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Amiga Collections: MegaDisc
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MegaDisc 27 (1992-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 1 of 2)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 27 (1992-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 1 of 2)[WB].adf
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MD_Index
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About_MegaDex
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About_MegaDex
Wrap
Text File
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1992-03-30
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4KB
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85 lines
MEGADEX
A FirstBase DataBase for MegaDisc's contents
FirstBase by George Knight
Database by Malcolm Capner
Ed: Malcolm describes how he put together the database of Megadisc
contents. Many thanks to him too for going to all that trouble - I was
going to have to attack it some time, so he's saved me a lot of work!
Here he goes into how he used FirstBase to set it up - we've used the
full Text listing on this disk rather than FirstBase.
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Well! Here it is, I don't know if you could use it but I can tell what I
don't know where I would be without it. Ever since I received your full set
of MegaDiscs I thought to myself there must be a better way to find out
what is in all these fabulous disks, I tried using your Index which is on
the catalogue disk but it left a lot to be desired because it was either
short of a few things which were in the disks or it had a few items that
were not in the disks, so as soon as I saw George Knights Excellent
FirstBase Program bells rang, lights flashed and off I set to start
cataloguing MegaDisc. It took a little while, I suppose around the hundred
hour mark would be about it,and with a lot of help from
Snap, DW, BigBench, Most and of course First Base.
Snap would have to be one of the best little utilities I have ever
used, sure saves a lot of key fingering - I have my Snap running in the
Xerox Mode, saves a lot of left Amiga-I-ing just rubber band the text you
need then Snap and off it goes into the Edit line, as simple as that, only
one problem I had was that in the default settings the left Amiga was the
text qualifier and of course BigBench also uses the left Amiga to scroll
the screen, so after reading a few manuals BigBench could not be changed
but Snap could. It is now configured with the left Alt as the text
qualifier and works just fine with BigBench now.
DW is also a great utility for it has the ability to be resized to just
the right size and still have all the neccessary gadgets available so it
can be used. This became invaluable as I had to read the contents of each
disk, directories and sub directories then match it up with what was on the
Instructions_and_Contents file (not always the same).
BigBench saved a heck of a lot of back-to-fronting - once this was running
I just tucked FirstBase down to the bottom part of the BigBench and slipped
up and down using the left Amiga key when needed. The best part was that
when you click on "NEW" in FirstBase to get a Edit Line it would pop up on
the top half of BigBench right were it was needed.
Most was the chosen text viewer mainly it has a slider gadget on the side
which was very handy as I had resized DW down to a square approximately
75mmX75mm and this would sit over the top of the slider so I could get to
the top and bottom parts of the slider to scroll through the
Instructions_and_Contents file. Only problem here was in the later
MegaDiscs this was crunched with PowerPacker and course my version of Most
does not handle PowerPacked files (Fullview does but did not have sliders
on the side). So a little bit of unpacking into RAM: as a ASCII file and I
was cooking with gas.
As a result of all this I now have a dirty great file sitting in my Hard
Drive which I can call up at any time with FirstBase and find out were all
those little bits and pieces are at a moment's notice. I have also
PowerPacked the ASCII file that Firstbase dumps into RAM: and attached a
tarted up icon to it so it can be FullViewed also (saves a lot of space
when it's been packed). FirstBase will not read the data file when it has
been packed.
I might even do a Games Database later on so all those game freaks can
sort through by name to see if there is a hint or a cheat for the game they
just bought, or maybe a review before they buy that DUD!!.
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