*****************  A Beginner's Startup-Sequence  ********************* 


			     by Mark Hopping



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   I bought my Amiga 500 a little less than a year ago. It was not a new one
  but it came with an AdRam 2mb expansion. That extra memory has enabled me
  to create, on startup, a recoverable Ram: disk and copy certain programs to
  it for ready access. What follows here are a few observations which I hope
  will be of interest to other beginners.

   Perhaps I should say, by way of introduction, that I previously had a
  Commodore 128 which was used to play games, write the occasional letter and
  construct lists of various sorts on a database. The reason for changing to
  the Amiga was that there arose a need in the family for a particular
  computer program which was only available in Amiga or MS-Dos format. My
  system is 1.3.

   After a period of fumbling in the dark and picking up pieces of
  information from computer magazines, which in turn helped me to make a
  degree of sense of (to me) obscure terminology in Amiga manuals, I have
  discovered MegaDisc (subscribed to by another member of the family). The
  style of MegaDisc is unique in my experience. It is a good read and
  written on a level that I, as a raw beginner, can feel at home with. I
  feel emboldened to have a go at submitting a few notes myself.

   I am heavily indebted to the articles of Doug Groat in MD27 which, for the
  benefit of anyone who has not seen them, were devoted firstly, to
  MightyMouse and its inclusion in the startup sequence and secondly, to
  creating a custom Workbench disk called Workshop. If what I have to say
  repeats matters covered by him in those articles it should be taken as a
  tribute to Doug and his persuasiveness.

   Although this note is called "A Beginner's Startup Sequence" I propose to
  leave the actual startup-sequence to the finish. In truth, the "sequence"
  I had in mind was the far from strict sequence involved in getting started
  on the road to understanding how to get the best out of the Amiga.

   My experience with Amiga programs has been, as I suppose it is with
  everyone, an exercise in trial and error. Having tried a number of
  programs and set a number of those aside, I seem to have settled upon a
  virus checker, a mouse pointer accelerator/screen blanker, a calculator, a
  disk copier, a directory utility, a text editor and a means of reading text
  packed with a cruncher. It is far too early in the process to say that any
  of those programs has been finally chosen but the ones currently being
  examined are, following the same order:

		Virus Checker (from MegaDisc)
		MightyMouse   (UT 302)
		Calckey       (Tbag 35)
		Xcopy Professional
		CLImate
		QED           (Tbag 34)
		PP            (Fish 601)

   Additional to PP, I have in the c directory of my boot disk (which I have
  called Workplace, Doug Groat having claimed Workshop as his own) the text
  readers Most, More, PPmore and Fullview.

   The classifications referred to above are of course my commonly used ones.
  It was not intended to suggest that disk recovery, word processing and
  database programs and others are not in the disk box.

   Brief Descriptions

   Perhaps a few short remarks about the listed programs would not be out of
  order. Virus Checker checks for viruses; Mightymouse has a number of
  functions, it blanks the mouse pointer after a period of inactivity, it
  dims the screen after a longer period of inactivity thus preventing
  burn-in, it installs a digital clock and it provides hot keys (about which,
  more later); Calckey is a calculator which, once activated, will stay in
  the background until called by its hot key combination and it will insert
  the result of a calculation at the cursor position in your document; Xcopy
  is a convenient disk copier with several functions; CLImate is a directory
  utility with the usual functions of file copying, text and picture viewing
  and printing (I have, but have not yet tried, DirWork, a directory utility
  recommended by the Editor of MD); QED is a text editor which I am using to
  write this and which is very much more user friendly than Ed; PP is also
  known as PowerPacker Patcher, it acts on files crunched with Power Packer
  in a way that makes other programs think that the crunched files are not
  crunched at all.

   A small digression on PowerPacker

   The word processor ProWrite offers the opportunity to the user to place
  words into a User Dictionary. An excellent function but it is only a short
  time before the disk, which also contains ProWrite and numerous other
  essential files, is full. This may not mean much to a hard drive user but
  the floppy user is faced with having to delete something from the floppy to
  make room for additional words. For those unfamiliar with ProWrite, the
  dictionaries are used by the spell checker and are therefore of some
  significance. I solved the problem by crunching the Main Dictionary and
  the Thesaurus with Power Packer (UT 290) and when ProWrite would not
  recognise them in their crunched state, I installed PP. There is now
  plenty of room for the User Dictionary. Of course, PP must now be
  installed every time I use ProWrite.

   This next comment is something I am not sure about. It seems that to be
  started from the startup, a program must detach(?). I have tried to start
  PP from startup and it will not work. Similarly with BigBench. I suppose
  that Runback will solve these problems but I do not have Runback yet.
  Notwithstanding these minor obstacles, I have included successfully in the
  startup sequence Virus Checker, MightyMouse and Calckey. [Ed: Runback will
  cure these problems, but many programs are written these days to detach
  themselves from the CLI they're run from; and WB2's RUN command allows for
  this feature now too, I believe.]

   Altering the startup sequence and substituting programs on the boot disk
  is something of a compromise. The more you do in startup the longer
  startup takes. I think it is worthwhile to spend time in setting up so
  that the benefits can be enjoyed later. On the other hand there are
  convenient alternatives to having programs executed in the startup.

