ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 Shareware Freeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)

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PRO-UTIL Version 3.0 (Prodigy Utilities) Copyright (c) 1990 by Pete Royston (DBRK81A) September 13, 1990 This is my third major mailing and my first major overhaul to the Prodigy Utilities. I have tried to incorporate all of the features of the original utilities into one program. Most of the public domain utilities have also been built into PRO-UTIL. PRO-UTIL is shareware program, you are encouraged to register if you like the program. Donating money doesn't unlock any special features or increase any of the program's limits (I don't believe in cripple-ware), but if you register, you will receive free updates... Please Peruse "Pitiful Plea for Pete" Make sure you check out the ABOUT PRODIGY bulletin board under the topic MEMBER UTILITIES for messages about PRO-UTIL. Jump to ABOUT PRODIGY. FEATURES OF PRO-UTIL Extremely memory conscious: uses only 14k of memory in its smallest form, and memory requirements can be changed to fit your system. Change the WORKING icon into a clock. Print public and private mail wider than 40 columns. Print just the text from any screen that uses the 40 column font. Restore the Print Screen key. (Now uses PrtScr, not Alt-P) Restore the type-ahead buffer. Advance the printer one page. (Form feed) Advance the printer one line. (Line feed) Add a signature line to the bottom of a message. Print all of the unread private mail with one key. (Printed in the correct chronological order). Wait for a message to arrive in your electronic mailbox. Remove the form feed sent after Prodigy prints a message, and the extra Carriage Return sent at the end of each line. Upload a private message with the press of a key. Upload a public message with the press of a key. Up to 50 single key macros which can be recorded while using Prodigy instead of created off-line. There is practically no limit to the size of a macro. Macros which remember the last time each Bulletin Board was accessed, and can fill in the "Read Bulletins Since" date automatically. Automatic logon for up to 6 users. If already signed on, a new user may automatically logon without disconnecting from Prodigy. (It jumps to EXIT and chooses "Let another user sign on." It also changes to that user's signature (Alt-h) and date macros.) Save printouts to a file. (Print to the printer only, the file only, or both.) With a keypress, "print to disk" feature will begin using another file. Users can store related printouts in separate files. Cancel the printout in progress. (Ctrl-ESC) Removes itself from memory after exiting Prodigy. BOOKMARK allows you to mark your place anywhere in Prodigy and jump back at your leisure. (Similar to Prodigy's LOOK/ZIP... slower but more powerful.) Records each keystroke as you use Prodigy. If you are disconnected from Prodigy, simply log back on and press the RESTORE BOOKMARK key (Alt-R) and PRO-UTIL returns to the same location... even if you were in the middle of typing a message. (Please read the warning on this...) Press Ctrl-ESC to clear the keyboard buffer, cancel a macro and cancel almost any other function of PRO-UTIL. INSTALLING PRO-UTIL DUAL 360K FLOPPY USERS Copy the files PRO-UTIL.COM and PRO-UTIL.DAT to your Prodigy B disk. Copy the file AUTOEXEC.2FL to your Prodigy A disk under the new name AUTOEXEC.BAT. The easiest way to do this is to put the disk containing PRO-UTIL into drive A: and put your Prodigy A disk in drive B:. Now type COPY A:AUTOEXEC.2FL B:AUTOEXEC.BAT To run PROSETUP, place the PRO-UTIL disk in drive A: and type A:PROSETUP B: To start prodigy, put your Prodigy A disk in drive A, the Prodigy B disk in drive B and turn on the computer (or reboot). PRO-UTIL will automatically logon user A. Disk space is very limited. You can safely delete the MODEMSTR.EXE file from the Prodigy B disk. You should turn off the feature of PRO-UTIL that makes a backup file of PRO- UTIL.DAT. (Under TAILOR in PROSETUP.) SINGLE FLOPPY USERS (not single 360k users though) Copy the files PRO-UTIL.COM and PRO-UTIL.DAT to your Prodigy disk. Copy the file AUTOEXEC.1FL to your Prodigy disk under the new name AUTOEXEC.BAT. The easiest way to do this is to put the disk containing PRO-UTIL into drive A: and type COPY A:AUTOEXEC.1FL B:AUTOEXEC.BAT the computer will read the first disk and then ask you to insert the B disk in drive A. Insert the Prodigy disk in drive A and press a key. To run PROSETUP, place the PRO-UTIL disk in drive A: and type PROSETUP. A screen will appear saying "unable to find PRO-UTIL.DAT..." Remove the PRO-UTIL disk and insert the Prodigy disk. Press the <SPACE BAR> and the setup program will load the data file. To start prodigy, put your Prodigy disk in drive A and turn