MAIN LINE COMPUTER USERS - JUNE 1997 - ISSUE #181 **** JUNE 1997 *********************************** ISSUE #181 **** VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, ST. AUGISTINE CENTER MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - JUN 07 !! CELEBRATION LUNCH CONVENES AT 13:00 !! ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS Announcements 2 ! JUNE ANNIVERSARY ! 2 BBS Changes 2 State of the AMIGA Market 2 Internet Book offer 6 Trading Post 6 64/128 meeting minutes 7 Partitions and More! 7 CMD HD-40 Setup and Demo 8 AMIGA User Happenings 9 MAP/Masthead/Meeting schedule 11 Membership Form/Dues 12 ---------------------------------------------------------------- MAIN LINE 64/128 USERS - Room 110 Meeting #180 is now behind us (this number conveniently excludes various cancellations that have not been tallied!). We hope to continue to provide meetings that are of value to our members. With the continued, slow decline in C= 8-bit use, the needs of our members become even more important - we need YOU to spell out those needs! For this meeting, we plan to tackle menu programs. Our leader will be Peter Whinnery, who is a user (advocate?) of a utility called EZ Loader. He'll show us how it is to use and why he likes it. Emil Volcheck has a home brew menu program to show. Attendees are invited to show what they like to use and why. Hopefully, we'll all get some ideas. (continued on page 2) MAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - Room 210 Come-on and celebrate. I'm sure you've heard that many times. Well, this month, that's exactly what we plan to do. I only hope you can stay long enough to do so. In a manner of speaking, the drinks are on the house! The club will be treating CLUB MEMBERS to a late lunch at the Villanova Diner. See Emil's write-up elsewhere in this issue for the details. This month I'm hoping we can spend some time talking about getting on the Internet. I'd like to discuss everyone's experience (assuming you have experience) with using the different TCP/IP software available to the Amiga user. I particularly had in mind discussing the different experiences with AmiTCP, Termite TCP, and Miami. The point is to (continued on page 9) ---------------------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL MEETING NOTICE! WHAT'S COMING UP! WELL - WE MADE IT! - 15 years and counting!!! Do you remember all of it? Well, come share some memories at the meeting and the free luncheon for club members following the meeting. See p.2 for more details! 11960 DIRECTIONS FOR ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING ROOMS For the next many months, we have shifted our monthly meetings from Mendel Hall to the St. Augustine Center at Villanova University. The 8-bit meeting will be in seminar room 110 and the AMIGA meeting in seminar room 210. Please be sure to enter the campus from the ITHAN AVENUE main gate, then proceed to the 2-level parking building adjacent to the St. Augustine Center, on the Ithan Avenue side. However, you may have to enter the building via the front door, as shown in the sketch below. 19 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 64/128/Amiga Meetings 1997 Steering Committee Meetings June 07 ** June 18** July 12* July 16** August 09* August 13 ** SPECIAL MEETING! * = second Saturday ** = third Wednesday ------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWSLETTER DEADLINE is June 26 !!! ********************************************************** EDITOR: Emil J. Volcheck, Jr. 1046 General Allen Lane West Chester, PA 19382-8030 (Produced with C-128, RAMlink, HD-40/85, 1571, FD-4000, THE WRITE STUFF 128, XETEC Super Grafix, Panasonic KX-P1123, Swiftlink RS-232 and Motorola 288 modem) MLCUG BBS: 610-828-1359 (300 --> 28800 bps), 24 hr/day ######################################## ANNOUNCEMENTS & SPECIALS ######################################## ! JUNE ANNIVERSARY ! As you know by now, June means the passage of 15 years since the first formal meeting of the group that decided to call itself the MAIN LINE COMMODORE USERS GROUP (MLCUG)! We are planning on a small celebration that will follow after the regular June monthly meeting - which normally ends in the 12:30 to 13:00 timeframe. After the meeting, we will be able to gather in the back room of the Villanova Diner from 1 PM for a slightly latish FREE luncheon. Yes, for all of you MEMBERS who would like to come and share a few memories, as well as cheer us on to year 16, the club will be BUYING lunch. As soon as possible after you read this, if there is someone you recall as being a special contributor to the club's activities in past years - AND WHO MIGHT STILL BE LIVING IN THE AREA - please get that info to Emil Volcheck (610-388-1581) or post on the BBS. We'll try to contact and invite them to join us! SPECIAL