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MEGA-Matic (v1.12) (c) 1987 T.I.F. Software a division of T&L Enterprises, Inc. 3826 W. Missouri Ave. Phoenix, Arizona 85019 Author: Lloyd E. Pulley, Sr. Disclaimer of Warranty and/or Liability (aka..if anything goes wrong, it ain't my fault) Try It First Software (hereafter known as TIF Software) makes no warranty, either expressed or implied, as to the usability of the enclosed programs, the documentation and any other related items. TIF Software will not be held liable for direct or incidental damages resulting from any defect or omission in these programs or the documentation. These programs have been tested thoroughly but TIF Software can not be held liable if it doesn't work on your system. MegaMatic has been tested to run on the 520 ST, 1040 ST, Mega ST2 and the Mega ST4. It works on an all floppy system and on a system with hard drives. It works on the older roms and the new ones. It works with or without the blitter installed. I've even tested it on a 1040 ST that was running 2 1/2 megs and the new roms. But that doesn't mean it'll run on your system. Long ago I reached a conclusion that "all ST's are not created equal". The documentation and programs included in this arced file, are copyrighted by TIF Software. These programs are NOT public domain, they are shareware. Since MegaMatic is shareware, please feel free to make copies of these programs for you, your users groups, BBS's, ect. But please, make sure that you include these files everytime you distribute it. There is nothing that I hate worse, than not getting all the files needed to make a program perform properly. MEGMATIC.PRG CONFIG.PRG MEGMATIC.DOC As I said earlier, MegaMatic is shareware. If you like it and use it, send TIF Software a few bucks. If you don't like, let us know why. Now, on to the good stuff. Page -1- Introduction (or "where did I come up with this idea") When I first bought my ST, I didn't know anything about the AUTO folder and how to use it. But before too long, I had 5-6 programs in my AUTO folder that 'I just had to have'. Between these 5-6 programs and 3-4 accessories, it was taking forever to boot up my computer (even with a hard drive). So to make life easier (and faster), I decided to take the best ideas from each of these 'AUTO programs' and incorporate them into one program. The first problem that I ran into was that I HATE 'all-in- one' programs. Usually there was only 1 or 2 parts of these 'all-in-one' programs that I used. All the rest of the program (along with my computers memory) was wasted. So I decided to make MegaMatic a 'all-in-one' program where the USER (that's you!) could decide what parts of it THEY wanted to use. In other words, much of MegaMatic is configurable by the user. The parts that are not configurable (listed later in the docs) do not take up any memory after boot up. Once they do their job, they disappear from the computers memory. Also, I HATE AUTO programs that 'asks questions' and then sits there until the user gives an input. I want to be able to turn on my system and go do anything I want and when I come back, it's all up and ready to go. MegaMatic at bootup has two areas where it asks for user input (more on these later). At each spot, MegaMatic will wait for approximately. 1 second for an input. If no input is received, MegaMatic will then continue on and just use the default input. Since I don't know C, Pascal or Modula, I was forced to write MegaMatic in pure 68000 assembly code (it was either that or GfA Basic). MegaMatic was written with HiSoft's DevPac Editor/Assembler. Since MegaMatic was written in 68000 code, you'll find it short (less than 4k) and fast. Also, once MegaMatic has been booted and is running, it only takes 1k of your precious memory to run (that does not count the memory needed for the ramdisk or print spooler however). To make the program user configurable, I also wrote a CONFIG.PRG that goes along with MegaMatic. You HAVE to use the CONFIG.PRG on MegaMatic before using MegaMatic. (more on CONFIG.PRG later) How to install Mega-Matic (or "if you don't follow instructions, don't blame me") ALWAYS make a backup of all the files before attempting to use any of them. MEGMATIC.PRG HAS to be configured with CONFIG.PRG before using it. MEGMATIC.PRG HAS to go into the AUTO folder first. (Sorry guys, but I have to know what some of the lower memory address's are before some other program modifies/changes them.) If you are running a hard drive booter in your AUTO folder, it can go in before the MEGMATIC.PRG. Page -2- Mega-Matic's basic features (or "I thought that this part would never get here") 1) RESETTABLE RAM DISK ** I've heard the pro's and con's about the resettable ram disks. To me, any ram disk that isn't resettable, isn't useable. The resettable ram disk 'saved my bacon' more than once. This ramdisk will survive a normal RESET with no loss of data. But remember, this is not guaranteed!! 