World of Ham Radio 1997

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Introduction to paKet version 6 Installation ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▄ ║ ║ ▒▒█ ▒▒█▀ ▒▒▄ ║██ ║ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒█▒▒█▀ ▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ║██ ║ ▒▒█▀▀▀▒▒▄ ▀▀▀▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒█▀ ▒▒█▀▀▒▒▄ ▀▒▒█▀▀ ║██ ║ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█▀ ▒▒█▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█▀ ▒▒█ ║██ ║ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒▄ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀ ▒▒█ ║██ ║ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒█▀ ▒▒▒▒▒▄▒▒▄ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▄ ║██ ║ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ║██ ║ ▒▒█ ║██ ║ ▒▒▒▒█ Version 6 ║██ ║ ▀▀▀▀ ║██ ╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝██ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Congratulations! You now have a copy of paKet Version 6, Still "The best Packet Radio software in the world". (Scroll through this document and press Esc when finished) The system is distributed as several Compressed files, compressed by the excellent Public Domain utility, LHA. Although the paKet files are self expanding, a full copy of LHA is included. Please note this LHA system includes the following copyright notice: Copyright (c) Haruyasu Yoshizaki, 1988-91 Backup the paKet diskette(s) You should backup your original paKet diskette(s). You can use DISKCOPY to make a copy of the original diskette(s) or if you have a high capacity diskette drive you could copy all the files to a high capacity diskette and install from that. Copy the files to Hard Disk and install from that if you like. It doesn't really matter where you install from, or how many diskettes you use, provided all input files will be found on the same drive. The paKet installation process will not write over the Input files, so for added protection you should ensure the copy of the original diskette is write protected, especially if you decide to install from the original diskette(s). There is no form of copy protection nor hidden files nor any such inconveniences with paKet. You can copy the paKet system and give copies to as many people as you wish. The program is considered "unregistered" until you enter your Serial Number, but you will still have full facilities available in the unregistered copy while you conduct your evaluation of paKet. All Registered users will be given a Serial Number to authorise their use of the program. Disk requirements Up to 1.3 MB disk space will be required for the installed paKet system, although half that is required for the Online Manual. If you are tight on space, you could delete the installed copy of the Manual from the disk after printing it, and go without the Online Manual facility. The Install Program works on any system with two or more drives (let's call them the Input and the Output drives). If you have only a single diskette drive and no Hard Disk, refer to the instructions given below under the heading, "Single Drive systems". This version of paKet includes some program overlays to reduce the full time memory requirements. This means there will occasionally be some disk activity to load other parts of the program when called. While I have tried to make this overlay activity so infrequent that you might not even notice, it does lend itself to a hard disk operation. Yes paKet will run from diskette but it will run better from a hard disk. If you are Installing to a Hard Disk or 1.44MB diskette: It should all fit on the one volume (if space is available!). If you are Installing to a 1.2MB diskette: It should all fit on the one diskette but you might have to delete a couple of the miscellaneous files or utilities included with paKet. If you are Installing to 720K diskette: You will need 2 blank diskettes; If you are Installing to 360K diskette: You will need to have 3 or 4 blank diskettes available, depending on the options chosen; The INSTALL program The Install program is fully automated and will advise you of progress as it performs the installation of paKet 6. If necessary, you will be prompted to change diskettes, but otherwise just sit back and watch. When first started, after displaying the READ.ME and (this) INSTALL.DOC files the Install program will ask you for the preferred video display settings. If you have a monochrome display (whether you are running a colour card or not), or if you have an LCD display, you should select the first of the two options. Then it will use a set of Black and White "colours" instead of the usual multi-coloured screen. The Install program will proceed to transfer all required files to the output drive/directory, expanding compressed files as necessary. The Configuration file paKet uses a Configuration file, PAKET.CFG, to maintain the various system settings. You can change these settings through the Online Configuration Windows while running paKet and full details on this are provided in the Configuration Windows section of the Manual. The Install program will create a new Configuration File. If you are upgrading from paKet 5 the Install Program will update your old PAKET.CFG file to the new format. So please ensure there is a copy of your old PAKET.CFG file available in the directory (or the diskette) where you are installing paKet 6. If you are installing paKet for the first time, a new PAKET.CFG file will be created with a set of default values which should be adequate to get you started. At the first opportunity after running the program you should activate the Online Configuration facility (Press <Alt-Z>) and have a look at the various options to ensure the system is set up to your liking. Serial Port parameters paKet needs to know what settings to use for the computer's