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- $DE1|1-Making An Autobooting Disk
-
-
-
- By Sorcerer Of WILDFIRE
-
-
-
- I know nearly everyone reading this mag must know how to make a
- autobooting disk however they may just be that one person who doesn't.
-
- Autobooting Workbench :-
-
- To make a disk that boots up to Workbench follow these steps :-
-
- 1. Format a disk. If you can't do this then i'm not going to tell you
- how!.
-
- 2. Depending on whether you used a proper disk formatter ie. X-Copy or
- D-Copy you should format the disk with the bootable option however if
- formatted through Workbench the chances are that the disk will not be
- bootable. To check reset the computer and put your formatted disk in
- the drive and wait. If the screen flashes back to the put-a-disk-in
- screen then the disk is not bootable but if it boots to a DOS prompt
- ie.
-
- 1>
-
- Then the disk is bootable. The DOS prompt appears because the disk
- hasn't actually been told to do anything so it comes up with th
- requester.
-
- Anyway if your disk wasn't bootable, then load up Workbench and open
- a shell window. The next step is to type excluding quotations :-
-
- "Install <Volume>"
-
- Where volume is the name of your disk and no you don't need to include
- the open and close brackets around it so for example :-
-
- Install Empty
-
- If this doesn't work well then you probably are doing something very
- wrong. If you've got two drives then just place the disk to be
- installed in DF1: and type install df1:
-
- 3. The next step is to create some directorys on the disk. Depending
- on whether you want the directories to be invisible until show all
- files is selected or whether you want directories that show straight
- up. The directories that you will need are C and S so type in shell:-
-
- (Invisible directories)
-
- Makedir <Volume>:C
- Makedir <Volume>:S
-
- (Visible directories)
-
- Use the pull down menus and make a directory called S and C.
-
- 4. Right now were getting somewhere. What the disk needs now is a
- startup-sequence. This has to be a plain ASCII text file to be placed
- in the S directory as this is the directory that the computer searches
- upon entering the disk. To do this open a shell window and type :-
-
- Ed <Volume>:s/startup-sequence
-
- where volume is you guessed it the name of your disk.
- Once Ed has loaded if you want a message to appear upon loading your
- disk you will need to use the echo command. If you don't want any text
- to show than ignore the line with echo on. Type :-
-
- ;Anything place by a semi-colon will be ignored (ideal for reference)
- Echo "Loading Message of your choice can go here"
- LoadWB
- Endcli >NIL:
-
- The message may flash a bit to fast so adding the wait command will
- help, which if used add it after the echo statement and type :-
- (You will need to copy wait from your Workbench disk to your new boot
- disk C directory)
-
- Wait 1
-
- The above number is the shortest waiting time and therefore you can
- experiment with different numbers.
-
- Now go to the menu and click on SAVE. Not SAVE AS.
-
- 5. Right that should be all ready except you need to copy the loadWB
- command to the C directory of your disk for anything to happen. To do
- this type in shell again :-
-
- Copy sys:c/loadWB <YourVolume>:c
-
- the statement must have :c after it to tell the computer to copy to
- the c directory.
-
- Right thats it. Reset the computer, the computer should first find
- that the disk is bootable and therefore look in the S directory for
- a startup-sequence once it finds this it will starting from the top
- execute each line. (The Echo and Endcli commands do not need
- to be copied to the disk as they are part of the A1200 disk operating
- system anyway).
-
- Now you Know how to do this there is no end to startup-sequences,
- all you need to do for example to make a disk bootup to a slideshow
- is :-
-
- First of all make sure the following commands are in the C:
- directory of your disk : PPSHOW, MAKEDIR, ASSIGN.
-
- You will this time also need an Libs directory so do this in the way
- as stated earlier(makedir <VOLUME>:Libs) and copy the
- POWERPACKER.LIBRARY to it off of one of your disks.
- Make sure you have your IFF pictures straight on the disk and not
- in a directory.
-
-
- The Startup-Sequence could read:-
-
- ;Sorcerers Startup
- echo "Loading Please Wait . . ."
- Makedir RAM:ENV RAM:T
- Assign T: RAM:T
- Assign ENV: RAM:ENV
- PPshow <YOURPICNAME>
- PPshow (this can be repeated for how many pictures you've got)
-
- Or you could use a WILDCARD and type instead of tons of lines saying
- PPShow if your pictures all have for example the extension .iff
- Add this line to the startup-sequence instead of the PPshow ones
- above.
- PPShow #?.iff TIME 10
- Where "Time 10" means that you want each picture to appear on the
- screen for ten seconds.
-
- If this doesn't work you probably need to copy more files to the c and
- libs directorys of the disk.
-
- This should work but I can't be bothered to test it. Ive told you how
- to make a bootable disk that loads up a Workbench screen so that'll do
- from me.
-
- Sorcerer Of WILDFIRE
-
- end
-