hrlaser@sactoh0.UUCP (Harv R. Laser) (11/25/89)
Once in a while I'll read an essay that hits me just right.. the
writer knows what he's talking about and expresses himself well,
with humor and command of his language. Chuck McManis (hi, Chuck!)
writes a lot of articles that conform to those criteria - his
"It is impossible to sell a product that requires support for
less than $99 and make any money" posting from Jan '88 is one
that's found a permanent home on my hard drive. I read it every
once in a while and point a lot of people to it. It's a great
dose of "reality" and a beautiful piece of writing.
Here's another piece of prose posted to People/Link a couple
days ago which I think is right up there with Chuck's piece and
is a pleasure to read. This was written by one Jack Rash and it
concerns his adventure in installing MS-DOS WordPerfect 5.1 on
the Bridgeboard side of his Amiga. It's long but I think it's
worth the "bandwidth." Hope you enjoy it.
-------------
HAPPY THANKSGIVING from Sunny Orlando, Florida!
. . . or, as the locals call it, Hollywood East. Having been
transferred here directly from the real Hollywood, California, I
refer to Orlando as, HollyWEIRD East.
So all you brethren in points north won't feel bad, it is raining
like the proverbial cow p_____g on a flat rock here today!
This is somewhat of a "tongue in cheek" article about WordPerfect
v5.1 and the Amiga BridgeBoard. I trust everyone will read it in
the same spirit from which it was written, an attempt to spread
information, along with a generous sprinkling of Holiday Cheer.
The moral of the story? The Amiga is still the best darned PC for
the money on the market!
Oh, if Jerry Pournelle could ever learn this lesson. I know, he's
improved, but runs hot and cold, rather more like Totally Tepid for
you San Fernando Valley folk. Maybe if he had to PAY for all those
toys, he would soon forget his MACS and Zeniths and . . . Well,
you get the picture, most bang for the buck and all that.
The friendly Federal Express man delivered my update to WordPerfect
V5.1 yesterday afternoon, all 10 pounds, 11 disks, and 1500 pages
of it, (encompassing 2 books). Yes, my little installation fiend
friends, this one is a monster!
So what is an upload about Messy-DOS WordPerfect V5.1 doing on the
AmigaZone, especially when those Wizards in Orem have just made
their [on again/off again] latest and greatest maintenance update
for Amiga V4.1 available to us?
In one word, BridgeBoard. In short, It works fine . . . but, read
on.
Actually, this article grew out of a five hour ordeal which began
when Federal Express knocked on my door, to deliver the package.
The poor Fed-X man thought he was delivering a TURKEY from some
appreciative company, seriously! That gives you an appreciation
for the size of the package.
When I laid eyes on the big blue & white box, it seemed to shout,
"Wait 'til they get a load of me!"
I knew that this wouldn't be one of those quickie WP maintenance
update procedures like the multitudes from days gone by. You know
the kind, where you just copy the new files over the old ones and
re-install the printer drivers.
Nope, this one would require a "high colonic." That's a deep enema
for all you Joker fans.
Since April, 1988 WP Corporation has sent me somewhere between 8-10
maintenance updates for V5.0 and 4-6 for the Amiga version.
Installing them had gotten to be a little ritual. Every time I
would read about a maintenance update, I would dutifully call their
800 number and order it, relieving myself of somewhere between $0
and $20 for the privilege. Version 5.1 was $85! Most of the time,
(though not all), I couldn't tell any difference from the version
I had just relegated to obscurity, and the "new" one, especially
the MS-DOS updates.
The recent update for the Amiga version is very nice indeed. It is
even a surprise, given that they seem to want to drop Amiga
development, even though their better programmers know it is the
best PC platform to develop on. Alas, it is due to VOLUME, or a
lack thereof.
Where ARE those CBM Ads anyway? Is Orlando, Florida not in their
target market? Disney World, Universal Studios, NASA, 135,000,000
tourists a year and no ads in Orlando? Go figure Gould! The
lights are on in West Chester, but is anybody HOME? Earth to
Commodore. Come in please. Can someone get Andy Rooney to do an
investigative report on this?
The Amiga WP update however, is too little, too late. Especially
considering its LACK OF AMIGA FEATURES! Can you say, "Why do they
play passive-aggressive with the best stock WYSIWYG PC platform on
the market?" I knew you could! But I digress . . .
