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POWERKIT Documentation November 1988 Version 1.90 Copyright 1987-88 by John H. Brooks. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to distribute copies of this documentation. DISCLAIMER: This software is sold "as is." No warranty is given, either express or implied, that any specific POWERKIT feature will work on any particular machine. The manufacturer will not be liable for any damage caused by the use of POWERKIT. The names of hardware and software products, and companies mentioned in this document are trademarks or service marks of the respective companies. To registered users, version 1.90 is a FREE upgrade. FORWARD: Welcome, I'll be brief. I'm asking you to please pay for POWER- KIT if you use it. At $12.95, I believe the price is fair. Give POWERKIT a good workout, then remit to: CENTRAL DATA SERVICES 1641 WINONA COURT DENVER, CO 80204 (303) 595-4218 SUPPORT FOR POWERKIT: Since there are so many different video cards, versions of PC/MS-DOS, flavors of the BIOS ROM, hardware configurations, all calling themselves "PC (or AT) compatible," the "non-guarantee" above is regrettable but necessary. Obviously, you won't buy POWERKIT if it doesn't work on your machine, but if you could spare a few moments to let me know what would not work, and what kind of machine you have, I'll do my best to get POWERKIT to work on your machine. As many registered users of POWERKIT have already discovered, I intend to have POWERKIT be one of the best supported SHAREWARE (or commercial, for that matter) programs in the business. SEE PAGE 11 FOR INFORMATION ON POWERKIT'S NEW ONLINE SUPPORT. INSTALLATION: Type "PK" at the DOS prompt. You may also type some optional instructions to POWERKIT (described in detail later) after the "PK". INTRODUCTION: POWERKIT is small, about 2700 bytes of it stay in memory. If each of POWERKIT's tasks were to be done by separate "COM" programs, many thousands of bytes would be used. Almost all of POWERKIT's operations may be controlled from the command line (the DOS prompt or a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT), with a keyboard "hot" key, or from a pop-up "1-2-3" style menu, even while you are inside another program. Many can be disabled, if your favorite utility program does the same thing. After all, POWERKIT uses very little memory. Page 2 You will like the way POWERKIT handles your keyboard. A key, when pressed, starts to repeat after a waiting period whose length you set, accelerates smoothly at a rate you set to a top speed you set, and when released, "stops on a dime." Keystrokes also may be made to repeat very slowly, or to repeat not at all. POWERKIT's AutoPilot lets you teach your machine how to do a repetitive task, while you sit back and relax. If that's not enough, add an extra large keystroke buffer and an ability to view what's in it, a way to route printer output to your screen, an escape hatch from programs that falter, a screen blanker, a floppy disk motor early shut-off, a way to protect your machine from prying eyes and mischievous fingers (even at bootup), a few other things, and there's HOOK. HOOK is unique. HOOK will open up many of those programs that won't let your "can't live without" pop-up utilities pop up. HOOK will do other things too (see /K)eyboard redefine, and KEYPAD 5, H, page 9). LESS EXPERIENCED PC USERS: Don't be put off by the wealth of more or less technical data which follows. You already know how to get POWERKIT working and if you read how to get the help menus (see /U1 farther down this page) you may never have to read anything else about POWERKIT. COMMANDING POWERKIT: Most POWERKIT parameters may be set by including them after the "PK" when you call POWERKIT, and several MUST be set from there. For example, typing: PK/M15/W5/d2/f110/g68 will set the floppy disk motor to shut off after 1.5 seconds (15 tenths), the wait before repeating a keystroke to 1/2 second (5 tenths), the display to switch off after 2 minutes (if no keys have been pressed during that time), the keystroke repeat speed to a maximum of 110 keystrokes per second, and replaces KEYPAD 5 with F10 (68 is the decimal scan code for F10) as the HOT key. The commands may be entered in any order, in lower/UPPER case. The following commands can be given ONLY from the command line of PK.COM /U1 is for NEW USERS who would like to have a menu to