CompuServe Messages

Ok, I think I can answer most of your questions… — 1. What the heck are gadgets, gurus, intuitions, et. cet? Gadgets, are those things people like to play with. On the Amiga, they are the buttons, sliders, etc. that you use the re-size windows and scroll text or scroll files names. Gurus, the nick-name for "system/program crashes". When something goes wrong, and the Amiga crashes. It doesn't just "freeze", the Amiga will *try* to give you a message about what went wrong. Originally, when the system crashed a black screen appeared containing a "guru meditation error" message in red box. By decoding the message (it is numeric) you could figure out if the CPU was fed a bad command or data, or if a support library failed. The nickname "guru" came from a hobby that the orginial Amiga developers engaged in — balancing (meditateing) on a joyboard. A joyboard was a special surfboard-joystick, used for a surfing game. Intuition, is the REAL name of the "graphic user interface". The Workbench (and most other programs), use the information in the "intuition.library" (stored in KickStart ROM) to draw all the boxes, buttons, gadgets, windows, etc. — 2. When I get ready to quit, I find that there are applications I need to quit […] I'm assuming your referring to the QUIT command used to kill the Workbench "application". While the WB with not quit when something it launched is still running, you don't really need to kill those launched programs. You can just turn the power off. As long as a program isn't writing to a disk, it is safe to turn the Amiga off at any time. — 3. How much memory, beyond the 2 meg standard, can I put on-board, or somewhere, and how mu$h can it cost me? The A1200 has no sockets on its motherboard for mor memory. You can add an expansion board through the "belly slot", that can hold another 8-megs of memory. Adding memory through the belly slot can double the speed of the A1200, since the A1200 will no longer need to run programs in the first 2-megs that the graphic sub-system "shares" with the CPU. If you add an CPU/RAM expansion board with a 68030 or 68040 CPU, you can add upto 128-megs of memory depending on the features of that expansion. — 5. I am a little disappointed that WB/OS 3.0 did not come with the speach/speak/talk files. Can I get them still somewhere? The text-to-speech software that Commodore used in the past, was leased from a third party. Commodore decided not to renew the lease for AmigaOS 2.1 & 3.0. The speech software from AmigaDOS 2.0, still works with 2.1 & 3.0, and if you could find a frien that has the 2.0 files… You can still play music, sound, & digitized speech files using programs like deliTracker, Sound, SSPlayer, etc. Check the Libraries. — 6. I have a battery-backed clock. Its a DKB 1202 (I think). If this is the board that fits in the belly slot, you have a way to add upto 8-megs of memory using 32-bit, 72-pin SIMMs. This board uses the same SIMMs that the A4000 uses. If its the small daughter board that plugged into the middle of the A1200's motherboard, you just have the clock. The clock should be setable using the TIME preference manager found in the PREFS drawer. Set the correct time & date, then SAVE. Ron. – ap'ing with AP. (Eagles may fly, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.)