on the computer (or reboot). PRO-UTIL will automatically logon user A. HARD DISK USERS Copy the files PROSETUP.EXE, PRO-UTIL.COM and PRO-UTIL.DAT to your \PRODIGY directory. If you have a special directory for batch files, copy the file P.BAT there, otherwise copy P.BAT to the root directory \ on your hard disk. To run PROSETUP, type CD\PRODIGY and then type PROSETUP. To start prodigy, type P followed by the letter of the user you want to automatically logon. For example: P A to logon user A, P C to logon user C. THE SETUP PROGRAM - PROSETUP The setup program allows you to enable or disable almost any feature, create macros, change the hot-keys, and specify how much memory PRO-UTIL will use. MOVING AROUND IN PROSETUP On any screen, the up and down arrow keys will move the cursor from one entry field to another. One type of entry field will ask or a hotkey, simply press the key and it will replace the existing key. The second type of entry field expects you type in a response, like your ID and password... on these fields, an inverse box appears showing the maximum number of characters you can enter. You can use the left and right arrow keys, the DEL and BACKSPACE keys, and the insert key. HOME takes the cursor to the beginning of the line, END takes it to the end of the line. The third type of entry field is used for fields which can only contain preset values. For example, when it asks about printing to disk, the prompt reads SEND PRINTOUTS TO: and the response says PRINTER ONLY. Press any key (except up/down/enter) and the value changes to FILE ONLY, press a key again and it switches to BOTH FILE AND PRINTER. etc. until it loops back to the initial value. To exit a screen and return to the menu, press the down arrow until the cursor moves to the last entry field. When you press the down arrow again, it will return to the menu. CHANGE A USER ID/PASSWORD/SIGNATURE - PROSETUP You should setup each user who will be using PRO-UTIL. Choose CHANGE A USER... from PROSETUP, then pick the user 1-6. The screen shows 6 entry fields. Use the up and down arrows to move the cursor. Some fields expect you to type in a response (like your ID). Type the letters (you can use the standard editing keys) and press ENTER when you are finished. Enter your ID on the first line, and the password on the second. The next line lets you specify a key that will be used to logon the user after someone else is finished using prodigy. If the #2 user is logged on to prodigy the #3 user wishes to logon, user #3 may press one key and PRO-UTIL will jump to EXIT, then choose LET ANOTHER USER SIGNON and log them in. The signature will automatically add the date and time. You can specify whether the time will be entered in military time or standard (am/pm) format. Press any key to toggle between the options. (The signature and date macros will also change.) Simply press the key that you want to use, or press ENTER or an arrow key to leave it blank. Each user can specify their own signature and the number of tabs to be sent after the signature. (If you send 0 tabs, the cursor will be left in the edit screen, just after the last digit in the time. If you send 1 tab, the cursor will jump to SEND after entering the date (this is the default). If you send 3 tabs, it will jump to PRINT.) I've found the date feature handy because people like to know when you sent the message but it is a hassle to add the date and time every time you write a note. Remember that anyone who has access to your computer can see your password if they run PROSETUP. If you want to do a partial logon, you can leave the password blank. PRO-UTIL will fill in the ID and then wait for you to enter your password before entering Prodigy. It is a good practice to change your password regularly (one a month or so). You should change your password immediately if you believe someone else knows it. CHANGE THE PROGRAM'S HOTKEYS Choose the second menu option and you can change any of the hotkeys. Most of the hotkeys use the first letter of the action, for example, Alt-P to print a screen, Alt-V for the Viewport. I left the signature as Alt-H because that is how it was in all earlier versions (Alt-S was taken by the text only print screen). You can change any of the hotkey except the cancel (Ctrl-ESC) key. Use the up and down arrows to move the cursor on the hotkey screen. To change a key, simply press the new hotkey. To erase a key (and make the option inactive), press DEL and it will show <No Key>. Making an option inactive does not free up any memory. OTHER FEATURES OF PROSETUP After you setup the users, choose PRINT and print the program information. It will give a list of hot-keys and quite a bit of valuable information. You can change any of the keys that the program uses by choosing CHANGE THE PROGRAM HOTKEYS from PROSETUP. RESTORING THE