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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf
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TUTORIALS
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Startup-Sequences
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1988-05-28
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121 lines
ABOUT STARTUP-SEQUENCES
I'm sure that many Amiga users have good tips on how to improve
on what I mention here, and if you do, please send them in so we can tell
others. Meanwhile, on this disk you should have a look at various other
descriptions and listings of startup-sequences, particularly Scott
Castledine's article on the SIDECAR, and Tim Hogan-Doran's "Enhancing_WB"
article, where he recommends some extra programs to run.
THE BASICS
The Startup-Sequence (SUS from now on) is simply a series of CLI commands
strung together in a batch, and read by the machine at startup - hence the
names "Batch File" or "Command Sequence File" for any such group of CLI
commands designed to achieve a purpose. The SUS, along with any other
batch files, lives in the S (for Script) directory of your bootable disk,
simply because it's convenient to have a place for them, and so the system
is set up to look for them there whenever the EXECUTE command is issued -
usually by you, but in the case of the SUS, by the system on bootup. There
is nothing inviolate about a SUS, they are there for your convenience, and
you are encouraged to change them around, customise them as you wish, and
since they're just a series of words (ASCII characters, such as letters
and numbers), you can use any TEXT EDITOR or WORD PROCESSOR to load them
in and edit them. In the case of a Word Processor, just make sure that it
has a SAVE option which allows you a "Text Only" or "ASCII" option.
Otherwise you may find that you've saved a file which has some "embedded"
characters peculiar to the Word Processor, and therefore liable to confuse
your computer on bootup, leading to the gnashing of teeth, wrinkle-forming
frowns and eventual loss of self-esteem.
There are various schools of thought about the style of SUSs -
purists and power users like to keep them as short as possible, to speed
up the booting process, and minimise the grinding of the internal drive,
df0:. Other users are more baroque, and lean towards long elaborate files
which run all manner of clocks, monitors, shells and so forth in the
background, some of which may end up fighting with each other in the
depths of the machine when it comes to sharing resources, like memory.
There is no doubt that the fewer the background processes ticking away,
the more stable the use of the computer, but there are numerous little
utilities which are recommended (see below and see Tim Hogan-Doran's
article which recommends a good number of them).
A STANDARD SUS
If you open a CLI, and enter
> type sys:s/startup-sequence
you'll see on screen the SUS of your current system (sys:) disk, and if
you are using a standard issue Workbench, it should look something like
this:
echo "Workbench disk. Release 1.2 version 33.46"
echo "Use Preferences tool to set date"
if EXISTS sys:system
path sys:system add
endif
if EXISTS sys:utilities
path sys:utilities add
endif
BindDrivers
LoadWb
endcli > nil:
There are a few unnecessary lines here - you know already that this is a
Workbench 1.2 and that you can use Preferences to set the date. So we can
eliminate the first two lines, and thus save two disk accesses when the
boot disk's C directory is searched for the "echo" command, which simply
allows you to put anything on the screen during a batch file (how to
eliminate these comes later on). Then there are two IF-ENDIF statements,
designed to establish the existence of the directories UTILITIES and
SYSTEM on your boot disk, and having done so, to add those two directories
to the path which is searched for any command you may type into the CLI.
Now if you always keep those two directories (drawers) on your Workbench,
then we can eliminate both statements, and replace them with a single
line, namely
path sys:system sys:utilities add
The command PATH will allow you to make up to 10 additional search paths
on the one line, so you could expand on this a little and include, say,
ram: or ram:c (if you're going to put any commands there) and maybe sys:
if you keep any useful utilities in the main window of your boot disk. The
usefulness of PATH command becomes apparent when you realise that you no
longer have to refer to, say, the command DISKCOPY as SYS:SYSTEM/DISKCOPY
any more - you can simply enter DISKCOPY on its own and it will be found
because you've told the system to peek into the SYSTEM drawer as well.
Likewise with NOTEPAD or SETMAP or a number of other utilities found in
different places on your disk.
The next command BINDDRIVERS is there just in case - all it does
is make sure that any piece of hardware (hard disk, etc) which has an
associated icon in the SYS:EXPANSION drawer will be included in the rest
of the session. Not really necessary otherwise.
LOADWB is a program which runs what we know as WORKBENCH, ie the
WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pull-down menus) interface, originally
developed as a concept by XEROX, and since then greedily appropriated by
Apple Computers, as if they owned it! You could even remove this, as many
CLI users do, and forget about icons altogether. However, for easy (and
powerful) interfacing with the Amiga, you can't beat it, and it is the way
most normal users tell the computer what to do most of the time.
Finally, we arrive at the last line, which simply tells the system
to shut down this CLI window in which the SUS has been executed. If you
want to keep the CLI around, and simply re-size it (dragging the bottom
right corner up with the left-mouse-button (LMB) pressed) to access
Workbench, you could knock this line out too.
So what has our SUS been reduced to? Simply
path sys:system sys:utilities add
binddrivers
loadwb
endcli >nil:
or even
loadwb
endcli >nil:
We'll see how to expand it again and how to speed it up in
the next installment, but for more information about HOW to edit these
files, using a TEXT EDITOR, called ED, which is sitting in the C directory
of your Workbench disk, have a look at the "Batch_Files" article on MD6,
which also describes some of the more general aspects of Batch files. All
the better, however, if you have an ASCII-saving Word Processor, or a good
Text Editor such as TxED, or CygnusED, or Zirkonics PTE or the shareware
editor UEDIT.
Tim Strachan
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