1.99x DENOTES EXPERIMENTAL VERSIONS OF EXECUTOR In an effort to keep our customers in the development loop, we are periodically releasing experimental versions of Executor. These experimental versions are numbered 1.99a, 1.99b, 1.99c, etc. We try not to break features with new releases, but sometimes that happens, so be aware that anything mentioned in these notes may fail to work. To keep totally up to date, you should join the Executor Interest mailing list. To do so, send e-mail to "majordomo@nacm.com" with a blank subject line and a mail body of "subscribe executor" and then you'll have access to a more timely forum concerning the latest developments in Executor. HOW TO INSTALL This distribution has an installation program which will automatically install Executor from two floppies. To run the installation script, make sure that the first floppy (the one with this README.1ST file on it) is in your 3.5" floppy drive. If that drive is drive "A:", all you need to do is: C:\> A:\INSTALL Unlike previous versions of Executor's installer, starting with 1.99i, the installer program will allow you to install Executor anywhere on your hard drive. IMPORTANT: If you are using disk cacheing you should set it to only do read caches. Write caches can result in the ".hfv" files being corrupted if Executor dies unexpectedly. (NOTE: if you forget to turn off your write cache, you may have to reinstall the ".hfv" files after Executor crashes). MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE AFTER YOU INSTALL The installation process creates a "docs" directory that contains other files that may help you to better understand Executor. The most important of these is called "faq", which stands for "answers to Frequently Asked Questions". EXECUTOR NEEDS A MOUSE DRIVER TO WORK In addition to needing a mouse to be physically connected to your computer, Executor requires a mouse driver to be loaded before it can run. If Executor complains that you don't have a mouse installed, even though you have one connected, the problem is that your autoexec.bat does not load the mouse driver for use with DOS programs. Since many people only use their mouse with Windows, which has its own mouse driver, they don't have the mouse driver commands in their autoexec.bat. The exact changes that need to be made to your autoexec.bat varies depending on what type of mouse you have, and where the mouse driver has been installed on your system. In general, anyone knowledgeable about your particular configuration should be able to give you simple instructions for modifying your autoexec.bat, whether that's the technical support line of the company that made the machine, or your local DOS wizard. HOW TO GET STARTED COPYING MACINTOSH FORMATTED FLOPPIES Executor/DOS can only read High Density (1.4Mb) formatted floppies. Most older Macintosh applications were distributed on 800K floppies which can't be used with Executor, so MAKE SURE you use 1.4Mb Macintosh formatted floppies with Executor/DOS. Executor/DOS doesn't format floppies for you; you'll have to do that on a Macintosh, for now. The key to copying Macintosh formatted floppies is the "Desk Accessory" called HFS_XFer. Desk accessories are little programs that piggyback off other programs to do their work. It's like the old Vermont joke (beware, provincial humor does not always translate well) "You can't get there from here (pause) you have to go someplace else, first". The upshot is that you must run a program, almost any program, in order to find and use "HFS_XFer". I usually start up the "Mines" program. Once Mines is started, and the initial "OK" box is clicked, you can find "HFS_XFer" under the Apple menu at the far left of the menu bar. Internally at ARDI we have a file browser that allows you to graphically copy, delete and rename files. It will be included with E/D 2.0, but it is not yet available to the general public. It is important to note that you have three different areas that you can copy to/from. In addition to Macintosh formatted floppies, you can copy Macintosh files to your hard disk, either as DOS files, or as Macintosh files within a single DOS file which represents a Macintosh "volume". This fully-enabled version of Executor/DOS 1.99x also allows you to copy to/from Mac formatted SCSI drives (if you have a SCSI adapter) and copy from Mac formatted CD ROMs if you have a CD ROM drive. When you copy Mac files as DOS files, they are broken up in two halves. One half will have the original name of the file, the other will have a "%" prepended to the original name. The file with the original name represents the "data fork" of the Macintosh file, and that's where data that can be used in both Macintosh and DOS environments resides. The other half, the one with the "%" prepended is the "resource fork" and it contains information that only makes sense in the Macintosh environment. Using the DOS filesystem to represent Macintosh files is very awkward. In fact, if the names contain funny characters, you might get an "I/O error". The alternative is to store files within a single "Macintosh Volume". This demo version of Executor comes with a 5 Mb Mac Volume. It should be sufficient to allow you to explore Executor. While Executor is working within a Macintosh volume, files can have upper and lower case names with lengths up to 31 characters, but your DOS programs can't see the individual files. More about what's going on is in the printed documentation. USING MKVOL TO CREATE A NEW VOLUME Although we don't supply documentation with this demo version of Executor, you may notice the "MKVOL" program in the "\EXECUTOR" directory. If you are adventurous and want to use mkvol, it is important that the new volume that you create have the suffix ".HFV". If you do not call your new volume "something.HFV", Executor will ignore it. RUNNING PROGRAMS DIRECTLY OFF FLOPPIES Running programs directly off floppies is incredibly slow. You will find it much quicker to use HFS_XFer to copy a program from a floppy into one of your ".hfv" files and then run the program directly out of the ".hfv" file. UNIXISMS LEFT IN EXECUTOR Executor was developed originally under UNIX. A few "UNIXisms" have remained in Executor; they will be gone in 2.0. Sometimes you will see "/" used where "\" would normally be used in DOS. In addition, switches are introduced with a leading "-" instead of "/". We apologize for this annoyance. USE WITH WINDOWS Executor/DOS 1.99x will run under Windows 3.1. You can make a double-clickable icon for Executor by using the Program Manager in Windows: Choose "New..." from the Program Manager "File" menu Click the "Program Item" radio button Click "OK" Enter "Executor" in the Description field Enter "c:\executor\executor" in the Command Line field Enter "c:\executor" in the Working Directory field Add a Shortcut Key if you wish Click on "Change Icon... Click on "OK" when the error message comes up Find, Select and Click OK on an Icon you like Click on "OK" to leave "Program Item Properties" Remember, Executor is its own windowing system. It does not need Windows to be effective, although the only way you can run two Mac programs at once it to do so under Windows. Once you have one copy of Executor running under Windows, you can use "Left_Alternate-Tab" and "Right_Alternate-Enter" to hot-key back and forth between different programs and screen modes. USE WITH OS/2 Executor/DOS 1.99x works with OS/2 2.11, but not with previous versions. To get E/D 1.99x to run you'll need to adjust use these settings: DPMI_DOS_API ENABLED DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT 16 EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT 0 XMS_MEMORY_LIMIT 0 USE WITH NT Currently, Executor/DOS 1.99x does not run under Windows NT. This should change soon, I believe. IF EXECUTOR RUNS SLOWLY Executor needs about 4 Mb of memory to work efficiently. If it does not have enough physical memory, it will make do by writing infrequently used parts of itself to your hard disk and only "paging" them in when they're actually used. However, DOS systems can have their memory artificially eaten up in too many ways to describe here. If think Executor is running slowly, you might want to have a DOS guru check to make sure that it's not being memory starved. CREDITS Executor is a product of ARDI (Abacus Research and Development, Inc.). The majority of Executor proper was designed and implemented by Clifford T. Matthews. The synthetic CPU and DOS port were done by Mathew Hostetter. Executor was originally written under X-Windows, then ported to NEXTSTEP and finally ported to DOS using DJGPP, a port of the Free Software Foundation's gcc compiler done by DJ Delorie. The file "EXECUTOR.EXE" is actually a modified version of DJ's "GO32" DOS extender, the source to which is freely available, from us (for the cost of a floppy plus postage). More information about the Free Software Foundation and DJGPP is included in our documentation. Thanks! Clifford T. Matthews questions@ardi.com Founder +1 505 766 9115 Phone ARDI +1 505 247 1899 FAX