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README.TXT ========== This is the README.TXT file for the Energizer Bunny (TM) Screen Saver. Trademark Acknowledgements: Energizer and Energizer Bunny are trademarks of the Eveready Battery Company, Inc., and are used with permission for the development of this product. Additional trademarks of the Eveready Battery Company include E.B. and Going, and Going, and Going... Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Netware is a registered trademark of Novell. After Dark is a registered trademark of Berkeley Systems. Intermission is a registered trademark of ICOM Communications. (C) Copyright 1992 by PC Dynamics, Inc. and Eveready Battery Company, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Introduction ------------ Are you ready for the Energizer Bunny? Here he is, with exciting screen savers, new wallpaper designs, and of course, zany guest appearances. Just when you least expect it, this hare with a flair will walk, strut, parachute or swim across your screen, beating his drum for everyone to hear -- just like you've seen on the TV commercials. When you're not using your PC, amaze your friends with E.B.'s famous under- water screen saver, complete with fish, ocean plants and SHARKS! Or maybe you prefer E.B. parachuting through the clouds, or better yet, randomly cycle through the many-available scenes -- all with sound, of course. Are you tired of your Windows desktop? Then install one of the fresh new E.B. designer series wallpapers. No assembly or tools are required. And don't forget E.B.'s animated icon that continuously beats the drum, that is, unless you've hidden it to surprise your friends when E.B. suddenly appears out of nowhere. Are you already using another screen saver, such as After Dark or Intermission? If you are, no problem! E.B. will still make unannounced guest appearances right over them. And not to be redundant, E.B. will quietly disable his own screen saving mode when either After Dark or Intermission are detected in memory to avoid dueling screen savers. We hope you enjoy this product as much as we enjoyed designing it. System Requirements: This product requires an IBM PC or compatible with a color monitor running Microsoft Windows 3.0 or higher running in either standard or enhanced mode. Approximately 2.5 MB of hard disk space will be needed to store the program, sound and image files. Although this product is designed to run on machines equipped with only the minimum hardware required to run Windows; certainly, you can expect to see better performance on PCs with extra memory or faster processors. For sound support, Windows 3.1 or higher is needed. Although this product includes a public domain utility for playing sound through your PC's internal speaker, we recommend a Windows-compatible sound board to achieve the best results. A Windows-compatible sound board is one that includes a device driver that installs into your Windows Control Panel as a standard WAVE device. All of the sounds included with this product are 11KHZ MONO sounds. Installation ------------ Your Energizer Bunny Screen Saver is distributed on a 3.5" high-density diskette. If you do not own a 3.5" floppy drive, please refer to the next section for instructions on how to copy the installation files to other media formats. Otherwise, please follow the steps below to perform the installation. Step 1. Start Microsoft Windows on your PC. Step 2. Place your original Energizer Bunny program diskette into one of your floppy drives. These instructions assume you are using your A: drive. Step 3. From your Program Manager, select the RUN option on the FILE pull-down menu. Type A:\SETUP in the dialog box and select OK to begin. Step 4. Follow the on-screen instructions once the SETUP dialog box appears. Copying the Installation Files to other Diskette(s) --------------------------------------------------- If your PC does not contain a 3.5" floppy drive, you may copy the files contained on your original diskette to 5.25" diskettes using another PC equipped with both size drives. Alternatively, you may fill out and return the enclosed coupon with a check for $5 to receive a 5.25" diskette by mail. The SETUP program is flexible in that it does not matter which diskettes its various files are moved to. This allows you to copy the files from your original diskette onto any number or combination of backup diskettes, as long as no files are split between diskettes. We recommend you use the standard DOS COPY command to perform this procedure. Once you've created an alternate set of diskettes compatible with your PC, you should follow the original instructions for completing the installation. As you run SETUP, you'll be prompted to change diskettes when needed. Sound Support ------------- This product supports sound through Windows' standard WAVE file device. This feature is available only with Windows 3.1 and higher and requires either a sound board or a special sound driver which uses your PC's internal speaker. For those of you who do not own a Windows-compatible sound board, we recommend the public domain sound driver developed by Microsoft named SPEAKER.DRV. This file is available free on CompuServe and many other popular BBS systems; however, for your convenience, we've included a copy of it along with this product