99.9% of time it works properly but .1% of the time the system bombs beyond repair and can corrupt the ram disk pointers or the data on the ramdisk. Resettable Ram Disks boot up a little different than 'normal' ram disks. They take two 'passes' to boot up. The first time MegaMatic is booted by the system, it moves parts of itself into high memory (right under the graphics screen). It then modifies some of the lower memory pointers and does a warm reset which then causes it to be booted again. It then looks to see if it's been booted before (by looking for some 'magic' data in high memory). If it has been booted before, it then finishes it's job by hooking some of the lower memory vectors into the program that has been moved under the graphics screen. At that point it returns to TOS and lets the system finish booting up everything else. This ram disk is configurable in size from 128k to 2 meg (minus 24k for 'overhead'...i.e. FAT tables, directories, ect.) with the CONFIG.PRG. Also at powerup, it can be temporarily configured to different sizes. During the first pass (see above paragraph), MegaMatic will display a prompt................ 'Input:' for about a second. If you temporarily need a different sized ram disk from your normal one, all you have to do press certain keys and the system will re-configure the ram disk size for you. This size will last through resets and will only disappear when you power down. Here's the keys that you can press to change the ramdisk size. (remember, all these sizes will be less 24k for the 'overhead') 1 - 128k 2 - 192k 3 - 256k 4 - 320k 5 - 384k 6 - 448k 7 - 512k 8 - 576k 9 - 640k 0 - 704k ESC - 768k SHIFT - 832k (for you math types, just add 1 to the number and multiply by 64) The resettable ram disk is configurable (with CONFIG.PRG) as to which drive identifier that you want it set up as. Your choices will be C-P. I always use P for my ram disk because I haven't ever found anything else that uses that drive letter. The only program that ever had problems with my ram disk as drive P was DCopy. He uses some nonstandard figuring and uses drive P as a printer drive. So if you use DCopy, you might not want to use P as your drive indentifier. Page -3- 2) PRINT SPOOLER ** MegaMatic also gives you a configurable print spooler. This print spooler can be configured in size from 16k to 144k. (In the CONFIG.PRG you just enter a value from 1-9. MegaMatic then figures the print spooler size by multiplying 16k times the figure you inputted. If while printing, you want to stop the print spooler, just press the CNTL/SHIFT/ALT-0 keys (the '0' is the one on the keypad, not at the top of the keyboard) all at the same time. This will zero out the print buffer. If you've got a print buffer in your printer, this won't stop the printing until your printers buffer is empty. 3) Disk VERIFY On/Off This feature allows you to turn the disk write verify off or leave it on (on is the system default). You'll find your disk writes are speeded up with VERIFY off. NOTE: Be careful if you have VERIFY turned off. Some drives can give bad writes if there is no VERIFY on. You'll usually know how dependable your drives are. 4) WHICH DRIVES MegaMatic will display which drives are connected to the system at powerup (including ram disk). 5) SCREEN SAVER ** A screen saver will turn your screen 'off' (turn it black on color systems, reverse colors on mono) if you've left your system unattended for a certain period of time. Once you touch the mouse or a key, the screen will return to normal. This is supposedly to stop the monitors from being 'burned in' by displaying the same screen for hours at a time. This screen saver will work on either color or mono systems. You can configure (using CONFIG.PRG) how long the system will wait before it turns the screen saver on (2-9 minutes). I like my screen saver to keep 'flipping'. Going from off to on to off to on...etc. I use it as a timer as well as a screen saver. When I see the screen go dark, I know 7 minutes have passed (my default) and when I see it go back normal again, I know another 7 minutes have passed. You can configure the screen saver to 'flip' or just stay dark with the CONFIG.PRG. 6) FREE RAM This feature displays the total memory of the system and how much memory is free after booting up. This does not include the memory used by accessories or other auto folder programs booted up after MegaMatic. 7) MEMORY CHECK ** Does a two pass memory check (a fast and a slow memory check), every time you boot up the system. Page -4- 8) AUTO DESK ** This feature allows for the automatic desktop selection of either a low, medium or high res desktop at bootup (LOWDESK.INF, MEDDESK.INF and HIGHDESK.INF). MegaMatic looks to see which monitor you're using at boot up and if you're using a mono monitor, it will boot up the mono .INF file (HIGHDESK.INF). If you're booting up in color, MegaMatic automatically chooses the MEDDESK.INF (medium res). You can choose to go into low res at powerup by simply pressing any key when you see the following prompts displayed during MegaMatic's second pass (see paragraph in ram disk section describing the two passes)............ 