[Simon:] I think it actually does end up by saying have a nice day.
[John:] Oh oh.
[Simon:] Have you changed the disk before you get anything....
[John:] Read the s read the screen. Thank you. I'm very glad you're here.
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] [LAUGHTER] I def I definitely should have done this tomorrow night [].
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Or th or last night. Last night would have been very nice actually. Right disk number four?
[Simon:] Three. Which you might have already had actually, but it did say insert three....
[John:] I had three ready here. Right. And you can it's alright, it'll only ask and say I don't like it, put the proper one in, silly idiot.
[Simon:] Probably yeah. [stapling sounds] ... Yeah it's got all these little pop-up utilities.
[John:] I don't know what the parents of some of my students are going to think when I'm showing them how to do G C S E maths on the computer instead of the rather. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]... Er it's, it's not a problem, it just er it shows up in odd little corners of the. Oh one of the things it'll load shortly is er...
[John:] files. Ooh. Pretty sounds through the speaker.... I do like that and it is so easy to do and
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] it's been proved
[Simon:] Well worth it.
[John:] time and time again hasn't it? People don't mind waiting if they know
[Simon:] the frustration.
[John:] how long they're waiting for.
[Simon:] Exactly.... Er... yeah you get loads of nice things, you get paintbrush... er calculators,
[John:] Card file even.
[Simon:] er you get, you get quite a good editor, just comes free with Windows.
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] Quite a good word processor.
[John:] A word processor?
[Simon:] Which is vag it's basically a subset of Word.... Erm
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] it, it, it looks a lot nicer than Works and yo it allows you to, obviously it allows you to access Windows fonts, which is a great advantage.
[John:] This is the reason I wanted it
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] is to have fonts and then I
[Simon:] Yeah. You've got a super font selection.
[John:] [whistles through teeth]
[Simon:] Erm...
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] it lacks some capabilities of Microsoft Works.
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] I mean obviously what they want you to do is buy Word.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Erm... er for example s
[John:] Mm. Trie tried to persuade Sue to ask er them if the they could all change to Word at work.
[Simon:] Are they on WordPer WordPerfect at work?
[John:] Yeah. And stuck on it for life I think. All the ones, the old secretaries who've been using it for years think it's absolutely wonderful.
[Simon:] Mm. I d I, I don't think think it's so bad. I... you know
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] it, it, it... it is unconventional in the sense that it doesn't
[John:] Yeah. I, I think it's things like I was trying to do Setup last night, I was trying to set... page length, you know paper size, and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] erm the default font. And they're all on different menus and they're a you're trying all sorts of different keys.... F, F One I don't, I don't, F Three, F One
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] [LAUGHTER] F One, F One [] to get your... keys up, your
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] template for your keys and try and find out which one does what. [beeping]
[Simon:] Oops! a new disk.
[John:] Whoo!...
[Simon:] Course there are versions of Windows for the Two Eight Six.
[John:] Yes.
[Simon:] I wonder if that would be worth getting? Probably not. I think they've probably lost the backward compatibility by now.
[John:] Erm they're somewhat cheaper. They weren't very good.
[Simon:] No
[John:] Erm...
[Simon:] huge complaints at the time weren't there?
[John:] Cricklewoods I think were selling them about sort of fifteen quid each. Erm I've got a Three Eight Six version. Windows Three Eight Six is no good to you?
[Simon:] No. In one of the er tacky comics was selling, I think
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] it was like Windows One... that was it said the last Windows version that would run on Two Eight Sixes.... You playing with your mouse again?
[John:] No I'm just turning the brightness up.
[Simon:] Oh.... Oh it's got a passable er database called Cardfile.
[John:] Yeah. you know if you were just keeping your
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] records collection on it or something.
[Simon:] I was, I, I've always said
[John:] Actually it would be ideal for these wouldn't it, for these tapes?
[Simon:] Yeah, yeah keep your accounts
[John:] Set records for that and just
[Simon:] I only got it cos we were going to run this D T P package
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] and erm when I, when I installed it I was very pleasantly surprised, at the... basically at the number of useful little applications that they threw in with it.
[John:] Mm. I, I think it's, it's great for the price.