to save you the trouble of downloading it. The sound clips provided with the Energizer Bunny Screen Saver include excerpts from the most popular TV commercials as well as individual drumbeat sounds. If you're using a sound board, you'll be able to play any or all of these sounds without a hitch. When using your PC speaker; however, you'll find that you'll probably prefer to stick with the short drumbeats since the animation will stop while the sound is played. This happens because the PC cannot play sounds and animate at the same time without the support of external hardware, such as a sound board. In addition to being copied to your BUNNY directory during installation, the Microsoft SPEAKER.DRV driver file (SPEAK.EXE) is available free on CompuServe in Data Library 15 of the Zenith forum. It can also be found by typing GO IBMFF (file finder) and searching for the name SPEAK.EXE. This file is a self-extracting executable program which contains the driver, instructions and Microsoft License Agreement. To install the speaker driver follow these instructions: 1. Run SPEAK.EXE from the DOS command line. 2. Start Windows. 3. Double-click on the Control Panel icon in the Main group of Program Manager. This starts Control Panel. 4. Double-click on the Drivers icon in Control Panel. 5. Click on the Add button. 6. Double-click on the "Unlisted or Updated Driver" in the List of Drivers. 7. Type the drive and path to which you installed the Energizer Bunny Screen Saver. This is normally C:\BUNNY. 8. Click on the OK button. 9. You should now see a dialog box titled "Add Unlisted or Updated Driver" with an entry in the list titled "Sound Driver for PC-Speaker". 10. Click on "Sound Driver for PC-Speaker", then click on the OK button. 11. You should now see a dialog box titled "PC-Speaker Setup". Click on the OK button. 12. This will bring another dialog box up titled "System Setting Change". Click on the Restart Now button. This will restart Windows with the speaker driver installed. Running BUNNY.EXE for the First Time ------------------------------------ Once you've completed the basic installation as described at the beginning of this manual, you're ready to begin using your Energizer Bunny Screen Saver. The executable program for this product is named BUNNY.EXE and is located in the directory you specified during installation, usually named C:\BUNNY. The simplest way to run BUNNY.EXE is to double-click your mouse on the E.B. icon that appears in your newly-created Energizer Bunny group. If you do not have a group by this name, it's likely that your desktop program manager is not compatible with the PROGMAN program that comes with Windows. In this case, you'll need to consult your desktop manager's instruction manual for directions on how to add a new program or group item. Initially, the screen saver and guest appearance features of this product are disabled. You'll need to enable each of these independently following the instructions outlined in this manual. On the main program window are two check boxes that allow you to quickly fine-tune how this product behaves. These are: * Hide Desktop Icon * Minimize on Exit The Hide Desktop Icon option is used to keep the E.B. icon for this product from appearing on your Windows desktop. This is sometimes desirable when you wish to make the screen saver transparent. When the icon is hidden, you may still use the task list (Alt-Tab in Windows 3.1) to re-display this program's main window. The second check box option is used to keep the screen saver program running in the background when you select the Exit button on the main window. This feature is generally required for normal operation of the product. If this box is not checked and you exit, the screen saver will be removed from memory and will not be able to activate itself while you're working in other programs. By checking this option, the program will minimize itself whenever you select the Exit button and will therefore remain resident in memory. This same requirement applies to guest appearances. Running this Program Automatically ---------------------------------- In most cases, you'll want this product loaded automatically each time you start Windows. The best way to do this depends upon which version of Windows you are running. A) Windows 3.1 or higher using Program Manager Starting with Windows 3.1, the Program Manager shell includes a special group named Startup. If you have Program Manager, or a similar shell that supports a Startup group, the simplest way to load this program each time you run Windows is to drag the E.B. icon into the Startup group and set it up to run minimized. Each time Windows starts up, it always loads the programs listed in the Startup group. B) Windows 3.0 or higher If you are running Windows 3.0, or are using a Program Manager replacement shell that does not support Startup groups, or simply prefer not to include this program in your Startup group but still wish to have it loaded auto- matically, then check the box labeled "Load automatically on Windows startup" located on the Setup dialog accessible from the main screen in BUNNY.EXE. This will insert a LOAD= line into your WIN.INI file that instructs Windows to run this program automatically each time it starts up. Configuration Options Available through the Setup Dialog Box ------------------------------------------------------------ Detailed below are several configuration options that are available through the Setup dialog box which is accessible from the main program window of BUNNY.EXE. Animating the Energizer Bunny Icon For extra fun, you may wish to have the E.B. icon for this program continuously beating the drum. This animation occurs only when the program is loaded and in a minimized state. To enable this feature, check the box labeled "Animate icon when minimized." Installing a Setup Password A setup password is used to control access to this dialog box. When a setup password is installed, each time you or anyone else attempts to display this dialog, a password will be required. To install a setup password, you must: 1. Check the "Password required for setup access" option. 2. Select the Password button to display the password input dialog box and enter a password. Installing a Screen Saver Password By default, no password is required to restore your screen when returning from screen saver mode. If you prefer to require a password, control is returned to Windows only if the user is able to correctly enter the current password. Depending upon which password radio button you select, the current password can be either the same password used for Setup access, or the login password for the user currently logged into the network from this workstation. At present, only Novell Netware is supported for network passwords. If you choose to use network passwords, the program will prompt for a password only if a user is currently logged in on your PC. Otherwise, no password will be required. Installing a Screen Saver Hot Key To manually activate your screen saver when you leave your PC unattended, you must install a hot key. By default, this hot key is CTRL+SHIFT+B. This means that you must hold the Ctrl and Shift keys down and press B. The Ctrl and Shift keys are always required as part of the hot key sequence; however, the alpha letter that follows is selectable. To install a screen saver hot key, you must: 1. Check the "Saver hot key" option to enable the use of hot keys. 2. Set the alpha letter to be used along with CTRL+SHIFT to manually activate the screen saver. Improving Performance under Low Memory A checkbox named "Use only simple animation" is available on the Setup dialog box to help improve the performance of this product when memory is low or on slow processors. When checked, E.B. will appear using only a subset of his normal movements (no head turns and spins, etc.). Also, some of the screen savers will cut back on the number of objects they attempt to animate to the screen at the same time. Redecorating with Energizer Bunny Wallpaper ------------------------------------------- A pushbutton is available on the main program window to display the Energizer Bunny Wallpaper dialog box. This dialog box is used to sample and install new wallpaper for your Windows desktop. This feature is provided here as a convenience to save you from needing to run Windows' Control Panel. Adding or changing your Windows desktop wallpaper using this dialog box performs identically to using Control Panel; except that here, only images included with this product are available for selection. Another small difference is that this program already knows which images should be tiled, and which ones should be centered. This product includes both 16 and 256-color wallpaper designs; therefore, not all wallpapers will display correctly on 16-color monitors. Each wall- paper design is identified with (16) or (256) after its name to help you determine which ones are compatible with your video hardware. Dialog Box Options ------------------ Name: List of available images. Select one you're interested in and try it out using the Sample button. Select [None] if you don't wish to use any of the images included with this product as your desktop. [Sample] Displays a full-screen sample of the wallpaper currently selected in the "Name" list box. Pressing any key or moving your mouse restores the display. [Install] Installs the currently-selected wallpaper as your new Windows desktop and returns to the main program window. [Cancel] Cancels all changes made during this session and returns to the main program window. [Help] Displays a window. Enabling the Energizer Bunny Screen Savers ------------------------------------------ To enable an Energizer Bunny screen saver, you must: 1. Choose one of the available displays. 2. Make sure the On/Off switch in the screen saver dialog box is set to ON. 3. Adjust the slider bar to the desired blanking delay period. 4. Select ACCEPT to save your settings and exit back to the main program window. 5. Make sure the "Minimize on Exit" box on the main program screen is checked. 