NOTE - if you expect to attend, please call Emil no later than JUNE 4TH; so we can have a reasonable estimate on table space to ask the diner folks to set aside for us - NUFF SAID! --------------- BBS CHANGES There's been what I hope proves to be an improvement in our BBS. A DOOR (an add-on program) has been added to the BBS interface. The new interface enables users to access our newest hardware addition - a CDROM drive. The CDROM drive is courtesy of Charles Curran, our C64/128 disk librarian and club secretary. The CDROM drive is an "old" Xetec-Chinon single speed drive. Though many of you may consider such a drive slow, it is more than adequate to the task of serving up files for hi-speed modem downloads. There's absolutely no problem handling 30,000 bps file transfers from this CDROM unit. For starters, we have the entire collection of Aminet CDROMs (1-18) to offer, but only one at a time can be setup for downloading. Other CDROMs for other platforms will be offered as they become available, but don't hold your breath waiting for that big event. We are, after all, still a C64/128 and Amiga Users Group. Lacking any C64/128 CDROM to offer (we could burn our own - hint, hint) we will be posting Amiga specific CDROMs for the foreseeable future. As already mentioned, Aminet CDROMs are currently being offered as they come ready for Bulletin Board Service. [Sysop - John Deker]. ---------------------- THE STATE OF THE AMIGA MARKET ---------------------- NEWS ITEM 1 -- A New Amiga Organization is Announced New York, NY, 14 May 1997 The AMIGA INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL and The OPEN AMIGA WORKGROUP (ICOA) For the past nine months, an international cross section of Amiga developers, original Amiga and Commodore veterans and informed Amiga users (The ARise Initiative), have been discussing, debating, analysing and deliberating over the future of the Amiga platform. This culminated in the creation of the Industry Council/Open Amiga working group (ICOAWG), a formal project built around the two most promising ideas to come from the study. The Industry Council proposes a co-operative forum of serious Amiga designers and developers, providing them with a forum in which they can debate, create and plan for the future of the platform as a single set of focused concerns rather than competing against each other and wasting time and resources re-inventing the wheel. The Open Amiga is seen as one of the by-products of the Industry Council. First, it would work towards the establishment of a common set of Open API's, protocols and specifications. Secondly it would lobby for the creation of a shrink-wrapped Amiga operating system that could run potentially on any platform, platform specific HALs (Hardware Abstraction Layers) providing the translations that would allow Open AmigaOS to run on disparate systems. A week ago, the formal project proposal was dispatched to Gateway for their consideration and inclusion in their future plans for the Amiga. We are pleased to announce that Gateway favorably responded to the outreach by the ICOA, without endorsing ICOA or any strategy thus far offered. This weekend (May 17-18, ed.), at the World of Amiga show in London, representatives of ICOA workgroup will be giving a presentation at the Amiga Society's Developers Conference (DEVCON), on Saturday. If you are an Amiga Developer, please attend. If you are an Amiga User, please stop by at the Finale Developments booth at WOA. They have kindly offered us a space to present the ICOA initiative. We look forward to seeing you there. For any further information please contact the project manager, fleecy moss at: fleecy@netreach.net Skal Loret, Director of Communications, The Jay Miner Society for The Advancement of Personal Computing skal@nac.net The Industry Council Open Amiga Initiative (ICOA) is sponsored and supported by the Jay Miner Society for The Advance of Personal Computing. A non-profit society incorporated in the State of New York. JMS has no economic association with any company, nor does the JMS specifically endorse any Amiga-oriented Companies, Products or Commercial Concerns. The Jay Miner Society for Independent Computing 140 West 24th St., NY, NY 10011, USA. 14 May 1997, Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group / cucug@cucug.org NEWS ITEM 2 -- AMIGA International Acquistion Finalized HAMMERSMITH, London, U.K., May 16, 1997 - [http://www.amiga.de/] AMIGA International, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of [http://www.gw2k.com/] Gateway 2000, Inc. (Nasdaq: GATE), has finalized the acquisition of the assets of AMIGA Technologies from the German bankruptcy court. The announcement was made at a news conference prior to the opening of the World of Amiga conference in London. "We have received many positive