Amiga Collections: MegaDisc/MegaDisc 07 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip/MegaDisc 07 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf/ARTICLES/Hints&Tips

Text File | 2000-04-10 | 17KB | 329 lines

                          HINTS AND TIPS

Many thanks to those of you who have heard our pleas and sent in your own
tips - please keep them coming, and remember that a usable tip is
"rewarded" by the return of the disk you sent it on, along with another
free disk, both with the Public Domain disk of your choice copied over
them. Send in as many as you've got because many MD users find the Tips
section the most useful part of MD. (See also READERS_HINTS in this
issue.)

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ABOUT SLOWMEMLAST/RAM_ON_OFF & NOFASTMEM

This is a brief and simplified explanation of why these programs exist and
what the memory situation is on the various Amigas (as far as I can find
out!).

 The A1000 situation - 512K of internal "chip memory", accessible by both
the CPU (Central Processing Unit, ie the 68000) and the Custom Chip Set
(the 3 co-processors, Paula, Agnes & Denise); 8 megabytes of "fast" or
"expansion" memory could then be added which is accessible only by the
68000. On power-up some of the chip memory would be taken for system
functions, and the rest put into a "free memory list" for other functions.
Then expansion memory would be looked for, and if found, linked into the
memory free list as fast memory. The only problem with all this is that
precious chip memory is used where fast memory would do just as well. Chip
memory is precious because it is required for the functions of the custom
chip set, such as Intuition screens, graphics, etc, and can soon start
running low.

 The A500/2000 situation - Due to the problem above, "slow memory" was
added, being 512K more RAM (built into the A2000 and available as the A501
Ram/clock module on the A500), which maps in at the top of memory. This
memory is checked before chip memory at power-up, and if found is used for
the "supervisor stack" and other system functions, thus freeing up some
chip memory. The remaining slow memory is added to the free memory list,
and henceforward treated like normal expansion or fast memory. The only
problem is that "slow memory" isn't real fast, because it is subject to
"cycle stealing" by the Custom Chip Set while, for example, high
resolution is being handled, even though this memory can't be accessed by
the Custom chips. The upshot is that programs which use high resolution
and/or lots of colours will run more slowly in 1-meg 500s and 2000s than
in a system with real fast memory.

 So, NOFASTMEM (or RAM_ON/OFF) solves the problem of some early programs
which assumed that all available memory was chip memory (and consequently
screwed up when there was any extra memory) by allocating any non-chip
memory, ie effectively removing it.

 If you've got slow memory, it will tend to be used before real fast
memory - so run the program SLOWMEMLAST (preferably in your
startup-sequence) and it will be used after real fast memory.

See also the SYS program in the UTILITIES drawer for more Ram utilities.

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CLI SHELLS
These Shells constitute an interface on an interface - ie, the CLI is
itself an interface between the user and the Operating System (OS). But
it's not so very friendly, as it expects you, for example, to type in every
command line from scratch, even though you might want to use a previous
command again, or something very similar.
Shells to the rescue! Essentially they wrap themselves around the CLI and
provide you with such useful features as a "History" of commands (the
commands you've entered remain in memory for you to re-use); "Command-line
editing" - you can recall a previous command, edit it, then re-use it;
often-used commands are kept in memory or made "resident" for instant
access; sometimes you can create "macros", ie a series of keystrokes or
commands is assigned to a single function key, for example; you can
also set up "aliases", ie type a single character instead of a whole line
of them; various shells offer various other features.
One of the earliest PD shells was MYCLI, quite a useful one, especially at
the price. Since then, there have been other PD shells, and a number of
commercial ones. Among them:

 * WSHELL - written by Bill Hawes, the man responsible for CONMAN (which
is almost a shell in itself, and available as shareware on the Fish disks)
this shell includes Conman 1.1, and provides the features mentioned above
along with: Command aliases and abbreviations
            Extended Prompt string/window title options
            Concurrent Piping (ie the output of one process automatically
                               becomes the input of the next, & so on)
            Transparent support for REXX-language Macros
            (See the Review on TxED_Plus & other Text editors)
            Fixes the AmigaDOS Execute() function
I'll be getting this one, as it is designed to run with Conman, TxED, REXX,
and the AmigaDOS Replacement Project commands. WSHELL (US$52, $50 within
USA) and AREXX (US$52, $50 within USA) are available from Bill Hawes at:
P O Box 308, Maynard MA 01754    USA      TEL: [phone]

 * TSHELL - More like a clone of the various UNIX shells, it adapts that
style to the Amiga, and provides Unix-type filenames, with a syntax
similar to C and a lot of powerful features useful for C programmers in
particular. Available for US$50 from:
Metran Technology, P O Box 890, West Oneonta, NY 13861    USA

Anyone who's using the CLI regularly is wasting a lot of time and effort
if not using a shell such as those above, or perhaps CONMAN or CSH,
another Public Domain shell by Matt Dillon which quite a lot of people
swear by.

