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Text File | 1995-06-19 | 15.7 KB | 300 lines

AZTECH CD-ROM MANAGER HELP FILE This CD-ROM disc compilation and various other items are Copyright 1995 Aztech New Media Corp. ------------------------------------ GENERAL INFORMATION ------------------------------------ Thank you for purchasing Aztech's Home Edutainment Collection, Series II. This compilation represents some of the very best shareware applications games currently available. To reflect the changing times, this collection features four DOS-based CD's and three Windows-based (3.1 or later) CD's. Many of the applications on this CD-ROM run directly from the CD-ROM, although you may not be able to save games or save reconfigure options (you can't change the contents of a CD-ROM). Some games may need to be placed on your hard drive because the program needs to determine the configuration of your PC as it installs itself. Some games want to write a configuration file or a high score file to disk. Since it is not possible to write information to a CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory) any changes you make to the a game's configuration will have to be done each time you play the game. To overcome this, you will have to copy the game to your hard disk or to a floppy. ----------------------------------------- A NOTE ABOUT SHAREWARE ----------------------------------------- It is important to note that the bundled price of this CD-ROM covers only the medium, research, assembly, production, packaging, and distribution costs. The actual intellectual properties (that is, the shareware programs) require separate payment to the author(s) if you are going to use them. These programs are "shareware." They are not free unless specifically identified as such. Many of the games offer the first episode or level for free with the hope that you will enjoy them enough to want to buy the additional episodes. This is one of the best methods of shareware. Try the first level - if you like it buy the rest. Other games give you the full functionality and the author expects that if you like and use their product that you will forward a recommended payment to them. Usually there are additional incentives for "registering." -------------------------------------------------------- USING THE AZTECH CD-ROM MANAGER -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Main Window -------------------------------------------------------- The main window has five selections; GO, Help, About, Quit and More. All the applications on this CD are displayed in the main window called the Category List along with a summary description of each application. The Category List contains all the files on this CD. With this box you can scroll through the various selections by pressing the Up and Down arrows to the right of the items. To select and learn more about an item just double-click on the line and the individual selection box will appear with a variety of options. Some applications may not include certain options such as Help or the application may require that it be installed on your hard disk before it can be used. Unavailable options are shown with the usual greyed "disable" text color. * GO Double-clicking on the selected application line has the same effect as selecting GO. This item executes the SELECTION menu which, in turn offers a variety useful functions: LAUNCH: If this button is NOT greyed out then the selected application may be run directly from the CD. If it is greyed out then you must first install the application to your hard disk. Note: Some applications will modify your WIN.INI file and not indicate to you that it has done so. This is common, for example, when you change the default setup or options for some applications. Deleting the application at a later date does not necessarily remove the entries from your WIN.INI file. If you are concerned about such modifications, back up WIN.INI (in your WINDOWS directory) before installing any applications(whether from this CD-ROM or any other source, for that matter). READ HELP: If the application has an "external" help file available, then you may read it using this button. If no file is available, then the button will be greyed out. Some applications do not have a help file. READ TEXT: Some applications are supplied with last-minute details or general information that you should know about when executing or using the application. This button will be black (ie. not greyed out) if such a file exists. Such a file is usually a READ.ME, README.TXT or some other derivative filename. READ DOCS: This button will be active if the application has an external manual and/or other miscellaneous text files available. If black, this button will show you a file in the Windows Write format (filename.wri). This button is also used for text files that the Windows Notepad cannot load due to certain file size restrictions. VIEW/LISTEN: This button will only be black for Wave, Midi, Flic (animation), and bitmap (graphics) file types. Clicking this button will allow you to preview a selection before installing it onto your hard drive or diskette. Aztech's CD-ROM menu program will look into your Windows configuration to see if you have any applications that willplay or display the particular filetype you requested. If the appropriate application has been "associated" (see your Windows manual) with the respective file type (eg. .AVI = Video For Windows) then this button will launch that application and present the selected file. For example, the BMP Files category might use Paint that comes with Windows. The Wave Files category may call up Windows' Media Player. INSTALL TO HARD DRIVE: This button is always black and when selected, will open a dialog box. The box will display all the drives and directories that you have available in your system. It will also allow you to create a new directory by pressing the New Directory button. Note: Aztech's CD-ROM Menu install option will check to see if you have enough space on the drive and directory you requested before it tries to copy any files. Also, it will not allow you to install an application into the "root" directory of any drive. This is done for your protection (please read your MS-DOS manual for more details). One important reason is to prevent inexperienced users from copying hundreds of files into the root and making it impossible at some later time to determine which files could be deleted. You must create a new directory for installing the application or use an existing directory. MORE INFORMATION: This button is always black. This selection offers additional details regarding the currently selected application including: . what directory the application currently resides in on the CD . how much disk space it will occupy (in KB) on your HD . whether VBRUN is required or not . cost of registration, . time you are permitted to try it out before registering and more. * HELP Displays this file which also has helpful hints on the more common problems one can run into when installing new software applications, irrespective of whether it is shareware or a commercial retail product. * ABOUT Displays basic copyright and authoring information about this CD. * QUIT Returns you to Windows' Program Manager. * MORE This selection offers a number of useful functions for greater control over the installation of applications into your Windows environment. You