EnigmA Amiga Run 1995 November/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 02 (1995)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1995-11][Skylink CD].iso/earcd/misc/noahsarc.lha/Noahs.Arc/Part3

Text File | 1995-10-05 | 38KB | 770 lines

  Amiga 2000 Note:  If you have a 2000 with an A2090A Hard Disk/SCSI
Controller, then you'll want to follow your own startup routine to "auto-
boot" your hard drive.  After that you can join us down below.

  And if you've got just tons of room on your hard drive and don't want to
delete a single thing I suggest, that's cool.

  Hey, I like icons too. ;)

                                       *

  The following is for floppies only, but even if you have a hard drive, I
recommend you grab an old Workbench disk and go through the routine with us.

                                       *

  Workbench 1.2 Notes:  First off, you'll want to bomb the Demos drawer.
I've seen all kinds of "graphics hacks" now and I rate these a "C-".  Look
at them, gawk in awe if you must, then discard the whole thing.  The rest of
this stuff you'll pretty much have to wade through..most of it's the same
and you should be able to figure what's new or put in a different drawer.
In the System drawer, delete the SlowMemLast program.  If I ask you to
delete something and the computer responds "object not found", it's probably
an upgrade, so move on.

                                       *

  Okay!  One of the first things we need is a stripped-down version of Work-
bench1.3.  This will be a good chance to go through the various directories
and make a few mentions.  Watch that byte gauge and hold on.

  Let's start off on a good note by clearing away some of this unnecessary
glitter.  Activate the Shell icon and blast it into the Great Forevermore.
Look it dead in the eye and say "This is the Bench, buddy, not some beauty
parlor" and send Mr. Shell to GoodbyeLand.

Expansion:
  Blow this guy right out of the water.  If you have a hard drive and there
are files in your df0's Expansion directory, just "Delete Expansion.info" to
get rid of the unnecessary icon.  If there are no files in the Expansion
directory, blast the whole thing.


Empty:
  You can keep it around for now; it's harmless and useful to make new
drawers with.  When you activate it then Duplicate it, it actually
duplicates both files for you; the Empty directory and the Empty.info file,
the icon.  If you Dir in the CLI you'll see Copy Of Empty (dir) and down
below the Copy Of Empty.info icon.


Trashcan:
  The general reason this doesn't have a place on the Workbench is this:
Workbench is already jammed to the teeth, byte-wise, so if we've got
something we just kind of want to let hang around a while before we decide
whether or not to dump it, we don't want it hogging up byte space.  It's
much more practical to simply store it on a separate disk named "Misc"
or something.  We won't delete friendly ol' Trashcan (there are some great
Trashcan icons out there), we just won't use it much.  Sorry!


Prefs:
  Ah, our first serious case of update-itis.  What they did was allow you to
access the specific parts of the Preferences program, nothing wrong with that
on the face of it.  The idea is to save you time, but..(here it comes)..
rather than just having the Preferences icon in the Utilities drawer where
it belongs, you have to have a whole separate drawer for the Prefs programs.
So not only does it take time to open the Prefs window, whereas you might
have already had the Utilities window open, but every time you open the main
Workbench window it takes just that much longer, because it also has to load
the Prefs icon.  Eventually you won't be using the Preferences program very
much, but still opening the main window lots, so you'll actually be LOSING
time!  Sorry to be so picky, but it's important to see here that if TIME is
is the main factor, you have to weigh everything.

  On this disk we're going to blast all this stuff except the big guy.  You
may want one or two of them down the road, but you can fish them off the
master disk then.  So first grab Preferences with the mouse and drop that
beggar right into the main Workbench window next to the Trashcan.  After you
get things set up you won't need it so much and can move it to the Utilities
drawer.  Next, close the Prefs window, activate the Prefs icon and Discard.
See ya, guys, be sure to write!  You'll see the screen flash briefly but
don't worry about it.  The Prefs drawer itself can't be deleted; it's part of
the startup-sequence's Path command, and we'll have to wait until we edit it
out before we can delete the actual directory.  For now, activate the Prefs
icon, pull down the Rename menu, and rename it to "XX" or whatever.  Now
activate the Preferences icon and rename it to "Prefs" so you won't have
to type out "P-r-e-f-e-r-e-n-c-e-s" every time you want to access it through
the CLI.