remind them of POWERKIT's many options. /U1 tells POWERKIT, as it is being loaded, to attach an interface to itself which will allow it to communicate with a public domain program called SlashBar. Slashbar is a program that pops menus of the user's choice onto the screen whenever the "ALT" and "/" keys are pressed simultaneously. SlashBar, and its complementary program, MAKEBAR (MAKEBAR creates the menus SlashBar pops up), was written by R.L. Hummel, who wrote a description of SlashBar and its operation in the May 26, 1987 (vol. 6, # 10) issue of PC Magazine. There are many places you can obtain a copy of SlashBar, including PC Magazine's own BBS, (212) 696-0360 or (415) 598-9100. Assuming you have obtained a copy of SLASHBAR.COM, some modifications must be made to it. But don't worry, they only need be made once, and they are easy to do. Make sure that DEBUG.COM, SLASHBAR.COM, and SLASHMOD.TXT (included in this package) are on the same diskette, then, at the "A>" prompt, type: Page 3 A>debug slashbar.com <slashmod.txt The modification allows SlashBar to communicate with programs (any programs, not just POWERKIT) that are loaded "beneath" SlashBar. With that task completed, see that POWERKIT.MNU (included in this package) is on the same diskette as SLASHBAR.COM, and at the "A>" prompt, type: A>slashbar powerkit.mnu/2000 Press "ALT" and "/" at the same time and watch POWERKIT's menu pop onto the screen. The beauty of using SlashBar for POWERKIT's menus (besides being my tiny contribution to standardization of program interfaces) is that SlashBar need not be loaded when you are using a huge application program that takes up virtually all available memory, all memory, except perhaps for the 2.5k POWERKIT needs. SlashBar, together with its menu buffer, uses several thousand bytes. For you that register POWERKIT, send an extra $2.50, and receive the latest version of POWERKIT, and a utility program that adds POWERKIT's commands to any other "BAR" (menu) file you use with SlashBar. /In, /Jn sets the high byte and low byte, respectively, of the "ex- tended" ASCII code SlashBar (or any other menu program) uses to get POWERKIT's attention. With SlashBar, the high byte "must" be zero. The default low byte is 30 (1Eh), which is CTRL-6 (SlashBar doesn't recognize KEYPAD 5). These switches were provided in case CTRL-6 means something to one of your programs, and you wish to write your own "BAR" file (using MAKEBAR.COM), or use the utility provided to registered users (see /U1, page 2). /An, n = 0 to 9 (or thereabouts) tells POWERKIT the number of phony keystrokes to insert between each "real" keystroke. This is a means to curb repeating key overshoot in especially recalcitrant programs. /Rn, n = 0 to 9 (or more) tells POWERKIT the number of times to "lie" to an application about the status of the keystroke buffer. Its purpose is the same as /An above. See page 8 for further details. /Cn, n = 0 or 1 toggles CAPS/SHIFT LOCK (see KEYPAD 5, C, page 10) When ON, and when CAPS is ON too, pressing a SHIFT key will NOT pro- duce a lower case letter. /En, n = 65 to 90 (these are the ASCII codes for A-Z), sets the drive, floppy, ram, or hard, where POWERKIT looks for COMMAND.COM when it exits an application program and allows you to load and run another program, format a disk, etc. COMMAND.COM must be in the "root" dir. /M)otor off after 1 to 255 tenths seconds. This command has nothing to do with speeding up floppy disk input or output, it merely allows the computer to turn off the floppy disk drive motor after so many tenths of a second. I included this command in POWERKIT to let you get back to work more quickly after a disk access (the keyboard sometimes won't work while the drive motor is on). Also, it is not always safe to remove a disk from the drive while the motor is on (stray magnetic fields produced by the motor could garble the data on your disk). If you tell POWERKIT nothing about motor shutoff, POWERKIT will set it to one second. /M0 makes POWERKIT ignore motor shut off. Page 4 /Nn, N = 0 or 1, forces shell to DOS to use current active display page (n = 0), or change to a new display page (n = 1). Also see page 10. /On, n = 0 to 25 (1 = top of screen), sets the line on which the cursor will appear after POWERKIT completes its initialization. The default is line 25. If you don't like that "CURSOR VANISH?" message, set /C25 (or any other setting) to