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***************************************************************** * N O T I C E * ***************************************************************** 15th of December, 1988 This text, Your second Manual Version 4, has been updated to Version 5. The many errors and poor writing in the Y2M has been corrected; in Summer 1988, I taught ST classes and used the experience to write V5. There is at least twice as much information, twice as much text, and six new chapters. V5 is being published in the UK, Holland and Germany. V5 is being distributed in the UK by Paul Glover, ST Club Newsletter, 9 Sutton Place, 49 Stoney Street, Nottingham, NG1 1LX, United Kingdom. V5 is bound in magazine format. The price is about £4.00. Contact Paul Glover for a copy. Andreas Ramos, Jaegergaards Gade 142 8000 Aarhus C / Denmark, Scandinavia Tif: (45)620-1117 BBS: (45)620-2016 **************************************************************** * N O T I C E E N D * **************************************************************** Version 4.0, Part One / April, 1988 / Press "Q" to exit. YOUR SECOND MANUAL TO THE ATARI ST BY ANDREAS RAMOS FOR THE AARHUS 68000 USER GROUP Aarhus, Denmark You just bought your ST, you flip through the manual, you start it up: nothing. You spend a week working with it; you make a mess of the disk which your salesman told you not to destroy. Your salesman can't help you; he's been transfered to the catfood department; the new one doesn't know how to even turn the machine on. But he tries to sell you a program that costs your next holiday, and you've heard that you can get free programs somewhere. It takes you hours to write and print a single page, while your neighbor's kid can program a flight to Jupiter on his toy computer. You live in some town where you always have to say "it's 154 kilometers from that city." The whole thing looked so easy in the store; computers can't really be that hard; your cousin uses one and everyone knows how stupid he is. Or maybe you've worked with your machine for a year now and still have never heard of a SPOOLER. Or a RAM disk. Do you know that all those buttons on your keyboard are not what they seem to be? What ASCII is? Why not to use format programs written before September 87? How to deal with directory problems? How to RECOVER deleted disks? What are PD's and how to get them? What is a BBS? == * * == The Introduction This is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the ST. Not to BIOS, not to GEM, not to BETELGEUSE 5. This manual will not help you to get into the ST; this manual will help you in getting around the ST. If the first one tells you how to turn on the machine, this one tells you how to use it. It is your second (and better) Operator's Manual to the ST. This Second Manual assumes that you've read the first ST Owner's Manual at least twice. You must already know how to create folders, etc. If you haven't, please take the time to do so now. Otherwise, you just won't get much out of it. I have written this as an introduction manual to new members of our user group: the 68000 User Group in Aarhus, Danmark. In all of our meetings and get-togethers and sitting around and general talking, there has been an enourmous amount of information about the use of the ST which has gotten passed around. I've put a lot of the useful tips and ideas, bit by bit, into a file, and now I edited it and organized it. This is the manual I wished I had gotten when I got the machine. This is not a manual to the technical aspects of the ST. That material you can find elsewhere (see for example publications by the DATA BECKER publishing house, address below). Any technical information here is given only in the amount needed to understand a process. I've tried to check all technical information with persons who are qualified; nevertheless, any mistakes are mine. About the language; I've tried to keep the English straight- forward; if there are sentences which are unclear or twisted, please let me know. Everyone should be able to read this. Where necessary, I've put in the Danish or German equivilent. Sadly, there's no standard to the Danish in the ST menues and dialogue cards. If there's something in which you're particularly interested, use the FIND function from the menu (and large letters, with MATCH). Where I have written prices (or assumed prices), it is so that you can get an idea. Prices change constantly. Check before you buy. So that 520 users can load this file, it has been broken up into smaller parts. Credits: this manual, version 4, was written and rewritten with the help, reviews, comments, and discussions of many people, both new users and professionals. Many errors were corrected, new information was added, things were dropped. The first few versions were a near chaotic collection of things: this 4th version is improved in style, structure, and contents. The following persons especially helped me: Karen Nordentoft, Heine Svendsen, Claus Grotrian, Peter Mikkelsen, Olafur Bragason, Terkel Skorup. I also thank many others from our User Group, from the many BBS's in Denmark, and other user groups for tips, ideas, suggestions, comments, and reactions. Of course there will be a fifth version. More, bigger, and better. That will happen with your help and cooperation. If you learn a trick, a tip, an idea, if you have information, guides, advice, write it down, in any language, and send it to me. == * * == Before I start, just one last thing. Don't be afraid of your ST. You're the boss. When I was a little kid, my parents sent me every summer to summer camp in the mountains in Tennessee. There we learned to shoot rifles, use bow and arrow, swim over waterfalls, mountain climb, canoe in white water, catch poisonous snakes barehanded, all the fun stuff. And we learned to ride horses. Feed them, saddle them, rope them. We had this mountain man who taught us, a crazy mean old man who drank Jack Daniels from an old fruit jar (we also learned about Jack; Good old Tennessee). My first day, we line up in the dust, us little kids, in front of these big southern horses. This old man, spitting tobacco, says to us "Don't ever be afraid of a horse. If the horse tries to test you, show him who's boss." and with that, he goes right up to the first horse and with a terrific swing, punches the horse in the face: it fell down. He was right; I never was ever scared of horses from then on. But I was terrified of him. == * * == The Contents of Your Second Manual to the ST (Version 4) Part One 0. Introduction. 1. The Beginning. Computers in General. Definitions. 2. The ST Keyboard. Notes about the keyboard. Special functions. New keyboard layout. Fixing it. 3. The Mouse: a few notes. Feeding and cleaning your mouse. Part Two 4. Disks. Disks, TOS, drives, directories. Formatting, both standard and special. Copying. Recovering. 5. RAM disks. What it is. How to set one up. How to use it. Part Three 6. The Screen. Your Desktop. How to change it. Desktop.Inf and what it is. Icons (Russian and American) and what to do about them. Fixing things. 7. Accessories. How to load them. Different kinds. 8. Wordprocessing. General notes. Different kinds. Some tips and comments to 1stWord/Wordplus and Signum. 