  I have to admit the book covers Prefs quite well.  When you SAVE in
Prefs, it saves the current screen/pointer/printer information to a tiny file
called "system-configuration" in the devs directory.  Make note of the
difference between the SAVE and USE functions.  When you get the program
PrefCh (off a BBS or FredFish/PublicDomain) you'll only use the USE box.


Utilities:

  This drawer might be more appropriately named "Tools", although either's
fine.  You can also use "Utils" if you like.  In it we find a mixed bag of
goodies, most of them of no real use to us.  Notepad is only an example
of a word processor; they make no claim to the contrary.  ProWrite, a real
word processing program, is made up of 143,624 bytes, whereas humble little
Notepad is a paltry 50,832.  You can use it to play around with, and I could
spend a page on Notepad alone, but it would be a waste of both our time as
you're definitely going to buy a regular program like ProWrite if you're
into writing at all.  For this bench, it's history.

  Check out a Notepad note's Info window for the layout of the font and
window size formats in the Tool Types box.  You use those little up and down
arrows to view the different sub-commands.  The fact that you can enter
little sub-commands in this box, and change the Default Tool to whatever
you want is what makes a Project window, like this one, so necessary.

  The Calculator is pretty straightforward.  We'll keep it around for now
unless you know you don't want it.  Rename it "Calc" for quick access through
the CLI.

  Move the Clock over to the main Bench window.  It's not really a tool,
it's just kind of what it is.

  The ClockPtr is cute, but it's really more of a "hack", so unless you
just can't live without it, give it the heave-ho.  Remember, this is a
stripped-down version of Workbench we're working on here..any of these
things that you kind of like can easily be copied over to future Benches.
The general impression you might have is that you need LOTS or MOST of the
programs on the disk, whereas in reality you hardly need any of them.  Most
are for the advanced user.  The things WE want are on the BBSs! :)

  Blast CMD.  It "redirects serial or parallel output to a file", like you
really need that, and heave PrintFiles out the window.  It lets you print
multiple files, which you can do just as easily, if not better, with a
Directory Utility. InstallPrinter is to help you copy your printer driver
over from the Extras disk, but, being the computer version of a dashboard
idiot light, I don't think you'll need it.  If you want to use it just
once, to copy your regular driver over, fine.  I won't embarrass you later
by mentioning it.

  GraphicDump works okay and doesn't need any further documentation.  We
don't need it on this disk so give it the ax.  Yes, yes, I'm sorry we're
throwing all this stuff away, but you get to modem'ing, or hoof it down to
your local Public Domain outlet, and you'll just have LOTS of goodies to put
on your Workbench.  A week after you get your modem going you'll be screaming
for byte space, promise.

  As far as More goes, if you've got Less, well, Less is much more than More,
not less.  I mean, Less is, not More.  That is, much more less.  So MuchMore,
an excellent BBS Type program, is not less than More, but Less is much more
than MuchMore and always more than More, or rather, not less, than More.  In
essence, then, More is history.  Quoth the raven...

  Again, we'll leave it on our normal Workbench, as lots of ReadMe files will
try to access it, but for this bench, it's outta heah.

  Say is definitely a kick.  The pitch controls, etc, are fun but remember
you HAVE to enter the Pitch when you change the Voice to have an effect.
Experiment with different settings.

         example: -r-p85

         default:  p-110
                   s-150

         I like: -p100-s120

  Use "Say -x <filename>" to speak a textfile.  Cntl-c to quit.

  I've decided Say has a Canadian accent, possibly Manitoban.  Great
phonetic practice is to make Say pronounce foreign words.  It's tough but
can be done quite well.  Future project:  Make up a whole bunch of Say
windows ready to say all kinds of things, hook up the audio output to the
phone line somehow and CALL somebody!  Hah!  Give little Say the ax.

  And if that's you I still hear gripin' about how empty we left the poor
li'l helpless Utilities directory, well, the bad news is that not even cute
ol' Say belongs here.  It's not really a Bench tool..it belongs in some Audio
or Audio/Tools drawer or something.