make it go away. /C0 clears the screen and puts the cursor at the top of the screen. /K)eyboard redefine, from its name, you might think is a replacement for ANSI.SYS. It is NOT, it is a supplement to ANSI.SYS and the other similar keyboard redefinition programs. For the technically inclined, ANSI.SYS redefines the keyboard by replacing the (extended) ASCII code generated by one key, with the extended ASCII code generated by a dif- ferent key. However, some programs don't even bother to look at ASCII codes, so /K)eyboard redefine (used with HOOK, see page 9) works by replacing the "scan" code generated by one key with the scan code of a different key. From here on the going gets kind of tough for awhile, so I'll go slow- ly. There is a type of program let's call a KIM, a Keyboard Interrupt Monopolizer. If you own SIDEKICK, or a similar program, and you tried to call it up by pressing CTRL-ALT (or some other HOT key) while in- side another program, and it either wouldn't pop up or your machine froze, that program you were inside was a KIM. KIM's have other prob- lems, too. The older KIM's have no way of recognizing the larger key- boards that come with many of the newer PC compatibles, except for the keys corresponding to the old 83 key "standard PC keyboard." This means you can't use that nice separate cursor keypad while working within the KIM, for example. POWERKIT's /K)eyboard redefine, in conjunction with the HOOK command could help you with that problem. /K)eyboard redefine takes two forms. One, you can put pairs of scan codes on the "PK" command line; a "/" then the decimal scan code you wish to redefine, followed by "/" plus the decimal scan code you wish it to be, repeating this for each key to be redefined. For example, what you see below makes the keyboards of TANDY 1000's or 2000's work just fine inside most KIM's: /K41/72/43/75/74/80/78/77/88/71/89/41/90/43/85/78/83/74/87/28/86/83/84/70 ^ NOTE: no slash needed for first number Obviously, you need to know something about scan codes to do this, which leads to the second way /K can be used. Putting /K on the "PK" command line, followed by nothing at all, or followed by another POWERKIT command (like /k/h, for example) causes POWERKIT to help you find the scan codes. First, the machine will start its normal boot-up procedure. When it loads POWERKIT, a beep will occur, and the display will read: Press key to be changed, ESC to quit: /k Press a key, and its scan code (in decimal) will appear behind the /k, you will hear another beep, and the display will show: Press key to change to: Page 5 /kXX The XX above represents the scan code of the first key pressed. Press a second key; its scan code will appear as /kXX/YY. Another beep, and the "Press key to be changed, ESC to quit:" prompt will reappear. In this way you can tell POWERKIT which keys you want redefined. For example, to get that long line of redefined scan codes shown above (on a TANDY 1000), do the following (keypad means the numeric keypad): PRESS THEN PRESS ACTION up arrow keypad 8 fixes up arrow key down arrow keypad 2 fixes down arrow key left arrow keypad 4 fixes left arrow key right arrow keypad 6 fixes right arrow key HOME keypad 7 fixes HOME key F11 up arrow makes F11 print ` and ~ F12 left arrow makes F12 print \ and | INSERT right arrow changes INSERT to grey + DELETE down arrow changes DELETE to grey - keypad ENTER ENTER fixes keypad ENTER keypad . DELETE changes keypad . to DELETE BREAK HOLD fixes CTRL-BREAK ESC saves scan codes and exits (inside a KIM, keypad 0 will probably act like INSERT) In general, for any extended keyboard, you can use the first five sequences above for the ARROW and HOME keys, and in addition: PRESS THEN PRESS ACTION END keypad 1 fixes END key PG UP keypad 9 fixes PG UP key PG DN keypad 3 fixes PG DN key INSERT keypad 0 fixes INSERT key DELETE keypad . fixes DELETE key ESC exits POWERKIT has enough room for 15 redefined keys. After all this, the line on the display starting with /k will show the necessary scan codes to put on the "PK" command line before you next run the KIM; but there is no need to reboot the computer now, just write down the /k line for future reference. POWERKIT has saved these codes, and after you do just one more thing, you can load the KIM and have your keyboard work properly. That final task is to activate HOOK while the CAPS key is turned ON. HOOK is activated