9. Magazines and books for the ST. What there is. All the different magazines. Part Four 10. PD's: Public Domain Disks. What they are. How to get them. 11. BBS: Bulletin Board Systems. What it is. How to get onto one. How to use it. * * * Copyright Note * * * This is the fourth version of this manual. Version 1 was 30KB, Version 2 = 60KB, Version 3 = 105 KB. Every six months or so, more is added, errors removed, information is updated. If you would like to recieve further updates of this manual, then become a registered user. To be a registered user, either join our UG (write for further details) or send a donation of 10 US dollars, 10 pounds, 30 Dm, or the equivalent to either Amnesty Interna- tional, any group helping Nicaraugua, or any group which is helping the South African Blacks or Palestinians. Send me a photocopy of your deposit slip and a blank disk; you will recieve the next version. Copyright information: All rights are mine, where those rights do not infringe on other rights. This text may not be sold, given, exchanged, or offered as part of a commercial exchange (I went to law school. I have two brothers who are hotshot American lawyers. I will sue. Commercial copyright infringement is big money. If you hear of someone selling this text, let me know so I can send a generous reward.) Copying of this file is permitted where such copying is free and between users. Public domain services may offer this document for distribution if they do not charge more than 4 dollars, 4 pounds, ten DMarks, or the equivilent in any national currency as a service fee only. ST+ NOTE: this zine is PD and NOT commercial, o.k. Andreas Ramos, 68000 User Group Jaegergaardsgade 142.2, 8000 Aarhus C, Danmark, Scandinavia. BBS tlf 06109777. End of the Introduction ====================== * * ====================== Chapter One: The Beginning. Things Your Salesman Didn't Tell You. Much of the computer is so interconnected that it is difficult to talk of "parts." That makes it hard to understand. You can't really talk just about the screen without discussing the keyboard; the disk is not separated from the windows. Much of the information is thus "general" in a sense, though you will hopefully understand later what is going on. Computer English There is a very complete glossary (vocabulary, or definitions) in the back of your Owner's Manual. Here are more definitions. Booting:This used to be called "bootstrapping." That comes from an old American expression: To pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Germans know this from Munchhausen: he was riding along on his horse one day when they fell into a mudhole. Munchhausen pulled himself out by taking hold of his hair and pulling himself out. When you start up the machine, there are certain programs which are carried out. But in order to carry out those programs, the computer must have a program which is active and can carry out programs. But that program has to be already running so that it can start itself. A curious chicken or the egg pro- blem. What it means, for us, is just starting the machine. There are cold boots: when you start totally, as in the morning. There are also warm boots, as when you press the reset switch, which doesn't turn off the machine completely. Reset vs. Turning the machine off and on (or, warm booting vs. cold booting). When you bomb, there are two things you can do. Either reset, just press the button which quickly blanks the screen or switch the machine off entirely and start all over again (which button, and where it is, will depend on which version of the ST you have. Check your owner's manual). Both seem to have the same effect, but they are different. A total off/on will wipe the RAM memory clean (the machine must be off for at least ten second)(usually the time it takes to say "Why did I ever waste my money on such a stupid, lousy, idiotic program"). A reset will only clear the memory which is not protected by certain routines. If you are using reset proof programs, such as certain ram disks or routines, then resetting will not delete those programs. If you bomb, a simple reset will clear up the memory; if you really bomb, and a reset doesn't help, then you need to cold boot. BOOT DISK:Your BOOT DISK (Start up disk) is the one with which you always start. You can create several different boot disks. Of course, you can boot with any disk you like, unless you have created a special format. If you use just any disk, then most likely you don't know how to make a boot disk, create a desktop, or use accessories. DESKTOP.INF:A file called DESKTOP.INF will set up your desktop the way you like it. This file is created when you use the SAVE DESKTOP option. Accessories:Also on the desktop may be your favorite ACCes sories. Auto folder:There may also be an AUTO folder; any programs in your AUTO folder will be automatically run. Data:All of the stuff that goes on a disk, and which you use in one way or another, is in the most general sense just DATA. Just information. There is of course good data (correct information) and bad data (corrupted, or faulty, information). This data can appear as either a program: then it is a set of commands which organizes and works with other kind of data, namely files. PRG:is PROGRAM (WORDPLUS.PRG). RSC:is RESOURCE, which are various parameters and other information for the program. If it is missing, then the program will not load (WORDPLUS.RSC). PD's:A PD is a PUBLIC DOMAIN program or disk (see the PD chapter below). Tools or Utilities:A German defined "Tools" as programs which help you solve problems which you would not have if you did not have a computer. That is the best definition of a tool. A tool, or utility, is a secondary program which fixes problems which you have with your main programs. If you want your wordprocessor to write Spanish characters, then a tool program will let you change your keyboard. There are all sorts of tools, which do all sorts of things. Games:A terrific way to lose five days and your wife and friends. The only worthwhile ones are Flight Simulator II (FSII) and Psion Chess. Desktop:DESKTOP is the main screen, the one you get when you BOOT, on which appear the different WINDOWs, which are a second screen, the kind you can zoom and close. Coffee, Beer and Wine:These will destroy your disks and keys. Don't put them near the computer. Several in the UG have knocked over glasses of wine into the keyboard: disks have been soaked in coffee, and so on. If a disk gets wet, throw it away. You will make the disk drive head dirty if you just "try and see" if it is okay. If you pour liquids into your computer: clear non-sticky ones (water, etc) will usually be okay if you stand the computer on end and let it dry out. Sticky ones (beer, coca- cola, etc) may be a problem. Let the machine dry out. If it is not okay, and your warranty is over, then open and clean with a moist cloth. If your warranty is still good, go to your dealer. CIGARETTES:cause lung cancer, Your lungs will rot and you will die. CLICKING:is pressing a mouse button once; DOUBLE CLICKING is two quick clicks. If you can't double click fast enough, use the CONTROL.ACC (it's in the Owner's Manual) to change the click response time. You will find that some programs will allow the right mouse to click. Other programs will have special or secret functions if you click in strange places. Always try what seems intuitive: mice are very popular with some programers. WP:WP is Word Processing (text editors are something else. COPY:DISK JOCKEY is what you are if you try to copy disks by dragging icons. If you don't like the DISCO scene, then use a RAMdisk, a file transfer PRG, or a good copy program. Laws:Computering has its own laws. The most famous one is: Garbage in, garbage out. No software or hardware is going to improve a lousy idea, even if it is Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (Starwars). Another rule is: The more important the piece of work, the more likely that things will go wrong. This has been confirmed by many users. A third rule, closely related, is: Computers have no mercy, especially with deadlines. Many users, when facing a systems crash, tend to become Catholics; any and all saints are called upon to save the file. This reminds me of the story about the little boy who was climbing around on the roof of a high building; he slips and starts to slide to the edge; he cries out "Oh, God!" Just then, his jeans catch on a nail, and he stops; so he just looks up and says "Never mind!" *.