responses from the Amiga community regarding the acquisition", said Jim Taylor, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing of Gateway 2000. "There is still an extremely loyal following of AMIGA users and we look forward to supporting the needs of this group through licensing and support of new product development". Taylor was joined at the news conference by Petro Tyschtschenko, Managing Director of AMIGA International. "Our strategy is very clear and we will be focused on reviving the market for AMIGA", said Tyschtschenko. "We will support the community that has kept AMIGA alive through bankruptcy". Tyschtschenko outlined the following areas that AMIGA International is exploring to reinvigorate the AMIGA market: * Supporting the existing AMIGA community * Leveraging the existing AMIGA technology through broad licensing * Assisting in developing new products based on open standards to the home computer and video/graphics market. AMIGA International, Inc. will operate as a separate business unit of Gateway 2000. AMIGA International currently has operations in Braunschweig, Germany and has opened new offices near the Frankfurt airport in Langen, Germany. AMIGA International can be reached on the World Wide Web at www.amiga.de. About Gateway 2000 Gateway 2000, Inc., a Fortune 500 company founded in 1985, is a global leader in the direct marketing of PCs. The company, headquartered in North Sioux City, South Dakota, has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Ireland and Malaysia, and employs over 9,700 people worldwide. Gateway 2000 products and services consistently win top awards from leading industry publications. In 1996, the company shipped 1.9 million systems and reported revenues of $5 billion and net income of $250 million. About AMIGA Since the introduction of the AMIGA 1000 in 1985, AMIGA has represented the embodiment of the efficient use of memory and hard drive capacity, while pioneering industry developments in multimedia, 32-bit multitasking and autoconfiguration. AMIGA led the industry in combining computer graphics, animation, and film sequences with stereo sound known today as multimedia. MEDIA CONTACT: Angela Peacock, Corporate Communications, (605) 232- 1686. 16 May 1997, Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group / cucug@cucug.org NEWS ITEM 3 -- Amiga International, Inc. Press Conference London, May 16, 1997 Petro Tyschtschenko: "Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests. I am looking around and I see a lot of people I know. People who have long experience with our AMIGA products and people who support AMIGA. It is nice to see that the AMIGA platform is gifted by a community of competent people. These strengths are going to be of critical importance for the success of the plans of AMIGA International, which I am going to explain to you later. Anyway, I am happy to see you all and I would like to welcome you on this press event. I believe there is a bright future for AMIGA International, Inc. Let me just explain a few details of importance, so that you can have a better understanding of what has happened to AMIGA since the Commodore days. Escom AG acquired AMIGA in April 1995. During this time, an effort was made to revitalize the AMIGA market, however Escom went into financial difficulties and filed for bankruptcy on July 15th, 1996. During this time, an effort was made to develop products, but due to financial difficulties, there has not been any significant amount of new product development by AMIGA over the past couple of years. Since filing for bankruptcy, we have been trying to keep the marketplace alive through inventory sales by the trustee. However, it has truly been AMIGA community that has kept AMIGA alive through the development of products based on newer technology and software application developments. Now that AMIGA is owned by a successful company - Gateway 2000 - there is a bright future. * Gateway 2000 is a solid and well established company in the computer industry * Gateway 2000 has consistently been honored with awards for products and service * Gateway 2000 is the right partner to give AMIGA new life and energy for the future. AMIGA International was formed as a US based company in March, 1997 to acquire the assets of AMIGA Technologies GmbH. AMIGA International will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Gateway 2000. Over the past month, we have been very busy finalizing the acquisition, performing due diligence, setting up operations in Germany and communicating with the AMIGA community. We have a new office in Langen, next to the Frankfurt airport and I am happy to report to you that we are operational again. In Langen, we will have three people handling sales, marketing and general administration. We will be running at the