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-
- Amiga 2000 Note: If you have a 2000 with an A2090A Hard Disk/SCSI
- Controller, then you'll want to follow your own startup routine to "auto-
- boot" your hard drive. After that you can join us down below.
-
- And if you've got just tons of room on your hard drive and don't want to
- delete a single thing I suggest, that's cool.
-
- Hey, I like icons too. ;)
-
- *
-
- The following is for floppies only, but even if you have a hard drive, I
- recommend you grab an old Workbench disk and go through the routine with us.
-
- *
-
- Workbench 1.2 Notes: First off, you'll want to bomb the Demos drawer.
- I've seen all kinds of "graphics hacks" now and I rate these a "C-". Look
- at them, gawk in awe if you must, then discard the whole thing. The rest of
- this stuff you'll pretty much have to wade through..most of it's the same
- and you should be able to figure what's new or put in a different drawer.
- In the System drawer, delete the SlowMemLast program. If I ask you to
- delete something and the computer responds "object not found", it's probably
- an upgrade, so move on.
-
- *
-
- Okay! One of the first things we need is a stripped-down version of Work-
- bench1.3. This will be a good chance to go through the various directories
- and make a few mentions. Watch that byte gauge and hold on.
-
- Let's start off on a good note by clearing away some of this unnecessary
- glitter. Activate the Shell icon and blast it into the Great Forevermore.
- Look it dead in the eye and say "This is the Bench, buddy, not some beauty
- parlor" and send Mr. Shell to GoodbyeLand.
-
- Expansion:
- Blow this guy right out of the water. If you have a hard drive and there
- are files in your df0's Expansion directory, just "Delete Expansion.info" to
- get rid of the unnecessary icon. If there are no files in the Expansion
- directory, blast the whole thing.
-
-
- Empty:
- You can keep it around for now; it's harmless and useful to make new
- drawers with. When you activate it then Duplicate it, it actually
- duplicates both files for you; the Empty directory and the Empty.info file,
- the icon. If you Dir in the CLI you'll see Copy Of Empty (dir) and down
- below the Copy Of Empty.info icon.
-
-
- Trashcan:
- The general reason this doesn't have a place on the Workbench is this:
- Workbench is already jammed to the teeth, byte-wise, so if we've got
- something we just kind of want to let hang around a while before we decide
- whether or not to dump it, we don't want it hogging up byte space. It's
- much more practical to simply store it on a separate disk named "Misc"
- or something. We won't delete friendly ol' Trashcan (there are some great
- Trashcan icons out there), we just won't use it much. Sorry!
-
-
- Prefs:
- Ah, our first serious case of update-itis. What they did was allow you to
- access the specific parts of the Preferences program, nothing wrong with that
- on the face of it. The idea is to save you time, but..(here it comes)..
- rather than just having the Preferences icon in the Utilities drawer where
- it belongs, you have to have a whole separate drawer for the Prefs programs.
- So not only does it take time to open the Prefs window, whereas you might
- have already had the Utilities window open, but every time you open the main
- Workbench window it takes just that much longer, because it also has to load
- the Prefs icon. Eventually you won't be using the Preferences program very
- much, but still opening the main window lots, so you'll actually be LOSING
- time! Sorry to be so picky, but it's important to see here that if TIME is
- is the main factor, you have to weigh everything.
-
- On this disk we're going to blast all this stuff except the big guy. You
- may want one or two of them down the road, but you can fish them off the
- master disk then. So first grab Preferences with the mouse and drop that
- beggar right into the main Workbench window next to the Trashcan. After you
- get things set up you won't need it so much and can move it to the Utilities
- drawer. Next, close the Prefs window, activate the Prefs icon and Discard.
- See ya, guys, be sure to write! You'll see the screen flash briefly but
- don't worry about it. The Prefs drawer itself can't be deleted; it's part of
- the startup-sequence's Path command, and we'll have to wait until we edit it
- out before we can delete the actual directory. For now, activate the Prefs
- icon, pull down the Rename menu, and rename it to "XX" or whatever. Now
- activate the Preferences icon and rename it to "Prefs" so you won't have
- to type out "P-r-e-f-e-r-e-n-c-e-s" every time you want to access it through
- the CLI.