*:The symbols "*" and "?", in computese, are usually called WILDCARDS; they represent any value. These ?.?:are often used in the directory window, for example, to specify which files will be shown. The combination *.* is big magic; it means, literally, WILDCARD.WILDCARD, or ANYTHING.ANYTHING, any file with any extension will be shown. If you write *.DOC, any filename with only the extension .DOC will be shown. If you are hunting for .ACC (accessories) and maybe you changed some of them to .ACX, then try .AC? This will show only those which have AC as the first two letters of the MASK:extender. Selecting files in this way is called using a MASK (a filter). BBS:Bulletin Board Service (Opslagstavle program, but nobody says that. It is also called an electronic mailbox.) If you have a modem, then you can call a central computer (a BBS) and leave messages to other users, receive messages, and get copies of programs. A BBS lets different kinds of computers talk to each other directly. Our UG has one (tlf. 06109777). Database:A database is a program which allows you to collect a lot of information and then get at that information in many different ways. It is nothing more than a very fast and very flexible card file box. Databases can be either on your own disks, with your own data, or they can be large, indus- trial/research databases (instead of 500 or 1000 items, they can have millions of pieces of infor- mation). Large databases usually have their own special programs, written especially for that kind of information, and hence, to use them, you need special training. Practically every single major profession has a major database. Some major data- bases are open and free; either you go to the office (such as a university library database) or you can reach it by telephone; anyone with a modem can call and use them. Most databases charge a fee; usually around 20 to 50 dollars per hour. If you know how to use the base, then you are not on for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Many are commer- cial. The database for oil companies costs 100,000 dollars per hour. That is cheap; a single drilling costs about 15 million dollars; you will gladly pay a 100 big ones just to find out if you have a chance. Modem:connects your computer to the telephone so that it can communicate directly with other computers (BBS, databases, banks, other users, etc.etc.). Mouse:An interface device. A way of sending information to the computer. Your keyboard does the same thing. Mice were developed in the late 60's by Xerox Corporation. Apple made them standard. IBM (I Borrow from Macintosh) laughed at them for a long time, but they are now standard on the new IBM's. Other ideas were light pencils: a pen connected by a wire: you simply pointed at the screen. But that requires even more waving around with your arms. A joystick is a mouse of sorts; just another way to send information to the screen. There are trackballs: you spin a ball to position the cursor. These were developed for arcade games (rough and unstealable). Use SPEED- MOUSE; it reduces your mouse's running space (see Mouse chapter below). Future mice will not be mice at all, but possibly a pair of gloves which send hand positions and movements to the computer: you "pick up" and "handle" what is on screen; there is even feedback: you can "feel" the objects, not just see them on screen. In ten years or so, there may not be anymore monitors or mice; you can interface with your computer simply by waving a hand, moving your finger, etc. Some users already interface with their computers in this manner: something goes wrong and they punch the screen. RAM disk:This is very difficult to explain; although when you understand the concept, it is very simple. An entire chapter is dedicated to this subject below. It is a method of storing data electronically, instead of on disk, so that you can access (read or write) it much faster. It is extremely useful; every single advanced user works with one. READ/WRITE:Reading means that your disk drive is reading the disk, and getting information. This is also called LOAD:"loading"; you load by reading a program and moving it to RAM memory. Writing means that your disk drive is writing information onto the disk (saving). Kilobytes, bytes, KB's, Kbs:The most simple unit of informa- tion is a bit: it is either yes or no. Eight bits together can define (describe or state) just about any letter or message we would want (just multiply 2 by itself 8 times; that produces 256 different states, which means 256 possible separate charac- ters). That we call a "byte." When you press the letter "R" on the keyboard, you don't send an "R" to the computer or screen; instead, you send a string of bits. A word, or a page, or a picture is thus made up of a long string of bits. What is important to know at this level is the size of that string: how long it is. Your files (information, texts or pictures) will have dif- ferent sizes. Short files are of course smaller than long files. Click on OPTIONS to show as text, instead of icons, and you will see the byte size of all your texts. 1024 bytes is a kilobyte; so a file that is 23,378 bytes is also 22.8 kilobytes (you usually round up; therefore it is about 23 kilobytes.) A page of 1st Word text is about 3 kilobytes (3000 bytes). (Of course, this depends on whether you have full pages of text, or lots of empty spaces.) Later in your work, as you began to fill up your disks, it becomes more important to know the kilobyte size of your files. KB is the usual abbreviation for kilobyte; Kb is the abbre- viation for kilobits. TOS:"The Operating System". This is called DOS ("Disk Operation System") on PC's. MS-DOS means that it was written by MicroSoft. TOS is a complex group of programs and systems which make the computer work. Think of a core surrounded by several layers. The central core is the machine itself, the chips and other hardware. Around it, covering it, is: 1) BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). This depends directly on various basic (or main) devices. It works at a very low level. It reads the keyboard, writes single characters to the VT-52 screen, and several other things. 2) XBIOS (eXtended BIOS). This allows access to an extended set of specific devices (for example, the printer ((both parrallel and serial ports)), the mouse, midi, sound, etc). It permits general disk access. It formats disks. Both BIOS and XBIOS form the first level around the hardware. 3) BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System). It is second level. It is therefore not so specific to the hardware. It writes strings of characters to/from the screen/keyboard. It takes care of memory allocation. BDOS runs programs and files. It creates files, does the Read/write, deletes, finds files, etc. 4) A-Line Routines. These simple commands take care of a great deal of the actual work of setting up what becomes the image on screen. Dots, lines, rectangles, filled rectangles, fill closed paths, move/copy rectangles from one place to another, etc. The Blitter works in this area by speeding up these calculations and movements. Over this is... 5) GEM (Graphics Environment Management). A set of routines which are independant of the device. The third layer around the computer. These control the windowing. And last of all, most visible to the user, is... 6) The application program (such as 1st Word). Our programs are the shell, the outside level of this system. The program uses a complex group of abilities from the various parts of the Operating System (OS) and presents them to the user as a simple image on screen. The shell uses GEM to present a graphic interface between the user and the OS. For simplicity, I only mentioned some parts of this system. There is debate and discussion of whether or how much any one part is distinct from other parts. You can see that all the computer magazines spend a great deal of time trying to explain this. There are very few people who understand this system entirely (only a handful of top professional programmers, and they have quite a bit of arguments about it). If you only want to use the computer, or just do some simple program- ming, you do not have to worry in the least about any of this. Problems:The curious thing about computers is that a problem is not a problem, but rather, a challenge. (My high school gymnastics teacher, Coach ((we called him "Coach")) always said "Let it be a challenge to you.") If your car has a flat tire, that's a problem: it has a clear nature (hole, no air) and a clear solution (patch and pump). No discussion. But on a computer, anything can be done in at least ten totally different ways, with totally different methods. And no one agrees about the explanations for why it works. Everyone will solve a problem in his own way: to print out new characters, for example. Hardware people will change the chips. Programmers will reprogram. I would use a utility program. Font users will add fonts; others will redefine the printer. It is very difficult to give "answers" to problems: You "think" you have a problem; you try to describe it, but a working answer, and a final description of the problem, will be something totally diffe- rent. The whole thing is a problem. RAM/ROM:You have two kinds of memory chips: ROM (read only memory) which has information on it which can't be changed or deleted (it can only be "read"); RAM (random access memory) is memory space which you can change (add and remove). Resident:One often talks about resident programs. That means a program which is in the computer (not on disk). The concept is not too clearly defined; different things can be resident in different ways. Your accessories are called resident; they are in the RAM chips; so you call them RAM resident. When you have TOS in ROM, then it is ROM resident; it is in the ROM chip. You need to know about this only to know the difference. Resident:(An example) The program which formats your disks (the one in the desktop menu) is a ROM resident program: it is always there. 520 RAM, 1040 RAM, 2 and 4 MEGA RAM:Different "sizes" of ST's. The number tells you how much RAM the machine has in kilobytes. A 520 RAM machine has 520 KB of space to use (the actual number will be less than that). A 1040 has twice the capacity, and a two mega ram ( 2 MEGA ST) is twice as large as that. For comparison,an expensive calculator has 2 or 4 KB of memory. The Commodore 64's which are so popular have 64KB of memory: a 520ST has eight times as much. The standard PC can be upgraded only to 640 KB: a 1040 ST is almost twice as large (and twice as fast). These numbers only give you a rough idea of size: a poorly written program can work very well, but take up an enormous amount of space: well written programs can often be much smaller. It is only for marketing reasons that the numbers are not correct. You will soon figure out that a 260ST really has 256 KB; a 520ST has twice as much, or 512KB; a 1040ST has therefore twice again as much, or 1024KB. But the numbers are not "pretty," 256/512/1024 is "messy." The marketing people in Atari forced the name to be more presentable. RYFM:What a programmer will tell you if you ask a question which is in your manual. "Read Your *.* Manual" he means. You must read, re-read, and, several weeks or months later, re-re-read the manual. Things you did not understand then will become clear later. CPU:The main chip in your machine. The Central Proces- sing Unit. This is where much of the actual work is done (instructions are carried out, etc). You don't need to know about this, the GLUE chip, or any of that stuff, unless you want to start taking your machine apart. FOOTPRINT:The amount of space it takes up on your desk. Many more concepts and words are defined and explained in the rest of this text. If you find words which you don't understand, let me know. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don't worry, most Americans and British don't understand much of this vocabulary either. Computer English is just as artificial, false, and unnatural as Computer Danish or Computer German. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Just for reference, here is the DESKTOP with MENUES (for those who are reading this on paper). Mt. Fuji icon File View Options ------------- ------------ -------- ------------------- Control Panel Open Icons Install Drive Install Printer Show Info... Text Install Application Set RS232 Config. New Folder Sort By: Set Preferences VT52 Emulator Close Name Save Desktop Ram Free Close Window Date Print Screen Format... Size Type (* Ram Free is optional) If you do not have these options, something is wrong with your system. Many of our users have not gotten the Control Panel, for example (I didn't get my for the first 4 months). If you do not have this, contact us. The new Control Panel (20KB large, instead of 16KB) joins the Control Panel, Install Printer, and RS232 all into one, a great improvement which clears up two accessory slots (spaces). I include RAMFREE.ACC, which should be a standard. It reports on your memory size left. You must fully understand what all of these options can do. Read your manual again if you don't. It is here that you will create boot disks (AUTO folders), add new ACCESSORIES, create new disk icons for ramdisks (and remove the silly second drive icon if you only have a one drive system), change icon names, file names, change files to READ ONLY, set up your printer to print full screen pictures, make standard format disks, set your screen to show files by KB size, set up your files to automatically load just by double clicking on them, save your desktop, and make printouts of your screen. If you don't understand