beginning of June. Since early April, we have four employees in Braunschweig that are taking care of logistics and warehousing, order processing and customer support, Internet support as well as technical service.Finally, we are in the process of identifying an individual to manage new product development and R&D. What are we going to concentrate on? Implementing our strategy by: * Supporting the existing AMIGA community * Leveraging the existing AMIGA technology through broad licensing * Assisting in developing new products based on open standards to the home computer and video/graphics market. How will we support the community that has kept AMIGA alive? Through conventions, press conferences, via the Internet, meetings and all useful initiatives coming from the AMIGA community. I have already been to conventions in Germany and in Sweden and will entertain any suggestions. Continuing to sell to the distributor network that has supported AMIGA. Working with developers through concepts such as the "Open AMIGA Initiative" that is being formed with the support of many of the prominent names in the AMIGA community. The basics of success in this project is to work together with partners and to define a common path of development. The AMIGA market can not afford a split, we must go together into one direction. For us to keep the market alive it is neccessary to assist many companies in developing products through broad licensing. Our licensing policy will be very open, broad and focus on licensing and standard O/S, Chipsets and the trademarks. Also, licensing will allow the AMIGA to be spread to many different embedded applications in field such as medical solutions, simulation applications, fitness equipment, irrigation systems and kiosk terminals. Of course, we are looking for new partners. Through licensing and focused R&D managed by AMIGA International, we plan to assist the market place in developing new products for the AMIGA. We are currently exploring many of the possible new products that have been suggested including such things as an operating system upgrade and new hardware platforms. We would like to keep the procedure as simple as possible. We need to talk with the technology companies from the AMIGA business and exchange know-how. It is also important that we explore an open AMIGA platform, use industry standard components to make it cheaper to produce, faster to develop and easier to upgrade. These things need to happen quickly, but in a very managed fashion. With this strategy and the support of the AMIGA community and Gateway 2000, we are convinced there is a bright future for the AMIGA. That, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our presentation for today. Jim Taylor and myself will be available for MEDIA interviews. We hope that all of you will visit us at our booth, at the WORLD OF AMIGA conference. Thank you very much for your attention". 16 May 1997, Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group / cucug@cucug.org *************************** INTERNET BOOK! A new book - aimed at the Commodore community interested in getting maximum benefit from the internet - has recently been published by Gaelyne Gasson (nee' Moranec), who has written many, many articles in Commodore oriented magazines (including Commodore World) and is a very active on-line user. "The Internet for Commodore Users" covers hardware, terminal programs, Internet providers, shell account basics, email, editors, newsgroups, ftp, gopher, Archie, the World Wide Web and much, much more. It is published in Australia which makes it a bit pricey. However, there is a club discount that brings the price down to $24 (including postage) - assuming at least five copies are ordered. At this point, we have four interested folks; so if we get one more, we can place an order. Any others beyond the five will get the same price, if ordered at the same time. There will be a detailed description at the June meeting, plus a sign up sheet. If you are interested, but won't make the meeting, give Emil a call to get on the order list. --------------- MANY THANKS! - BOOK WANTED: I was looking for, at least a loan, of the following book: Commodore Fun & Games, Vol. 2 with a program that does an ENIGMA machine simulation. Well, more than one member tipped me to sources and Dennis Krall sent me a copy of the key article!! Thanks, again - Emil Volcheck. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $ TRADING POST $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ WANTED: the book "QUEST FOR CLUES 1" by Shay Adams, publ. by Origin Systems. If you have one to sell or know of one, call Dennis Krall at 215-340-0932. (1) FOR SALE: C-64, 2 monitors and printer No further info available. Asking $100. Call Dixie Westerland, 610-692-4840. (2) FOR SALE: C-64 with 1541 drive and a Sanyo color monitor. Best offer takes them. Call Janet at 610-623-0120. (3) FOR SALE: 2 C-64's, 1541 drive, Koala Pad, Okidata printer w/interface. Quite a few programs, plus extra stuff. Call Charles Golt at 302-366-1363. (3) FOR SALE: C-128 w/JiffyDOS, 1571 and 1581 drives, 1902A RGB monitor, C= 1200 bps modem, Xetec Super Grafix interface, Mach 128 cartridge, Epyx Fastload, 1530 datasette, and scads of programs. All in good condition (exc. monitor). Asking $200 for the lot - OBO on separate items Call Tom Johnson at 610-525-3440. (3) FOR SALE: C-64, 1541 drives, MPS-801 printer, PS for 1571/1581 drives, mouse, joystick, cables and manuals. Make offer to John Nagel at 610-566-6919. (3) FOR SALE: MLCUG has a lot of hardware that is available for purchase by MLCUG members and at attractive prices! 2 computer - C-64 w/PS $25 2 disk drive 1541 - clone $20 15 disk drive 1541 - various $20 1 disk drive 1541 - 8/9 sw. $25 1 disk drive 1541-II $30 1 interface - Cardco $ 5 1 interface - MSD $ 5 6 joystick $ 2 1 modem - Panasonic 1200 bps $10 1 monitor - amber - Panasonic $10 1 monitor - screen filter $ 5 1 plotter - Commodore 1520 $10 2 printer - Commodore 1525 $10 2 printer - Commodore 803 $10 2 printer - color - Okimate 10 $10 2 printer - Okimate 120 $20 1 printer - Star Gemini II $25 2 computer - VIC-20 TBD 1 64K RAM/video for VIC-20 TBD 1 computer - Plus4 $25 Also, we have quite a bit of software, for bargain prices (typically $2). You can contact Charles Curran to check on any items of interest (610-446-5239). *************************** 64/128 MEETING *************************** The May meeting went well in our new meeting room. Charles Curran's special monitor cable worked fine with the C-128 80-column mode driving two monitors for better audience appreciation! The main program, by Emil Volcheck, was devoted to the subject of partitions - here's the jist: PARTITIONS AND MORE! The topic for the May 8-bit meeting was PARTITIONS - what, why and how! A partition being a physical area on a floppy, hard disk or RAMdisk drive that is allocated as a single continuous storage location. The vehicle for the review and demonstrations was a CMD HD-40 hard drive - see the separate article on this device and its configuration. Briefly, we reviewed the history of partitions (at least that part relating to personal computers) - beginning with the advent of hard drives having storage capacity of more than 32 megabytes (MB) which was the physical limit for the early MS-DOS systems. When hard drives bigger than this became available, it was necessary to divide (partition) them into chunks equal to or smaller than 32 MB. The limit is based on two factors: 1) MS-DOS (as well as CBM DOS, CMD DOS, Apple DOS, MAC DOS, etc.) have used a 16-bit word to map the parts of the drive that have been used or are still available and 2) the smallest location on a floppy or hard drive was 512 bytes. With 16-bits, you can account for 65,536 of those 512 byte units (or sectors or blocks or whatever) - 65,536*512 = 33,554,432 bytes - or 32.00 MB. Since Commodore decided to use sectors or blocks that hold only 256 bytes, the limit is half this amount or 16 MB. So, one can select partition sizes less than or equal to 16 MB for our CBM or CMD devices. Partitions come in a wide variety of forms in the Commodore world (whereas there is essentially only one in the MS-DOS world). They include: - CBM 1581 partitions - CMD Native partitions - CMD emulation partitions - 1541 - 1571 - 1581 These are what you might call "working" partitions. There are some others like system and foreign (DACC) partitions that are used in CMD devices, but are not normally accessed by the user of a program. Having covered a bit of history and defined the nature of partitions, we moved on to showing how partitions are created and a bit about some of their more special uses. We fired up HD TOOLS and used it to access the hard drive. It provided us with information on what was already on the drive (see the separate article on the HD-40) and allowed us to very quickly and easily add or remove partitions of all types (except CBM 1581 type partitions). A similar utility - FD Tools or RL Tools - lets one do the same chores on FD floppy drives or RAMlink ram expansion devices, respectively. Next, we did a brief demo of the utility program, BCOPY+, to back up the first (MLCUG SYSTEM) partition on the hard drive. It took a couple of minutes to back up the 6400 bytes to a standard, high density 3.5" floppy. Then, we fired up the utility, MENUETTE 64, another CMD product, that has a sub-program (called a module) that lets you easily manage partitions on 1581 floppy disks or 1581 emulation partitions on CMD devices. It does the very tedious and error prone computations for you and gets the 1581 just where you