Amiga Collections: MegaDisc/MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip/MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf/TUTORIALS/SC-II.Part1

Text File | 1988-05-28 | 13KB | 283 lines

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    A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO USING THE A1060 SIDECAR WITH THE A1000 AMIGA

             [ALSO RELEVANT TO A2000 USERS WITH A HARD DISK]

           PART 1                            BY SCOTT CASTLEDINE







     [Ed: This article is also useful for A2000 owners with a hard disk
          and also incorporates a lot of general techniques about
          startup-sequences that apply to everyone, including the thorny
          problem of "assigning" programs to hard disks, and changing
          icons to run properly when moved to different directories.]

     By now you should have read my last article about the Sidecar in
Megadisc 7. If by some unimaginable twist of fate, you haven't, then get
hold of a back issue and have a little read.
     That article was not too technical and did not touch on the issues
of using the Sidecar too deeply. This series of articles is going to go
into some of the useful aspects of the A1060 machine.
     Before I go on, I have to point out that there are a few people out
there who have had problems with their machines for some reason or other.
I have not yet had any problems with either my A1000 or the Sidecar. I
have had the Amiga since November 1986 and the Sidecar for about 10
months.
     I would also like to point out - because of the similarities between
the 2088 Bridgeboard and the 1060 Sidecar in the functions they perform
for their respective machines, those people running the 2088 and A2000
configuration can apply some of these techniques to their system. The two
systems are almost identical. Briefly, the Bridgeboard has its own RAM
and CPU as does the Sidecar. The access software is the same. The
difference is, the Sidecar is put in it's own box and attached to the
A1000 expansion bus, where the Bridgeboard is mounted in one of the slots
inside the A2000 system box. They both come supplied with the same 5.25
inch floppy drive. This compatability makes my audience somewhat larger
than specificaly Sidecar users. Now, let's get right into it...

GETTING STARTED:
----------------

     The best place to start, is at the start (how profound!). And that,
on the Amiga, is the "startup-sequence" file! I have edited my startup-
sequence to one line:

     EXECUTE SS

That's all there is in that file. The reason being, I edit the startup-
sequence often and found it too long-winded to type..

     ED S/STARTUP-SEQUENCE

every time I wanted to change an ASSIGNment or the like. So the actual
file that does all the work is "SS" (obviously short for
startup-sequence!). Now all I have to type to edit my boot operations is

     ED S/SS

     Now, what have I got in my "SS" file? Glad you asked! I don't run my
Amiga without the Sidecar very often (except when loading a game from a
bootable disk, but that's not what we're here to discuss), so I have a
disk dedicated to booting the Sidecar and my JANUS controlled hard disk.
My "SS" file contains:

BindDrivers
   echo " "
   echo "                  Initializing Janus      *N"
   echo "                Please wait 25 seconds..  *N"
   Wait 25
   Echo "               Mounting Janus Hard Disk   *N"
   DJMount
   Echo "              Transfering control to JH0: *N"
   Assign sys: jh0:
AddBuffers jh0: 30
CD :
   Assign lc: jh0:c
   Assign include: jh0:lc/include
   Assign lib: jh0:lc/lib
   Assign c: jh0:c
   Assign s: jh0:s
   Assign l: jh0:l
   Assign libs: jh0:libs
   Assign devs: jh0:devs
   Assign fonts: jh0:fonts
   Assign "Textcraft Plus:" jh0:WPs
     .
     .
/* some more ASSIGNments in here */
     .
     .
Path add jh0:PC
copy ramicon1 to RAM:disk.info
loadwb
endcli > nil:

For a Sidecar system without a Hard disk you could shorten that SS file
considerably to something along these lines..

BindDrivers
   echo " "
   echo "                  Initializing Janus                 *N"
   echo "      Please place your MS-DOS boot disk in drive A: *N"
   echo "                Please wait 25 seconds..             *N"
   Wait 25
   echo "             Your Sidecar is ready to run            *N"
Path add Workbench1.2:PC
copy ramicon1 to RAM:disk.info
loadwb
endcli > nil:

     Obviously, in this case, SS is not ASSIGNing all your control over to
a nonexistant Hard disk if you don't have one, so basically all it has to
do is await the boot operations of the Sidecar which means putting the
MS-DOS disk in the 5.25" drive (or any other disk containing COMMAND.COM).
Then, all it has to do is load the workbench.

     OK! What does all this mean? The system searches for the "startup-
sequence" file in the "S" directory when you put a bootable disk into the
internal drive of (any) Amiga. If the computer can't find a file with
exactly that name, it won't perform any boot operations and load the
workbench - it just breaks to the CLI. My startup-sequence calls and
executes the SS file which then does the work of booting and ASSIGNing
all the directories over to my Janus Hard disk. Basically my "SS" file
boots the Sidecar OS before it does any Amiga tasks. It waits 25 seconds
for all that to happen (the execution of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file which I
will discuss later). Then it mounts (using DJmount) the hard disk for use
by the Amiga. Because the hard disk (from now on we will call it "JH0:"
for Janus Hard drive ZERO) is always attached to my system, it is ideal to
place the control entirely in it's hands. That's where all the ASSIGN-
ments come in. I have all the DOS commands and more (from the Public
Domain or written myself), in a "C" directory on JH0: and ASSIGNed that as
SYS: so every time I type a command in the CLI it looks in JH0:C. This
gives me two floppy drives free at all times. My boot disk often just sits
in the internal drive because most tasks are done on JH0: and I'm too lazy
to eject it. Any other floppy required for a session is put in DF1:.
    Not only is the "C" (for "Command") directory assigned to JH0: but all
the other operating directories are also. The C programming language
"include" and "lib" files have also had their paths defined for access
when I am compiling a project. I also have a large cache of fonts in my
fonts draw and regardless of which program I boot from floppy or hard, I
have access to ALL my fonts (here again some from the PD and others I
designed myself). The printer and clipboard devices etc. are also
accessible if needed by any task. All this adds up to a system that is
much more convenient and faster than floppies.
     The line:

