--------- HOW I RUN --------- This is the July 1992 issue of JUMPDISK, the Original Disk Magazine for the Amiga. It is the 72nd consecutive monthly issue -- observing its sixth year. JUMPDISK requires a minimum of 512K memory to work and is designed to mostly work on a 512K system with one external disk drive. Exceptions are noted in the doc files of such programs. If you have a meg or more of memory, JUMPDISK will work with DF2: and DF3: drives active. Of course, systems with hard drives have sufficient memory. If you have only one drive, more memory will be available, but there may be times when you find disk swapping onerous. But that applies to many of your Amiga activities already. AMIGA 3000 AND WORKBENCH 2.0 Welcome to Amiga 3000 owners and anyone else using Workbench 2.0 and higher. If this screen is garbled, you should reboot with a copy of your ORIGINAL Workbench, so the default 8 point font is used. Then the correct type will show. TEXT 80, NOT 60 If you're a beginner . . . Can you see the letter X at the end of this line? -----------------> X If not, your Amiga Preferences is set for TEXT 60, while you should have it set for TEXT 80. To make the needed change: 1. Remove JUMPDISK, and put a COPY of Workbench in DF0:. Don't use the original Workbench. 2. Open the Workbench window, and in that window double-click on the Preferences icon. 3. In the Preferences window, see the characters TEXT 60 80. Click on the `80' so it changes color. 4. At right of screen, click on the word `SAVE'. This returns you to the Workbench screen. 5. Click off the Workbench window. 6. Restart JUMPDISK. JUST EXPERIMENT Most JUMPDISK activities run from icons. To make something happen, double-click an icon. To double-click means to put the mouse pointer over an icon and click the left mouse button twice rapidly. There are program icons which start programs running, and there are text icons (usually with the suffix .Doc in their titles) and they open text files. Both programs and text readers include further instructions for making things go. There are also some image display icons. If you double-click an icon and a picture appears, look at it, then click the RIGHT mouse button ONCE to make it go away. The Article menu is an exception to the icon-clicking rule. It instead presents a series of titles. The first title contains instructions for doing things from the Article Menu. Double-click on the title to read it. From the Article Menu you can display text on the screen, hear it spoken and send it to the printer, if you have a printer. Scattered through this issue you will find an abundance of tips and instructions on how things run. TROUBLESHOOTING This article is meant to help you troubleshoot problems that may occur when you're running activities on your Amiga -- not only JUMPDISK, but any program that may appear to cause problems. You might scan it quickly now and return here in depth if you experience any frustration with this issue. NOFASTMEM CAN HELP This problem occurs most often on an Amiga 500 with the A501 expansion. You click on a program's icon. It seems to load but then hangs up. The answer is to reboot, open the Workbench SYSTEM drawer and double-click the icon labeled NoFastMem. Nothing apparent happens, but memory is assigned so the recalcitrant program will run. Close the SYSTEM drawer and the Workbench window, insert JUMPDISK and try the program again. WE TRY TO BE WELL BEHAVED Each JUMPDISK issue is designed to be as well behaved as possible. However, a given issue can include work of up to 20 different people who all have different styles. If a program does something strange, read its DOC file and look for a beginning JUMPDISK NOTE which will probably clear up the problem for you. If a JUMPDISK ever signals a READ/WRITE error, first eject the disk, firmly put it back in the drive and try again. Double-check that the error does not refer to some other disk you have in a drive. If you have another drive, try JUMPDISK in it also. If the READ/WRITE error keeps cropping up, then you have a bad JUMPDISK. We apologize, and we will replace it. We sector-check every JUMPDISK that is shipped, but sometimes a disk just goes bad, no matter what. MEMORY CONSTRAINTS If your Amiga has 512K memory and you're running it with more than one external drive, we suggest you turn off any drives beyond DF1: and use only the internal drive and one external drive. This saves memory and may preclude program crashes due to insufficient or fragmented memory. If the system does crash for these reasons, reboot with Workbench and start over. A fundamental way of conserving memory is to close any windows not currently being used. When you open a drawer and find a program within it, consider clicking off the main J window (click the box at its northwest corner). Then run the program, after which close the program's drawer, and only then open the main J window again. Another memory saver is to shut down any multitasking or background tasks. If you're smart enough to have invoked these through your startup sequence, you need no help in closing them. For beginners, this just means you should turn off any activities that may be running before you go on to something else. The problem is that each running event occupies memory. When memory gets too low, the system responds sluggishly and may even lock, producing a Guru message. Guru messages are not fatal to anyone or anything. Just restart the system by rebooting with CTRL-A-A, which means holding down the CTRL key and the same time pressing the A keys on either side of the space bar. READERS This issue contains two ways of reading articles: The Articles program offers a menu of text and art contents. Also in this issue is PPMORE, which displays text from clicked icons. Both automatically decrunch and display. Most text and programs on the disk have been PowerPacked, doubling the storage capacity of the disk, which is nearly filled. Articles and PPMORE decrunch text and present it as plain text, and offer ways to send text to the printer. Also see the Article Menu item on decrunching files. No duplication is made nor space wasted by offering multiple readers. The same text file is called by each. Some doc files are best left in drawers with the programs they explain, but most of these can be also accessed from the Articles Menu. THANK YOU! Sincere thanks for trying JUMPDISK. This issue would be nowhere near its level of sophistication without the suggestions and help of many readers and programmers. A special note to beginners. We all were once exactly where you are right now. Don't give up. Every mistake you make will teach you something important. It WILL become clearer sooner than you imagine. END OF TEXT