by KEYPAD 5, H. See page 9 for a complete discussion of HOOK. Turning on HOOK with CAPS ON tells POWERKIT to feed the new scan codes to the KIM. /L)ock machine at bootup, like /K above, takes two forms. Putting /L on the line with no parameters will show the (decimal) scan codes of the keys you press, until you press ESC, to use in a password that will have to be entered before the machine will continue booting up. Using parameters with /L will define the password. For example: /l30/48/46/32 ^ NOTE: no slash needed for first number will define the password "ABCD". The password may contain up to eight Page 6 keystrokes. This password will protect only against children or casual meddling. However, on a machine with a hard disk, and with some additional hardware/software changes, this password could provide one more "layer" of protection for "sensitive" data. BE SURE to put ECHO OFF in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file when using this feature. /Qn, n = 0,1,2,4, or 8, for HOT KEY ALONE, or RIGHT SHIFT, LEFT SHIFT, CTRL, or ALT, plus HOT KEY, respectively (HOT KEY set by "/Gn" or from the keyboard, see page 10). When n is not zero, the designated shift key must be pressed at the same time as the HOT key. This switch was added to increase the number of possible HOT keys. /Sn, n = 18 to 255 is a speedup factor. It does this by stretching the time between memory refreshes in your machine. It works on IBM PC's and AT's, and a few clones that are SO COMPATIBLE, they even use the same refresh interval. Modern memory chips no longer need to be refreshed as often as the IBM machines do it. /S255 should work on any machine whose memory chips have been manufactured in the last five years. If not, lower n in /Sn, until it does work. The speedup is 5% on 4.77 Mhz machines (PC's), up to 20% on some 12 Mhz AT clones. /Tn enables an algorithm that blanks HERCULES brand display adaptors. If you have an Hercules "compatible" adaptor, it probably can be blanked without invoking this command. /T1 -- Tests for an Hercules adaptor. If present, enables blanking. /T2 -- Activates Hercules blanking without testing first. /Vn, n = 91 to 255, is the number of timer ticks your machine makes in 5 seconds. The default is 91. /Xn adjusts the the time it takes repeating keystrokes to get up to top speed, (a speed you can set according to your own taste, see KEYPAD 5, F page 7). /X0 -- Repeating keystrokes start out at top speed. /X1 -- Repeating keystrokes accelerate smoothly, but quickly, to their top speed. /X2 -- Repeating keystrokes accelerate rather more slowly than with the /X1 setting. This is the default setting. /Y0 turns off POWERKIT's Scroll Lock key handler (see page 10). /Z1 -- Turns on the much louder "system beep" and turns off POWERKIT's. OTHER COMMANDS that may be put on the "PK" command line are: /D)isplay off /F)ast repeat /G)et new HOT key /H)ook /O)vershoot plan A, B, or C, 0 for A, 1 for B, 2 for C. (used to be /P) /P)rinter output to screen, 0 (off) or 1 (on). /W)ait before repeating Note that when defining the HOT key here, the (decimal) scan code of your designated HOT key must be used. Note also that when HOOK is placed here, and you wish it to be used with /K)eyboard redefine, make sure the CAPS key is ON while your machine is booting up. Page 7 COMMANDS ACCESSED BY PRESSING AND RELEASING KEYPAD 5: What follows are descriptions of the POWERKIT commands accessed from the keyboard. First, the "5" key on the numeric keypad (SHIFT KEYPAD 5 when NUM LOCK is "on") must be pressed, RELEASED, then the indicated COMMAND key pressed and released. If the command needs more input (numbers or letters), enter them when you hear a beep. Press ENTER when finished. If you press KEYPAD 5 by accident, press it AGAIN to cancel. KEYPAD 5, ESC: Sometimes can bring you back to the DOS prompt from a hung or crashed program. When KEYPAD 5, ESC does succeed, when you have pre- cious unsaved data on a ramdisk for example, POWERKIT will have earned its keep. NOTE: A few programs have their own escape routines. If they exist, they are invoked by either CTRL-BREAK or CTRL-C (usually). KEYPAD 5, W: At the beep, entering a number from 1 to 60, followed by ENTER, will set the delay before keystrokes begin to repeat to that many tenths of a second. Enter zero if you wish to go back to your old, sluggish keyboard. But then, POWERKIT tasks associated with