-
- I have to admit the book covers Prefs quite well. When you SAVE in
- Prefs, it saves the current screen/pointer/printer information to a tiny file
- called "system-configuration" in the devs directory. Make note of the
- difference between the SAVE and USE functions. When you get the program
- PrefCh (off a BBS or FredFish/PublicDomain) you'll only use the USE box.
-
-
- Utilities:
-
- This drawer might be more appropriately named "Tools", although either's
- fine. You can also use "Utils" if you like. In it we find a mixed bag of
- goodies, most of them of no real use to us. Notepad is only an example
- of a word processor; they make no claim to the contrary. ProWrite, a real
- word processing program, is made up of 143,624 bytes, whereas humble little
- Notepad is a paltry 50,832. You can use it to play around with, and I could
- spend a page on Notepad alone, but it would be a waste of both our time as
- you're definitely going to buy a regular program like ProWrite if you're
- into writing at all. For this bench, it's history.
-
- Check out a Notepad note's Info window for the layout of the font and
- window size formats in the Tool Types box. You use those little up and down
- arrows to view the different sub-commands. The fact that you can enter
- little sub-commands in this box, and change the Default Tool to whatever
- you want is what makes a Project window, like this one, so necessary.
-
- The Calculator is pretty straightforward. We'll keep it around for now
- unless you know you don't want it. Rename it "Calc" for quick access through
- the CLI.
-
- Move the Clock over to the main Bench window. It's not really a tool,
- it's just kind of what it is.
-
- The ClockPtr is cute, but it's really more of a "hack", so unless you
- just can't live without it, give it the heave-ho. Remember, this is a
- stripped-down version of Workbench we're working on here..any of these
- things that you kind of like can easily be copied over to future Benches.
- The general impression you might have is that you need LOTS or MOST of the
- programs on the disk, whereas in reality you hardly need any of them. Most
- are for the advanced user. The things WE want are on the BBSs! :)
-
- Blast CMD. It "redirects serial or parallel output to a file", like you
- really need that, and heave PrintFiles out the window. It lets you print
- multiple files, which you can do just as easily, if not better, with a
- Directory Utility. InstallPrinter is to help you copy your printer driver
- over from the Extras disk, but, being the computer version of a dashboard
- idiot light, I don't think you'll need it. If you want to use it just
- once, to copy your regular driver over, fine. I won't embarrass you later
- by mentioning it.
-
- GraphicDump works okay and doesn't need any further documentation. We
- don't need it on this disk so give it the ax. Yes, yes, I'm sorry we're
- throwing all this stuff away, but you get to modem'ing, or hoof it down to
- your local Public Domain outlet, and you'll just have LOTS of goodies to put
- on your Workbench. A week after you get your modem going you'll be screaming
- for byte space, promise.
-
- As far as More goes, if you've got Less, well, Less is much more than More,
- not less. I mean, Less is, not More. That is, much more less. So MuchMore,
- an excellent BBS Type program, is not less than More, but Less is much more
- than MuchMore and always more than More, or rather, not less, than More. In
- essence, then, More is history. Quoth the raven...
-
- Again, we'll leave it on our normal Workbench, as lots of ReadMe files will
- try to access it, but for this bench, it's outta heah.
-
- Say is definitely a kick. The pitch controls, etc, are fun but remember
- you HAVE to enter the Pitch when you change the Voice to have an effect.
- Experiment with different settings.
-
- example: -r-p85
-
- default: p-110
- s-150
-
- I like: -p100-s120
-
- Use "Say -x <filename>" to speak a textfile. Cntl-c to quit.
-
- I've decided Say has a Canadian accent, possibly Manitoban. Great
- phonetic practice is to make Say pronounce foreign words. It's tough but
- can be done quite well. Future project: Make up a whole bunch of Say
- windows ready to say all kinds of things, hook up the audio output to the
- phone line somehow and CALL somebody! Hah! Give little Say the ax.
-
- And if that's you I still hear gripin' about how empty we left the poor
- li'l helpless Utilities directory, well, the bad news is that not even cute
- ol' Say belongs here. It's not really a Bench tool..it belongs in some Audio
- or Audio/Tools drawer or something.
-
- It's slightly ironic that Commodore took one of the few tools that we
- actually DO need and demoted it to the Extras disk in this latest version.