   Using HotKeys

   Programs such as AutoCLI and MightyMouse can easily be configured to
  launch other programs. I've made MightyMouse load at startup and the
  pressing of specific hot keys loads immediately QED, CLImate and Xcopy.
  Pressing hot keys will also produce immediately a Shell. In my case QED,
  CLImate and Xcopy are copied into Rad: on startup. That makes access to
  them very quick. MightyMouse is configured to look for them in Rad:. It
  could just as easily be told to look for them in df1:. This feature of
  MightyMouse is convenient and saves a bit of typing in the Shell. All you
  do is put the typing in a box in MightyMouse instead and pressing the hot
  keys executes the script. [Ed: AutoCLI on MD29 has similar capabilities.]

   If you are continually making a lot of changes to your set-up, e.g.
  adding libraries to Libs, changing the names of programs to something
  shorter (say, to a couple of letters) to save on typing in the Shell,
  putting things in c, or changing to a fresh program of a type similar to an
  old one to try it out, you may need to keep a note of what you've done.
  Having tried keeping such a note on a piece of paper and losing it, I tried
  including a note in the startup sequence but that was not satisfactory
  either. My solution was to copy a read-me file and icon from a PD disk and
  with a text editor, I used QED, delete the existing notes and substitute my
  own. These can be altered as required and read at any time with a mouse
  click.

	Here then is my startup sequence as it is now;

c:SetPatch >NIL: r ;patch system functions
Addbuffers df0: 10
cd c:
echo "Amiga Workbench Disk. Release 1.3.2 version 34.28 - WORKPLACE!"
echo "Most, More, FullView and PPMore are in the c directory"
Sys:System/FastMemFirst ; move C00000 memory to last in list
BindDrivers
mightymouse
SetClock load ;load system time from real time clock (A1000 owners should
	      ;replace the SetClock load with Date
FF >NIL: -0 ;speed up Text
resident CLI L:Shell-Seg SYSTEM pure add; activate Shell
resident c:Execute pure
mount newcon:
;
failat 11
run execute s:StartupII ;This lets resident be used for rest of script
wait >NIL: 5 mins ;wait for StartupII to complete (will signal when done)
;
SYS:System/SetMap usa1 ;Activate the ()/* on keypad
path ram: c: sys:utilities sys:system s: sys:prefs add ;set path for Workbench
LoadWB delay  ;wait for inhibit to end before continuing
virus_checker -l158 -t000 -w400
Calckey
echo "Rad: startup"
;
Binddrivers
;
failat 15
mount Rad:
if not exists Rad:c
makedir Rad:c
copy c:copy to rad:c
copy c:dir to Rad:c
endif
path add rad:c
if not exists Rad:dud
makedir Rad:dud
echo "Copying CLImate to Rad:dud"
cd df1:
copy climate to rad:dud
echo "Copying XCopy6.7 to Rad:dud"
copy xcopy6.7 to Rad:dud
echo "Copying QED to Rad:dud"
copy Qed to rad:dud
copy Qgo to rad:dud
echo "Copying BigBench to Rad:dud"
copy bigbench/bigbench to Rad:dud
endif
endcli >NIL:



   Most of what you see here is what you will see on your own boot disk if
  you have not altered it. I will not try to explain what it all means. For
  that you should read Megados, the excellent MegaDisc manual. The truth is,
  I don't really know what it all means but it seems to work.

   You will see that the names MightyMouse, Virus Checker and CalcKey have
  been inserted at different places in the standard sequence. The numbers
  accompanying Virus Checker place the program's window on the title bar,
  leaving room for MightyMouse's clock. Those three programs are in the c
  directory of the boot disk. If you are daunted by the prospect of putting
  programs in c or any other directory, do not be. Use a directory utility.
  They typically have two windows. Using those you select, by clicking
  appropriately, in one window the file or directory you want copied and in
  the other the place, e.g. c directory, you want it copied to. Click again
  and wait a bit. There is now a copy where you wanted it.

   Returning to the startup sequence, which is really only here as a rallying
  point for these otherwise unconnected notes, you will see that the entries
  following "echo RAD: startup" set up and populate the Rad: disk.  Because
  Rad: survives re-sets and gurus, it would soon be chockablock full of
  numerous copies of the same programs if the startup did not provide for the
  recognition of an already existing program. This sequence makes use of If
  to check for the existence of particular directories and if they exist it
  ignores the copy command. It seems to follow, though I have yet to try it,
  that on a re-set using a different boot-disk it would be possible to copy
  additional material to the existing Rad:. You will have seen that I chose
  to call the directory the programs QED etc. are copied to, by the name
  "dud". There is no significance to the name. It was easy to type, that's
  all.

   It may be that it would have been more elegant to have only one If - Endif
  group or perhaps I should have had a second Failat but I don't know enough
  to decide. It seems to work O.K..

   Maybe it should have been made abundantly clear earlier in these notes
  that for the startup sequence to find programs in df1: and copy them to
  Rad: they must be in df1: to be found. In other words, you must prepare a
  disk of utilities containing all the programs to be copied to Rad: and
  place it in df1: before starting up. The directory utility is the tool to
  use to create a disk of your favourite utilities.




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