KEYPAD 5 W, F, S, A, and R will no longer work. KEYPAD 5, F: At the beep, entering a number from 5 to 255, followed by ENTER, will set the maximum speed a keystroke repeats to that many repeti- tions per second, give or take 2 reps./second. The actual repetition rate will be determined by how fast the application program can handle keystrokes (ANSI.SYS slows the repeat rate, for example). Enter zero and the keyboard will work like an old-fashioned typewriter keyboard (no auto-repeat, a more comfortable mode for those with disabilities). NOTE 1: Use KEYPAD 5, S (see below) for 1 rep./sec, or slower. NOTE 2: Some repeat speeds are smoother than others. This is deter- mined by the tick rate of the system clock. For most PC compatibles, 5, 10, 19, 37, 55, 74, 92, 110 reps./sec. are the smoothest. Also, adding 2 or 3 lies/rep. (KEYPAD 5, B, 2 or 3) smooths things out. KEYPAD 5, S: At the beep, entering a number from 1 to 255, followed by ENTER, will repeat a keystroke (or a sequence of keystrokes) every that many seconds. This is used mainly with AutoPilot (KEYPAD 5, A below). KEYPAD 5, A: Activates AutoPilot. At the beep, enter up to 18 keystrokes that you want repeated, then press ENTER. If you want an ENTER keystroke to be part of the sequence, press RIGHT SHIFT-ENTER. After ENTER is pressed, the sequence will repeat, unless CAPS = ON, in which case the sequence will execute only once (but will be saved for possible re- use), like an ordinary MACRO. To stop (and erase) the repeating se- quence, press any key. However, if you want to save this sequence, press the RIGHT SHIFT key, which stops the action and saves the keystroke sequence. To reactivate AutoPilot (using these keystrokes), press KEYPAD 5, A. If CAPS = ON as you press, AutoPilot will stop af- ter doing the sequence only once. To erase a keystroke sequence that has been saved by pressing RIGHT SHIFT, without restarting AutoPilot, press KEYPAD 5, RIGHT SHIFT-A. NOTE: Because of the peculiar nature of the programs we have dubbed KIM's (page 4, or see KEYPAD 5, H, page 9), there are actually two AutoPilot routines. Therefore, an AutoPilot sequence that has been Page 8 defined outside a KIM won't work inside a KIM, and vice versa. Use KEYPAD 5, A, with CAPS turned ON, to destroy saved keystrokes before "hooking" and entering a KIM, or before leaving a KIM. PRESSING and RELEASING the CTRL, ALT, or SHIFT keys will count as ONE of the six- teen permitted keystrokes while inside a KIM, while these key presses DON'T count against the sixteen when outside a KIM. I am certain that AutoPilot will be used in ways I could never dream of. If you must dump your "KEY" program to load a large application, AutoPilot will be there to restore some of its function by using AutoPilot together with the at least rudimentary MACRO capability most application programs now have. A single PG DN keystroke can be set to repeat at a comfortable pace, to let you read a document in your word processor without touching the keyboard. To snoop through the BIOS ROM using DEBUG's UNASSEMBLE command, set the keystrokes to U, and RIGHT SHIFT-ENTER. When something interesting appears, press RIGHT SHIFT, examine it more closely, then continue snooping with KEYPAD 5, A. Suppose you would like to eliminate an entire column of a table in one of your applications. You know the application has a very slick method of doing this, but you can remember only how to eliminate one line of the column at a time. You can go to the user's manual, or it might be quicker to go to AutoPilot, enter the single line commands, plus a DOWN ARROW keystroke. KEYPAD 5, R: At the beep, enter A or B. This sets the "plan" to use to inhib- it repeating key overshoot, when inside certain programs. Plan "A" inserts unusable "null" keystrokes between each "real" keystroke. How- ever, some programs are just too smart for their own good and discard these null keystrokes before they can fill its buffer and prevent "run-on". Hence the need for Plan "B". Plan "B" tells the program a "little white lie", but it's "for its own good". It sends a "no key- stroke in buffer" report back to the program, several times, before sending the "true" message. You can use these two plans together. If CAPS = ON when choosing a plan, the values for the other plan will not be erased. After entering A or B (after the second beep), enter the number of null keystrokes (or fibs) to