- Open up the Extras disk's main window, go into the Tools drawer, rescue
- our lost buddy IconEd with the brave and fearless mouse and bring it safely
- home to the Utilities drawer. There, an honest-to-goodness tool.
-
-
- System:
-
- CLI opens up a new CLI window. There's a similar command in the c
- directory called, oddly enough, "NewCLI". Type "NewCLI" in a CLI window and
- you've got another. I'm putting all these commands, etc, in capital letters
- for your benefit, remember. DOS doesn't give a hoot. For now, pick up the
- CLI icon and dump it in the main window. We want it as handy as can be.
-
- DiskCopy is just that. Workbench procedure is to pick up the FROM disk
- with the mouse and drop it onto the TO disk, and DiskCopy does the rest.
- It will go bye-bye after you get MarauderII, a much-needed diskcopying
- program. As far as store-bought software goes, MarauderII is first on
- the list, followed closely by FaccII. MarauderII, besides allowing you
- to make copies of most of your copy-protected disks, has an extremely impor-
- tant diskcopy Verification feature. We'll always use it for important disks.
-
- Update Note: MarauderII has gone out of business, so whatever the
- salesperson suggests should be fine. The local guys say a program called
- "Project D" is the best one around right now, but it's certainly subject to
- change. In the tutorial I'm just going to continue using the now-generic
- term "Marauder" as both noun and verb for a high-quality commercial disk-
- copying program and process.
-
- Format will be much-used, either from the icon, pull-down menu
- ("Initialize"), or the CLI. You, the budding Amigalite, don't want any dumb
- Trashcan on your clean disk, as the Workbench's Initialize command insists on
- giving you, so the CLI allows you to format the disk spanking clean. Handy
- little fella!
-
- Format drive df1: name Formatted noicons
-
- Format is VERY particular as to correct usage, so scribble it down. As a
- rule you usually format in drive df1, just to keep it away from Workbench.
- Don't want any nasty accidents! The name is up to you but you have to have
- the word "name" there in the command. To be technical, the subcommand
- "noicons" should actually read "notrash", as it's really keeping the
- Trashcan directory from being created, with, of course, its lowly icon. I
- don't want to "be technical" in this tutorial, but there are definitely some
- things we want to pay attention to, such as when and where directories are
- created. Especially, ahem, without our permission.
-
- InitPrinter: Don't have the slightest idea what it is and have never seen
- any documentation on it. All I know is my printer hates it. Send it to the
- great Byte God In The Sky. If your printer doesn't work, THEN try it.
-
- Update Note: Well, I finally read some documentation on it, and I STILL
- don't know what it does. :)
-
- Having, myself, never had a case of broken fonts, I'm just not sure what
- FixFonts is all about. From reading the paragraph in the update book, it
- updates the .font files, but I'm not about to touch it. "If it ain't broke,
- don't fix it" don't..excuse me..doesn't just apply to cars and plumbing.
- There's no place for it on this disk so give it el-flusho. If your fonts
- ever DO break, make sure to try it right away.
-
- NoFastMem is a seldom-used command. We're tossing it off this Bench but
- just remember it in case some program wants you to run it first. Of all the
- progs, hacks and games I've run this last year, I have found exactly ONE
- program that used it, and it wasn't even documented, I discovered it by
- accident. If, or should I say, because you have a meg of Ram, the first Ram
- to be used up is the FastMem, the expansion pack. It was only when I had a
- bunch of stuff up on the screen and a bunch of stuff stored in Ram that
- this certain program suddenly ran much faster, because I had No..Fast..Mem
- left. I made some room in Ram and sure enough the program was "slow" again.
- Having never had the chance/desire/need to use NoFastMem, it took me a while
- to figure out what was going on, but when I ran it, bang, the program was
- fast again. Which brings us to...
-
- FastMemFirst, which I never HAVE used. We automatically use our FastMem
- before the chip mem, so unless I've misplaced my physics book, that means it
- would come ahead of, or "First". If you want to leave it in both the
- directory and the startup-sequence, fine, no biggie.
-
- MergeMem is if you have additional Ram boards, which you'll know if you
- do. Blast it.