6. Select EXIT to return to your program manager or workstation shell. Dialog Box Options ------------------ On/Off Master switch used to enable or disable the screen saver without affecting any of your other settings. This switch should be set to ON for normal operation. Screen Choose one of the available screen saver displays. Saver Select [Randomize] to invoke a different one each time Name: the product activates. Select [None] if you prefer not to install this product's screen saving features. Sound: Choose one of the available sound tracks or drumbeats for the screen saver selected above. This field will be dimmed if sound support cannot be provided with the current PC hardware/software setup. Delay: Set the time (in minutes) after which the screen saver will activate if no input is received from your keyboard or mouse. [Sample] Temporarily invoke the currently-selected screen saver so that you may sample the available displays. Press any key or move your mouse to restore your screen. [Accept] Saves the current screen saver configuration and returns to the main program window. [Cancel] Cancels all configuration changes made during this session and returns to the main program window. [Help] Displays a help window. Enabling Energizer Bunny Guest Appearances ------------------------------------------ Guest appearances are when the Energizer Bunny suddenly decides to interrupt whatever you are doing and parade across your screen -- just like on the TV commercials. Although guest appearances are normally triggered via a timer that you set, you may also trigger them manually by clicking the right mouse button on the E.B. icon when BUNNY.EXE is minimized. To add variety to your guest appearances, each of the available appearance types has several sets of choreagraphy associated it. This way, E.B. will perform differently on each pass. To add a higher level of randomization, select the [Randomize] option. This will cause the program to cycle through the various styles of appearances as well as the different choreography. During an appearance, your keyboard, mouse and screen are taken over by the Energizer Bunny. Afterwards, everything is restored back to normal. If you move the mouse or hit a key during an appearance, the appearance is immediately terminated. Dialog Box Options ------------------ On/Off Master switch used to enable or disable guest appearances without affecting any of your other settings. This switch should be set to ON for normal operation. Guest Choose one of the available guest appearance displays. Appearance You may select [Randomize] to invoke a different one Name: each time the product activates. Select [None] if you prefer not to install this feature. Sound: Choose one of the available sound tracks or drumbeats for the guest appearance selected above. This field will be dimmed if sound support cannot be provided with the current PC hardware/software setup. Delay: Set the time (in minutes) after which the Energizer Bunny will make a guest appearance. Unlike the delay period used for screen saver mode, this delay doesn't wait for your keyboard or mouse to become inactive. For example, setting the delay to 5 minutes will trigger an appearance every 5 minutes, regardless of your keyboard usage. Please note; however, that when it's time for an appearance, the program will wait for a convenient opportunity when you haven't pressed a key or moved the mouse for a few seconds. [Sample] Manually trigger the currently-selected guest appearance so that you may sample the available displays. [Accept] Saves the current settings for E.B. guest appearances and returns to the main program window. [Cancel] Cancels all configuration changes made during this session and returns to the main program window. [Help] Displays a help window. More on Installation -------------------- This section is provided for those of you who wish to know exactly what happens during the Energizer Bunny Screen Saver installation. When you run SETUP, all the program files required by this product are decompressed into the directory you specify at the first dialog box. Next, your WIN.INI file is updated to point to this directory using a simple two-line entry. The default format of this entry is shown below. Lines added to your WIN.INI file: [Bunny] Install=c:\bunny It's also possible that a LOAD=C:\BUNNY\BUNNY.EXE statement could be added to your WIN.INI file. This happens when you use the Setup dialog box in BUNNY.EXE to check the box labeled "Load automatically on Windows startup." Finally, a Program Manager group is created named "Energizer Bunny" using the standard DDE communications interface available through Windows. This group will contain two entries; one for BUNNY.EXE, and another to run Windows' NOTEPAD program with this README.TXT file. The first time you run BUNNY.EXE, a file named BUNNY.INI will be created in your default Windows directory. This file contains your personal preferences for using this product. By placing this file in the Windows directory (the one containing your WIN.INI file), this product is able to conveniently support multiple users on a shared network drive. Please remember; however, that even though this product is designed to support networks, you must still procure a license for each person or PC using it. Tips and Tricks --------------- Listed below are various tips and tricks we've found helpful toward making this product more enjoyable: 1. When playing drum sounds through your PC's internal speaker, you may want to experiment with the available sounds to find the one which sounds the best on your particular hardware configuration. 2. If you find it necessary to reduce the hard disk space required by this product, you may delete the wallpaper files you are not using. These are the files with the .BMP extension in your C:\BUNNY directory (or the directory in which the Energizer Bunny Screen Saver is installed). 