PRINT SCREEN KEY Prodigy disables the Print Screen key because it is tricky to use when displaying graphics. PRO-UTIL allows you to restore the PrtScr key, but you must be careful... In order to print graphics using PrtScr, you must have a graphics driver loaded before PRO-UTIL. (A graphics driver is a small memory resident program that knows how to convert the graphics on your screen to graphics on your printer.) DOS supplies GRAPHICS.COM which you can read about in your DOS manual, but that usually only works with IBM and Epson compatible printers, and only on CGA and will not work with EGA, VGA or HERCULES. (The DOS 4 version usually works with EGA.) There are public domain programs available for just about every display and every printer. USING MACROS A macro is a single key which pretends to be a series of other keys. PRO-UTIL supports standard macros, macros which automatically upload an entire message, and "intelligent" macros. INTELLIGENT MACROS Since PRO-UTIL only works in Prodigy, it is able to perform tasks that standard macros can not. The BOOKMARK is one example; it remembers keys as you use Prodigy. The date macro is another, because it can remember the exact date and time you last accessed each bulletin board. BOOKMARK/ERROR RECOVERY Press Alt-B to mark your place and anytime later in the session, press Alt-R to return to the marked location. In case you are knocked off of Prodigy by a CM 4 or some other error, PRO-UTIL marks your place and saves it when you exit. Simply press Alt-R after logging on and it will return to the same location. (This feature will work any time in the session until you use Alt-B to mark a different location.) One important note is that the recording of data begins the first time the JUMP box appears (F6) and the data is cleared every time you choose JUMP. If you press too many keys without jumping somewhere new, the program will stop recording keys. You can specify how much memory you want to dedicate to this function by running PROSETUP. Another hazard is the fact that THINGS CHANGE CONSTANTLY on prodigy. Suppose you have one message in your private mailbox. You press ENTER to read it are replying to it when you get knocked off-line. You log back on, press Alt-R and it jumps back to your mailbox, chooses the first messages and begins retyping your reply. Suppose that in the time you were logged off, another message arrived in your mailbox. Your reply could be going to the wrong bulletin. This problem can occur in almost any section of Prodigy. Things are constantly changing. A similar problem will occur if you send several messages and have not pressed <F6>. The only way to get back to where you were is to press Alt-R and have PRO-UTIL retype (and re-send) every message you wrote before you were knocked off-line. To recover messages, you might want to get in the habit of using PRO-UTIL's "macro learn" mode. When you begin typing a message, press Ctrl-F10 and then a "scratch macro" key (any key you want to use, I use Alt-Z). Let PRO-UTIL record the message as you type. Press Ctrl-F10 to turn off the recorder. If you do get knocked off-line, log back on and manually return to the same message, chose REPLY and then press the scratch macro key. You can use the same macro key for each message because it deletes the old macro before recording a new one. DATE MACRO Another intelligent macro is the DATE MACRO, which will fill in the "Read Bulletins Since" field on the public bulletin boards. The date macro is used in conjunction with other macros and will "remember" the last time you used a macro. For example, you can define Alt-A as a "date setting macro" and have it repeat the following keys: <F6> ABOUT PRODIGY <ENTER> <TAB> <TAB> <TAB> <TAB> <ENTER> <ENTER> <ENTER>. This will take you to the about prodigy bulletin board and choose "read a message." It will also set the date macro with the last time you used this macro. When you press Alt-D at the "read bulletins since" screen, it will automatically fill in the date and time of the last time you read messages in this bulletin board. PRO-UTIL saves the information upon exiting Prodigy so you never have to remember the last time you used each bulletin board. You can create up to 10 date setting macros. Each of the 6 members use the same 10 macros, but each user's dates are kept separate. To match Prodigy, the date macro always uses east coast time. You must choose TAILOR THE PROGRAM OPTIONS in PROSETUP and choose which time zone you are in; the program makes the conversion automatically. STANDARD MACROS You can create standard macros using PROSETUP, or create them while on-line. Each macro can hold any number of keys, but the total of all macros cannot exceed 16,000 keys. To create a macro on-line, you must first determine whether or not the macro will set the date. To