'Hooking in Auto-Desktop selector' 'Installing ' After the word 'Installing', MegaMatic will wait for a short period of time for a keypress. If it see's it, it'll bootup the LOWDESK.INF file. If no key is pressed, it'll bootup MEDDESK.INF. To create each file, you simply go to the res that you want, set the desktop up how you want it and then save the desktop. Just rename the DESKTOP.INF file to name needed (in low res - LOWDESK.INF, in med res - MEDDESK.INF and in high res - HIGHDESK.INF) 9) COLD/WARM RESET Once I got my Mega, I found out that was a 'major pain' to get to the RESET and ON/OFF switch on it (not one of Atari's better ideas). And with the incompatibility of some programs on the Mega, I found myself needing the RESET and ON/OFF button more than ever. So I added two special key combinations that would allow me to do a warm or cold start from the keyboard. Here's the two key combinations.......... ALT/SHIFT/CNTL-* (the '*' is the one on the keypad only) will give you a cold start (POWER OFF) ALT/SHIFT/CNTL-. (the '.' is the one on the keypad only) will give you a warm start (RESET) ** If you don't want this feature, you can configure MegaMatic so that it won't be attached. Page -5- How to use the CONFIG.PRG (or "aren't we done yet?") As stated earlier, you HAVE to use the CONFIG.PRG before using MegaMatic. All the defaults are set to zero in MegaMatic until CONFIG.PRG sets them. I didn't make CONFIG.PRG too smart, so make sure that it and MegaMatic are on the same directory (they can be in a folder as long as both programs are in the same folder). Also, there is minimal error trapping done. Any errors will run through one of two routines, either the READ error routine or the WRITE error routine. If you make any mistakes or just want to quit CONFIG.PRG at any time, I put in a 'panic' key. Just press the ESC key at any time and you will be sent back to the desktop without anything happening. When you double-click on the CONFIG.PRG name, it'll automatically load in a file called MEGMATIC.PRG. MegaMatic HAS to be named this or CONFIG.PRG won't load it. Then CONFIG.PRG will check to make sure that the correct version of MegaMatic has been loaded. (This version is 1.1x. The last digit is not checked. It's just there to let me know which revision you have) Also, you CAN configure the same version of MegaMatic over and over again. The CONFIG.PRG automatically sets all the defaults back to zero when it's loaded into memory. You'll be asked a series of questions concerning how you want MegaMatic configured. If you've read the descriptions above, the questions are all pretty much self-explanatory (if you haven't, you should). After you answer each question, you'll then be prompted with a "Correct? <Y>es <N>o". If you want to redo your answer, just press 'N' and CONFIG.PRG will take you back through the question so you can answer it again. A 'Y' will take you to the next question. If you later decide that you configured one of the earlier questions wrong, don't worry. Before CONFIG.PRG will write the MEGMATIC.PRG back out to disk, it'll ask you "Is everything correct? <Y>es <N>o". At that point, you can press 'N' and you'll start all over again. Pressing 'Y' will write the modified MEGMATIC.PRG back to disk and take you back to the desktop. A special note. Do to CONFIG.PRG's limited intelligence, when you are entering the size for your ram disk, you'll have a choice of entering 2-32 (2*64k=128k ramdisk, 32*64k=2048k ramdisk). If you're entering a one digit number (2-9), you'll have to press RETURN when done. You don't have to press RETURN for a two digit number. Page -6- Final comments (or "it looks like we're almost done!") MegaMatic has been tested for several months with no noticeable bugs but there is no doubt in my mind, that someone out there is going to find one. If they do, let me know. Tell me how your system is configured, what AUTO programs you're running, what accessories that you're running and what happened when you had the problem. I'll try to test the problem out if possible (I don't have all the programs available for the ST though). The only two programs that I've had any problems with are: PUBLISHING PARTNER - On the Mega ST ONLY. If you have both the print spooler AND the screen saver configured to be ON, Publishing Partner will give you garbage on the screen. HOWEVER, there is no problem on the 520/1040 ST's NO MATTER which rom's you're using. It has to be something to do with either the hardware in the Mega or the blitter chip (even though I've tried it with the blitter OFF) because I had no problem with a 1040 ST that was running 2 1/2 meg and the new roms. NEO-CHROME - You'll get some slight flicker at the bottom of the screen. They must be using some of the same interrupts that MegaMatic uses and the timing is slightly off. Remember, this is Share Ware. If you like it and use it, send TIF Software a donation (none too small, none too large). People that send donations will get upgraded to future versions free. (Future versions will NOT be Share Ware and will NOT be allowed to be freely distributed. Lloyd E. Pulley MADMODIFIER - Delphi LEPULLEY - Genie Acknowledgments (or "without these people, it wouldn't have got done) I'm a converted 6809 programmer. This was my first major programming test on the 68000. Many things were very similar to the 6809 and other things were radically different (the 6809 don't have any 'cmp.b #3,#0(a1,d2)' type of code). Also, the 68000 is serious about the difference between address and data registers, the 6809 isn't. Without the following people's assistance, I'd still be trying to figure out how to get this program to work. Dan L. Moore (author of PaperClip) Charles F. Johnson (programmer, reviewer and musician) Mat Ratcliff (programmer and reviewer for Analog) Dave Mumper (author of TINYVIEW/TINYSTUFF........without his help and code, I'd never got the keyboard reset routine done) and all the others who put out fine p/d software that I was able to get ideas from. Page -7-