3. If you are experiencing poor performance using the Watery World, Parachuting, or E.B. in the Old West screen savers, you may adjust the number of objects on the screen using profile strings in the BUNNY.INI file located in your Windows directory. Watery World: NumberOfFish=x (x is from 1 to 6) Parachuting & E.B. in the Old West: CloudCover=x (x is from 1 to 30) Sample BUNNY.INI: [Bunny] Status=10384 . . . CloudCover=4 NumberOfFish=3 4. You may increase or decrease the length of time that your keyboard and mouse must be inactive before the Energizer Bunny will do a guest appearance by changing the number of seconds referenced by the GuestAppearSafetyDelay= profile string in your BUNNY.INI file. 5. By default, the Energizer Bunny guest appearances will terminate immediately if any mouse or keyboard activity occurs. If you choose, you may prevent keyboard or mouse activity from terminating these appearances by setting the GuestAppearTerminate= profile string to 0. 6. When playing sounds through your PC's internal speaker, you may need to adjust the length of the sound buffer (in seconds) to accomodate the longest sound you wish to play. This adjustment is made using SPEAKER.DRV options available through Windows' Control Panel. 7. If this program cannot grab enough memory for itself when it's time to make a guest appearance, then the appearance is simply skipped. 8. If this program cannot grab enough memory for itself when it's time to save your screen, then it will try dropping some of the more complex animation components in hope of fitting into available memory. When you see this happening, you might try setting the "Use only simple animation" checkbox on the Setup dialog box to help this program better adjust to low memory situations. This option will also usually help when your screen savers fail to display the Energizer Bunny. 9. The appearance of the Energizer Bunny during the Laser screen saver is based on the current settings in the Guest Appearances. If you would like to disable the appearance of the Energizer Bunny without changing your current Guest Appearances settings, add the line: LaserBunny=0 to the BUNNY.INI file. To re-enable the appearance of the Energizer Bunny, remove the previous line from the BUNNY.INI file. 10. The Energizer Bunny Screen Saver is heavily optimized for fast animation. However, if you feel it's still not fast enough, we suggest using a Windows software graphics accelerator, such as WinSpeed from Panacea. A speed increase of 2-3 times Windows current graphics speed is common. 11. The Energizer Bunny Screen Saver will detect open communications sessions before activating either a screen saver or a guest appearance. However, this does not necessary mean that the session is active, i.e. transmitting and receiving. If you regularly use a background communications program and you know it will not be active when a screen saver or guest appearance starts, you can disable the detection of open communications sessions on a port by port basis. For example, suppose you are using a fax-board on COM2: and do not expect any faxes. You can disable the detection on COM2: by adding the following line to the BUNNY.INI file: NoCheckCom2=1 This will disable the check for open communications sessions on COM2. The general syntax is: NoCheckCom<n>=1 where n= 1 through 8. 12. If you are using an accelerated video card, such as the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro, and you are experiencing extremely slow animation, it is caused by the video driver. When the bitmaps used for animation are created, these video drivers move the bitmaps into unused video memory. Then during animation they move the bitmaps back out into system memory. ATI has acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix. A suggested workaround for ATI, until an updated video driver is available, is to change the DeviceBitmap= entry from On to Off in the [mach32] section of your WIN.INI file. Other similar workarounds may be available for other video cards. Please consult your video card manual or contact the manufacturer. Removing this Product from Your PC ---------------------------------- In the event that you find it necessary to remove the Energizer Bunny Screen Saver from your PC, please follow the steps below. Step 1. Start Microsoft Windows on your PC. Step 2. Place your original Energizer Bunny program diskette into one of your floppy drives. These instructions assume you are using your A: drive. Step 3. From your Program Manager, select the RUN option on the FILE pull-down menu. Type A:\SETUP in the dialog box and select OK to begin. Step 4. When the SETUP dialog box appears, select REMOVE and follow the on-screen instructions. This procedure removes the entire directory containing this product's files, cleans up your WIN.INI file and removes the BUNNY.INI file located in your Windows directory. If you still have a Program Manager group for this product, it too will be deleted. Technical Support ----------------- Technical support for this product is provided by PC Dynamics during normal business hours, Pacific Standard Time (PST). For assistance, please call our support hotline at (818)889-1742, or write to: PC Dynamics, Incorporated Technical Support Department 31332 Via Colinas, Suite 102 Westlake Village, CA 91362 --- End of README.TXT File ---