  It's slightly ironic that Commodore took one of the few tools that we
actually DO need and demoted it to the Extras disk in this latest version.
Open up the Extras disk's main window, go into the Tools drawer, rescue
our lost buddy IconEd with the brave and fearless mouse and bring it safely
home to the Utilities drawer.  There, an honest-to-goodness tool.


System:

  CLI opens up a new CLI window.  There's a similar command in the c
directory called, oddly enough, "NewCLI".  Type "NewCLI" in a CLI window and
you've got another.  I'm putting all these commands, etc, in capital letters
for your benefit, remember.  DOS doesn't give a hoot.  For now, pick up the
CLI icon and dump it in the main window.  We want it as handy as can be.

  DiskCopy is just that.  Workbench procedure is to pick up the FROM disk
with the mouse and drop it onto the TO disk, and DiskCopy does the rest.
It will go bye-bye after you get MarauderII, a much-needed diskcopying
program.  As far as store-bought software goes, MarauderII is first on
the list, followed closely by FaccII.  MarauderII, besides allowing you
to make copies of most of your copy-protected disks, has an extremely impor-
tant diskcopy Verification feature.  We'll always use it for important disks.

  Update Note:  MarauderII has gone out of business, so whatever the
salesperson suggests should be fine.  The local guys say a program called
"Project D" is the best one around right now, but it's certainly subject to
change.  In the tutorial I'm just going to continue using the now-generic
term "Marauder" as both noun and verb for a high-quality commercial disk-
copying program and process.

  Format will be much-used, either from the icon, pull-down menu
("Initialize"), or the CLI.  You, the budding Amigalite, don't want any dumb
Trashcan on your clean disk, as the Workbench's Initialize command insists on
giving you, so the CLI allows you to format the disk spanking clean.  Handy
little fella!

                Format drive df1: name Formatted noicons

  Format is VERY particular as to correct usage, so scribble it down.  As a
rule you usually format in drive df1, just to keep it away from Workbench.
Don't want any nasty accidents!  The name is up to you but you have to have
the word "name" there in the command.  To be technical, the subcommand
"noicons" should actually read "notrash", as it's really keeping the
Trashcan directory from being created, with, of course, its lowly icon.  I
don't want to "be technical" in this tutorial, but there are definitely some
things we want to pay attention to, such as when and where directories are
created.  Especially, ahem, without our permission.

  InitPrinter:  Don't have the slightest idea what it is and have never seen
any documentation on it.  All I know is my printer hates it.  Send it to the
great Byte God In The Sky.  If your printer doesn't work, THEN try it.

  Update Note:  Well, I finally read some documentation on it, and I STILL
don't know what it does. :)

  Having, myself, never had a case of broken fonts, I'm just not sure what
FixFonts is all about.  From reading the paragraph in the update book, it
updates the .font files, but I'm not about to touch it.  "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it" don't..excuse me..doesn't just apply to cars and plumbing.
There's no place for it on this disk so give it el-flusho.  If your fonts
ever DO break, make sure to try it right away.

  NoFastMem is a seldom-used command.  We're tossing it off this Bench but
just remember it in case some program wants you to run it first.  Of all the
progs, hacks and games I've run this last year, I have found exactly ONE
program that used it, and it wasn't even documented, I discovered it by
accident.  If, or should I say, because you have a meg of Ram, the first Ram
to be used up is the FastMem, the expansion pack.  It was only when I had a
bunch of stuff up on the screen and a bunch of stuff stored in Ram that
this certain program suddenly ran much faster, because I had No..Fast..Mem
left.  I made some room in Ram and sure enough the program was "slow" again.
Having never had the chance/desire/need to use NoFastMem, it took me a while
to figure out what was going on, but when I ran it, bang, the program was
fast again.  Which brings us to...

  FastMemFirst, which I never HAVE used.  We automatically use our FastMem
before the chip mem, so unless I've misplaced my physics book, that means it
would come ahead of, or "First".  If you want to leave it in both the
directory and the startup-sequence, fine, no biggie.

  MergeMem is if you have additional Ram boards, which you'll know if you
do.  Blast it.