[Simon:] Oh! I was reading the other day th th you can check this out. There's supposed to be something in here called erm it's an undocumented feature of Windows Three Point One an
[John:] or
[Simon:] n er n no it's a, it's a, it's a, an er diagnostics utility...
[John:] Ah
[Simon:] for
[John:] yes!
[Simon:] er DOS or something called A D M or something like, or D M A or I dunno what
[John:] Yeah I read that
[Simon:] but it's just hanging about somewhere.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] So I guess you just do a directory of all the executable files and see if there's anything in there... erm but I like diagnostic programs.
[John:] Does it set up a lot of directories?
[Simon:] Just two I think one within the other. I think it sets up Windows
[John:] I like
[Simon:] and Windows flash system.
[John:] Good. Well that's tidy the way I like [LAUGHTER] it [].
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Smart Drive going in, the new Smart Drive... p p presumably it will put my mouse driv my new mouse driver in for me for the day when I want one?
[Simon:] Think so.
[John:] And then I can ah... well I'll try a... I don't know whether to try a mouse or a MyMouse. I should have had MyMa MyMouse in there and then it would have picked up the MyMo MyMouse driver.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] But presumably I can put a mouse driver in later?
[Simon:] Yeah you can just
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] get... once your Windows is running it has its own setup menu
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] which you can go to and p
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] do things like that.
[John:] I've read a bit about sort of erm... there's a special editor for a system file isn't there?
[Simon:] Erm I don't know much about that. There's
[John:] Th th a
[Simon:] th th there's, basically there's an ord it has an ordinary editor which is sub right, it's an ASCII editor that appears in a window and it's for using, for editing the ASCII files. [cough] But I don't know enou much about the system part of Windows.... [beep]
[John:] Well this is, this compared to... WordPerfect is an absolute dream
[Simon:] I only actually sort of drink want a coffee or something?
[John:] Yeah, yes please. there's one of my superstitions you see.
[Simon:] What's that?
[John:] Erm when I'm doing things like loading things that are close to the operating system I don't turn kettles [LAUGHTER] on [] [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Avoid spikes! [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Oh dear!
[John:] I almost turn the fridge off but not quite, no. I think oh well, so what, you know the fridge is going on a lot
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] the kettle.
[Simon:] Yeah. They got all these stupid fucking suggestions... [reading] now would be a great time to remove the serial number []. Now would be a great time to get off my screen and go back to Microsoft.
[John:] ... are they going to ask for this at the end of the installation?
[speaker003:] I dunno
[Simon:] Hey!
[John:] type courier?
[Simon:] Oh better ones than that. That's just the beginning.
[John:] Bold.... Now this, is this is going at a fantastic rate....
[Simon:] Yeah. Compared to the WordPerfect. Courier ten fifteen. [whispering] [].
[John:] It hasn't asked me any questions about how weird my machine is or wh what are you doing with an Amstrad or anything.
[Simon:] ...
[speaker003:] Modern.
[Simon:] Er I think
[John:] and this is the other thing that
[Simon:] Yeah?
[John:] O Olayan D L L stuff, I can just whip stuff from spreadsheets to word processors and st stick it on a clipboard.
[Simon:] Supposedly I, I think there are problems with it working. I, I, I er I ge end up never really tackled these problems but I have heard rumours that
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] erm not enough people exhaustively enough implement O L E in their applications
[John:] file. Yeah.
[Simon:] or you'd be able to exchange it. So the capability is there but not used
[John:] Amipro We've got a version of it.
[Simon:] What's this?
[John:] Amipro
[Simon:] Amipro
[John:] We've got a version of Amipro that doesn't write.
[Simon:] There you go, Times Roman in
[John:] Hey! That's a Cambridge I think.
[Simon:] That's a tasty one, that, that
[John:] Yeah?
[Simon:] it's a good one.
[John:] Yeah. I've got erm... proportional space code which is very similar to it on the Microsoft Works. Have you got Panasonic?
[Simon:] Depends on your printer
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] driver.
[John:] Panasonic Panasonic.
[Simon:] Mm. I did have a, a Panasonic Times.
[John:] Has this got erm joined up writing as well? Two types
[Simon:] Er... Don't remember. It's got all kinds of funny ones.
[speaker003:] .
[John:] [singing] Bom bom bom [].
[Simon:] It might ask you a question about the A Twenty driver.