create a macro that sets the date, press Ctrl- F9, to create a standard macro, press Ctrl-F10. You will see an H in the bottom left corner of the screen reminding you to press your hotkey. Next press the key that will be the macro key (or hot-key). IF THERE IS ALREADY A MACRO DEFINED FOR THIS KEY, IT WILL BE ERASED. Now use Prodigy as usual and PRO-UTIL will record the keys as you type. Every time you press a key, you will hear a soft "click" which means the key has been recorded. While PRO-UTIL is recording, you will see an M on the bottom left of the screen. Press the same macro key, or Ctrl-F10 to stop recording. You can link one macro to another, but you can not call a macro from within a macro. For example, if you define a macro that jumps to the PC CLUB bulletin board, then calls the date macro, then sends a TAB and ENTER... (something like this: <F6> PC CLUB <ENTER> <ENTER> <ENTER> <ENTER> <DOWN> <ENTER> <ALT-D> <TAB> <ENTER>) the <TAB> and <ENTER> will never be sent. Once the Alt- D is sent, the date macro TAKES OVER and it never goes back to the original macro. In fact, if you are recording a macro on- line and you press a macro key, PRO-UTIL will stop recording. Remember that each key of each macro takes up 2 bytes of memory. You should do a little experimenting before recording each macro and find the shortest path there. For example, you don't always need to type in the complete jump word, just enough to make it unique. Don't jump to ABOUT PRODIGY, just jump to ABOUT P. One of my favorite macros makes browsing the bulletin board much easier. Use the big plus key on the number pad (above ENTER) and redefine it as the letter X and the down arrow. Now when you are marking messages to read on the bulletin boards, press the plus key instead of pressing X. Your hand never has to leave the number pad, you have ENTER, PG DN, PG UP, and your new X to mark messages to read. EDITING A MACRO Once you create a macro (on-line or in PROSETUP), you can use PROSETUP to edit the macro. Choose CREATE/EDIT A MACRO. When asked for the macro key, press the key of the existing macro. After answering Y or N to the question "should this macro set the date macro" you will be placed in edit mode. You can use the arrow keys to move left or right and the DEL key to erase a key. Any other keys you hit will be inserted into the macro at the current cursor location. To add a left or right arrow or a DEL key to your macro, simply hold down Ctrl while you hit Left, Right or DEL. ERASING MACROS You can erase a macro by running PROSETUP and choosing CREATE A MACRO. When it asks for a key, press the macro key you want to delete. When the macro edit screen appears, press DEL repeatedly to erase each key. You have created an empty macro, which is automatically deleted. When you are recording a macro while using prodigy, assigning a macro to a key which is already assigned will erase the current macro. STOP THE PRESSES Anytime you are using PRO-UTIL and things begin going crazy (if you hit the wrong macro key, etc.) holding down CTRL and pressing ESCAPE will stop replaying a macro, clear the type ahead buffer, stop recording a macro, etc. You can actually press SHIFT-ESC, CTRL-ESC or ALT-ESC. If a Prodigy screen tells you to press ESC, just press ESC; to stop PRO-UTIL, hold down CTRL or ALT or SHIFT and press ESC. Pressing Ctrl-ESC will also cancel a printout. Since Prodigy does not offer a method of canceling a printout, PRO-UTIL will ignore the characters sent to the printer. (Prodigy still thinks it is printing.) If you are printing to disk or to a LASER printer, you will not see much of a difference in time. The next printout will work fine, Ctrl-ESC only cancels the current printout. Remember that printers have buffers that hold the characters to be printed while the printer is working. When you hit Ctrl-ESC, there will still be characters in the printer waiting to print. Once you hit Ctrl-ESC, you can turn off your printer to clear its buffer. UPLOADING A MESSAGE PRO-UTIL allows you to upload a public or private message with the press of a key. The message must be created through PROSETUP. Since the private messages consist of 4 pages of 12 lines each, and the public messages can have 7 pages (and the first page is shorter), you must decide whether the message is going to be formatted as a public or a private message. You may create 10 private messages (ALT F1-F10) and 10 public messages (SHIFT F1-F10). Each message is saved as a separate file, and they do not take up any extra memory while you run Prodigy. When you press Shift-F1, the message is loaded from the disk and put in the "print to disk/message upload" buffer. (Since you can't do both at the same time, it uses the same memory to save space.) To enter a message, you just press the Alt-F or Shift-F key instead of typing in