     Assign "Textcraft Plus:" jh0:WPs

is purely because Textcraft, when booted from hard disk, calls on its
volume by name (to load your last preferences for document format). That
line now redirects the program to look in the "WPs" drawer on JH0: for the
file it needs. I have a few more of these assignments that I deleted from
the sample "SS" file here, but all do a similar type of redirection. When
running these programs from hard disk I no longer need to put the
associated floppy in one of the drives.
     You have probably noticed the line that puts my custom icon on the
workbench screen for the RAM disk. If not, it is the line:

     copy ramicon1 to RAM:disk.info

This just reads the icon from the boot disk's root directory to RAM: and
names it "disk.info" so it will show. Otherwise it is hidden away. Nothing
to do with the Sidecar but a little tip you may find useful for that
"really ace" icon you designed for RAM:

WORKBENCH LEVEL
---------------
     Once you are in the workbench, there are a few convenient tasks you
can perform that make accessing your Sidecar faster and easier.
     If you open the root window on the "A1060 Workbench 1.2" disk, you
will notice it looks identical to any other workbench disk, except it has
an added drawer called "PC". This contains the software that emulates an
IBM display. These programs call the IBM keymaps and pass control to the
Sidecar.

You have:
  PC Mono: For emulation of a monochrome IBM clone and would be used if
for some reason you have software dedicated to monochrome displays. To
boot from the CLI, type RUN "PC MONO"

  PC Color: Boots a color window which in my eyes is the ONLY screen
emulator to use as it has a choice of 2 (mono), 4 (workbench), 8 or 16
text colors. A maximum of 4 graphics colours can be displayed. Depending
on the number of colours you ask the Amiga to display on behalf of the
Sidecar, it is directly proportional to the speed at which text is
displayed. Two and four colours is reasonably fast and does not tend to
annoy when reading scrolling text. Eight and sixteen colours can cause the
scrolling of text to become very jerky and hard to follow. My advice is to
select colours according to the tasks you perform. To boot from the CLI,
type RUN "PC COLOR"

  PCDisk: when booted will allow transfer of files from the Sidecar to the
Amiga and vice versa. You can transfer either text or binary while running
MS-DOS with a few easy commands. When it's icon is double clicked, you
will have some disk activity but no other physical response is evident.

  LPT1S: This assigns the Amiga's parallel port to the Sidecar and allows
the printer to be used by the Sidecar without having to unplug anything.
It takes complete control, so either the Amiga has access OR the Sidecar,
not both at the same time; if LPT1S is running the Amiga has NO access!
Conversely, if the Amiga is using the parallel port, LPT1S cannot be
booted. If it is booted you will see a title bar on the screen - that has
a close gadget so you can turn it off and access the parallel port with
the Amiga again.

     In the PC drawer is also a module called "PCwindow" that both the PC
screen emulators call on. This does not have an icon so you won't see it
unless you have a look using the CLI. I have moved the "PC color",
"PCdisk", and "LPT1S" programs out of their drawer and into the root
directory on JH0: and had to perform a default-tool path-change for "PC
color". This is easy. Just select the icon and then under the "Workbench"
menu, select "Info" this will pop a requester window up and in the
"Default Tool" string gadget, type the path to "PCwindow". On mine that
path looks like this:

     :PC/PCwindow

Simple! If you want to drag Mono out as well, you will have to do likewise
with that.
     While in the subject of default tools I shall explain a few things
for those uninformed! When moving (project) icons about on a disk from
drawer to drawer, a few of you have probably noticed that sometimes the
project will not boot as it did be for. This is because some programs
assign the default tool as per the master disk when shipped. Like BASIC
assigns the default tool as

     EXTRAS:AMIGABASIC

so every time you double-click a project icon, it will ask for the EXTRAS
disk to be placed into one of the drives. If you move the actual
AmigaBASIC icon into another drawer or relabel the disk from EXTRAS to
something like "MyBASICdisk", then none of the projects will be able to
automatically find and boot AmigaBASIC to run. You can do the
select-project - shift-double-click tool sequence, but that can be a
problem if the project icons are in another drawer or the like. The
easiest way around all this is to change the default tool using a similar
method as above - Select "info" from the menu after selecting an icon,
then just typing in the new path. It sometimes is easier to keep most of
the default tools in the root directory (not in any drawer on a disk) of
your work disk. In my case, I have it in a drawer on my hard disk but had
to reassign all the default tool paths for every icon OR do an assignment
in the SS file, where it would look like

     Assign EXTRAS: Jh0:BASIC

Now whenever I double click an icon that looks for AmigaBASIC on the
EXTRAS disk it looks in the BASIC drawer on my hard disk. I can boot
projects in any drawer or even off a floppy - they will always use the
hard disk's version of AmigaBASIC. Unless, of course, the default tool has
been changed on the project to something like :AmigaBASIC which would look
in the root directory of SYS: (in my case - JH0:).

      Well, that's it for this issue. Next issue I will discuss the
Sidecar environment, how to tailor the display to suit your needs, look at
the AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the MS-DOS environment and setting up virtual
drives using Amiga devices and/or RAM:. I think you now have enough to
keep you occupied until next time. See how much you can speed up the
startup-sequence boot time.

Contact me on (002) 29 4784 if you have any problems.

                                                     Scott Castledine

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