  We'll trash SetMap in a little while.  Way way down the road on some rainy,
wintery day you can dust it off and try to make it do something besides goof
up your keyboard.  If you have a crying need to try it out now, no problem!
Simply put your Extras disk in df1 and enter these two simple commands:

                     Copy df1:devs/keymaps/usa2 df0:devs/keymaps
                     SetMap usa2

  Isn't SetMap a real tickle??

                                       *

  Those are the directories that have/had icons attached.  We'll make a small
sidetrip experiment for a minute and then come back to the Workbench and take
a good look (haul out that eraser!) at the files in the other directories.

                                       *

  Okay..feeling brave?  We're going to take a tiny, hesitant step into the
dreaded Interlace Land.

  Few dare to tread there!  Few have survived to tell the tale.



  Turn down the lights and close the curtains.  Serious.



  Adjust the brightness and contrast controls on your monitor so that the
knobs are at the indents.

  Pop open Prefs, turn the Interlace box ON and SAVE that rascal.  Now
don't be scared..the first time I did this it only cost me $179 in the shop,
a stiff warning from the store owner not to do it again, and an afternoon in
court due to the the ensuing litigation from Commodore.  Ready?

  Reboot this baby.

  Okay, open the Bench window and see what you think.  C'mon now, be honest..
looks like hell, doesn't it?  Open the Prefs and pull the whole Prefs window
down to the bottom half of the screen.  Now we'll adjust the bench colors
with the color slide gadgets.  They go from 0 to 15, with 0 being at the far
left.  Click in the slide box to move the pointers one at a time, move them
so they read:

          blue - 0    white - 7    black - 0    gold - 6
                 0            6            0           4
                 4            6            0           0


  Amazing, eh?  #2's obviously the reason for the Interlace jitter.  Not
fiddling with the colors is the main reason most people think Interlace is
worthless..they just boot it up, go "Yecch!", and that's that.  The main
reason you don't see it in the stores is because of the bright lighting.
This is obviously a low light, non-glare situation.  If you're trying this
during the daytime, definitely try it again tonight with almost all the
lights off.  I ran #1 at 0,0,5 for a long time but recently moved it down to
0,0,4.  You'll also want to fiddle with your monitor controls and the
settings above.  Experiment!

  After that you'll want to make a few other adjustments to Prefs if you
haven't already.  Put the Key Repeat Delay between the y and the R, the Key
Repeat Speed right under the second e in "speed", Text on 80, mouse on 1 and
the mouse double-click delay near the top, about even with the buttons on the
little Prefs mouse.  You want to train your hand that there's a difference
between just kind of clicking on the mouse, and an authentic double-click.
Go to the Pointer editing window and change those awful pointer colors, then
back to the main Prefs screen.  If you have a dot matrix printer and do any
graphics stuff, go to the Printer screen and change the Paper Size to Custom,
which'll help get rid of some of those horizontal lines.  Change the box on
the Graphic 1 screen to "Black and White" unless you're going to be doing
color stuff.  When you're printing out text and you want to change the left-
hand margin, the margin box is where you do it.  When you're done, SAVE.

  Pop open a few windows, your Directory Utility if you've got one, hey,
twice the screen size!  Room!  Space!  Windows!

  The Interlace mode, fairly unique, compliments of Commodore.

  For daytime viewing you might brighten things up a bit.  I have a prefs
setting called "day.pref", colors 006/788/000/860, I use with the BBS program
PrefCh.  I don't use Interlace all the time, but near to it.

  Interlace mode is radically affected by not only where your bench lights
are placed, but how bright they are.  You definitely want them on a dimmer,
and definitely no reflections on the screen.  There seems to be this perfect
brightness for the lights; too low and the screen kind of throbs too much,
too bright and the screen's harder to focus on.  So experiment with the
Prefs colors, the brightness and contrast controls on the monitor and your
bench lights, and I bet you'll find this exact perfect combo.  When you do,
you might even "lock" the dimmer in place with a piece of tape (or have it
out of reach) and then turn the lights on from a different switch.