want it! Finally, we used the utility, MCOPY, to transfer a copy of a working GEOS 128 system from a backup floppy (made from one hard drive) into a 1581 emulation partition (on a second hard drive). This produced an immediately working GEOS 128 V2.0 for all to observe!!! Members who have any questions about getting acquainted with partitions are invited to bring them to future meetings as the need, or their curiosity, arises... *************************** MLCUG "40 MEG" CMD HD-40 HARD DRIVE by Emil Volcheck As part of the demonstration for the May 8-bit meeting, we had on hand a CMD HD-40 hard drive [loaned to the club by Charles Curran]. It will become a more or less permanent part of the equipment setup for meetings; so we'll want to become much more familiar with this beast! To get ready for our use, we started with a totally clean hard drive. That means I removed all the partitions that were previously installed and built up from ground zero! Here is what we had to work with, as produced by CMD (Note: there have been many variants of the HD-40, depending on what the best buy in drive mechanisms was at production time. Our drive is a pretty early one.): Nominal capacity 40 MB Disk capacity: 188,664 CBM blocks 48,297,984 bytes (46.06 MB) Data capacity: 188,664 CBM blocks 47,920,656 data bytes (45.70 MB) With this big (especially by C-64/128 standards!) data space available to us, the first question is partitions - how many and what kind(s) to install? I chose the following layout for the - INITIAL PARTITION FORMATTING: NAME TYPE SIZE ---- ---- ----- [SYSTEM SYS 288] MLCUG SYSTEM NATV 6400 MAIN NATV 65280 1541 EMULATION 1541 684 1571 EMULATION 1571 1366 1581 EMULATION 1581 3200 1581 - 2 1581 3200 BLOCKS USED = 80,130 BLOCKS AVAILABLE = 108,534 The first partition, SYSTEM, is automatically put there by the HD DOS; so you do not and can not change that. You do not use that partition for yourself, the HD uses it for its own arcane tasks... I first put in a "small" native partition - carefully sized for easy backup with CMD's backup utility (BCOPY+) to a standard high density, 3.5" floppy (requires a CMD FD-2000 or FD-4000 floppy disk drive to use). In this working partition, I started storing stuff that gets used at the meetings. Next I put in one of the largest size partitions possible in CBM or CMD variants of the DOS (disk operating system). Like MS-DOS used in the PC or MacOS used in the Macintosh, there is a limit to how large a partition you can have (so the DOS can keep track of where everything is). For these other operating systems, that size is about 32 MB (without "wasting" disk space), but for Commodore the limit is 16 MB - we covered the math behind this at the meeting, too. A very useful feature of HD DOS is the ability to emulate the other disk formats used by the various Commodore disk drives over the years. I installed the three (3) most common types next - to emulate the 1541, 1571 and 1581 disk drives, respectively. (I left out the CP/M and another type or two.). Then I installed a single 1581-type partition to be used for GEOS. This is the largest format that most GEOS applications support (some variants of the desktop will support native partitions, but the 1581 format is safer). Most of the partitions are empty, except for utilities and meeting stuff in the first one and the beginnings of archive stuff in the second. These latter include collections like the HD Utilities and CMD Utilities disks. Over time, we'll probably add all the disk drive utility collections, the New User disk - and whatever attendees of the meetings identify as useful. At the meeting, we showed how the HD is manipulated with its main utility - HD TOOLS - as well as some of the informative items on the tools disk. We demonstrated the partitioning process - to try to get folks comfortable with it. We can also re-demonstrate the differences between CBM and CMD partitions - and why the latter are so much more useful (and their close resemblance to what you find in MS-DOS, MacOS and AmigaDOS, etc.). If you have questions about how to manage disk drives and disk space, raise them at the upcoming meetings - hands-on help is the best when it is possible! P.S: forgot, since the HD has a real time clock (RTC) built-in, I had to set it, too. It was in great shape as it had drifted only about a minute in 6 months or more of sitting on a shelf! *************************** AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS By John Deker, AMIGA SIG Leader [continued from p.1] gain some insight into the easiest way to gain "full" access to the Internet. Obviously, it may also be pertinent to discuss experiences with different Internet providers. In addition, I want to review some troubleshooting techniques for use when your computer won't start. See the MAIN