As I started to say, this article grew out of a 5 hour ordeal,
installing WP5.1 on my A2088 BridgeBoard. So, let's get to it.
Actually, the 5 hours weren't totally consumed with the
installation, and I don't want to create the impression that it is
difficult to install. WordPerfect Corporation's wizards have come
up with an Installation Program that makes it idiot proof. This is
one of the most intelligently written MS-DOS installation programs
I've ever seen! We expect that from WP Corp though, don't we?
Other companies should take lessons from WP Corporation on support
and customer relations. I won't mention any COMPANY names, but
this week I attempted to order the update to an MS-DOS spreadsheet
program called Quattro Pro, (this one is making a lot of noise with
the MS-DOS reviewer community). I ordered it on Monday, 11/20, the
very same day that I ordered WP v5.1.
Suffice it to say that 3 1/2 days later, I'm composing this on
WP5.1 and B__l__d International, (remember, no company names!),
hasn't even shipped Quattro Pro, even though I requested they ship
it by overnight air, which they agreed to do, but obviously didn't.
The B__l__d representative didn't even know what "Surpass" was,
even though his computer screen told him that because I was a
registered owner of it, I could get the Quattro Pro update for $99.
I even have Quattro v1.0 and Lotus V2.01 (which they have an
incentive switcheroo deal on) and still had to BEG to order the
update by phone! I almost gave up!
For those of you who don't foray into the MS-DOS world, Surpass was
a competing spreadsheet program released almost concurrent with
Quattro v1.0. It was one of the best MS-DOS programs written at
the time. It had font choices, formula & sheet linking, multiple
sheets in memory at once, graph printing from within the sheets,
etc. We're talking 1987 here! Well, Phillipe Kahn, head of
B__l__d International, was so taken with Surpass, he bought the
whole company, (a la Victor Kiam, Remington Shavers). This got him
the source code and he decreed that it should be incorporated into
Quattro and be re-born as Quattro Pro.
Before installing WP v5.1, I took to the bathtub, manuals and
yellow highlighters in hand. I filled the tub with a hot bubble
bath and settled in to read about this latest incarnation of the
world's best selling manipulator of words, (not to mention the best
manipulator of my Visa card)! I just ordered the latest v5.0
update and its "optional" Macro Editor 2 weeks ago.
By the time I emerged from the tub, with extremely wrinkled toes
and a most sweaty brow, two hours had passed! My plan of attack
was complete.
1. Back up the current v5.0 software to the linked virtual drive
on DH1: (just in case 5.1 didn't work and I had to re-install
5.0). Now, what WERE those damned switch commands for XCopy
and/or PCOPY v9,999.9? For that matter, where are the manuals?
Bill Gates may be smart, but he has no INTUITION! Talk about
your basic cluttered Workbench! [ puns intended :) ]
2. Make backup copies of the new disks, all 11 of them. OK, what
old 5 1/4 disks will be sacrificed THIS time? Since I'm
using old disks, better re-format them with Norton's Safe
Format first, to weed out any potential defects.
3. Find the new Janus manual and review how the hell one is to
crank up the Mouse on the BridgeBoard side.
4. Forget going out tonight, this is going to take a WHILE!
5. The backups are all done (2 1/2 hours). All the old v5.0
files have been deleted [gasp!]. Time to install this baby.
Oh sweet Antci- (...say it, say it...) -pation!
6. What's this little Red card peeking out of the top of
"Install/Learn/Utilities 1" disk? Let's see . . .
"The diskettes contained in this package contain compressed
files. In order to be able to use the files on these diskettes,
you MUST [in red] run the WordPerfect Installation program..."
This sucker is 11 disks long, COMPRESSED? Yep, the days of
of a down & dirty copy of the updated files are DEFINITELY
over!
7. "Place disk 1 in A: drive and type `install'." A very nice
and insightful program comes up, as close to intuition as
non-GUI MS-DOS gets. You select all the directories you
want certain portions of the program installed in, (i.e. WP51
vs WP, sub-directories for PRINTERS, MACROS, SPELLER, GRAPHICS,
etc.). Why, it even checks to see if the directories exist.