the message. You should choose REPLY to jump to WRITE and enter an ID and subject. Only press the Alt-F or Shift-F key when you are in the body of the message. (Not the ID or the SUBJECT line.) Remember Ctrl-ESC if things start going crazy. The editor in PROSETUP is nothing to brag about, but it does have more functions than Prodigy's editor. You can import a Word Perfect file directly, or import an ASCII file. Many ASCII files have a carriage return at the end of each line. IMPORT gives you the option of stripping these. You may have to try it both ways before it looks close. Either way, you will probably have to clean up the message after importing it... PRINT TO DISK Your printouts can be sent to the printer as usual, saved in a file for later use, or both. You can set the default value in PROSETUP and then change it while using Prodigy by pressing a key. By pressing a key, the print to disk feature can switch to saving data in a different file. In PROSETUP, you can define up to 10 filename/hot-key combinations. When you press the hot-key, all successive printouts will be saved under the new name. These hot keys can be used within macros. For example, you might have one macro which jumps to MAIL and switches printouts to the file MYMAIL.PRO. Another may jump to HOMELIFE and switch printouts to RECIPES. When you're defining a macro, simply add the hot-key which changes to the desired file. You can have PRO-UTIL use the current date as part of a filename. Simply put MMDD in the filename and PRO-UTIL will replace it with that day's month and day. For example, if a filename is MAILMMDD.PRO, it will create filenames such as MAIL0628.PRO, MAIL0701.PRO, etc. You can printouts for each day in a different file. PRINTING ALL UNREAD MESSAGES When you press Alt-M, PRO-UTIL will jump to your mailbox and find the last unread message. It selects the last message and then chooses PRINT. It then moves to the message above and prints that, etc. until all of the unread messages have been printed. In order for this function to work correctly, you should not read any messages before hitting Alt-M. To cancel this function, press Ctrl-ESC. WAIT FOR A MESSAGE TO COME TO YOUR MAILBOX Press Alt-W and PRO-UTIL jumps to the mailbox and checks to see if you have any mail waiting. If you do, it beeps and selects the last unread message. If you do not have any messages waiting, it keeps jumping to the mailbox until a message appears. When a message appears, it beeps and then the message appears on the screen. This function can be handy if you are on-line the same time as a friend. You can use it as a VERY crude chat function. Type a message to your friend, press Alt-W and it will show their reply as soon as it arrives. This function may not work correctly if there are no messages in your private mailbox. Prodigy puts up a "you have no messages to read" message and it seems to throw off the loop. It still works, but you will notice a beep and it will take a detour into the message center every time it jumps to the mailbox. You can correct this by not deleting a message after you read it. Read messages will fall off automatically in about 3 days. If there is even one old message in your mailbox, this feature will work fine. I hope to have this "unanticipated feature" cleared up in the next release. To cancel this option while it is running, press Ctrl-ESC. HOT TIP: If you always use Alt-W to read your next message, they will always appear in the correct chronological order. Also, it will keep the error recovery macro working better since JUMP will be called between each message. PRINTING MESSAGES IN 80 COLUMNS Prodigy prints public and private mail 40 columns across. PRO- UTIL counts characters as they go to the printer. When it sees a carriage return, it says "is this in column 41?" If it is then it doesn't send the carriage return or the line feed. This makes the next line print AFTER the current line, doubling the print width. BUT, if the first letter on the next line is a space then it says "Hey, this is a new 'paragraph,' I'd better put it on it's own line." Prodigy made it easy on me by padding the end of each line with spaces. If you have a line with just the word 'FRED' at the beginning, Prodigy will print FRED followed by 36 spaces. Remember that this is going to print twice as wide. (Up to 81 characters [40 + 40 plus one space to separate them].) Using Pica (10 CPI) spacing this will use almost the entire width of the paper. You may have better luck printing in Elite (12 CPI) spacing. I have added the ability to print even wider than 80 columns. This will benefit those who want to print on wide paper and/or use compressed print. I prefer printing in 120 with a compressed font. TURNING OFF WIDE PRINT WHILE IN PRODIGY You may return to normal printing at anytime by pressing