Serial Port so it can send (and receive) information to the TNC when the program first starts up. The Install Program will ask you for some essential information for the initial Serial Port settings. It needs to know: COM Port Which of the Computer's Serial Ports you will use Baud rate > Parity > These should be set to Word Length > match the settings currently Stop Bits > used by your TNC. If you are already communicating with your TNC, just make a note of the settings you are using now. If this is your first attempt at using your TNC, the TNC Manual should tell you what its initial settings are. The Manual The paKet Manual is distributed as 11 separate files, one for each "Part" in the Manual. These files are named MAN01.DOC (for Part 1), MAN02.DOC (for Part 2) etc up to MAN11.DOC. These parts should be combined into one single file for the Online Manual. (If there is space available, the Install program will do this for you automatically, creating a single file PAKET.DOC). But this combined Manual is over 700KB and I know how inconvenient it can be to try to print such a large file. So I thought it might be easier for you to handle the printing if the Manual were distributed as separate Parts. To combine these files manually, use the DOS COPY command: COPY MAN01.DOC+MAN02.DOC+MAN03.DOC...(etc)...+MAN11.DOC PAKET.DOC If your system does not permit such a long command line, you could try doing it in two steps: COPY MAN01.DOC+MAN02.DOC+MAN03.DOC+MAN04.DOC+MAN05.DOC+MAN06.DOC P1.DOC then COPY P1.DOC+MAN07.DOC+MAN08.DOC+MAN09.DOC+MAN10.DOC+MAN11.DOC PAKET.DOC Then you can delete the temporary file P1.DOC. It would be easier to ensure there is adequate space available (at least 2MB) before running INSTALL - that way the program will do it for you. The individual Parts of the Manual may then be deleted. You can still go back to the original diskettes to retrieve an individual Part if you need to do that later. You should read through all the Manual, scanning any parts you don't understand just yet - they will become clearer next time around. While I have tried to make paKet easy to use, there is a lot in it and I think it would be worth your while to become familiar with the Manual so you can look up any information you need. The Online Manual feature in paKet allows you to call up the Manual and view any part of it in a pop up window while using the program. I expect this feature would be best used with a Hard Disk (or RAM disk) because, with the size of the Manual, you might find it too big to store and too slow to load from diskette. The Manual contains only ASCII text although I have used some of the IBM PC Graphic characters (sometimes referred to as Extended ASCII) such as those shown in the "paKet" logo at the beginning of this file. There are no formatting characters other than a Form Feed which appears after every 55 lines. All lines are less than 78 characters wide, most less than 75 characters. I recommend you print the Manual at the first opportunity. The PAKPRT program I have included a PAKPRT program which you could use to print the Manual. The main advantage of using this program is that it will ask you if your printer can handle those Extended ASCII graphic characters. If it does NOT handle those characters, the PAKPRT program will convert those data characters to something more acceptable to your printer. Even blanks would be better than some of the confusion created on some printers when these Extended ASCII codes are "printed". To use this program type: PAKPRT then answer the questions that appear on the screen. Or you could type the document name on the command line, eg: PAKPRT MAN01.DOC I have numbered all pages in the Manual. If these page numbers are not printing correctly or if you find the Manual is printing on every second page, it could be your printer has been set to automatically generate an internal Form Feed (or Page Eject) as it nears the end of the page. This could be because: a. The page size setting in your printer is set to a value of 55 lines or less. Some printers measure page size in length such as inches or centimeters. All pages in this Manual have 55 lines with a Form Feed on the following line. So if your Printer has been set up for a page length of less than 56 lines, it might internally generate a skip to a new page when its preset page length is reached. Then when the computer sends the Form Feed code from the document, that will cause ANOTHER page skip! The page size is usually set with DIP switches, but in many printers it can also be set in software. So try switching the printer off and on again to reset any temporary setting that might have been sent by some other software. b. There is a Top Margin and/or a Bottom Margin set in your printer. This is similar to the previous Page Size item. Check the printer switches and again reset it by power off and on. The effect of the Margin settings is to give some more space at the top and bottom the page to make it more presentable. But for this Manual you must have at least a printable page size of 56 lines. The printable page size is the size of your page less any Top or Bottom Margins configured into the printer. So if you are using standard Letter paper (11 inches) with a 1 inch Margin set at both the top and bottom of the page you will have only 9 inches available and at the standard 6 lines per inch, you can get only 54 printed lines on a page. That's not enough for the paKet Manual. By all means adjust your Margins to suit yourself, but leave enough room for 55 lines of print. c. You might also check to see if your printer has an option to "Skip over Perforations". This option will tell your printer to skip a few lines as it nears the end of a page, so it can avoid printing over the perforations on continuous form paper. Set this option off because this Manual will never get down to the perforations