If they do not, it pleasantly asks if you want it to create
them. This will be a piece of cake. It even resists fooling
with your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files without your
permission, even though you can tell it wants to!
8. Finally, everything is ready, choose "proceed with
installation."
Whir, Gronk, Seek, extracting file such & so . . .
"Do you want [name a feature] "installed?"
Yes <cr>
"Please Place" [so & so] "disk in drive A:" . . .
Whir, Gronk, Seek, extracting file such & so . . .
Better call Pizza Hut, no time to cook tonight! What time is
it anyway? Oh God, it's 8:30 pm, missed the beginning of
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES. That's ok, I'm solving one of my own!
What's the name of that host anyway, Elliot Ness? My memory
is going . . . Been at this since 4:30 pm . . .
9. 9:30 pm: "Installation of WordPerfect files is now complete."
Now something about choosing printer drivers. Ok, let's see if
they've improved the DeskJet Plus driver. I've still got that
one I downloaded from the CI$ WPSIG on the virtual drive.
Yeah, I want to install a printer driver. What good is a
word processor if it won't PRINT anything?
"Please select a printer . . ." from the list of "every
printer that was ever manufactured" that is displayed.
"Please note that those printer names with a asterisk beside
them require another disk from WP Corporation." These cost $?
each . . . Yeah, Yeah
Pg Dn, Pg Dn, Pg Dn, Pg Dn, ad infinitum! Was that a
Commodore printer name I saw fly by!?!?
Finally find the Hewlett Packard section. [HP this & HP that]
Bingo! There's the HP DeskJet Plus & NO ASTERISK! Thanks WP.
Typed in its number.
"Please place `Printer 1' disk in drive A:"
Gronk, Whir, Seek, extracting . . .
"Please place 'Printer 2' disk in drive A:"
Gronk, Whir, Seek, extracting . . .
"Please place 'Printer 3' disk in drive A:"
Gronk, Whir, Seek, extracting . . .
My God, how long can this DeskJet Plus driver BE? The
Super_DJ driver from Dr. Hull at Creative Focus is only
5980 bytes long and it works with ANY Amiga program,
INCLUDING Amiga WordPerfect, although it DOES prefer its
OWN version, buried in the bowels of those mammoth *.prt files.
"HPDJPLU.PRS installed, do you wish to choose another printer?"
Yeah, but I also want that FILE NAME translated, PLEASE!
Yes <cr>
"Please place `Printer 1' disk in drive A:"
[You know the drill. Find HP PaintJet, scroll, scroll, scroll]
Oops, what's this? A PaintJet XL? Never heard of that!
Has IBM taken over HP or does Orem know something we don't?
Well, the PaintJet XL has an asterisk anyway, better choose
the plain PaintJet to be safe. Enter its number.
Gronk, Whir, Seek - ABRUPT HALT - SCREEN CLEAR
"The information for this printer was already extracted when
the DeskJet Plus was installed. Do you wish to choose another
printer?"
Then why didn't you tell me all the printers you were fetching?
I thought you were just getting the DeskJet Plus.
Yeah, I probably will get the HP LaserJet IIP when my credit
cards stop melting from this update! This driver wasn't
already extracted . . . Gronk, Whir and so on.
10. Thereupon, I was prompted for my WordPerfect License Number.
"So it would be handy in case I had to call the Customer
Support number or wanted a future update." Yeah right!
Besides, its ALREADY the future and I haven't seen this
puppy run on the BridgeBoard yet!! Now, where IS that
4.2 manual with my license number on it? Good thing I
had the boxes well marked when I packed to move.
Forget the Pizza, it's cold now anyway.
11. Found and typed in the license number. No, wait! That's
the AMIGA license number, not the MS-DOS one. Will it
know the difference. Do I care? Oh, there's the MS-DOS
number, ok WP5nnnnn <cr>.
Whir, Gronk, WRITE, WRITE, WRITE! (to BOTH drives C: & A:)
Hum, it just embedded the number in some file on C: AND
the "Install/Learn/Utilities 1" disk in A: (for which it had
previously requested re-insertion after the printer driver
marathon. Will have to check this out later . . .
12. WP loads and displays the Set-Up menus. The Bubble-Bath
study of the 1,100 main manual had paid off. I quickly
made choices, anxious to test drive this baby. As soon as
I finished making choices and backed out of the Set-Up
routine by repeatedly pressing 0's, [ought to write a Macro
for getting out of Set-Up], I was dumped to DOS, with a
final warning about the CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
It wasn't happy that I hadn't let it fiddle with them.