-
- We'll trash SetMap in a little while. Way way down the road on some rainy,
- wintery day you can dust it off and try to make it do something besides goof
- up your keyboard. If you have a crying need to try it out now, no problem!
- Simply put your Extras disk in df1 and enter these two simple commands:
-
- Copy df1:devs/keymaps/usa2 df0:devs/keymaps
- SetMap usa2
-
- Isn't SetMap a real tickle??
-
- *
-
- Those are the directories that have/had icons attached. We'll make a small
- sidetrip experiment for a minute and then come back to the Workbench and take
- a good look (haul out that eraser!) at the files in the other directories.
-
- *
-
- Okay..feeling brave? We're going to take a tiny, hesitant step into the
- dreaded Interlace Land.
-
- Few dare to tread there! Few have survived to tell the tale.
-
-
-
- Turn down the lights and close the curtains. Serious.
-
-
-
- Adjust the brightness and contrast controls on your monitor so that the
- knobs are at the indents.
-
- Pop open Prefs, turn the Interlace box ON and SAVE that rascal. Now
- don't be scared..the first time I did this it only cost me $179 in the shop,
- a stiff warning from the store owner not to do it again, and an afternoon in
- court due to the the ensuing litigation from Commodore. Ready?
-
- Reboot this baby.
-
- Okay, open the Bench window and see what you think. C'mon now, be honest..
- looks like hell, doesn't it? Open the Prefs and pull the whole Prefs window
- down to the bottom half of the screen. Now we'll adjust the bench colors
- with the color slide gadgets. They go from 0 to 15, with 0 being at the far
- left. Click in the slide box to move the pointers one at a time, move them
- so they read:
-
- blue - 0 white - 7 black - 0 gold - 6
- 0 6 0 4
- 4 6 0 0
-
-
- Amazing, eh? #2's obviously the reason for the Interlace jitter. Not
- fiddling with the colors is the main reason most people think Interlace is
- worthless..they just boot it up, go "Yecch!", and that's that. The main
- reason you don't see it in the stores is because of the bright lighting.
- This is obviously a low light, non-glare situation. If you're trying this
- during the daytime, definitely try it again tonight with almost all the
- lights off. I ran #1 at 0,0,5 for a long time but recently moved it down to
- 0,0,4. You'll also want to fiddle with your monitor controls and the
- settings above. Experiment!
-
- After that you'll want to make a few other adjustments to Prefs if you
- haven't already. Put the Key Repeat Delay between the y and the R, the Key
- Repeat Speed right under the second e in "speed", Text on 80, mouse on 1 and
- the mouse double-click delay near the top, about even with the buttons on the
- little Prefs mouse. You want to train your hand that there's a difference
- between just kind of clicking on the mouse, and an authentic double-click.
- Go to the Pointer editing window and change those awful pointer colors, then
- back to the main Prefs screen. If you have a dot matrix printer and do any
- graphics stuff, go to the Printer screen and change the Paper Size to Custom,
- which'll help get rid of some of those horizontal lines. Change the box on
- the Graphic 1 screen to "Black and White" unless you're going to be doing
- color stuff. When you're printing out text and you want to change the left-
- hand margin, the margin box is where you do it. When you're done, SAVE.
-
- Pop open a few windows, your Directory Utility if you've got one, hey,
- twice the screen size! Room! Space! Windows!
-
- The Interlace mode, fairly unique, compliments of Commodore.
-
- For daytime viewing you might brighten things up a bit. I have a prefs
- setting called "day.pref", colors 006/788/000/860, I use with the BBS program
- PrefCh. I don't use Interlace all the time, but near to it.
-
- Interlace mode is radically affected by not only where your bench lights
- are placed, but how bright they are. You definitely want them on a dimmer,
- and definitely no reflections on the screen. There seems to be this perfect
- brightness for the lights; too low and the screen kind of throbs too much,
- too bright and the screen's harder to focus on. So experiment with the
- Prefs colors, the brightness and contrast controls on the monitor and your
- bench lights, and I bet you'll find this exact perfect combo. When you do,
- you might even "lock" the dimmer in place with a piece of tape (or have it
- out of reach) and then turn the lights on from a different switch.