[John:] It should be okay actually. Erm DOS Five was one of the best buys I ever made because
[Simon:] There's something there called W S swap, I wonder if that's a word processor to word processor converter... another undocumented feature.
[speaker003:] I think
[Simon:] I s I, I never really played with Windows, I just installed it to do the job of running this one application... and then left it alone.
[John:] Well I I got it cos Sue needs to know, I mean the things they do at, at her work are just unbelievable.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I mean there's one woman there working on a Three Eight Sixes twenty five megahertz and she works off the floppy all the time, she doesn't use the hard drive. She's got an eighty meg hard drive.
[Simon:] Yeah, presumably it's what she's used to, she's used to floppy.
[John:] It's what she's used to. And she was sort of telling Sue to do this, and Sue said this isn't is it? And I'm thinking work on your, work on your hard drive and when you've got it the way you want it and when you've got it the way you want it save it to the floppy and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] erm n they won't buy disks, they got about twenty sort of faculty heads
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] and they can all give them work. There are about half a dozen who regularly do and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] say you need a box of disks for each of them
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] and you keep their work on their disks and if they want it
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] doesn't belong to the typist it belongs to the
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] the faculty head. And if she wants to do her own bit of typing and give it to someone else sh
[Simon:] b selection!
[John:] Right no printer attached so... I will have a
[Simon:] You need your mouse.
[John:] a Panasonic. Can I page down?
[Simon:] You can probably cursor down, yeah.
[John:] Or tab?
[Simon:] Cursor down. Tab will move you to a different part of the
[John:] Erm page page
[Simon:] se search.
[John:] down.
[Simon:] Yeah should be able to do that... you might even be able to jump by typing initial letter
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] but I doubt it
[John:] y yes
[Simon:] Ah there you go!
[John:] I did I didn't doubt it for a minute, I thought I know this
[Simon:] Which one have you got?
[John:] I've got the K X B one hundred and twenty four
[Simon:] That's a huge one that is.
[John:] it really is
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] it doesn't do colour
[Simon:] Well what do you expect?
[John:] Okay. Erm That's all I want, really.
[Simon:] Good. You might not know how to select multiple ones but
[John:] Erm if I want another one I
[Simon:] Ah, do you know what you want?
[John:] I do want.
[Simon:] What's E P T, is that like a network?
[John:] Ooh ooh I don't know
[Simon:] Printer port or something I've never seen that before on a menu
[John:] E P T E P T crunch crunch. Now WordPerfect did that
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] It buggered about on it
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] and
[speaker003:] Pow!
[John:] and ever since then er well the only thing I've done on it since then is to just er Sue loaded
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] WordPerfect on it to compare it with the other one [whispering] and it was... I er said []
[Simon:] Presumably it's just fragmented your
[John:] Yeah. I said I'm going to have to clear that and delete a bit of stuff off and load it with and load WordPerfect again.
[Simon:] Do you want to use my disk?
[John:] Que est-ce que c'est? [LAUGHTER] Yes, yes I would love to, I would love to erm ooh look at that!
[Simon:] That's so cool!
[John:] Yeah I've wanted to
[speaker003:] Defrag me disk
[John:] about the last month or so I've felt it getting slower.
[Simon:] And you haven't got a utility to do it, you just have to take it out and put it back on again?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm... chug chug chug chug chug chug....
[Simon:] Wow. Oh this is where it er loads all your applications. Er this I don't understand, I fucked up at this stage.
[John:] Right. Setup needs to know the application name for DOS edit. [reading] Select the application name form the following list and choose [] okay or press enter, and its DOS editor
[Simon:] It is in fact it is that isn't?
[John:] That's what I would call it, yeah?
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] So it was a good guess there.
[Simon:] Mm.... You got GEM have you?
[John:] Yeah.... the disks that might work
[Simon:] Real GEM?
[John:] Real GEM, GEM.
[speaker003:] Log off.
[John:] the GEM
[Simon:] GEM
[John:] Well I've got one that came with erm Timeworks which is, it works properly and
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] it looks nice.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Ah this looks prettier though.
[Simon:] Yeah,
[John:] Let's see. power.
[Simon:] That's okay. That's that is Works Two isn't it?
[John:] Yeah, that's Works Two. I could, I would very much like Works for Windows some time. Perhaps we can
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] buy it between us one day. might buy it.