But, I knew that FILES & BUFFERS were set plenty
big enough already (40 & 20 respectively). No MS-DOS
program of any consequence will run without that today.
13. Just as well, I needed to activate the Mouse for the PC
side anyway.
Let's see, page 82 of the new Janus manual . . .
RUN SYS:PC/AMouse; (on the Amiga side. It SELF detaches)
C:\DOS\AMouse -c"***Copyright 1983 Microsoft***" -i -t
on the BridgeBoard side. Hum, same program names on each
of Janus' faces, but one HELL of a difference in invocation.
Better commit the MS-DOS side command to a batch file, no
way to put the syntax in a "filenote comment" on MS-DOS.
Created "DOMOUSE.BAT" in the BATCH sub-directory of C:
Added same line to "AUTOEXEC.BAT" & "WP.BAT" Overkill,
but will use process of elimination later.
DID IT WORK?
Yes, it loads and runs. All the new features seem to work fine, at
least those which I've had time to try-out in less than 24 hours!
WHAT STANDS OUT THE MOST?
Two things are MOST apparent, and they aren't what Orem's marketing
boys would pitch.
First, perhaps the most notable "feature" of WP v5.1 is something
which its documentation seems to be absolutely silent on, making
backup copies of the disks. I'm sure that by now, you are all
accustomed to the usual admonishment found on the first page or two
of any professional application package today, make backup copies
before using it. Not on this package. I've just completed another
search of the two manuals and not a peep about backups!
In fairness, since the original disks contain compressed files and
the Installation Program MUST be run to get at them, they aren't
usable to run the program anyway. I guess this could be construed
to imply that the act of installation will create the actual "run
time" copies of the program, be they on the hard drive or on
floppies.
However, neither the manuals or the installation program warns you
that it is going to ask for, and then write your license number, to
both your run time copy AND your original disk #1. Maybe I'm
wrong, but I DON'T LIKE THE IMPLICATION OF THIS ACT! I fear it is
a foreboding sign of the changing times in the historically
trusting offices at Orem. I do not like software taking presumed
liberties with my investment!
Having been a health care executive for many years, I understand
the need of a business to protect its product(s). In the computer
industry, its almost as if every company in the nation "sprang
forth full blown" with this revelation over the past 18 months.
Witness the multitude of law suits over alleged infringements and
the official position taken, (albeit from perceived necessity), by
the Association of Shareware Professionals regarding pirating and
copyright infringements. There is a paranoia afoot in this country
about all this and I hate to think it is based in reality. But, as
patients are fond of saying, "Doc, just because I'm paranoid
doesn't mean they aren't out to get me."
Moral? PAY FOR YOUR SOFTWARE and make backup copies BEFORE running
any new disk, commercial, shareware, freeware or a download. The
alternative may be our swift and unpleasant return to those
insidious copy protection police acts we all hate so much!
The second most notable aspect of WP v5.1 is also something that is
not emphasized. At least this one IS hinted at, if you read enough
of the manual and pay attention to your hard disk activity. What
am I talking about? RAM CRAM! WP is more than ever dependent on
OVERLAYS, swapping parts of itself in and out of memory from disk.
WP has gone the way of Lotus 1-2-3 and other major applications
which are bursting at the seams because of the 640K limit of
MS-DOS.
On a faster machine, with a faster hard drive, these little delays
may not even be noticeable. On a 4.77 Mhz XT, they verge on
distraction. Especially when, with a flick of LeftAmiga-M, I can
instantly be in an environment with linear addressing, up to 9
Megabytes of elbow room, and accessing an 11 MS SCSI hard drive
instead of a 65 MS RLL clunker. I've always thought that
demonstrating such a machine would be one of the BEST MARKETING
ploys CBM could use to win-over those IBM business types. Talk
about your "side by side" comparisons!
One thing is for certain. I could not imagine running this puppy
from a floppy drive based machine. The slowness would have to be
maddening! By the way, the manual DOES warn you several times that
720K floppies are the MINIMUM for running without a hard drive.