can view other Aztech products, edit important configuration files, install Video and Quicktime For Windows as well as the Visual BASIC library, and more. For more information on Directories and Disks, please refer to your MS-DOS Manual or Windows Operating Guide. All of the applications have been reviewed. They all work. They are all decompressed and each application resides in its own directory. You do not need to know the "executable" file. You do not need to know how to use various decompression programs. ----------------------------------------------------------- MOST COMMON SHAREWARE PROBLEMS ----------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, the MS-DOS world of PC's has its own share of software and hardware problems because of its 15-year legacy of trying to maintain compatibility with older versions of software and the all-important customer data. This has led to numerous inconsistencies and patch fixes for making MS-DOS and PC hardware do things they were never designed to do. The shareware Aztech selected for this compilation is amongst the best in the world and some of these games approach or even exceed the quality of some commercial game products. Applications will freeze, hang-up, lock out, cause the screen to go screwy, terminate abnormally and do all the most horrific things that we all dislike about PC's and none of it is specific or even necessarily caused by the application currently running. The most common problems you may run into are: Some games on this disc were written without consideration for the continuing improvements in CPU performance. If the game runs too fast then you might consider pressing the "Turbo" or similarly-labelled button on your machine's front panel. It should change the display from the usual 33, 66 or 100 MHz to something like 8 or 12 MHz. Read the CD label which states, TO RUN: Log on to CD-ROM drive and type GO. Go launches a menu which allows you to run 90% of the games directly from the CD. You did not read the HELP file (which you ARE now reading). This short file has some useful information about how to use the disc and how to exit from games that don't have an obvious exit. Not enough conventional memory usually raises the ire of many of us with more than 2 MB of RAM. We know we have enough memory to play most any game. You may have lots of RAM and still be getting this kind of symptom or error message because the application may require more of the first 640 KB of RAM in your computer than is actually available. Read about loading drivers and applications in high memory and how to disable Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs. The application is asking for information about your PC that any "normal" person wouldn't know but is "guessing" at, such as: The demonic IRQ (Interrupt ReQuest) number, most often asked by applications when determining the SoundBlaster sound card, usually defaults to "7." However, the assumption is that sound cards would never be used at the same time someone is printing something. IRQ 7 is also the number for the parallel port. Only one device may use an IRQ at a time so if the user is playing music on the sound card and wants to print something or another device is also using IRQ 7, an "IRQ conflict" arises and the system will instantly hang, usually leaving the last note played also hanging on your eardrum as an irritating reminder of the conflict. Changing an IRQ is not something a novice should do. However, the only real alternatives are to go through all the options of a particular game to find one that works or getting an experienced person to identify the conflict and change the IRQ setting on one or more of the hardware cards. If the IRQ number is asked for, then another number is also usually asked for. This is the port address, which is the unique address of the device, much like the house number on a street is unique to the human device(s) residing in it. This number usually defaults to 220 for the SoundBlaster and this one has to be handled the same as the IRQ. The villainous video card is amongst the most common and most misunderstood creatures of the PC. EGA was wonderful because it was a standard. However, the world cannot be viewed through 16-color glasses and so S/VGA was conspired as someone's master plan to reduce tech support people all over the world to blithering idiots. Again, the assumption is that you will know which particular VGA or S/VGA card you have in your PC. While the PC industry has been getting smarter about automatic detection of these cards, it still remains that most applications in the PC world do not support every manufacturer's version of S/VGA. To compound problems, the VESA standard is not strictly adhered to by even the very largest video card manufacturers. You may have a manual for the card. If not, many video cards will identify themselves, typically on one of the very first lines to be displayed on the PC monitor during bootup. If it flashes by too quickly for the user to see it, sometimes hitting the PAUSE button on the keyboard will pause the bootup procedure. More often it will hang the PC and the user will have to reboot. Adding to this is the question of what the maximum resolution supported by the card is. Of course you will always want to pick the best one because you rightly believe you have bought the most current technology only six months go. Of course, the de facto standard changed since then. When it comes to a shareware compilation, each application is written by a different author. Not every hardware combination of video cards, CD-ROM drives, memory availability and sound cards can be supported by every application. Aztech has tried every game on this CD on at least three entirely different PC configurations. After trying some of the above, the following are some other things to attempt. The first thing to try is to copy the whole application over to the hard drive. Some programs want to write a high score or a configuration file or set up some temporary work area, which cannot be done on a read-only device. We also found that copying the game to the hard disk solved the problem. There is almost certainly some basic configuration of every game in this compilation that will work for most PC's. If, after copying to the hard disk, the game is still not working satisfactorily, the best approach to take is a step-by-step installation of the game. The user should first configure the game without sound, or at the most with PC speaker support. If possible, install the game with EGA graphics and no mouse. If the game works at this level then there is clearly some kind of conflict in the user's machine and it is likely that the application is not at fault. Then, one by one, improve the capability of the game by first installing either the video card support OR the sound support, but not both at the same time. Once you know the culprit, it should be much easier to resolve the problem. At the end of the day, it may simply turn out that the game can only be run on a particular user's machine at a configuration that is less than the user's machine's capabilities. ============================================================= Thank you again for purchasing Aztech's Home Edutainment Collection, Series II. We hope you truly enjoy this compilation. Other questions concerning the operation of this CD may be directed to Aztech at: FAX: (416) 449-1058 Attn: Technical Support