-
- If you've got bad eyes even the toned-down Prefs colors may not be
- acceptable, in which case I'd suggest you start saving your money and look
- around for a high-persistence monitor that you can run in Interlace without
- the jitter. I almost dare to call Interlace a necessity.
-
- *
-
- It's going to get pretty gritty from here on out, so don't reboot until I
- tell you to or you might end up starting all over. If you don't like the
- Interlace mode, pop Prefs back open, change the Interlace box to OFF and
- reboot now. Also tweak your colors back. If the slight jitter doesn't
- bother you, but things are "weird" and "different", give it a chance..you'll
- get used to it and the extra screen space is tremendous.
-
- *
-
- So now that we've got some room, drag the Workbench down to the bottom
- half of the screen and open a nice big CLI window in the upper half. Or, be
- incredible and make the entire screen one window.
-
- Type "Dir devs all" and you should see:
-
-
- keymaps (dir) - keymaps dir and any keymaps floatin' around
-
- printers (dir) - printer drivers dir and any drivers
-
- clipboards (dir) - empty unless you've used Notepad's Cut and Paste
- feature..this is where it saves them.
-
- clipboard.device - supports clipboard function
-
- MountList - for use with hard drives; Type this for a classic
- example of computerspeak
-
- narrator.device - part of Say
-
- parallel.device - controller for the parallel port (printer)
-
- printer.device - controller for printer
-
- ramdrive.device - controller for Ram
-
- serial.device - controller for the serial port (modem)
-
- system-configuration - screen/pointer/printer info saved by Prefs
-
-
-
- Now, <heh heh heh..> for the deletion part:
-
- The keymap usa1 activates the top row of the numeric keypad, the (, ), /
- and * keys, over to the right there. I usually see the numeric keypad as
- being used by people who bought the computer to run some business program
- and that's all. We won't even touch the thing, outside of the occasional
- game, so we don't need usa1. And as far as any other keymaps go, well,
- this isn't Sweden, so:
-
- Delete devs/keymaps all
-
-
- For the printers directory, you'll copy the proper driver over from the
- Extras disk. You can dump the generic driver, such as:
-
- Delete devs/printers/generic
-
-
- We'll leave the Clipboards directory and device alone as other programs
- may want them. If you'll never have a printer you can bomb the printer.de-
- vice. Unless you have a hard drive, get rid of that terrible reminder of how
- much you DON'T know about computers by deleting the MountList and that's it
- for devs.
-
-
- 1.2 Note: Nothing in this next directory for you to delete. Sorry!
-
- Now "Dir l". The FastFileSystem is for hard drives, so if you have one
- and KNOW you want it, fine, otherwise "Delete l/FastFileSystem".
-
- The Newcon-Handler and Shell-Seg are for the late Mr. Shell, so:
-
- Delete l/Newcon-Handler
- Delete l/Shell-Seg
-
- Some of these other yokels are a little too advanced for our use, so:
-
- Delete l/Aux-Handler
- Delete l/Pipe-Handler
- Delete l/Speak-Handler
-
- A few programs down the road may politely ask if they can store a small
- handler file in our l dir. No problem, we're very generous and are glad to
- accommodate them. As long as they keep it under, s-a-a-y, a thousand bytes.
- I run a subroutine called ConMan which has a handler file of a whopping 184
- bytes, but I, wishing to set a sterling example for all Amigakind, gener-
- ously, no, benevolently allow a file that size to clog up my heretofore
- unsullied l directory.
-
- Once again, we're just making a stripped-down, basic Workbench here,
- teaching you what HAS to be on a disk, and what doesn't. So in the future
- when you're trying to copy that 350k program over to a WB disk, you'll know
- what to delete to make room.
-
- Now "Dir libs". We'll leave all of this stuff here; you never can tell
- when some program might try to access one. If your drive light comes on
- when you're not expecting it, like if you're running a program out of Ram
- or from df1, chances are something's seeking a lib.
-
- The directory t is a backup for the Ed program. That's why it takes Ed so
- long to do its thing sometimes. If you're RE-editing a file, it both saves
- your new file to where you want and the old one to the t dir. Just leave
- the t dir alone, somebody may want it. Including, ahem, you.
-
-
- "Dir s" and there's our new buddy, the startup-sequence. And (yawn!)