My A2088 BridgeBoard has been expanded to a full 640K of ram, (plus
other goodies like its own 32 Mg Hardcard, separate parallel &
serial ports and a clock). With WP running, I shelled to DOS and
ran CHKDSK. It indicated that I had only 120,000 bytes of memory
remaining. This was WITHOUT a document!
Admittedly, my CONFIG.SYS statements of FILES=40 & BUFFERS=20 takes
a little more memory, as do the other little niceties, like a
custom command line editor, CED, (similar to ConMan), a more able-
bodied version of ANSI.SYS, ANSI.COM and a disk controller error
monitor, ERRMON, (which gives more elaborate error messages than
DOS). However, in the aggregate, these items take less than 10-20K
and hook into the interrupt vectors, and are not TSR, (i.e. they do
not cause conflicts). Without these added spartan conveniences,
the XT side would be a regressed environment indeed.
Moral of this part? The Amy wins again! The Amiga version of WP,
while sorely lacking in features such as those in 5.1, (and true
WYSIWYG like ProWrite, Excellence, Pen Pal, etc), seamlessly
integrates itself into the environment. But, WP v5.1 running on an
XT, flows like cold molasses, notwithstanding the fact that it IS
feature rich indeed. The operational speed, WITH a hard disk and
WITHOUT graphics manipulations, is acceptable. If ported to the
Amiga, this thing could be a showcase product for WP Corp.
WHAT ABOUT THE MOUSE AND OTHER NEW FEATURES?
The Mouse emulation works with every function described in the WP
Manual. A renewed observation though on, "Off Mice & Messy DOS."
Using a mouse on an MS-DOS machine, as with so many other add-ons
which were not around when this ageing operating system was
created, is sort of clumsy. A mouse, to these machines, is really
an afterthought kind of kludge.
Unlike our Amys and the Macs, the rodent was not originally planned
to be there, and it shows. It shows in the lack of precision
steadiness with which we can maneuver in an Amiga program. I will
concede than I have not tried one of the new "high resolution" mice
for MS-DOS boxes, nor have I used a Bus Mouse on one. I've only
used a serial mouse and the Amy's emulation.
However, the serial mouse I did use was a Logitech 3 Button,
running under Windows, on a 20 MgHz 386 NorthGate series tower.
One doesn't get a much better combination (in MS-DOS) than a this!
The "one with the operator" feeling which we enjoy with the Amiga
mouse device was NOT there folks. It performed as stated, but I
probably will not use it much for anything other than quick cursor
positioning and clicking on menu choices.
As with the Amiga version, the Pull-Down menus are a nice addition.
They look suspiciously like an add-on product for v5.0 that I have
around here somewhere. These menus are available with a touch of
the Alt & = keys together. They can then be navigated with the
cursor keys and the "first letter" of their function. This,
coupled with the new CONTEXT SENSITIVE Help function, should
greatly lower the learning time for this product.
Being a hunt & peck typist, I especially like the enhancement to
the Spell Checker which offers to correct inappropriate
capitalization, often caused by clumsy slow fingers, like "THis."
The "Spreadsheet import" feature worked well too. You do have to
take care about your right margins relative to the number of
columns you're about to import though! If you MUST have a wide
range imported, change to a smaller font for the table which is
created for the import. You could also put the table on a separate
page and go to landscape paper settings. NOTE that you can make
this import "dynamically linked" to the spreadsheet. Update the
spreadsheet, go back to WordPerfect and re-load the document. The
table is automatically updated. NICE!
There is a new utility program with WP v5.1 which analyzes your
system. The manual says this is for the benefit of WP
Corporation's Technical Assistance Staff if you call them with a
problem. On my BridgeBoard, it lamented that my KeyBoard BIOS was
the "OLD" style, not the enhanced one. Nonetheless, WP runs the
"SHORTCUT" keyboard map just fine. This is actually more helpful,
(to me), than the mouse, as it gives you several of the mnemonic
key combinations, a la the recent Amiga update.
Finally, I DO NOT ADVISE your attempting to load a WP v5.1 file
into the Amiga WP 4.1. Can you say, "Stomp right past GOMF & GURU
to lock up." I knew you could!
There are far too many features to discuss here. I have included
copies of several of my files which "CRANK" all this up. Where
appropriate, I have commented them.