[Simon:] The people upstairs who must have got it. And the I had a look at it once, it did look a bit
[John:] It is
[Simon:] flasher.
[John:] it is better it's got erm, there are things... I think one of the, I'm
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] not sure but I think one of the things is
[Simon:] Yeah that's right.
[John:] erm that you can have character strings as the arguments of functions in the spreadsheet and database. bloody ages doing things like if, if mode so and so to work out whether it's a Monday or a Tuesday or something and then trying and everything else to try and get
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] set something to a Monday.
[Simon:] Mm
[John:] Erm that was okay, wasn't it?
[Simon:] No.
[John:] Ah. Right, sorry that's erm none of those. Okay, so that was loading W P Fifty One. Doesn't it allow to type in?
[Simon:] I don't know.
[John:] You do it late, okay.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Ah, that's an old version of it... Works. So should I say none of those
[Simon:] Might as well I don't know
[John:] I'll say none of those because
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] In case they don't want to handle because it's going to, yeah and it's gonna get it's just a backup for Works
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] for a quick and dirty on the same disk.
[Simon:] Ooh, it knows about WordPerfect!
[John:] [LAUGHTER] It would! Multilabel office and all sorts of things it knows about.
[speaker003:] Slow. ...
[John:] I don't think O S Two runs Windows faster than that! [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] Somehow [].
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] It's, it's quite a fast hard drive you've got isn't it?
[John:] It's a
[Simon:] You've got G W Basic and M S Microsoft Basic.
[John:] Yeah. I'm getting rid of one of those.
[Simon:] So they'll all get icons now, they'll appear as icons on your er applications.
[John:] On m on my highly.... Oh that's good I can go round.
[Simon:] And your mouse driver still doesn't work! Er well there's no point running the tutorial until
[John:] go to mouse.
[Simon:] Yeah er so the tutorial
[John:] exit Setup exit Setup.
[Simon:] N er s sk skip tutorial, don't exit the Setup, no exit the Setup might eliminate further setup
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] steps.
[John:] Okay, right okay.... Skip tutorial.
[Simon:] Probably exit Yeah.
[John:] I wasn't thinking there.... [reading] Now setup remove any floppies from your drives [], thank you I'd forgotten.
[Simon:] Yes I always d forget that.
[John:] We'll leave the last one in.
[Simon:] [cough]
[John:] Soft boot, restart your computer. So, erm, if I
[Simon:] We turn him over to DOS first and modify your mouse driver file from
[John:] Exactly.
[Simon:] mine. Mm. Yeah
[John:] And my button pops in and out does it? Oh well I think I'll ju I'll just play with the tab and make it pop in and out a few times
[Simon:] Oh alright!
[John:] Oh
[Simon:] It's great isn't it?
[John:] [LAUGHTER]...
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Right, loading Windows, and it was just like that eh? That
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] was that was...
[Simon:] really painless wasn't it, considering the amount of software that was loaded.
[John:] Yeah.... Right it
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] funny to see how much disk space was you've got left []. [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Ah, now we won't edit. First of all let's use the mouse to edit, see what dri driver it picks up.
[Simon:] Mhm
[John:] No it's not MyMouse it's Microsoft it's Amstrad Mouse, cos I haven't got me real mouse with
[Simon:] Mm,
[John:] me.
[Simon:] right. [typing noises]
[John:] Mouse slash D one slash nothing, default
[Simon:] It'll figure it out.
[John:] Right, Microsoft Six Point Two Six, that's my old one.... I think.
[Simon:] Maybe it reads all the Microsoft
[John:] there's a I think there's, oh I don't know. I think that's the old mouse driver.
[Simon:] Well, when you have a look in the autoexec you'll probably find that there's been a few
[John:] Anyway
[Simon:] modifications made....
[John:] [yawn] we won't save their version in case we wreck it, will we?
[Simon:] Er [LAUGHTER]
[John:] [LAUGHTER] Yes we will but watch this. wiggle my mouse off....
[Simon:] [yawn]
[John:] Whee! It works.
[Simon:] Oh good
[John:] Good... What I though it was
[Simon:] I haven't got a mouse pad unfortunately.
[John:] Right, erm
[Simon:] Now what's it done? It's added s Windows to your path, that was very discreet of it.