PRESENTATION discussion below for what I mean. THE MAIN PRESENTATION - A GENERAL DIGRESSION INTO MISCELLANEOUS RAMBLINGS Since we did not have anything specific planned, our May meeting covered many topics - one being the state of the Amiga Technologies sale. As of this moment, 13 May 1997, there hasn't been any final and definitive statements from Gateway or others. Last I heard was that there would be further announcements around 16 May. If there are and I have time to add them, they will be under the STATE OF AMIGA MARKET below. As one of our other digressions, we keyed onto a problem experienced by Ted Dean and hopefully resolved it for him. What I found interesting about Ted's problem is that we probably have all experienced the same problem to one degree or another and had to resolve it. Obviously, those of us who never do much with our computers will never have many problems. Ted's problem resulted from trying to install some software, specifically AsimCDFS. Ted's predicament was that his Amiga would not complete a normal boot sequence from his hard drive after the installation. How that happened we can only guess. However, I think it important that we learn a couple of lessons from the experience. The FIRST is knowing how to temporarily circumvent the predicament of not being able to boot your Amiga. The most obvious way is to use a floppy boot disk. You all made a copy of the original system Workbench disk for just such an emergency, didn't you? It would be even better if you customized it with your favorite directory navigator (like DOpus) and editor. The other alternative is to try booting your Amiga WITHOUT a startup script. This is generally done by holding down both mouse buttons during the start of bootup. This will bring up a system requester with several options, one of which is to boot without a startup script. Selecting this option will dump you into the Amiga's shell/CLI without any Workbench GUI. If you're going to go this route to fix a problem, you gotta know how to use the CLI interface! That means you have to know how to type commands from JUST the keyboard to get things done! LOOK MA, NO MOUSE! The SECOND lesson is you need to have a minimum basic understanding about how the Amiga works, specifically how it goes through a "normal" startup. Basically, any computer has what I call a minimal "intelligence" when you turn it on. This minimal intelligence resides in the on-board ROM or BIOS chip. The ROM contains some very basic life sustaining INSTRUCTIONS. One of the processes or sets of instructions tells the computer to check the hardware to see what hardware is attached; if hardware is attached, then it checks to see if it is working OK. After checking the hardware, the computer then checks to see if certain scripts exist. If they do, the ROM has instructions to execute them. On the Amiga there is only one main script to read. That is the STARTUP-SEQUENCE script in the S: directory. If you want to be able to fix your own startup problems, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES - plain and simple. Beyond that, you need to be analytical enough to determine which steps in STARTUP-SEQUENCE are being executed and which ones are causing problems. It is impossible to describe in a few steps how one could troubleshoot all the problems that may occur during the startup sequence. It is better left for a presentation. Even then, we can only suggest some steps that might be used to troubleshoot a problem. One of the basic ways to troubleshoot the Startup-Sequence script is to embed the ECHO command into the script. I did this on one occasion by embedding ECHO 1, ECHO 2, etcetera throughout the script. By observing which ECHO commands printed to screen, I was able to determine a point of failure within the script. This is just one example of the creativity and knowledge needed in troubleshooting computer problems. As part of the discussion about software installation problems, I was curious to learn how many users used one of the features of the commonly used Amiga Installer routine. The feature that is almost always available is the PRETEND TO INSTALL option. To my surprise, no one except myself had ever used it. Am I overly cautious? Many said they had never seen this feature which surprised me even more. Some users were ready to swear that their versions of commercial and shareware software with the Amiga Installer routine didn't have this option. I want to ask all of you who believe the PRETEND TO INSTALL option doesn't exist to open your eyes and be observant! Next time you install a significant piece of software look for this feature and try it first before you commit to a real installation. If you find yourself being confused in the PRETEND mode, then PLEASE get help before doing the INSTALL FOR REAL option.