- there's the "startup-sequence.hd", the suggested hard drive sequence. It's
- terrible, of course. When you get a hard drive you'll look at this one,
- look at the manufacturer's suggested sequence, throw them both in the (real)
- trash and make your own like everybody else does. That's "everybody else"
- as in "Amiga/Atari owners", naturally. "Everybody else" as in "everybody
- else" means people who just turn a switch on.
-
- *
-
- Now I've given this 1.3 startup-sequence some thought, and I've come up
- with this: While the 1.2 st-seq had all kinds of needless commands and some
- outright silliness, this thing is just beyond redemption. So rather than
- spend endless pages explaining why so much of this nonsense ISN'T what we
- want, I think I'll just take it from the top and tell us what we DO. Any
- questions? No? Good.
-
- Now to start with, I- OUCH! All right!! Who threw that spitball?!?
-
- (Ahem!) To start with, in a CLI type:
-
- CD df0: ;just to make sure
- Rename c/FF c/FastFonts ;rename FF back to program's correct name
-
- If you want to use the cleaned-up topaz 8 font I included with the
- tutorial, do the following. I'll assume the whole tutorial is on a disk in
- df1. If you've got it elsewhere, you'll have to put in the right device
- name:
-
- MakeDir fonts/TBM ;makes the TBM dir in fonts
- Copy df1:fonts/TBM.font fonts ;copies the .font file to the fonts dir
- Copy df1:fonts/8 fonts/TBM ;copies the 8 file to the TBM dir
-
- Now we'll get serious:
-
- Delete s all ;yes, it's best this way. The s dir, itself,
- shouldn't be deleted, but check to make sure
- and "MakeDir s" if it's not there
- Ed s/startup-sequence ;at this point you cease to be a computer
- user..and start becoming a computer operator
-
-
- Up pops our new faithful friend Ed, and we're on our way. Our new best
- buddies are the Backspace, Delete, and arrow keys. You'll eventually
- master these guys. Tab also has its role to play.
-
- The first command is SetPatch, which fixes a couple of small bugs in ROM.
- It's not necessary. In true technical manual style, the update book I have
- for the 1.3 disk states quite clearly under the SetPatch section that it
- "must be run in the first line of the startup-sequence", and sure enough,
- near the end of the book, they've got a startup-sequence example and, you
- guessed it, they have SetPatch on the SECOND line, after BindDrivers. <sigh>
- It spits out a whole bunch of ridiculous text, so we'll quiet it down with
- a ">nil:", which will redirect the command's message to Nullsville, like so:
-
- SetPatch >nil: R
-
- (2.x/3.x users don't use the "R")
-
- If you have a hard drive, the next command might be BindDrivers, followed
- by Mount and your Assigns, etc, but we'll talk more about that in Part9.
- If this is all new to you and you HAVE a hard drive, I'd actually recommend
- that you not even use it until you understand what's going on. At this
- stage in your computer evolution, the hard drive is NOT the main deal of the
- system, that thing in front of you with all the keys on it is. The hard
- drive is an auxiliary piece of equipment, to be attached later after you
- understand the basic unit. Like you understand your TV before you get a
- VCR, or you know how to operate your stereo receiver before you buy a CD
- or tape player, same deal. If you have a hard drive and just gotta use
- it, skip to Part 9, make notes of what you need, then come back here.
-
- Next up is setting up our Paths. This is to make accessing tools through
- the CLI, or a scriptfile, easier. So it would be:
-
- Path Ram: c System Utilities <etc>
-
- We ALWAYS set our Paths before LoadWb. Also, at some point before LoadWb,
- you have to call attention to Ram, so it'll be recognized by Workbench and
- its icon will load, so this does that too.
-
- You'll use AddBuffers until you pick up a copy, oops, 'scuse me, dirty
- word, pick up your FaccII disk down at the store and get it going. Briefly,
- when you run AddBuffers it takes away memory and allocates it for remembering
- the programs or commands that most recently took place. Then it calls them
- from memory instead of having to re-access the disk, MUCH quicker. So for
- now, assuming you have the meg of Ram, we'll kick ol' AddBuffers up to 200,
- like thus: AddBuffers df0: 200. Just don't run any 300K animations or you
- may run out of gas. Be incredibly generous and give grateful little df1 50
- or so, like:
-
- AddBuffers df0: 200
- AddBuffers df1: 50
-
- The bad news about AddBuffers, and why it's quickly going to end up on
- the scrap heap, is that it can't be "turned off" so you can get the memory
- back. FaccII is a sophisticated AddBuffers, complete with OFF switch.