Version 1.3 of the Operating system (OS1.3) will incorporate a SHELL with
all or most of the facilities described above. It will have ALIASES,
HISTORY, RESIDENT COMMANDS, and the rest of it.

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CMD FOR FAST PRINTING
CMD is a public domain program by Caroline Scheppner, a member of the
Commodore-Amiga team who has written many very useful utilities for us
sloggers. This one looks like it will appear in the UTILITIES drawer on
Workbench 1.3, and essentially redirects what would normally go to the
printer into a file on disk or in ram:. Having done so, you copy the file
to the PAR: (parallel) device. The improvement in speed comes from the
printer not having to wait for the Amiga to do its thing for every line.
Good for single or multiple copies, and the usage is:
        > run CMD -s parallel ram:gfx.prt
followed by (when you want to print the picture):
        > copy ram:gfx.prt to par:
(Thanks to Amazing Computing v3.5 for this hint)

There is also an equivalent program by John Hodgson (NewZap) called
PARSNAG which does more or less the same thing, available with John's
NEWZAP update, recently arrived in the PD Collection.

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BACKDOORS FOR GAMES

To make Igor indestructible in BARBARIAN, just enter 04-08-59 (the
author's birthday) once the game has been loaded - if the background goes
grey, it's worked, and the next access to disk sets up the screen as it
should be (see the review in this issue).

To get "Power capsules" in ARKANOID, hit the Space bar, type DSIMAGIC
(without spaces and without hitting RETURN) and hit the space bar again
to un-pause the game. Now when a DS capsule is caught (it'll fall down
the screen), you'll be able to call up a POWER CAPSULE" of any kind at
any time. if you hit the appropriate keyboard letters (like "L" for
Laser, S for Slow, C for Catch, E for Expand, B for Break, P for Paddle
and D for Disruption) you'll get the "power capsule" falling, so catch it!
Also hitting the F key will take you to the Final Screen, so be sure to
have extra lives ready. And you can hit the ENTER key on the numeric
keypad to skip any screen you don't want to play.

[ED: If you've got any more of these, please send them in and get 2 free
PD disks, including the disk you sent it in on.]

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EASYCALL AND MODEMS
D Bielik finds a problem with using Telecom's EASYCALL facility with his
SUPRA 2400 modem. (For those who haven't heard of it, EasyCall is a neat
series of facilities for use with Tone Dial phones - you can get Last
Number Redial; Call Control(restrict access to others); Call Waiting - ie
alternate between 2 separate calls; Conference Calls - you can speak with
2 other people at the same time; Call Diversion - have your calls diverted
to another number in the same area; Hotline numbers - one button calls;
Abbreviated dialling - call up to 60 stored numbers.) However if you've
got the "Call Waiting" facility activated, the tones confuse the modem and
nothing happens, so it's best to turn it off when using your modem.
Danny wrote the review of the SUPRA modem in this issue.

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UTILIMASTER AND "PRINT"
Leon Jarvis is a keen user of this "Directory Utility" PD program, and
says that if you want to use the PRINT facility you must have the
secondary program of that name sitting either in your C directory or in
RAM, so it will be found by the program. Leon will be writing a review of
this excellent pd program for MD.

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STRIPPED-DOWN WORKBENCH
The very smallest, leanest Workbench disk you can have which will boot up
and present you with a Workbench screen needs the following -
libs/diskfont.library
libs/icon.library
c/loadwb
c/endcli
s/startup-sequence   (which would be:  loadwb    )
                                       endcli
From that lean start, you can add other elements to the disk, depending on
what you want. The two libraries are needed in the libs directory to
provide information about fonts and icons. Thanks to Nic Wilson for this
information.

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64 EMULATOR REVISITED

Although the Amiga is a speedy machine, and although the Emulator is
written in 68000 Assembler, some programs run very slowly. The reason is
Sprites - Amiga sprites are narrower than 64 sprites, so the Emulator has
to use a pair of Amiga sprites for each 64 sprite, thus imposing a lot of
computing overhead in handling games which make a lot of use of sprites.
So don't even bother with arcade-style games. However, Word Processors,
databases, spreadsheets, etc which don't use sprites tend to work fine.

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COMPILING BASIC

There is a Basic Compiler by the people who brought us AC/BASIC, and the
two Amigabasic programs STARMAP and CALC by Keith Neighbour (which appeared
on MD4) were compiled with it, and run much faster as a result. (Keith,
incidentally, is working on a companion program called CONSTELLATION which
will take STARMAP a lot further - contact us if you'd like to see it
released, and Keith might be prevailed upon to release it in some form).