  If you've got bad eyes even the toned-down Prefs colors may not be
acceptable, in which case I'd suggest you start saving your money and look
around for a high-persistence monitor that you can run in Interlace without
the jitter.  I almost dare to call Interlace a necessity.

                                       *

  It's going to get pretty gritty from here on out, so don't reboot until I
tell you to or you might end up starting all over.  If you don't like the
Interlace mode, pop Prefs back open, change the Interlace box to OFF and
reboot now.  Also tweak your colors back.  If the slight jitter doesn't
bother you, but things are "weird" and "different", give it a chance..you'll
get used to it and the extra screen space is tremendous.

                                       *

  So now that we've got some room, drag the Workbench down to the bottom
half of the screen and open a nice big CLI window in the upper half.  Or, be
incredible and make the entire screen one window.

  Type "Dir devs all" and you should see:


    keymaps (dir)        - keymaps dir and any keymaps floatin' around

    printers (dir)       - printer drivers dir and any drivers

    clipboards (dir)     - empty unless you've used Notepad's Cut and Paste
                           feature..this is where it saves them.

    clipboard.device     - supports clipboard function

    MountList            - for use with hard drives; Type this for a classic
                           example of computerspeak

    narrator.device      - part of Say

    parallel.device      - controller for the parallel port (printer)

    printer.device       - controller for printer

    ramdrive.device      - controller for Ram

    serial.device        - controller for the serial port (modem)

    system-configuration - screen/pointer/printer info saved by Prefs



  Now, <heh heh heh..> for the deletion part:

  The keymap usa1 activates the top row of the numeric keypad, the (, ), /
and * keys, over to the right there.  I usually see the numeric keypad as
being used by people who bought the computer to run some business program
and that's all.  We won't even touch the thing, outside of the occasional
game, so we don't need usa1.  And as far as any other keymaps go, well,
this isn't Sweden, so:

                        Delete devs/keymaps all


  For the printers directory, you'll copy the proper driver over from the
Extras disk.  You can dump the generic driver, such as:

                        Delete devs/printers/generic


  We'll leave the Clipboards directory and device alone as other programs
may want them.  If you'll never have a printer you can bomb the printer.de-
vice.  Unless you have a hard drive, get rid of that terrible reminder of how
much you DON'T know about computers by deleting the MountList and that's it
for devs.


  1.2 Note:  Nothing in this next directory for you to delete.  Sorry!

  Now "Dir l".  The FastFileSystem is for hard drives, so if you have one
and KNOW you want it, fine, otherwise "Delete l/FastFileSystem".

The Newcon-Handler and Shell-Seg are for the late Mr. Shell, so:

                     Delete l/Newcon-Handler
                     Delete l/Shell-Seg

  Some of these other yokels are a little too advanced for our use, so:

                     Delete l/Aux-Handler
                     Delete l/Pipe-Handler
                     Delete l/Speak-Handler

  A few programs down the road may politely ask if they can store a small
handler file in our l dir.  No problem, we're very generous and are glad to
accommodate them.  As long as they keep it under, s-a-a-y, a thousand bytes.
I run a subroutine called ConMan which has a handler file of a whopping 184
bytes, but I, wishing to set a sterling example for all Amigakind, gener-
ously, no, benevolently allow a file that size to clog up my heretofore
unsullied l directory.

  Once again, we're just making a stripped-down, basic Workbench here,
teaching you what HAS to be on a disk, and what doesn't.  So in the future
when you're trying to copy that 350k program over to a WB disk, you'll know
what to delete to make room.

  Now "Dir libs".  We'll leave all of this stuff here; you never can tell
when some program might try to access one.  If your drive light comes on
when you're not expecting it, like if you're running a program out of Ram
or from df1, chances are something's seeking a lib.

  The directory t is a backup for the Ed program.  That's why it takes Ed so
long to do its thing sometimes.  If you're RE-editing a file, it both saves
your new file to where you want and the old one to the t dir.  Just leave
the t dir alone, somebody may want it.  Including, ahem, you.