any of these, or are not able to do them, then READ YOUR MANUAL AGAIN! This SECOND MANUAL assumes that you understand those options. Much of what follows will use these options to change your system. The Owner's Manual only describes the options; it doesn't began to explain that with these; you can change and adapt your system to suit your hardward and needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V NUMBERS. Programs often have numbers after the name. There is not much of a standard regarding these numbers, but the following seems to be followed by the professional software producers. WORDPLUS V2.02 UK, for example. What do those numbers mean? V2.02 UK means Version 2.02, with British spelling and dictionary. The text versions of the program are usually called V.0.XX. The first released version of a program is called V.1O; when small changes have been made (corrected spelling, etc,) then the new updated version becomes V1.01, V1.02, V1.03, etc. When bigger corrections have been made, then it becomes V1.1, V1.2, V1.3, etc. When major updates and changes have been made, the whole digit changes: V2.0, V3.0, etc. If there are various versions of the program, usually for various languages, then it can be called UK (British English), US (American English), etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why bother with V numbers? Programs are constantly being upgraded. They are improved. New options are added; errors are removed. About every six months, we see new "generations" of programs: an idea is introduced and is quickly adopted by other programs. You will find out that using a computer is a job of constantly looking for the arrival of better, faster, more powerful programs. Therefore it is difficult to write a standard, "once and for all" list of "tips and tricks;" six months later, it is useless. 1st Word V 1.01, which was the standard for quite some time, is outdated; hardly anyone uses it anymore. Most moved on to V1.06, many use 1.16, and the elite use 2.02. V1.01 is just primitive. There are fashions in computering, just like in bikinis and epistemology. WIMP, the Windows/Icon/Mouse system, is very fashionable now (Apple developed it, Atari copied it, IBM copied it too.) But it is slow and difficult; we may see programs which are not GEM based (TEMPUS is an excellent example). The whole story between Apple, Atari, Commodore, and IBM is much more interesting than Dallas or Dynasty. Xerox originally deve- loped the mouse in the 1960's. At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)(which also developed SMALLTALK, an advanced inter- face system), the main parts of the mouse and windows idea was developed. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, used to hang out there. Apple took those ideas and added their contribution: menus. The look of the windows was designed by Apple as well. Digital Research (DR) came along and simply copied the whole thing and sold it to Atari. Apple sued. Apple, a huge company, could have kept Digital Research out of the market for years (DR had been losing money already), so they settled out of court: Digital possibly agreed not to sell any further developments to Atari. That's why, although better versions of GEM exist, we won't get them for the ST. Apple deserves a great deal of credit for being innovative enough to bring such an advanced system to a market which was totally dominated by IBM. Bill Gates, of Microsoft, which wrote MS-DOS, used in every IBM PC and compa- tible in the world, who has a personal fortune of 700 million dollars, laughed at windows and mice and said real men don't use that sort of stuff. Most PC users hate mice. IBM ignored windows ("It has no use in the office.") DEC, which makes the best mainframes, has now agreed with Apple to use the Macintosh desktop as the interface to their mainframes. So what happens to the other companines? Look at the new PS from IBM. All windows. All mouse. Developed by Bill Gates, who now calls himself "The World's Greatest Expert On Windows And Mice." Hewlett-Packard also copied the Windows/Mouse system. Which now has caused Apple to sue both IBM and Hewlett-Packard. This will be an interesting court fight: at stake is the control of the desktop computer market for the next 10-15 years and a market which is worth at least 100 Billion dollars in the USA alone. Digital Research wrote much of the ST's operating system on a contract for Atari Corp. GEMDOS, GEM, ST BASIC, and ST LOGO were done by them. GEMDOS and GEM are poorly written; ST BASIC and ST LOGO are garbage. Silly and trivial errors were made in the GEM system (for example, the harddisk can't have a partition larger than 16MB, simply because of an incorrect number). Atari wrote BIOS, XBIOS, and ALINE. The GEM we have on the ST is a pre-release version from Digital Research. That is why it has bugs and is slow. GEM is already available as versions 2 or 3 on PC's. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MORE NUMBERS: Flip your ST over (gently! gently!). The number stamped on the bottom tells you how old your ST is. Apparently these are sequential; the first one is 1,000,001. Mine is in the 9000's. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Something that is recommended to everyone is to open their computer. Take a look inside. See what goes on in there. It is a simple process of removing only about 20 screws (keep track of which go where!). The machine can easily be put back together again (it was designed to be put together by 14 year old girls working under slavery conditions). Note that changing the machine will violate your warranty, if that is still valid. Many German ST's have a sticker on the case which may not be removed without tearing; this prevents you from opening it. Do not violate your warranty. Please unplug the machine completely before opening. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ATARI, by the way, is the Japanese word for the game "GO". "ST" means either "Sam Tramiel," the hotdog capitalist who owns and runs Atari Corp, or "Sixteen/Thirtytwo," a technical description of the chip's processing capability. The 68030 machine will be called the TT, which means 32/32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A SINGLE SWITCH. It's not necessary to flip three separate switches to turn on the older ST's. Run all your plugs to one extension plug, put a switch on that, and connect it to the wall. Now just switch off and on there. The whole system turns off and on with one switch. I put my START UP DISK in the drive and run the juice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SWIVEL CHAIRS: All computers should be sold with an office chair included: the kind which turns, is on wheels, with a backrest. You will tend to twist around quite a bit, reaching over and around your keyboard. This will hurt your back. You can buy an office chair for about 5$ (or fifty kroner) at the Salvation Army's second hand stores. The Salvation Army, with its good contacts, tends to get large donations of materials from com- panies. The Salvation Army is by the way my favorite general charity, 92% of their income is used for the poor. The highest paid person in the Salvation Army recieves 23,000$ a year. Nothing. In comparison, most charities spend 45-60 percent on the poor, and the rest on being fat bureaucrats. The US Department of