It seems that TRUE BASIC, which sells at US$99.95 with Compiler or
US$149.95 with the "Runtime package", can now be compiled with the runtime
package and distributed commercially without any licence or charge, unlike
ABSOFT's AC/Compiler, for which you need to buy some form of licencing.
Not only that, but the ABSOFT compiler costs more than the full True Basic
language with compiler. And many people swear by True basic as the only
BASIC for the Amiga. So if you use Basic a lot, and would like faster
running programs, this looks like a serious alternative.

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THE CLI COPY COMMAND

The COPY command is one of the most used of all, but quite a few people
are typing more than they need to - ie, you can copy more than one file at
a time. So if you're copying a number of CLI commands, for example, to
ram: in your startup-sequence, you can do the following:
COPY cd|dir|endcli|type ram:c
instead of doing it in 4 separate lines.

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HARD DISKS AND HUMIDITY

Some people with hard disks may have noticed a tendency to inexplicable
glitches during periods of wet weather. Graeme Whittle tells me that it is
better to keep the disk running during such times, as the disks can tend
to get "muddy", ie moisture forms on surfaces and can create hair-tearing
situations. Anyone got any further information about care of Hard Disks?

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SNAPSHOTTING ON THE WORKBENCH

A few people have asked about doing this - essentially, if you want to
keep the window of a drawer or disk sized in a way you've chosen, click on
the drawer or disk icon once, then select SNAPSHOT. Or you can use
Extended Selection - keep the SHIFT key down as you select a number of
icons within a window and select the disk or drawer as well before you
SNAPSHOT. Then everything will stay as you want it. I'm told that there is
a PD program which avoids all this - ie, it automatically snapshots icons
as you've set them up. Has anyone got it?

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PHOTOGRAPHING THE SCREEN

Those who want to photograph images off the screen, but who are put off by
the curvature at the corners might think about getting Andrew Draper's
hacked Kickstart (A1000 only), which allows for full overscan horizontally
and vertically. The image can be shrunk a little towards the middle of the
screen and the shot taken around the slightly shrunken image. Check
Andrew's "Rumours" in Feedback - it's a very useful Kickstart anyway,
giving a lot more space on screen.

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WATCHING TV ON YOUR AMIGA

Those who are cost-conscious, would like to be able to watch TV
occasionally while computing, but don't want to buy a VCR just for that
purpose, might think about getting Dick Smith's TV tuner (which is used
for a Teletext kit they've got). Steve Wright, who contributed the
Do-It-Yourself MIDI for MD4 (updated for 500/2000 in this issue), has done
just that and will describe it in the next issue we hope. Your RGB monitor
already has the necessary circuits for simultaneous reception of TV - all
that's needed is a single jumper on the circuit board. And of course you
can just link up your VCR (VCR'S VIDEO OUT to your monitor's Video In).

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EPSON SET FOR PRINTING

An excellent PD printing program called EPSON SET can be found on Amicus #
12, which brings up a window with many buttons which can be selected or
toggled to choose various printing attributes, such as "skip perforation",
condensed mode, enlarged, etc. In other words, you can fine tune your
printing in a very easy way.

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REMOVE THAT POINTER FROM YOUR GRAPHICS SCREENS/SYSTEM-CONFIGURATION FILE

Some people may have been irritated about still seeing the mouse pointer
while showing graphics. Consider the EDIT POINTER selection in the
Preferences first screen - just play around with moving the HOT POINT
around and with re-designing the pointer. For example, move the HOT POINT
outside the actual pointer by a pixel or two; and/or make the actual
pointer a singel point, or even reverse its angle (like pointing downwards
to the right). And don't forget that whenever you SAVE any particular
combination of settings from PREFERENCES, it is saved on disk as the
contents of a 232-byte file called SYSTEM-CONFIGURATION. Now you can have
any number of these - each time you save from Preferences to your Workbench
disk, enter (in the CLI), something like
> rename devs:System-Configuration devs:SC1    (or SC2 or SCfunnyPointer)
and when you want to use that particular configuration (like you need to
print out to a different printer, or you want an interlace screen), just
rename your current System-configuration to some memorable name, and then
rename SC1 (or whatever) to "system-configuration", and reboot. And getting
a bit more sophisticated, you can always set up your startup-sequence to
allow you to choose this or that option, including system-configurations.
Clever use of the SKIP or ASK commands will allow you to "branch" to one
or another option during the startup-sequence. MD8 will have full details
about these possibilities, along with a locally written intelligent "ASK"
command.

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ END OF HINTS&TIPS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^