- Compared to every other piece of good software you'll buy, it's about the
- least expensive at around $25-$30. And by far and away the most-used, if
- not appreciated. An excellent program, get it as soon as you can.
-
- Sidenote: The "controller" program for the FaccII program is called
- SatisFacction, which I renamed "Fac". "Fac -q" quits FaccII, for example,
- which I'll be using in this tuturial when talking about memory.
-
- After that is FastFonts, which speeds up the text output and allows us to
- change the default font for our CLI windows, etc. I didn't like the two
- capital letters "FF" as the name of a program or command, and, as evidenced
- by the program's output, its real name is "FastFonts", so that's what I'm
- going to call it from here on out. If you've put the "8" and "TBM.font"
- files that came with the tutorial into your fonts dir, then make the
- FastFonts command read "FastFonts >nil: TBM.font". That'll start up the
- fast text and kick in the new, cleaner fonts. These fonts are a sliced-up,
- whittled-down true IBM font that have the true IBM ANSI characters, so BBS
- menus will look correct to you.
-
- Next on the list is LoadWB, which is the one that makes all the racket
- as the disk icons are loaded. As you may know, LoadWb isn't strictly
- necessary. If you're running certain big animations, for instance, LoadWb
- isn't used. In that case we'd need a different st-seq but fortunately
- there's a great program out there in BBS/FredFishLand called Select that
- will allow us to select our st-seq at the very beginning of boot-up. Nice!
- The book says LoadWb has a "delay" option to help quiet down all the disk
- thrashing, so the command would be:
-
- LoadWb delay
-
- Assuming you have the FastMem pack, the next command would be:
-
- SetClock >nil: opt load
-
- Toss in an "EndCLI >nil:" to close the st-seq window and that's it!
-
- Something like:
-
- SetPatch >nil: R
- Path Ram: c System Utilities
- AddBuffers df0: 200
- AddBuffers df1: 50
- FastFonts >nil: TBM.font
- LoadWb delay
- SetClock >nil: opt load
- EndCLI >nil:
-
-
- Okay! Hit Esc, then "x", then Return to save it.
-
- *
-
- Reboot this puppy and check that startup time. And it's really pretty much
- the same end result we had before, only dainty Mr. Shell is gone as well as
- some of that Aux and Pipe-Handler junk. AND we saved a bunch of memory.
-
- In general, you'll put your downloaded sub-routines and things after all
- the above, just before the EndCLI. If you have a Tools directory, or any
- other directory you have tools in that you may want to access through the
- CLI, put them in as well. The c directory is automatically already in the
- paths, but we'll put it in to help icons and scriptfiles find it.
-
- If and when you have problems with the st-seq, use the Echo command in
- front of each command to tell you what's coming next, so you'll be able to
- see where it fails. Something like:
-
- SetPatch >nil: ;has to be first
- Echo "Ran SetPatch.."
- Echo "Adding buffers to df0.."
- AddBuffers df0: 200
- Echo "Adding buffers to df1.."
- AddBuffers df1: 50
- etc
-
- You can do the above to any command that doesn't have a ">nil:", delete
- any ">nil:" already existing..and you can just have the BUSIEST of startup-
- sequences!
-
- Conversely, you can whittle a startup-sequence right down to the nubs if
- you want. If you don't care if the write dates on your files are correct
- (seen by using the List command), you certainly don't need SetClock. If
- you don't mind typing full pathnames, you don't need the Path command.
- The FastFonts fast text and new fonts are certainly options, as are Add-
- Buffers and SetPatch. Of course, you can always fire up your programs
- through the CLI, so you don't need LoadWb, and in that case you don't need
- the CLI process the actual startup-sequence is being executed from..so you
- can delete the startup-sequence altogether!
-
- And THERE'S your nubs.
-
- See, the computer is already "smart", the startup-sequence just helps make
- it smarter. But there isn't a single line in the st-seq that you "need" to
- operate the computer. If you want to operate icons, then certainly you need
- the LoadWb command, but that's about it. The only command that comes close
- to "necessary" would be the SetClock command, just because you'll want to
- reference back to the dates of files at some point later when trying to
- figure something out.