Ctrl-W. Ctrl-W toggle wide printing on and off. When you press Ctrl-W you will here TWO beeps, telling you that wide printing is off. To turn it back on, just press Ctrl-W again and you will here ONE beep, telling you that it is back on. One beep means on. Two beeps means off. THE TYPE AHEAD BUFFER Prodigy disables the type ahead buffer while you are on-line. If you press any keys while Prodigy is working, they are thrown away. (This was done not to harass advanced users, but to shield novice users.) PRO-UTIL automatically reactivates the type-ahead buffer. Remember that this is just like DOS's type ahead buffer. If you accidentally lean on the RETURN key, you are going to get a whole bunch of RETURNS; make sure you are careful. 99% of the time you will love the type ahead buffer, but that other 1% may drive you nuts. Always remember that it was YOU who pressed the keys. If you are in Prodigy and you want to disable the type ahead buffer, you may press Ctrl-T. To reinstate it, press Ctrl-T again. The next time you run Prodigy, it will be in the same state you left it. (It remembers.) You can also set it within PROSETUP. Ctrl-ESC will clear the type ahead buffer, you can read more about it under STOP THE PRESSES. MEMORY ALLOCATION In its smallest form, PRO-UTIL requires about 14k of memory. Add two bytes for each key in each macro. Add the size of the print to disk/message upload buffer, two times the buffer used to learn macros and four times the size of the bookmark/error recovery buffer (all of which you can configure). The "learn macros" buffer is memory which is reserved each time you run prodigy to hold the macros that will be created DURING THAT SESSION. Suppose you have the program setup to use a total of 20k, and you define 5k worth of macros while on-line. When you exit, those macros are saved and PRO-UTIL will require 25k of memory the next time you run prodigy because it loads the 5k of macros and reserves another 5k for creating new macros. The best method is to reserve 5 or 10k for this buffer the first few times you use Prodigy, and then cut it down to 1 or 2k once you have created most of your macros. The print/message upload buffer is memory that holds printouts before they are written to the disk, and messages that are uploaded. If you specify a small buffer (1024 bytes, or 1k is the default) PRO-UTIL will read and write more often when it is uploading a message or saving a printout. TEXT-ONLY PRINT SCREEN The text-only print screen now works with all video modes (including Hercules). It will pick out the standard white or yellow characters like those used for messages, consumer reports, and most expert columns. This only works with the 40 column (crayon) font, it will not work with the new 64 column font. REMEMBER: Always use Prodigy's PRINT option when available. If there is no print option, press <F6> to bring up the jump box and see if the COPY function is available. Use the text-only print screen as a last resort. Prodigy seems to be adding more and more print capabilities. It seems that everything that uses the 64 column font can also use the COPY command. Hopefully, in a year or so, I will be able to remove the text-only print function from the utils. CONTROLLING THE VIEWPORT (Alt-V) This is SLOW. (Especially in the high resolution modes.) It is quicker when there is a lot of text. The viewport lets you specify the top and bottom of the section of screen to print. The top hash mark should be positioned above the top of the first line you want to print. The bottom hash mark should be positioned below the bottom of the last line you want to print. To activate the viewport, press Alt-V (while in Prodigy). Viewport: Press Alt-V Starting with the top hash, use the arrows to move up/down. Press space bar and the arrows control the bottom hash mark. Use arrows, press space, use arrows, press space, etc. Press ENTER when the viewport is where you want it. PRINTING THE SCREEN (Alt-P) After positioning the viewport, you are ready to print the screen. Simply press Alt-P. A dot will appear on the left hand side of the screen showing you which line it is working on. If you want to cancel the printout, press Ctrl-ESC. ADVANCING THE PAPER (Alt-F) PRO-UTIL also allows you to send a form feed to the printer by pressing Alt-F. This will advance the paper to the next page. ADVANCING THE PAPER ONE LINE (Alt-L) If you only want to advance the paper in the printer by one line, press Alt-L. The paper will move up one line. (Press it repeatedly to move up multiple lines.) YET ANOTHER PITIFUL PLEA FOR PETE I am newly married, newly mortgaged and newly fathered (thankfully in that order). My bride (regrettably) doesn't share my love of silicon and phosphors. I enjoy creating utilities like this...but they take time. I can get by with my writing and freelance programming