if you are using standard paper. The Form Feed will take it to the next page before it gets that far! Double Sided Printing Because of the large size of the Manual, I thought it might be useful to provide a facility to print on both sides of the paper. Yes, I know there are several Public Domain utilities that do this, and do it a lot better than PAKPRT does, but I decided to add that option anyway! It is not as complete as some of the better double-sided-print programs because PAKPRT requires a Form Feed to identify the end of a page. The better programs can count lines and make up their own page breaks, for documents which do not include Form Feeds. Oh well...at least PAKPRT works with the paKet documentation! You don't have to bother with Double Sided printing if you don't want to; there is a "Normal" printing option. But you do get the option to print only the Odd numbered pages or the Even numbered pages. So you can print say, the Odd pages, then reverse the paper and print only the Even pages. It does save paper and the resulting Manual is less bulky. I think it is worth the trouble for a large document such as the paKet Manual. When you run PAKPRT, it will ask a few questions. I have shown each of those questions here with a brief explanation of the options available: Which file would you like to print? <NONE> Here you select the name of the file you want to print. If you have not specified a filename on the command line, the default name will be "NONE". If you select "NONE", the program will stop without printing anything. Press <Enter> to accept the default file name displayed or type the desired file name, including any path details if it is not in the current directory. If you enter a file name of "TEST", the PAKPRT program will print a small test sample on your printer so you can see whether or not it does handle those Extended ASCII Graphics. Does your printer handle the Extended ASCII characters (Y/N)? <Y> Here you tell the program whether or not your printer can print those "Graphic" characters. The default is "Y(es)", meaning your printer CAN handle the "graphics" so just press <Enter> if that is your answer. If "N", PAKPRT will convert those codes to plain ASCII. You can type either "Y" or "N" but anything else will be ignored. Do you want Normal (single-sided) print, or Odd or Even pages (N/O/E)? <N> Here you type "N", or "O", or "E". This is where you tell PAKPRT about the double-sided printing. You could enter "O" here to tell the program to print only the Odd numbered pages. Then feed the paper back into the printer so it is ready to print on the back of the paper, and use PAKPRT to print the Even numbered pages of the same file. If you don't want to bother about double-sided, just type "N" for normal printing. To print a short file, double-sided might not be worth the trouble. In that case PAKPRT will print all specified pages regardless of Odd or even page numbers. This is the default answer, so you can just press <Enter> for normal printing. Number of additional blank lines for Top Margin? <0> The standard American letter paper, which is 11 inches long can handle up to 66 print lines at the standard 6 lpi format, however some problems were found when trying to print say 60 lines on a laser printer. Many printers cannot print on the very top or bottom lines and they often have top and bottom margins built in, so the maximum PRINT capacity is quite a bit less than the full 66 lines! To permit trouble free printing on as many printers as possible, I have reduced the size of the printed page in the paKet Manual to 55 lines. This should prove to be acceptable in most cases, especially for the American letter paper. If you are using the "other standard", the A4 letter paper, which is 4 lines longer than the American Letter paper, you will have a significant margin of white space at the bottom of each page. Sorry about that but it is a bit too complicated to produce two copies of the manual just to overcome this er, "problem". However, the PAKPRT program has an option to print some additional blank lines at the top of each page, so in your case you might select a Top Margin of (say) 4 lines to print a little further down the page. This evens up the white space with a little more at the top and a little less at the bottom - makes it look a bit better I think. Starting page number? <1> Ending page number? <24> These two prompts allow you to select part of the file with a beginning and an ending page number. This might be useful if you happen to get a paper jam - you can print just that one page again. Just press <Enter> to accept the default numbers shown, or type your own choice for each item if you want to print only part of the file. The page numbers that appear on paper are part of the document text being printed. PAKPRT does not generate and print its own page numbers. Remember, PAKPRT identifies "pages" by counting the Form Feeds in the file. It is not sensitive to some text within the document to identify the "Page Number". So when printing say Part 7 of the Manual, the first page printed might show a "Page Number" of 241. But, as far as PAKPRT is concerned, that is page number 1 because it is the first page in that file. Printing both Odd and Even pages from file MAN01.DOC... With 4 additional blank lines as Top Margin Page 1 to page 24... OK to continue? <Y> This prompt appears when all the questions have been answered. It shows details of what is about to be printed and gives you a chance to abort the job before anything is sent to the printer. If you reply Y (or press <Enter>), printing will commence immediately. Single Drive Systems If you have a Hard Disk or more than one diskette drive you can skip this section and go down to "Registering paKet with your Serial Number". If you have only a single, high capacity diskette drive and no Hard Disk, you will have to do