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Cream of the Crop 21
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Cream of the Crop 21 (Terry Blount) (October 1996).iso
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coeli376.zip
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COELI376.EXE
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COELI.TXT
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1996-07-30
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Coeli (TM)
Electric Planisphere
Planispheres are simple but wondrous, and come in small and
large sizes. If you are unacquainted, the device is no more
than two concentric discs, the lower printed with a star map
centred on the local zenith, the upper - the dial - with a
substantial segment cut away. This permits partial visibility
of the former and can be rotated according to time and season
to reveal the sky's present or coming aspect.
Coeli will perform this function and more. It is Coeli's
starting point.
COELI is Latin for 'the sky', as I expect you knew. To be more
pedantic, it literally means 'the heavens', plural. If you
were to describe Coeli as no more than a visual front end for
the Yale Catalogue, you would be doing Coeli an injustice.
Coeli is a planisphere. And there is nothing more useful than
a planisphere if you are intent on learning the sky.
Think of it as your indoor observing tool - the 'dry run'.
Coeli is a simulation of the stars in their courses as seen
from Earth, and has the capacity to transform you into an
expert on the skies.
Installing and running Coeli
Let's get the technical requirements out of the way as quickly
as possible.
Coeli's primary requirement is an IBM-compatible PC. It is
virtually guaranteed to run on anything better than, or
equivalent to, a 486 DX2 with SVGA and 1 Mb of video RAM.
Ideally, you should be running MS Dos 6.0 or later. Of course,
it'll probably work on SVGA 386s with Dos 5.0 and below, and
586s dragging Windows 95 along for exercise. But the latter
cannot be guaranteed.
Because we have used the VESA standard, a further hardware
requirement is a VESA-compatible Super VGA. Coeli offers
various video modes, so if the preset mode (800x600x256)
doesn't set, please change to another (see below). Coeli's
video modes are as follows:
0) 320x200 (VGA) with 256 colours ( Not recommended - last
resort only!)
1) 640x400 (SVGA) with 256 colours ( Excellent if the others
cause eyestrain )
2) 640x480 (SVGA) with 256 colours ( The SVGA common
denominator )
3) 800x600 (SVGA) with 256 colours ( Unsurpassed. What Coeli 3
was designed for. )
640 k of base RAM will be needed. Since this version of Coeli
loads all stars into conventional memory, ensure you free as
much as possible, just as you might for games. SmartDrive does
not have to go, in fact Coeli will load its stars and world
map quicker with SmartDrive enabled. Try to load as many
operating system files as will fit into upper memory. See your
Dos manual or a decent Dos handbook for how to do this if you
are unsure.
A version of Coeli using extended memory (up to 32 Mb) and the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Database of more than
250,000 stars is already in the beta test stage, so register
now for more news!
Coeli takes advantage of an 80x87 maths co-processor if
available, and performance is considerably degraded if one is
not present. All DX PCs possess an 80x87, as do Pentiums.
After extraction, Coeli's basic suite of files comprises the
following:
COELI.EXE ( Coeli's program file: this is what you run )
COELICAT.001 ( Coeli's current star database - editable )
COELIKEY ( Coeli's key-guide - might be useful to print)
WORLD.ASC ( World map data in ASCII format )
COELICOL.MAP ( Coeli's colour palette data - editable )
GREEKLET.FNT ( Font data for Coeli's Greek alphabet )
COELI.TXT ( You're reading it. Other WP formats included )
KEYGUIDE.TXT ( Coeli's comprehensive online guide. Printable )
( Please consult PACKING.LST for the complete list of files )
Coeli can no longer be run straight from HD floppy or CD ROM.
To instal Coeli, just follow these simple steps:
1) first create a new directory on your hard drive from Dos or
Windows. We suggest you call the directory COELI-3, but of
course anything will suffice. To accomplish this from the Dos
command line you would type the following:
MD COELI-3
In Windows, you would double-click the File Manager icon and
then select Create Directory from the File menu.
2) Copy all the files from your distribution media into the
new directory.
3) Switch to the new directory and unpack the main archive
according to your supplier's instructions (it will probably
have a .ZIP or .LZH extension).
From the Dos prompt, you might proceed as follows (assuming
your distribution medium is a floppy disk currently in drive
A, the supplier's archive is called COELI.ZIP, and your hard
disk is labelled drive C):
COPY A:\*.* C:\COELI-3 ( copy from floppy )
CD C:\COELI-3 ( switch to new dir)
PKUNZIP COELI.ZIP ( unpack archive )
4) Your Coeli package is contained in a self-extracting file
called COELI376.EXE. Simply run this like a normal program.
All the Coeli files will be reconstituted, and you will then
be able to delete COELI376.EXE from your hard disk, as it will
have served its purpose.
NOTE: none of the foregoing steps will be necessary if you
received your package on a diskette with COELI376.EXE in the
root directory unarchived. If such is the case, you will
probably have received a program called INSTALL.BAT which,
when run, will automate the installation described here.
5) If you have not already done so, install your VESA driver
by typing its name. If it loads without error, you'll be home
and dry and all you will need to do is start COELI at the Dos
prompt or from inside your favourite shell, either as part of
a batch file or by itself. Coeli should run under Windows 3.1
too, but more slowly.
Please note that you should always install a VESA driver prior
to using Coeli. A universal VESA driver may have been provided
on the same disk volume on which you acquired Coeli. Otherwise
please see the end of this manual for suggestions on how to
obtain one. Coeli 3 will not function without a VESA driver!
If your system is not equipped with a real time clock (but
what PC isn't nowadays?), you should set the correct time via
Dos or Windows before starting Coeli. Coeli assumes the system
time to be your local time, and computes Greenwich and
Sidereal in relation to it. It is thus rather important to get
it right. That also goes for the date. There are facilities
for entering zone correction via the command line and within
Coeli itself, of which more later.
Command Line Options
Because Coeli will be used on different computers in widely
differing time zones, it will need to be set up optimally for
your specific circumstances. Rather than use configuration
files, Coeli 3 accepts options typed on the command line. You
can enter them at