  "Dir s" and there's our new buddy, the startup-sequence.   And (yawn!)
there's the "startup-sequence.hd", the suggested hard drive sequence.  It's
terrible, of course.  When you get a hard drive you'll look at this one,
look at the manufacturer's suggested sequence, throw them both in the (real)
trash and make your own like everybody else does.  That's "everybody else"
as in "Amiga/Atari owners", naturally.  "Everybody else" as in "everybody
else" means people who just turn a switch on.

                                       *

  Now I've given this 1.3 startup-sequence some thought, and I've come up
with this:  While the 1.2 st-seq had all kinds of needless commands and some
outright silliness, this thing is just beyond redemption.  So rather than
spend endless pages explaining why so much of this nonsense ISN'T what we
want, I think I'll just take it from the top and tell us what we DO.  Any
questions?  No?  Good.

  Now to start with, I- OUCH!  All right!!  Who threw that spitball?!?

  (Ahem!)  To start with, in a CLI type:

   CD df0:                     ;just to make sure
   Rename c/FF c/FastFonts     ;rename FF back to program's correct name

  If you want to use the cleaned-up topaz 8 font I included with the
tutorial, do the following.  I'll assume the whole tutorial is on a disk in
df1.  If you've got it elsewhere, you'll have to put in the right device
name:

   MakeDir fonts/TBM                 ;makes the TBM dir in fonts
   Copy df1:fonts/TBM.font fonts     ;copies the .font file to the fonts dir
   Copy df1:fonts/8 fonts/TBM        ;copies the 8 file to the TBM dir

Now we'll get serious:

   Delete s all                ;yes, it's best this way.  The s dir, itself,
                                shouldn't be deleted, but check to make sure
                                and "MakeDir s" if it's not there
   Ed s/startup-sequence       ;at this point you cease to be a computer
                                user..and start becoming a computer operator


  Up pops our new faithful friend Ed, and we're on our way.  Our new best
buddies are the Backspace, Delete, and arrow keys.  You'll eventually
master these guys.  Tab also has its role to play.

  The first command is SetPatch, which fixes a couple of small bugs in ROM.
It's not necessary.  In true technical manual style, the update book I have
for the 1.3 disk states quite clearly under the SetPatch section that it
"must be run in the first line of the startup-sequence", and sure enough,
near the end of the book, they've got a startup-sequence example and, you
guessed it, they have SetPatch on the SECOND line, after BindDrivers. <sigh>
It spits out a whole bunch of ridiculous text, so we'll quiet it down with
a ">nil:", which will redirect the command's message to Nullsville, like so:

                     SetPatch >nil: R

  (2.x/3.x users don't use the "R")

  If you have a hard drive, the next command might be BindDrivers, followed
by Mount and your Assigns, etc, but we'll talk more about that in Part9.
If this is all new to you and you HAVE a hard drive, I'd actually recommend
that you not even use it until you understand what's going on.  At this
stage in your computer evolution, the hard drive is NOT the main deal of the
system, that thing in front of you with all the keys on it is.  The hard
drive is an auxiliary piece of equipment, to be attached later after you
understand the basic unit.  Like you understand your TV before you get a
VCR, or you know how to operate your stereo receiver before you buy a CD
or tape player, same deal.  If you have a hard drive and just gotta use
it, skip to Part 9, make notes of what you need, then come back here.

  Next up is setting up our Paths.  This is to make accessing tools through
the CLI, or a scriptfile, easier.  So it would be:

                     Path Ram: c System Utilities <etc>

  We ALWAYS set our Paths before LoadWb.  Also, at some point before LoadWb,
you have to call attention to Ram, so it'll be recognized by Workbench and
its icon will load, so this does that too.

  You'll use AddBuffers until you pick up a copy, oops, 'scuse me, dirty
word, pick up your FaccII disk down at the store and get it going.  Briefly,
when you run AddBuffers it takes away memory and allocates it for remembering
the programs or commands that most recently took place.  Then it calls them
from memory instead of having to re-access the disk, MUCH quicker.  So for
now, assuming you have the meg of Ram, we'll kick ol' AddBuffers up to 200,
like thus:  AddBuffers df0: 200.  Just don't run any 300K animations or you
may run out of gas.  Be incredibly generous and give grateful little df1 50
or so, like:

                     AddBuffers df0: 200
                     AddBuffers df1: 50

  The bad news about AddBuffers, and why it's quickly going to end up on
the scrap heap, is that it can't be "turned off" so you can get the memory
back.  FaccII is a sophisticated AddBuffers, complete with OFF switch.
Compared to every other piece of good software you'll buy, it's about the
least expensive at around $25-$30.  And by far and away the most-used, if
not appreciated.  An excellent program, get it as soon as you can.