some of the installation work manually. It is a little fiddly and I thought it best to explain what is required and let you take control rather than try to be "clever" and attempt to automate what is going to be largely a manual operation with lots of diskette changing. In earlier versions of paKet, you could install paKet on a single 360KB diskette drive system, but this one has grown to the point where a single 360K drive is just not big enough to perform the installation process with so little storage. The program will RUN from your single 360K drive system once it is installed, but the installation process itself requires more. So in that case the Manual Install Option (option 4 below) is NOT available. There are a few options for you to consider: 1. If you have memory available, make a RAM drive and install paKet to that RAM drive. Use the Install Program and the instructions given above as if you had a Hard Disk. When the system is installed, copy the installed files to diskette. Ensure PAKET.EXE and PAKET.CFG are on the same diskette. or 2. Take your paKet diskette(s) to someone who has more than one drive and install paKet on their system. If that system has only one diskette drive and a Hard Disk, install to Hard Disk then copy the installed files to your diskette(s). or 3. Buy another drive! (Yes, well it IS an option!) or 4. The Manual Install Operation. If all else fails, you will have to do it manually. I will try to explain as I go, but if you are new to computers, it might be a good idea to ask someone with some computer experience to help. As explained above, paKet is distributed as several Self-Expanding Compressed files. So to expand each one of these in your single drive system, you will need space on a diskette to hold both the original compressed file and room for its equivalent in its expanded form. Basically it is a three step process for each of the required files: a. Copy an original Compressed file to a blank diskette; b. Expand the Compressed file on the "blank" diskette; c. Delete the Compressed file from that diskette (after creating the expanded version). You may need to have a few blank diskettes available. Using the normal COPY command, copy the PAKET6@.EXE file from the original diskette to a blank diskette. Eg: COPY A:PAKET6@.EXE B: The DOS Operating System knows you have only one drive and will ask you to change diskettes as necessary to make the copy onto your blank diskette. Let's call this "blank" diskette, the Working Diskette. Now, with the Working Diskette in the drive, run the "program": PAKET6@ This is a Self Expanding file so you will see the LHA program displaying some information as it expands into the full program file, PAKET.EXE. If you have a look at the directory of this Working Diskette now, you will see both the PAKET6@.EXE and the larger PAKET.EXE files on the diskette. You can see now why we were unable to do this Manual Installation with a single 360KB drive system: both these files would not fit on a single diskette! You can now delete the smaller one because it is no longer required on the Working Diskette: DEL PAKET6@.EXE Right. You have just installed the paKet program! Not too hard, huh? But we're not finished yet. You should do the same with all the Documentation files, MAN01@.EXE, MAN02@.EXE, etc. Copy the file MAN01@.EXE to a blank diskette, run the "program" (MAN01@), then delete the Compressed file, MAN01@.EXE. In other words, follow the same process we used for the paKet program. This step will give you the full paKet documentation, in eleven separate files MAN01.DOC through to MAN11.DOC. These can be printed separately as shown above. And they could be combined into a single large Manual file, so you can use it with the Online Manual from within paKet. But in your case with a single diskette drive, you might prefer to go without the Online Manual? There are also some TNC Help Files supplied with paKet. It may be you will not be using these on your single drive system, so you could skip this step if you like. But if you decide to extract a Help File, choose the one that seems best suited to your TNC, and if in doubt take the TNC2@.EXE file as it covers most general purpose Packet TNCs. The procedure here is the same as that used previously for the paKet program: COPY the selected TNC Help file to a blank diskette, or to the Working Diskette if there is room; run the "program" to expand the file, then delete the Compressed file. You can go through all the other Compressed files using the same procedure as shown above. The files with a filename ending in @ are the self expanding Compressed files. One final step is required before you can run paKet. We need a Configuration File. Normally this will be created by the Install Program but as we are doing it manually you should copy the sample PAKET.CFG file supplied on the original paKet diskette. This file must be copied on to the same Working Diskette where the PAKET.EXE program now resides. Note that because you will be using the SAMPLE Configuration File, it is quite possible the supplied Communications Parameters for the Serial Port will not be correct for your system. In this case, paKet will display an error message when it first starts up, telling you it cannot talk to the TNC! Just "Ignore" that error message and allow the system to start. Then type <Alt-Z> to get the Online Configuration window and change the Serial Port Parameters to their correct values. Whew! I wonder what a second drive would cost? Registering paKet with your Serial Number The REGISTER.DOC file will include details of where you can register the program. You can register with your local paKet distributor if you have not already done so. Or you can register with me directly if you wish but it is generally more convenient to go with your local distributor. They will be your first point of call for support