insert between each "real" keystroke, then press ENTER. You may never use this command. The majority of programs use the keystroke buffer supported by the BIOS (delineated by the two words at 40h:80h). POWERKIT sees to it that, while a key is repeating, this buffer never contains more than one keystroke. Hence, overshoot is impossible. However, KIM's (see pages 4 or 9) and some non-KIM's maintain their own keystroke buffers and couldn't care less that your cursor keeps moving after you release it. Experiment with combinations of KEYPAD 5, F (repeat speed) and KEYPAD 5, R, A, B, and n. Overshoot may not be eliminated, but is almost always reduced. For example, setting KEYPAD 5, F to 92 and KEYPAD 5, R to "A,3" eliminates overshoot in QuickBASIC 3.0, a non-KIM which, nevertheless, keeps its own 8 key- stroke buffer. Setting KEYPAD 5, F to 37 and KEYPAD 5, R to "A,5" only reduces overshoot in QuickBASIC 2.0, a KIM which must be "hooked" (see page 9), and which keeps a 16 keystroke buffer. BRIEF (v2.01) works fine with POWERKIT's default setting (2 fibs, 0 nulls), but on slower machines, your cursor will move faster using 1 null, 0 fibs. NOTE: Some programs object mightily to the null keystrokes Plan A uses Page 9 to control overshoot. PC-Write (and LIST), for example, sounds like a moonstruck cricket when nulls are set to greater than zero. These plans may also be used to make repeats look smoother. KEYPAD 5, H: The HOOK command is designed to outwit those application programs I call Keyboard Interrupt Monopolizers, or KIM's for short. You prob- ably have a KIM in your library. It's a program such that after you load it, your favorite pop-up utilities won't work until you exit it. Activate HOOK just before you load the KIM. If you hear a beep when the KIM starts to execute, then HOOK probably has intercepted the pro- gram successfully and your pop-ups (including POWERKIT) should work. Deactivate HOOK after you leave the KIM by entering KEYPAD 5, H again. No beep this time. FOR ADVANCED USERS: If CAPS LOCK is ON when you invoke HOOK, the KIM will be fed SCAN CODES determined from the table developed from data entered with the /K)eyboard redefine command. See page 4 for a dis- cussion of this command. This solves most of the problems many KIM's have with keyboards possessing more than the standard 83 "PC" keys. Some keyboards omit either the "make" or "break" signal when the lights (called LED's) in the CAPS or NUM LOCK keys are turned off or on. These keys will still have to be pressed four times to put them through a complete cycle (while inside a KIM). SAD NOTE 1: No "keyboard macro" program (these programs usually have "KEY" somewhere in their name) that I am aware of will work inside a KIM, even a "hooked" KIM. AutoPilot produces a (repeating) keyboard macro and that is why two separate AutoPilot routines were necessary. SAD NOTE 2: POWERKIT will not "hook" some KIM's. These are KIM's that do not use DOS services to attach themselves to interrupts. Also, hooking a non-KIM will sometimes hang the machine. QuickBASIC APPLICATIONS: Programs compiled with any QuickBASIC compiler, and which use the ON KEY command, must be "hooked" before pop-up utilities will work properly. KEYPAD 5, V: Opens (and closes) a view-port into the keystroke buffer. Your most used applications probably have become so familiar to you, you know long beforehand what comes next and what you want to do about it. However, distractions occur and you can "lose your place" while typing "blind" into the keystroke buffer. At these times a view-port is use- ful. The view-port expands and contracts according to how many unused keystrokes are left in the buffer. Reenter the command to close the view-port. KEYPAD 5, L: Lets you blank the screen and lock up the keyboard. After pressing KEYPAD 5, L, the screen will blank (if you haven't disabled blanking). At the beep, just press ENTER if you want no password pro- tection, or enter up to a four keystroke password, then press ENTER. To get your machine back, PRESS and RELEASE the RIGHT SHIFT key and reenter the password. Incidentally, your machine will go on computing while locked, if no keyboard input is needed. KEYPAD 5, D: At the beep, entering a number from 1 to 60, followed by ENTER, sets the display to turn off after one to sixty minutes of keyboard inactivity. KEYPAD 5, D, 0 disables screen blanking. Blanking is im- portant