  Sidenote:  The "controller" program for the FaccII program is called
SatisFacction, which I renamed "Fac".  "Fac -q" quits FaccII, for example,
which I'll be using in this tuturial when talking about memory.

  After that is FastFonts, which speeds up the text output and allows us to
change the default font for our CLI windows, etc.  I didn't like the two
capital letters "FF" as the name of a program or command, and, as evidenced
by the program's output, its real name is "FastFonts", so that's what I'm
going to call it from here on out.  If you've put the "8" and "TBM.font"
files that came with the tutorial into your fonts dir, then make the
FastFonts command read "FastFonts >nil: TBM.font".  That'll start up the
fast text and kick in the new, cleaner fonts.  These fonts are a sliced-up,
whittled-down true IBM font that have the true IBM ANSI characters, so BBS
menus will look correct to you.

  Next on the list is LoadWB, which is the one that makes all the racket
as the disk icons are loaded.  As you may know, LoadWb isn't strictly
necessary.  If you're running certain big animations, for instance, LoadWb
isn't used.  In that case we'd need a different st-seq but fortunately
there's a great program out there in BBS/FredFishLand called Select that
will allow us to select our st-seq at the very beginning of boot-up.  Nice!
The book says LoadWb has a "delay" option to help quiet down all the disk
thrashing, so the command would be:

                     LoadWb delay

  Assuming you have the FastMem pack, the next command would be:

                     SetClock >nil: opt load

  Toss in an "EndCLI >nil:" to close the st-seq window and that's it!

  Something like:

                     SetPatch >nil: R
                     Path Ram: c System Utilities
                     AddBuffers df0: 200
                     AddBuffers df1: 50
                     FastFonts >nil: TBM.font
                     LoadWb delay
                     SetClock >nil: opt load
                     EndCLI >nil:


  Okay!  Hit Esc, then "x", then Return to save it.

                                       *

  Reboot this puppy and check that startup time.  And it's really pretty much
the same end result we had before, only dainty Mr. Shell is gone as well as
some of that Aux and Pipe-Handler junk.  AND we saved a bunch of memory.

  In general, you'll put your downloaded sub-routines and things after all
the above, just before the EndCLI.  If you have a Tools directory, or any
other directory you have tools in that you may want to access through the
CLI, put them in as well.  The c directory is automatically already in the
paths, but we'll put it in to help icons and scriptfiles find it.

  If and when you have problems with the st-seq, use the Echo command in
front of each command to tell you what's coming next, so you'll be able to
see where it fails.  Something like:

                     SetPatch >nil:                  ;has to be first
                     Echo "Ran SetPatch.."
                     Echo "Adding buffers to df0.."
                     AddBuffers df0: 200
                     Echo "Adding buffers to df1.."
                     AddBuffers df1: 50
                     etc

  You can do the above to any command that doesn't have a ">nil:", delete
any ">nil:" already existing..and you can just have the BUSIEST of startup-
sequences!

  Conversely, you can whittle a startup-sequence right down to the nubs if
you want.  If you don't care if the write dates on your files are correct
(seen by using the List command), you certainly don't need SetClock.  If
you don't mind typing full pathnames, you don't need the Path command.
The FastFonts fast text and new fonts are certainly options, as are Add-
Buffers and SetPatch.  Of course, you can always fire up your programs
through the CLI, so you don't need LoadWb, and in that case you don't need
the CLI process the actual startup-sequence is being executed from..so you
can delete the startup-sequence altogether!

  And THERE'S your nubs.

  See, the computer is already "smart", the startup-sequence just helps make
it smarter.  But there isn't a single line in the st-seq that you "need" to
operate the computer.  If you want to operate icons, then certainly you need
the LoadWb command, but that's about it.  The only command that comes close
to "necessary" would be the SetClock command, just because you'll want to
reference back to the dates of files at some point later when trying to
figure something out.