too. Registered users will be given a Serial Number for their copy of paKet. The INSTALL program will ask you for your callsign and your Serial Number and will update this installed copy of paKet to a registered version. Note this process does not update your input files here, it records the Serial Number in the PAKET.EXE program file you have just installed. Your original input files remain unchanged. If you wish to give a copy of paKet to someone else (and I am quite happy for you to do so), it would be better to give them a copy of the original system diskettes to help ensure they get everything I have included with the full paKet system. If you give them a copy of your registered version, it should work just fine for them, but of course they would have to get their own Serial Number to register their copy. If you don't yet have your Serial Number, you can just press <Esc> instead of entering the Serial Number and the installation process will continue, producing a full (but unregistered) copy of paKet 6. You can run the INSTALL program again at a later date and just record your Serial Number (you won't have to go through the whole installation again). Or you can register the program later by typing <Alt-R> while paKet is running. As I mentioned earlier, you get all the same facilities whether you have registered or not. There are just two small differences between the registered and unregistered versions. When you have registered, your callsign will be displayed in the top left corner of your paKet display and it will be included in paKet's REMOTE Menu. They are the only differences! Everything works the same. Many paKet users have suggested to me that I should remove or disable some features of paKet in an unregistered copy of the program. That would provide more encouragement for people to send in their registration. Well, I thought about that but decided against it. I don't like it when I run some other Shareware program that has been cut down for evaluation purposes. I would rather get the full working copy to use. Then I can see what that program really has to offer and I am more likely to register my copy. If you are looking at paKet for the first time, you might need to see the complete paKet system to fully appreciate it too. Crazy? Yeah, probably. But if you do continue to use paKet, please consider sending in your registration. Have a look at the REGISTER.DOC file for details. If you think paKet is too expensive and not worth the registration fee, throw it away and use something else. I know there will be some people out there who are reading this and will already be thinking "I'll get into this with DEBUG (or similar) and crack the code and MAKE it into a registered version! Heh heh!". That's another reason I left all the features in the unregistered copy. You don't really gain much by being dishonest here. You have all the features anyway so leave it alone, eh? Maybe the only thing you would really achieve by doing this is to help ensure there is no version 7 of paKet! I'd like to hear from people on this subject. Am I being foolish by taking this "honesty" approach? Should I adopt a more hard nosed approach and follow the usual commercial practice with some sort of copy protection or a cut-down unregistered version? Conclusion. So, there you go. This document plus the facilities provided by the Install program will hopefully enable you to get paKet up and running quickly and easily. After the installation, you should: 1. Read through the Manual. It IS worth the effort to print it. Yes I know it is 350 pages, but that's all the more reason to have it available when you need to know something. You will certainly read it in a lot less time than it took me to write it! 2. Type PAKET to Start the paKet program then select the Online Configuration by pressing the <Alt-Z> key. This will bring up the Configuration Windows where all the variable parameters may be set or changed. With the Manual open at the Configuration Windows section, starting with the Overview on page 37, go through every one of the Configuration Windows and see that all parameters are set to your liking. This exercise will help you discover some of the features of the paKet system too. You should see the Configuration Help Windows pop up as you access the Online Configuration. If these windows are not appearing, it may be that option is disabled. I suggest you enable it at least while you are new to the system. That option is in the Miscellaneous Configuration options. The PAKETCFG.HLP file should be in the default directory too (that file is supplied with the original paKet system in the Compressed file CFGHELP@.EXE). If you have a Monochrome display, including LCD, you might need to change the "colours" to give maximum contrast on your display. Experiment with different colours as most monochrome displays will produce a shaded effect when different colours are used. You can change the Configuration parameters again at any time, in fact I would be surprised if there is ANYONE who just sets it up once and leaves it like that! Experiment with different settings, even different colours. It's easy and it's fun. Really! 3. Check the "Preferred TNC Settings" in the Technical Section of the Manual (Page 299) and ensure your TNC has the correct settings for use with paKet. Some of these parameters are critical for correct, reliable operation especially for Binary File Transfers. Thank you for supporting paKet. The response to paKet from users all over the world has been most encouraging. paKet 5 is being used in the far corners of the globe and most places in between. I hope you find version 6 an improvement over the earlier versions and again I invite paKet users everywhere to let me know what you think. If you have any ideas for future versions, please pass them on. Tony Lonsdale VK2DHU (Yes, REGISTER.DOC. That's the one.)