at least as finalized as they'll get!) and the code has been as bug tested as possible. v1.1 The last version of AssiST 97. Contains several bug fixes and nicer layout compared to v1.0. Due to my losing the code (and Delphi) in a hard disk corruption myself and Gerard can't update it any more. That said, it is as bug free as possible and doesn't really need an update. * Instructions for using the options in AssiST. 1. Set TOS image. This sets up the TOS image that PaCifiST needs to run. Since version 0.27 you can now specify several TOS roms. Frederic has added a TOS switching option to PaCifiST which allows you to change between the TOS version specified in AssiST. You MUST have at least one of these. First, select a slot for the TOS to be added to. Then select the version that you have and finally specify its filename by using the file selector and by pressing when the TOS rom file is hightlighted. To change drive press the letter of it (ie : 'd' would switch you to drive D: ). Page Down and Page Up will help you skip through larger directories. 2. Mount Hard Disk. This option lets you specify a directory on your hard disk which PaCifiST will use as an ST hard disk. Use the file selector to navigate through your hard disk until you find a suitable directory to use as the ST's hard drive. You can press '+' to create a directory, but please note - this must be given a sensible value or you may end up with a very bizarre directory name. This feature will be fully error checked for the next release. At present you can specify up to 3 ST hard drives. When you enter the emulator the ST's C:\ drive might not be setup. You'll have to do this from the GEM toolbar. Remember use a capital 'C'!. 3. Set Floppy-disk (A & B) This lets you specify which '*.ST' disk images to use when PaCifiST first loads up. The file selector only shows '*.ST' files so make sure that the image you want to use has this extension. If you select the 'Use PC drive A:' PaCifiST will attempt to use you pc's floppy drive as an ST drive. This will appear as an option in PaCifiST's file selector, or, if you haven't set up an A: drive *.ST image PaCifiST will start up looking for an ST disk in the A: drive. Try to avoid using this for now, as it is still quite unstable. 4. Autoboot from A: ? If this is turned on, the initial PaCifiST screen is bypassed and the disk in drive A: is loaded straight away. 5. Set ST memory Lets you specify how much ST memory you want to have emulated. A word of advice - do not specify more than you have on your PC! 6. Sound Emulation This lets you setup up the sound options for PaCifiST. It should be easy enough to understand for practically anyone. (Yes..you do need a soundcard to take advantage of this... ;) ). A new feature is the ability to turn on midi emulation. This will not work in conjunction with chip music so you'll have to turn those off first, 7. Enable Serial Port Enable or disable emulation of the ST's serial port via the PC's one. Its not very stable yet so it's probably a good idea to leave it off. 8. Set up Mouse Only try this if your mouse driver does not work with PaCifiST. When turned on PaCifiST tries to use it driver on your mouse. You have to specify a com port if you turn this feature on. The sensitivity option allows you to specify how responsive you want the mouse to be. It's not advisable to try this under Windows 95 by the way. 9. Set Display Options * Set Refreshrate Basically sets the framerate. The lower it is the nicer the emulator will look but you'll need a fast machine (P75 or >). If you are using a 486 raise it until the emulator runs at an acceptable rate. * Set Fastvideo If you have a fast graphics card this feature does nice things (don't ask me what - I don't have a fast graphics card ;) ). * Colour/Monochrome Umm..let me see..Could this change between monochrome and colour mode? Nah.. it couldn't be ;). * Set Truecolour Enable the use of truecolour I suppose. * Set Graphics Mode Select a type of graphics mode for the emulator to start in. Once in the emulator you can change it again (unless you chose the CUSTOM mode in which case you'll have to exit the emulator and choose a different mode from AssiST. 10. Set Joystick Emulation. If this is turned on, PaCifiST uses the keyboard to emulate an ST joystick, if not, then whatever joystick you have connected to your PC will be used. 11. Set STe/STf emulation This isn't implemented in the current release of PaCifiST. The final release of 0.47 should support this option. 12. Set LED emulation. This enables the use of the keyboard LEDs to display disk activity. On some machines this can the emulator to crash. Try turning it off if PaCifiST doesn't run properly or crashes frequently. 13. Set CPU emulation. This isn't implemented in the current release of PaCifiST. 14. Set Keyboard Delay. Some games may seem too responsive/unresponsive, if this is the case then change the value of this setting. Phew. Thats that over and done with. Make sure you read the PaCifiST doc file if you have any more questions. Thanks and Greetings go to the following people : Frederic Gidouin (for his great emulator and all the patient emails :) ) Alien (for the top scroller!) Arnaud Carre (for writing STSound - a great ST soundchip music player!) Damien Burke (for his tolerance of my incessant lame mails ;) ) Zippy (for getting in touch with me :) & sending that CD!) Ben Fozard (for all the email, support and bug reports!) Matthew Prest (for the email, webspace & bug reports!) Rich Davey (for more things that I could possibly mention. Check out his wepage now! (http://lgd.fatal-design.com). Gerard Butterly (insanity, AssiST 97 v1.0, flaming without a cause) MUG UK (For reviving the ST scene even more with his new Regression Therapy crew :) ) Darren Birks (for the prolonged beer debates we've had via ICQ :) ) And everyone else who is/was supporting the ST scene! Aengus Jankowsky 31.8.97 (ajankows@iol.ie).