-
- Okay, boot up your disk and let's move on.
-
- *
-
- To make sure the Discard Menu doesn't cool down, discard the XX, formerly
- Prefs drawer, then pop open the System drawer and delete the FastMemFirst
- and SetMap programs.
-
- Update Note: 2.x/3.x users, gad, you've got just TONS of stuff on your
- Workbench that you'll never use in a million years. Go through your manual
- and blast anything that looks ugly. Leave MultiView (very nice program) if
- nothing else.
-
- We're not keeping the fonts for Notepad on this disk, so put a blank,
- formatted disk in df1, rename it to FontDisk, make the Workbench window real
- tall so you can get a good eyeballful of the byte gauge there on the left,
- then in a big CLI window covering the rest of the screen, carefully type:
-
- Dir fonts all ;to take a look, if you haven't
- Copy fonts/TBM.font Ram: ;saves TBM.font to Ram
- Copy fonts/TBM/8 Ram: :save the actual font to Ram
- MakeDir df1:fonts ;makes a fonts dir on df1's disk
- Copy fonts df1:fonts all ;copies fonts to df1
- Delete fonts all ;check out that byte gauge!
-
- Wild, eh? It isn't just that there's so many bytes involved, it's also
- that whole bunch of sub-directories. When a directory is created, a certain
- byteage is kind of "assumed" for that directory, hence all the disk space
- needed for a bunch of byte-sized fonts. When you learn how to use the Assign
- command we'll get the space back AND save the fonts. For now, get rid of
- them. If you're hooked on Notepad and want all the neat fonts, make yourself
- another copy of Workbench, call it NoteBench, and use that disk for, quote,
- word-processing, unquote.
-
- Okay, let's put our TBM fonts back:
-
- CD df0: ;just to make sure
- MakeDir fonts ;have to make a new fonts dir
- MakeDir fonts/TBM ;make fonts/TBM dir
- Copy Ram:TBM.font fonts ;copies TBM.font back to fonts dir
- Copy Ram:8 fonts/TBM ;copies actual font to fonts/TBM
-
-
- Now it's time for the Big Daddy of them all, the c directory. So except
- for the ones you KNOW you need, type:
-
- CD c ;saves typing out pathnames
-
- Rename DiskDoctor df0:Utilities/DiskDoctor ;moves it
- to appropriate directory
- Rename Delete d ;"shorten" the Delete command
-
- d Ask
- d BindDrivers ;unless you have a hard drive
- d ChangeTaskPri
- d DiskChange
- d Edit
- d EndSkip *(not on 1.2)
- d Eval *
- d FileNote
- d GetEnv *
- d Lab
- d Lock *
- d Mount ;unless you have a hard drive
- d NewShell *
- d Prompt
- d Protect
- d Relabel
- d RemRAD *
- d Resident *
- d Search
- d SetDate
- d SetEnv *
- d Skip
- d Which
- Rename d Delete ;renames it back to "Delete". Do
- ;NOT leave it as "d"! :)
- CD df0:
-
-
- Having a good time? These are all advanced DOS commands which you might
- want somewhere on down the road. They're right there, faithfully preserved
- on your master, so don't hesitate to wipe 'em out.
-
- DiskDoctor tries to recover files from a damaged disk, OR files you've
- deleted..all of which means you may r-e-e-e-ally want the good Doctor
- some day. But it belongs in Utilities, like any tool. I, myself, never use
- the Utilities directory, I keep everything in "Tools". But Utilties should
- still be there, with the More program in it. 2.x/3.x users should have
- MultiView in there.
-
- FastFonts is also a tool, not a command, but we'll leave it here because we
- don't have enough need for a "Text/Tools" directory. Yet.
-
- *
-
- So I'd say that's Step One; clearing some room on the Bench and straight-
- ening up the st-seq. Make a master copy of this disk named BareBench.
- Whenever you make a master copy of something always boot it up just to be
- sure it works. This is especially true if you don't have Marauder yet.
- Rename this disk "Workbench" and this is the one we'll use for the tutorial.
-
- *
-
-