Please refer to the Janus V2 manual, Appendix J, Page 82 for a
discussion of the syntax of the command switches for invocation of
AMouse on the MS-DOS side.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to PLINK E-Mail me at
OLS326. Hope you enjoy the humor herein, even if you DON'T have a
BridgeBoard or WP v5.1. The findings are reassuring for we
Amigans, especially in the face of all the recent brouhaha over the
"Fate of the Amiga." As for me, I'm glad I've got both of my
A2000's!
START OF SAMPLE FILES
_____________________
File name: XT
Location: SYS:S directory on the Amiga side.
Function: Amiga side script file to wake-up the A2088 BridgeBoard.
I don't do this as part of the Startup-Sequence, as it takes some
80-100K of CHIP RAM, which I don't want to sacrifice unless
necessary. I call this script, "XT" and have it in my S:
directory, with the "S" bit set so it can be invoked (executed)
without typing Execute XT. Remember, if you use "Ed" to type in
this script or to change it, you MUST run the Protect program again
to re-set the S bit. Ed always clears it for some brain-damaged
reason! This is how you re-set the script bit:
Protect Sys:S/XT +S
NOTE the EIGHTH line. It activates the sharing of the mouse from
the Amiga side.
-------cut here to use-------
CD DH0: ;1. cd here so the PC "keys" files
; can be found
Echo "Initializing Janus..." ;2. optional message, not required
DH0:C/BindDrivers ;3. wakes up A2088, Power, POST,
; Boot, etc.
Wait 60 SECS ;4. give A2088 time to do its thing
STACK 2500 ;5. reduce stack temporarily, save
; RAM
runback DH0:PC/PCDISK ;6. set-up PCDISK for bus transfer
; operations
Wait 4 SECS ;7. give it 4 secs to set up
RUN SYS:PC/AMouse ;8. set up sharing of mouse
WAIT 2 SECS ;9. give it a couple of seconds to
; finish
run DH0:PC/PCWINDOW COLOR ;10. open the window to the PC, in
; color
STACK 25000 ;11. go back to original stack size
-------end of XT script-------
File name: AUTOEXEC.BAT
Location: Root Directory of C: drive (A2088 side).
Function: Same as Startup-Sequence on Amiga
-------cut here-------
C:\DOS\ANSI.COM
C:\UTIL\ERRMON
echo off
C:
cd c:\
C:\DOS\CPI STAT, BATCH
path=c:;c:\dos;c:\batch;c:\util;c:\util\norton;C:\quicken3
prompt $p$g
graftabl
graphics
mode co80
C:\util\NORTON\NCC BOOT /DOSCOLOR
echo on
NOVIRUS
C:\UTIL\CED
C:AMOUSE -c"***Copyright 1983 Microsoft***" -i -t
C:\BATCH\FFEED
C:\QUICKEN3\BILLMIND C:\QUICKEN3\SUN
echo off
C:\DOS\AMouse -c"***Copyright 1983 Microsoft***" -i -t
CLS
-------End Of Autoexec.bat-------
Name: WP.BAT
Location: C:\DOS\BATCH
Function: Invokes WordPerfect.
NOTE: The syntax for the Amouse command is significant. The
references to the directory "log" and "PCLOGIN" and "PCLOGOUT" keep
track of time usage for expense purposes, they are not part of
WordPerfect.
-------Cut here to use------
Echo off
C:
C:\DOS\AMouse -c"***Copyright 1983 Microsoft***" -i -t
cd c:\log
pclogin
cd c:\wp\DOCS
c:\wp\wp
C:
cd C:\
cls
CD C:\LOG
PCLOGOUT
CD C:\
CLS
echo ON
-------End of WP.BAT-------
Name: DOMOUSE.BAT
Location: C:\BATCH\DOMOUSE.BAT
Function: Actives Mouse driver on the A2088 side. Note switch
options. Refer to pages 82-84 of BridgeBoard Manual. It's only a
ONE LINER!
-------Start DOMOUSE.BAT-------
C:\DOS\AMouse -c"***Copyright 1983 Microsoft***" -i -t
-------End of DOMOUSE.BAT-----
----end of Jack's text---
--
Harv Laser | SAC-UNIX, Sacramento, Ca.
People/Link: CBM*HARV | UUCP=...pacbell!sactoh0!hrlaser