Welfare, which gives aid to the poor, spends 90% on themselves (perhaps I should rephrase that "...which gives aid to the poor..."). If you sit for long periods, your back will hurt anyway. Back problems are common among users; we will sit for three or four hours straight just trying to figure out a program or solve a problem. Something that I have found that helps is a foam wedge pad; it is about 10 cm high at the back. You sit with your knees lower. It has helped me somewhat. You can get these at any foam store for about 2 or 3 dollars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bundled Programs: When you bought your ST from a store, several programs were included with the machine. Some of these were written by Atari Corporation (fx ST WRITER), others were written by independant software houses and were bought by Atari for giving to its customers (Fx 1ST_WORD, DB MASTER ONE). The different programs were given out at different periods and in different countries: new buyers do not get 1ST_WORD anymore, for example. DB MASTER ONE, a database, was given out in Denmark for a few months in 1987. These programs have a curious status; they are very much commercial programs, they are copyrighted, you can not just hand out copies of them. But so many people have them and 1ST WORD has become the standard wordprocessor; it is nearly public domain. A number of public domain services in fact hand out copies of 1ST WORD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don't waste your time with ST-BASIC, the Basic program that came along with the computer. It's got errors, and rarely works right. I've never figured out what to do with LOGOS; absolutely no one uses it. Blank out those free disks and use them: they're high quality. If you ever want those PRGs again, just go to your dealer with the disk and tell them that it was blank. If you want to learn Basic, or use Basic, get GFA Basic from West Germany: good and fast. Most people use GFA; it is pretty much the standard Basic for the ST; it has good manuals, and lots of books (the first English translation was lousy; the second is better). You can talk to lots of other people about GFA. FAST BASIC from England is also very good and popular. Omikrom Basic from Germany is good too. There is a new version of ST BASIC, written by one of the Tramiel boys, which is bundled with new ST's, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere as good as GFA, Fast, or Omnikrom Basic. Atari Corpora- tion, which only earned 180 million dollars in straight profits last year, refuses to give you a manual. They will send you to the dealer, who is going to laugh if you ask for a 100 page manual. Many people ask which languages will run on the ST. Just about every one. All the major languages, and many dialects, have been adapted to the ST (Basic, Logo, C, Pascal, Modula 2, Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, APL, Fortran, etc etc.). Both old fashioned procedural languages, like Basic, and the new artificial intelli- gence langauges have been adapted to the ST. "New" langauges aren't. LISP, the major artificial intelligence language, is over 30 years old and older than BASIC. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Buying hardware and software: Quite a few of our members have bought computers in West Germany and England, despite the long held arguments regarding lack of service or support, without problems. At present, there is no reason for buying hardware or software in Denmark. As for service and support, there is none in Denmark. Prices are simply lower in Germany. With the sole exception of PIXEL (tlf. 05/152441), we do not yet know of a ST distributor which will give qualified service or meaningful support to a professional ST user. Danish businesses which sell business computers have dropped the ST because they were unable to rely on Atari Corporation for service or parts. German stores deliever what they promise. German stores are also reliable in long term: Danish stores has started and stopped with amazing regularity; the first two distributors for the ST crashed spectacularly. New World provided some unbelievable examples of amature errors and poor business sense. The previous importor is remembered for worst things. Datakilden in Copenhagen made such a disaster that they simply declared bankruptcy, to escape their angry customers and debts, and started up again as Scandinavian Software. A company to avoid, in any form. If you are going to invest in hardware or software, check with another user first: make sure that the company is reliable. Atari has come under very strong criticism from developers and users. There is simply no developer support or customer support. For all of their spectacular sales and profits, Atari does not bother with companies which are developing software/hardware for the ST. TOS is faulty; it makes errors and is limited. It was poorly written. Atari kept coming out with new versions, end- lessly changing the TOS; there are dozens of versions now. The latest is not 100% downwards compatible. GDOS, a supplement to the faulty TOS, has been kept secret/unavailable for a very long time. GEM information has been kept secret for no particular reason. The ST is a thirdparty machine: practically everything to it was developed by companies independantly of Atari. It is no secret that Non-Atari components are usually better than Atari compo- nents (especially drives, harddisks, monitors). Practically no application software has been developed by Atari. We don't even have software guidelines for the ST: each developer must invent his own format. Therefore the ridiculous situation with graphics: it is a pain in the neck to convert pictures from one format to another: it took over two years to get a wordprocessor which could read graphics. A software guidelines would give developers the ability to write programs which are compatible with one another. All Macintosh programs are intercompatible: just about anything can be moved from one program to another. This is unthinkable on the ST: try moving your spreadsheet into your wordprocessor. And then into your drawing program. No way. The result means that hardware / software developers must think twice and twice again before entering the ST market: they must first establish a standard. We users lose: we don't get radical, interesting programs for the ST. No one in their right mind is going to develop a totally new program on a machine which has such a difficult market. Get a copy of our PD catalog and ask for the USENET disks: these are downloads (copies) of discussions in the ST section carried out by many of the major persons in the ST world. The Tramiels, Digital Research (who wrote GEM), Atari's marketing director, Simon Poole (far away the best PD author on the ST) and dozens others are talking, discussing, criticising (and bitterly attacking) the ST. Don't start wondering whether you should start looking for another computer. The ST is a great computer. It is extremely powerful. It works, all in all, rather well. It is VERY reliable. Salespersons will tell you in confidential conversation that 30 to 40 % of Amigas need to be rebuilt: perhaps only two or three of 100 ST have problems (and these are mostly just loose chips which are easily fixed). The Amigas are a pain in the neck with their disk sensitivity (a disk must be very good