for monochrome displays, to preserve their phosphor coatings. Page 10 POWERKIT's default setting is screen blanking DISABLED. See page 6, /Tn, for instructions on enabling Hercules brand MGA card blanking. KEYPAD 5, G: At the beep, press the key you wish to use to signal POWERKIT. Some call this a HOT key. Use KEYPAD 5, G before you load a program to which KEYPAD 5 means something. The keys LEFT and RIGHT SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, CAPS, NUM LOCK, and HOLD won't work as HOT keys. Also, if NUM LOCK is ON, you must hold SHIFT, then press the HOT key. KEYPAD 5, C: Toggles a feature that, when ON (beep), and when CAPS is ON too, pressing a SHIFT key will NOT produce a lower case letter. KEYPAD 5, Y: Toggles POWERKIT's SCROLL LOCK key handler on/off. POWERKIT turns the Scroll Lock key into what (I think) it should have been all along. Pressing the key will freeze a scrolling display until you press SCROLL LOCK again, allowing you to examine its contents at your leisure (now that's a whole lot easier than CTRL-NUM LOCK, isn't it?). A beep will tell you when the display has been frozen, and beeps will greet your every key press, until you press SCROLL LOCK again. Toggle it OFF, when a program has its own designs on the SCROLL LOCK key. KEYPAD 5, P: Directs output normally destined for the printer, to the screen. This is handy when no printer is available and you must use a program that demands a printer be attached (when you are using a PC compatible laptop away from the office, for instance). It also lets you preview the formatting of a document without wasting a lot of time and paper, if you don't have a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor. Pressing KEYPAD 5, P a second time turns off this feature. NOTE: I always boot up with /P1 on the "PK" command line, because it's easy to activate Print Screen inadvertently, with no printer online. KEYPAD 5, E: Exits an application program, and puts you at the DOS prompt. There, you can perhaps do some little thing that you forgot to do be- fore you entered the application (like format a new disk if the disk you are using is full, and the application wants to write more data). To return to the application, type "exit" at a DOS prompt. If you have a graphics adaptor (CGA, EGA, etc.), POWERKIT exits to a different dis- play page, so as not to mess up your screen. With a single page adap- tor (MDA), there is no choice, sorry. However, a less confusing dis- play will result if you place the cursor at the bottom of the screen prior to exiting to DOS. See also the switch, /N on page 4. POWERKIT has to find COMMAND.COM in order to do this little trick, and it is not very smart, it looks for COMMAND.COM only in a "root" direc- tory (the directory you are in when you type "B:", say, at the DOS prompt). The default is the "root" directory on drive "A", but you can change this drive at bootup with the "/E" switch (see page 3). CAUTION: Don't shell to DOS at the DOS prompt, and especially, NOT at bootup. CONFLICTS WITH OTHER PROGRAMS: Other times when POWERKIT and other TSR's or application programs don't work well together occur because the other program is trying to do some of the same things POWERKIT is doing, such things as enlarging the keystroke buffer, blanking the screen, or speeding up the cursor. When this happens, disable the contested function, either in POWERKIT or in the other program (in the case of POWERKIT's extended keystroke buffer, simply don't enable it). Page 11 Finally, you must change POWERKIT's HOT key if it means something to the other program. 101 KEY ENHANCED KEYBOARDS: I have completely rewritten POWERKIT's keyboard handler to make it compatible with most (90%) 101 key keyboards. How- ever, if it doesn't work with yours and you would like it to, there is a 101 key enhanced keyboard driver (about 2k bytes) that WORKS with POWERKIT, included in this package. ONLINE SUPPORT FOR POWERKIT: If you have a modem, you can get prompt answers to your questions (several times a day), and download some interesting files by contacting me on a CCIE (Compatible Computer Information Ex- change) BBS. The phone number is: (303) 377-6725. You need not be a regis-tered user to use this service. That's it, you're on your own. Enjoy POWERKIT and please don't forget to send $12.95. CENTRAL DATA SERVICES 1641 WINONA COURT DENVER, CO 80204 (303) 595-4218 or 595-4074