man@cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine) (05/08/91)
To the terminally curious, I asked before 2.0 appeared if it would be possible to run it from a machine with only an 800K floppy and I was told that the answer was "No" since HyperCard grew too much. Well, as necessity is the mother of invention and I needed to be able to take my Mac with me (without its HD) and run HyperCard, I managed to come up with a configuration that does work, and leaves the whole floppy available for my stacks. The solution is heavily dependent upon the fact that my Mac has 2 Megs of RAM. Here's how I did it: 1. Create a barebones version of System 6.0.5 on a floppy. 2. Create a self-extracting archive of HyperCard and the Home stack. 3. Get an old version of the System and use it to create a MiniFinder (for convenience, install the HyperCard icon). 4. Remove the Finder from the floppy and rename the MiniFinder 'Finder'. 5. Find a RamDisk program and set up about a 1 Meg RamDisk that copies over System and Finder (the MiniFinder version). There will be enough room so that the floppy can contain the System, the MiniFinder, the RamDisk program, and the SEA containing HC 2.0. 6. Set the RamDisk program to the start-up application. Then you're done. When you boot up off the floppy: 1. The RamDisk program will create a 1M Ramdisk and copy the system and MiniFinder to it. Use the MiniFinder to launch the SEA program (using the Other...) button. 2. Dearchive HC and Home onto the RamDisk. 3. Press command-shift-1 to eject the floppy. 4. Double-click the HyperCard icon in the MiniFinder. 5. Put in your disk with all your stacks and open one of them from within HyperCard. Voila'. Simple, eh? :-) If anybody is interested, I could probably create an IMAGE version of my startup disk and mail it out. --Mark