  Okay, boot up your disk and let's move on.

                                       *

  To make sure the Discard Menu doesn't cool down, discard the XX, formerly
Prefs drawer, then pop open the System drawer and delete the FastMemFirst
and SetMap programs.

  Update Note:  2.x/3.x users, gad, you've got just TONS of stuff on your
Workbench that you'll never use in a million years.  Go through your manual
and blast anything that looks ugly.  Leave MultiView (very nice program) if
nothing else.

  We're not keeping the fonts for Notepad on this disk, so put a blank,
formatted disk in df1, rename it to FontDisk, make the Workbench window real
tall so you can get a good eyeballful of the byte gauge there on the left,
then in a big CLI window covering the rest of the screen, carefully type:

             Dir fonts all             ;to take a look, if you haven't
             Copy fonts/TBM.font Ram:  ;saves TBM.font to Ram
             Copy fonts/TBM/8 Ram:     :save the actual font to Ram
             MakeDir df1:fonts         ;makes a fonts dir on df1's disk
             Copy fonts df1:fonts all  ;copies fonts to df1
             Delete fonts all          ;check out that byte gauge!

  Wild, eh?  It isn't just that there's so many bytes involved, it's also
that whole bunch of sub-directories.  When a directory is created, a certain
byteage is kind of "assumed" for that directory, hence all the disk space
needed for a bunch of byte-sized fonts.  When you learn how to use the Assign
command we'll get the space back AND save the fonts.  For now, get rid of
them.  If you're hooked on Notepad and want all the neat fonts, make yourself
another copy of Workbench, call it NoteBench, and use that disk for, quote,
word-processing, unquote.

  Okay, let's put our TBM fonts back:

             CD df0:                   ;just to make sure
             MakeDir fonts             ;have to make a new fonts dir
             MakeDir fonts/TBM         ;make fonts/TBM dir
             Copy Ram:TBM.font fonts   ;copies TBM.font back to fonts dir
             Copy Ram:8 fonts/TBM      ;copies actual font to fonts/TBM


  Now it's time for the Big Daddy of them all, the c directory.  So except
for the ones you KNOW you need, type:

                        CD c               ;saves typing out pathnames

                        Rename DiskDoctor df0:Utilities/DiskDoctor ;moves it
                                                    to appropriate directory
                        Rename Delete d      ;"shorten" the Delete command

                        d Ask
                        d BindDrivers      ;unless you have a hard drive
                        d ChangeTaskPri
                        d DiskChange
                        d Edit
                        d EndSkip *(not on 1.2)
                        d Eval *
                        d FileNote
                        d GetEnv *
                        d Lab
                        d Lock *
                        d Mount            ;unless you have a hard drive
                        d NewShell *
                        d Prompt
                        d Protect
                        d Relabel
                        d RemRAD *
                        d Resident *
                        d Search
                        d SetDate
                        d SetEnv *
                        d Skip
                        d Which
                        Rename d Delete    ;renames it back to "Delete".  Do
                                           ;NOT leave it as "d"! :)
                        CD df0:


  Having a good time?  These are all advanced DOS commands which you might
want somewhere on down the road.  They're right there, faithfully preserved
on your master, so don't hesitate to wipe 'em out.

  DiskDoctor tries to recover files from a damaged disk, OR files you've
deleted..all of which means you may r-e-e-e-ally want the good Doctor
some day.  But it belongs in Utilities, like any tool.  I, myself, never use
the Utilities directory, I keep everything in "Tools".  But Utilties should
still be there, with the More program in it.  2.x/3.x users should have
MultiView in there.

  FastFonts is also a tool, not a command, but we'll leave it here because we
don't have enough need for a "Text/Tools" directory.  Yet.

                                       *

  So I'd say that's Step One; clearing some room on the Bench and straight-
ening up the st-seq.  Make a master copy of this disk named BareBench.
Whenever you make a master copy of something always boot it up just to be
sure it works.  This is especially true if you don't have Marauder yet.
Rename this disk "Workbench" and this is the one we'll use for the tutorial.

                                       *