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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. 2 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 3 Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources All rights reserved worldwide 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. 4 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 5 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. 6 Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources All rights reserved worldwide 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 7 Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources All rights reserved worldwide 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 8 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! 9 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. 10 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. 11 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 12 Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources All rights reserved worldwide 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. 13 Copyright 1987, Telemarketing Resources All rights reserved worldwide