by saying "but honey, I'm making SOME money." But doing free software development "for the betterment of mankind" doesn't always fly. As a result, you guessed it, I am releasing this as SHAREWARE. That means if you use it, and you find it worthwhile, you can make a voluntary contribution. (Whatever you feel appropriate, $10, $15, etc.) A $10 registration will put you on my mailing list to receive the next version if/when it is available. For each extra $5, you will be entitled to one further update. There is no guarantee that there will be any updates, but I certainly hope there will be... (much of it depends on the contributions I receive). I don't expect to get rich from this, but I would like to cover present and future expenses. I want to thank all of you who have already registered. (Thanks to you, my wife, mother, sister, and brother all survived their septuple by-pass heart surgery.) I've been encouraged by those who have contributed, but I'm certainly not going to quit my day job yet... I now have a cat AND a kitten to support. I need money to buy them mittens to keep them from shivering during those cold, blustery Chino Hills nights. They huddle around burning trash cans, batting the tears from their bleary, smoke-filled eyes; they desperately need mittens. (Ok, ok, so they're indoor cats, but the image was fairly touching for a moment there...) All seriousness aside, I am the proud father of a baby boy. Michael Wayne Royston was born on June 28th, 1990 and named after my dear friend Michael Wayne Rice who was taken by cancer at age 25, 3 months earlier. I can be reached at Pete Royston PO Box 785 La Mirada, CA 90637 Send me comments, questions and suggestions via Prodigy. Just jump to WRITE and address it to DBRK81A If you do write to my PO box, please include your Prodigy ID so I can get hold of you if needed. SPECIAL THANKS I would like to thank all of the people who have supported the PRODHP packages. Many long distance phone calls were made to download ever-swelling files. Many users have helped other users install the packages and answered technical questions. Also a big thanks to Brian Sedlak and Marc Rosenberg who did some very comprehensive beta testing. I should also thank Pamela Kane for all of her help, encouragement and suggestions. Be sure to look for Pam's book "PRODIGY MADE EASY" which is due out in early 1991 from Osborne McGraw-Hill... Pam's spent over year on this project; it will be the perfect companion for the novice Prodigy user and the ultimate reference for the expert. But a very special thanks goes to Pete Davis and Ron Ladne. They have spent COUNTLESS hours answering questions and posting phone numbers and receive nothing but thanks for their time and efforts. Without them, very few people would be using any utilities on Prodigy. Thanks, Pete Royston (DBRK81A) QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q: Every once in a while, the clock stops working... What gives? A: When memory gets very low, Prodigy will attempt to free up any available memory. When PRO-UTIL senses this, it disables some of its options. If Prodigy can not find enough free memory, it will issue the OUT OF MEMORY error. Try removing some other memory resident programs, or cut down on the memory allocated to PRO-UTIL. (See MEMORY ALLOCATION above.) Q: My WORKING icon does not change into a clock. A: 1) Make sure you are running Version 3 of Prodigy. 2) Make sure you have the option set correctly under TAILOR. 3) Make sure it says WORKING. If you have changed it to say something else, change it back to WORKING. 4) Contact me and let me know what type of computer and video card you have. Q: PRO-UTIL saves any new macros and date changes every time I exit Prodigy... is there a way to exit prodigy and have PRO-UTIL NOT save? A: No, but it does create a backup file before it saves. To restore the data file to the values it had before you ran prodigy, type COPY PRO-UTIL.BAK PRO-UTIL.DAT while in the PRODIGY directory. Q: Can I run PROSETUP from a disk or directory other than the one containing PRO-UTIL.DAT? A: Yes, type PROSETUP "path". For example, PROSETUP B: or PROSETUP C:\PRODIGY Q: Why won't the autologon work? A: Use either the Prodigy autologon (jump AUTOLOGON) or PRO- UTIL's autologon. If you use Prodigy's autologon, do not choose A,B,C,D,E,F,1,2,3,4,5 or 6 as your autologon code. PRO-UTIL reserves those and it will cause the autologon to act erratically. REMEMBER: This utility has not been approved by Prodigy, and it is not supported by Prodigy's Membership Services. If you have any questions, please write to me and not to Prodigy. PRODIGY is a registered service mark and trademark of Prodigy Services Company. WordPerfect is a copyright of WordPerfect Corp. PRO-UTIL, PROPRINT, PROEGA, PROWIDE and ALTPVER2 are copyrights of Pete Royston.