ARM Club 1/ARM_CLUB_CD.iso/_usearcfs/usingarcfs

Text File | 1994-02-23 | 6.6 KB | 197 lines

!ArcFS

!ArcFS contains a lot of help information in its !Help file.

You may be required to increase the memory allocation in the
RMA using the Task Manager.

HOW TO USE THIS DISC

TO cram over 1Mb of data onto this disc the programs are held
in archives. These are directories which contain programs that
are held in a compressed form.

!ArcFS must be used to extract the various files and applications.
It behaves just like a filing system, you can take files out just
by dragging as usual. However, the version of ArcFS supplied with
this disc is only able to read an archive it is not able to write
to it. This means that some applications will not work in a
compressed form as they may need to write data back to the disc. In
order for these programs to work they must be decompressed.

Decompression of all the programs on this disc is recommended just
in case you encounter problems.

If you want to unpack ALL the files on this ARM Club disc you will
need at least two formatted floppy discs.

Please refer to your copy of the User Guide for instructions on how
to format the discs.

Follow these instructions exactly to learn how to unpack a single file.

TECHNICAL WORDS USED:

ICON : A little picture on screen.

ICON BAR : The light-coloured strip at the bottom of the screen.

STEP A: Create a RAM disc

1. Point at the Archimedes icon on the far right of the icon bar at the
   bottom of the screen, using your mouse and pointer. If you have
   RISC OS2 this icon will be an Archimedes logo whereas if you have
   RISC OS3 this icon will be an Acorn.

2. Click the middle mouse button a menu will appear with the title "Task".

3. Point at the "Task display" option using your mouse and pointer.

4. Click the left mouse button to select this option. The "Tasks" window
   will appear.

5. Point at the down arrow in the bottom-right of this window using your
   mouse and pointer. This will cause the "Tasks" window to scroll.

6. Press the left mouse button and hold it down until the window stops
   scrolling.

7. Locate the line called "RAM disc".

8. Using the mouse and pointer, point at a position about one inch to the
   right of the figure "0K".

9. Click the left mouse button, a red bar will appear stretching to the
   pointer, the figure will change and a black chip icon appears on the icon
   bar with the word "RAM" below it.

10. Point at the end of the new red bar with the mouse and pointer.

11. Press and hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse and pointer        to the right, dragging the bar out until the figure reads "500K" or more.

 You have now created a RAM disc. this can be used in exactly the same way as
 a floppy disc but you will lose its contents if you reset or switch off the
 computer.

12. Using the mouse and pointer, point at the Tasks window close icon, X,
    at the top-left of the window.

13. Click the close icon using the left mouse button and the Tasks window
    will disappear.

14. Using the mouse and pointer, point at the RAM disc icon on the icon bar.

15. Click the icon once with the left mouse button. The RAM disc contents
    window will appear -- it is empty.

16. Using the mouse and pointer, point at the title of the RAM disc window,
    where it says "RAM:$" if you have RISC OS2 or "RAM::RamDisc0.$" if you
    have RISC OS3

17. Press and hold down the left mouse button.

18. Move the mouse and pointer down as close to the middle of the icon bar
    as you can get.

19. Release the left mouse button.

NOTE: On a 1Mb machine you may not be able to run any programs while you
still have the RAM disc. You must copy the files onto your spare disc first,
reset the machine and then run the programs.

STEP B: Unpacking a file

a). DOUBLE DRIVES

1. Insert a blank, formatted disc into drive 1.

2. Point at drive 1 icon using mouse and pointer.

3. Click with left mouse button to show the (blank) disc's contents.

4. Insert The ARM Club public domain disc into drive 0.

5. Point at drive 0 icon using mouse and pointer.

6. Click with THE left mouse button to show The ARM Club public domain
   disc contents.

Continue from step 4 for single drive (ignore any and all references to
swapping discs).


b). SINGLE DRIVE ONLY

1. Insert The ARM Club public domain disc.

2. Point at the drive icon using mouse and pointer.

3. Click with left mouse button to show The ARM Club public domain disc
   contents.

4. Point at the !ArcFS icon in the disc contents window using the mouse and
   pointer.

5. Double-click (two mouse clicks rapidly) the !ArcFS icon using the left
   mouse button.

6. Follow the on-screen instructions to swap discs as they occur.

Owners of the BBC A3000 may need to click the Okay button after the
required disc has been inserted, other machines should recognise disc
insertion automatically.

7. The !ArcFS icon will now appear on the left of the icon bar.

8. Point at an Archive icon in the disc contents window using mouse and
   pointer.

9. Double-click (two mouse clicks rapidly) the chosen Archive icon.

10. There will be a short delay while !ArcFS reads the contents of the
    archive, then a window opens up to reveal these contents.

11. Point at the first icon in the archive contents window using the mouse and
    pointer.

12. Press the left mouse button and hold it down. A coloured box will appear        around the icon.

13. WITHOUT lifting your finger off the button, move the mouse until the
    pointer is directly over the middle of the open RAM disc contents window        (NOT the RAM icon on the icon bar). The dotted box will move with the
    pointer.

14. Release the mouse button.

15. There will be a delay while !ArcFS unpacks the file from the archive.
    You may be instructed to swap discs, please do so.

16. Remove The ARM Club public domain disc from drive 0.

17. Insert a blank disc into drive 0.

18. Click the drive 0 icon to show disc contents.

19. Following the procedure described in 16 to 18, drag the file in the RAM
    disc contents window to the blank disc contents window.

You have now removed the file from the archive and it may be run simply by
double-clicking it. On a 1Mb machine you will probably need to reset the
machine to free enough memory.

The error message from Basic that indicates that it doesn't have enough room is:
      No writable memory at this address.


POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Disc full error when copying from Archive to RAM disc.

This means the ram disc is not big enough. Unfortunately you cannot alter
the size of the ram disc when there are files in it.

Either: Delete all the files, return to the Tasks window and make the RAM
disc bigger.

Or: Press Control+Reset and start again, make the RAM disc bigger than 500K.