for it; ST's will run fine with not-so-good disks (ie cheaper). And let's talk programs. It tooks seasons for the Amiga to get a simple wordprocessor; we had SIGNUM. There are far more applications programs for the ST. The fact is that there are more games, and more newer games, for the ST than the Amiga, the games machine. And last of all, price. The ST is simply cheaper. Power without the price. The price is of course customer support: you won't get that (and we don't expect it to come either). The only alterna- tive to the ST is the Macintosh II; and that involves a very large price difference. West Germans have really taken to the ST; it is the Mac of Germany. Lots of programs and hardware is created there. We can expect developments and progress from West Germany for the ST. For the money, the ST is the best you can buy in Europe. End of Chapter One: The Beginning. ====================== * * ====================== Chapter Two: The Keyboard Tips and tricks regarding the keyboard: ESCAPE: A clever trick, when working on the DESKTOP: You have a window open, showing one disk DIRECTORY (the contents). You switch disks. Do you then click on DRIVE B? No! Just press ESC (Escape), on the upper left corner of your keyboard. The computer will then READ the new disk. What it actually does is UPDATEs the directory, checking again what's on the disk, but since you've switched disks, it READS the new disk and puts that in the window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This works with RAM disks as well; click on the RAM disk window so that it is on top, and then punch ESC. (Ram disks will be explained below). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ESCape (ESC) is a handy button. When changing directory lines, disk labels, whatever, punch ESC, and it clears the whole thing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If you change disks while in an application, such as 1st Word, ESC can help. Load 1st Word (start the prg by double clicking). Now, you want to change disks. Insert new disk. Punch the CURSOR UP ARROW, this puts the cursor on the disk directory line. Now punch ESC. that clears the whole thing. Now hit ENTER. The new disk is read as a default in A drive. If you have 1st Word in D Drive as a RAMdisk, then instead of backspacing and typing some silly nonsense like ( A:Ø*.* ), just punch Up arrow (elevator to top floor) ESCape out the window and ENTER in the ground floor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You can also write the A:/folder/*.PRG or whatever onto a keymacro program and then produce the whole line with one keystroke (thanks to HS). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Typing an underline ( _ ) in the top directory line will bomb. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You don't have to start up a program just to look at a text file. You can open a file directly on your desktop and look at the first part of it (just double click and choose SHOW TO SCREEN from the dialogue box. Pressing ENTER scrolls one line at a time, pressing SPACE bar scrolls a whole screen. Instead of pressing ENTER and scrolling all the way to the end, press Q (quit). You're out again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some versions of TOS (there are dozens of versions of TOS, for no real reason) have a curious ability; press CAPS LOCK and then ALTERNATE: the Danish or German alphabets then revert to English font and produce square brackets and slashes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You are not stuck with Swedish keys (or whatever is on your keyboard). When you press the "B" key, you don't send a "B" to the computer; you send a long string of codes. This string can easily be changed (edited). You can easily re-program or re- define your keyboard. This requires no expert knowledge; fools can do it (most computer stores fall in that category). Use KEYEDIT.PRG, a public domain program; you get a picture of your keyboard on screen, simply use the mouse to move the keys around or add new keys (for example, get rid of Swedish, and add German or Danish). You can easily make several keyboards, for different languages. You can also place keys in places which are more convenient. The marks ( ' ) and ( " ) should be together, and next to the shift key. The same for ? and ! (and ¡ as well), these should be on one key. Add the Danish é and É to the keyboard. Delete the ridiculous £ sign. You can also use these keys in the directory; instead of writing 1/2_AARHUS.DOC, you can just write ½_ÅRHUS.DOC. You actually have not one, but five keyboards. You must think of several modes: the keys act differently depending on the board's mode. You change modes by pressing the SHIFT, CAPS LOCK, ALTERNATE, or CONTROL keys. The first mode is the normal "qwerty" board, the small letters. The second mode is SHIFT: small letters become large, and numbers remain the same. The third, fourth, and fifth mode is CAPS LOCK, ALTERNATE and CONTROL; press these and then you have different keyboards. The standard keyboard setup, what you get from the factory, has the same thing on both SHIFT, CONTROL, and ALTERNATE. A keyboard editing program allows you to put different keys in the various modes; you can place on the numerical keypad, which is rarely used in the higher modes, all sorts of alphabets, such as German, French, and Spanish. The numbers at the top 1234567890 can also hold different symbols. Paste stickers on your keys so that you can see the different things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You will notice after a while that the letters on the keys began to disappear. Touching the keyboard after a year will just rub off the keys. Clear plastic is sold in sheets or rolls which can be cut to fit the tops of your keys. This protects especially the non-american keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Instead of pointing and clicking the OK box in the dialogue box, hit RETURN or ENTER. Both of these keys usually have the same function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Get in the practise of holding the mouse in your palm, clicking not with the tip of your finger, but with the middle of the finger. Not so tiring. And keep the mouse near the keyboard, so that you can hit ENTER with your thumb. This machine was not designed by a southpaw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You can always print the screen by pressing ALTERNATE + HELP. Or almost always. Often the printing can be stopped by pressing Control + Q (quit) (or perhaps X, W, or Z as well). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Control + S will often work on your keyboard with some PRGs. This SAVES data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When renaming disk drives, or renaming file names, there is no need to backspace one letter and type in the new: just type it. If the cursor is at the end of the line, it will automatically delete and replace the word. Try this now by clicking OPEN FILE, and just pressing K, the .DOC will change to .DOK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The cursor can be moved with ALTERNATE + ARROW keys; press ALTERNATE + INSERT for a mouse click. The only time I've found this useful is when you have to click the mouse a lot (in a game, for example). Park the mouse over the box, and hold down the Alternate and Insert keys. Also this helps when reading long files (like this one). Park the mouse over the vertical bar on the right side of the screen, hold down ALTERNATE, and press INSERT as you read along. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Careful, though, too fast and this sometimes 'freezes' the computer, nothing works anymore. Panic. Try punching ENTER, or wait a bit. Waving a gun sometimes works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The right mouse button works on the desktop. When you have several windows open, point at an inactive window, hold down the right button, and point and click with the left button. The right button lets you work in non-active windows. Nice, but useless. It's so easy to click up a window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F1 and F10 often have a function in a program. Programmers have many traditional codes, such as pressing "CONTROL (Ctl) + ?"; this sometimes produces a few lines of HELP or other information. When in doubt, punch buttons. Try every key on the keyboard, in combinations. You can't hurt the computer by pressing buttons. However, shooting the computer may damage it. Gunshots are not covered by warranties except in Texas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Something difficult to describe, but rather handy, is an F-KEY guide. If your different programs use different commands on the F-Keys, this little device helps you keep track of them. Take about fifteen or twenty sheets of paper. Bind them together with one of those plastic ring binders: go to any paper supply store; they have a hole punching machine which makes a row of rectangle holes on the side of the paper, into which a plastic ring strip holds the sheets together (it is difficult to describe, but you will know it when you see them)(Use the smallest size, that is, the thinnest ones). Now use a paper cutter so that there is only a strip of paper 1.3cm wide (as if you bound a book which is only 1.3cm wide, but normal length. Still following this? Good. Put the thing above your F-keys. Trim to lenght. It sits there in the groove. Make a different page for each program that uses commands on the F-keys (also a handy place to keep notes about other commands) Just flip the pages back and forth for each program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I put a little red sticker on the F6, Delete Line, key. Then it's just a matter of reaching up and punching it; I don't need to look so carefully. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many programs can be aborted by pressing Q,W, X, Z, or CONTROL + Q, CONTROL + Q, CONTROL + X, CONTROL +Z, ESCAPE, or F10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In Germany, you can buy an AT keyboard which plugs into the ST. The AT keyboard is the best. High quality keys. It comes as a small separate keyboard (similar to PC's) and has a 2 meter telephone coil cable. Your ST is simply pushed back into the corner. Simply unplug the ST keyboard (a flat cable which is very obviouse when you open your machine) and plug in the AT keyboard. AT keyboards cost about 60 pounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Be careful with the keys. ST's are made of cheap plastic. The keys break off very easily. There's a lot of users with missing keys. I broke my Backspace key by dropping a dictionary onto it (small wonder!) Rubber cement doesn't work; it just gets loose after a while. It stayed loose for a long time, until a friend suggested model airplane glue; it's made for plastic (the guy at the store asked if it was for toy airplanes or toy soldiers. I said "for my toy computer"). It worked great. Solid connection. Be VERY careful not to glue the key to the sleeve; you'll freeze the whole thing. Use a toothpick to apply the glue. End of Chapter Two: The ST Keyboard. ====================== * * ====================== Chapter Three: The Mouse There's only one thing to say about the mouse. When waiting for a command to be carried out (waiting while opening a program, waiting while a text is being reformatted, etc), don't wiggle the mouse around impatiently. You send information to the computer when the mouse moves; the computer slows down what it is doing and begans to pay attention to your mouse movements. In other words, if you play around with the pot, it just takes longer to boil water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Your mouse should roll smoothly. If it doesn't (it feels like rolling on rubber), then you must clean it. In the back of your Owner's Manual is a short description of how to clean your mouse. It is not enough. You need to go further. Open the mouse, as the manual tells you. Use a cotton swab (the little sticks with cotton on the end) which has been moistened (not dripping) in alcohol and wipe the three rollers, turning them too. This softens up the dirt. Take a clean, small, sharp knife (or whatever) and gently scrape the dirt from the rollers, turning them as you go along. (As my chemistry professor used to say: CRAP = Chemical Residue in Apparatus). Don't scratch the rollers. Don't try and see how high the little ball will bounce. Put the mouse back together. New mice cost at least 50$. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some mice will go "walkies," as one British puts it. As you work on the keyboard, for no reason, the mouse arrow will fly across the screen. Notice that it only goes either straight up and down, or horizontally. There was quite a debate in ST WORLD last year about this; there are several different theories on the reason for this. There are also several different cures; many of which involve fooling around with the hardware. Try pushing the mouse plug tighter into the computer. It doesn't seem to be much of a problem; if it's not broke, don't fix it. Mine does it quite often; other people are rather amazed when it goes flying off by itself. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The right mouse button works on the desktop. When you have several windows open, point at an inactive window, hold down the right button, and point and click with the left button. The right button lets you work in non-active windows. Nice, but useless. It's so easy to click up a window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, right, nearly forgot. Mousepads are all the rage. They really are better as a surface. Don't spend money buying an "offical" pad at a computer store; go to a scuba divers store (underwater sports) and buy some Neoprene, the stuff that wetsuits are made of. That's what mouse pads are anyway (who ever came up with that?). There are two kinds of neoprene: wetsuits and drysuits (A wet suit lets water in, but insulates. A drysuit keeps water out completely.) Use drysuit material. (If you use wetsuit, then it won't "hold" to your table top. Use some double sided tape to hold it down.) The stuff is expensive by the square meter (around 40 £ / square meter of certain thicknesses)(it is measured in cubic centimeters), but you only need a 20X20 cm piece (mine is .40 cm thick). If you use the SPEEDMOUSE.ACC, then you only need 16x16 cm. Don't hope for a free scrap piece of material; none of it is thrown away. They use the little pieces for making fingers for the gloves. End of Chapter Three: The Mouse. ====================== * * ====================== Continued next issue - Ed.