[John:] So rem MyMouse.
[Simon:] It's put Smart Drive in at the front. That wasn't there before was it?
[John:] Er, no it wasn't. Smart Drive goes in first eh? Then comes dis it remmed out the com spec.
[Simon:] [yawning] Yeah [].
[John:] Stuck a few things, hmm?
[Simon:] It's put in front of the path hasn't it? And it's, it's
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] declared a temp variable for temp files.
[John:] Okay.... And I remmed out those echo on
[Simon:] Yeah, prompt.
[John:] prompt
[Simon:] Keyboard error
[John:] I remmed out the graphics.... Erm was there a C colon in front of that slash DOS?
[Simon:] No no, there wasn't.
[John:] Perhaps there used to be and I lost it.
[Simon:] Well there wasn't when I first looked at that file.
[John:] Yeah. Perhaps there was at some stage and I lost it.
[Simon:] There doesn't need to be anyway.
[John:] No no got some more.
[Simon:] Well there you go!
[John:] I didn't do much to that at all actually.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm I don't need to touch that because
[Simon:] No.
[John:] I don I don't put MyMouse in there, I put Mouse in choose which one I want it in Okay.
[Simon:] Well when you reboot it then remember to type your mouse command before you start Windows....
[John:] It doesn't automatically boot into Windows then? Ah.
[Simon:] No.
[John:] win and various parameters to get it
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] So click on our we exit. We don't alter that.
[Simon:] Yeah........
[John:] Oh
[Simon:] [yawning] Yeah []... it will have done things like, given you more files and buffers.
[John:] We don't need to be editing w probably only gonna look at it now.
[Simon:] Yeah, probably.... No it doesn't seem to have given you any more files and buff
[John:] fifty perhaps
[Simon:] what you had before, fifteen to twenty five
[John:] Yeah, okay.
[Simon:] I guess you had enough.
[John:] Er rem shell.
[Simon:] Now you high load Smart Drive don't you?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Oh no you commented that out. Or did it comment that out?
[John:] I did.
[Simon:] You did. Cos you put the date in there.
[John:] Yeah. Erm I, I thought that was a good idea, putting the date of when I remmed it out.
[Simon:] Mm it is.
[John:] I think only trouble is it's hard to put the date of when you remmed it back in [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Unremmed it in.
[Simon:] Yes. [sniff] Er puts that in.
[John:] Right. it says in lots of we shouldn't put that in anyway, but I wasn't sure what it did.
[Simon:] I've no idea what it does. I think it's only a Windows thing.
[John:] . Okay that's fine isn't it?
[Simon:] Yeah....
[John:] Mm.... character pointer. Erm before we go anywhere...
[Simon:] Wow.
[John:] I want to keep up Q Basic. Er what do we want to do? see the survival guide....
[Simon:] Wow.
[John:] Erm index.
[Simon:] That's great! You know what I have to do with my G W Basic? I have to sit there like typing in random keywords to see if it's a keyword.
[John:] Yeah, it's so easier. Erm function
[Simon:] Ah, I'm not sure whether I ever did that!
[John:] is the obvious one. Hurray!
[Simon:] Ah!
[John:] [LAUGHTER] So it was worth it just for that going
[Simon:] Yeah!
[John:] into Q Basic. Erm, right. You want a copy of Q Basic?
[Simon:] Yes please!
[John:] Right, well, I think before we start Windows... I'll erm I'll reload... I, I'll un-rem that.
[Simon:] This is my do it yourself manual, that I just learned by trial and error.
[John:] Oh, excellent, excellent. An ideal WordPerf word processor application that. Okay so you can play with your own. So we'll get out of this I think... Okay. I mean we could load one if you want to play. Where are we? Er let's open something and see what we've got.... Erm star dot pass... Where does it keep its? In DOS doesn't it?
[Simon:] Yeah,.
[John:] So over there then.
[Simon:] E T
[John:] this is just like sort of Microsoft Works, you can play about with that erm
[Simon:] Yeah, it's good that.
[John:] DOS.
[Simon:] what is it? Microsoft Works is wri written in Q Basic
[John:] Yeah. Erm, gorilla is throwing bananas at the gorilla and you have to get that traj je trajectory right. So if you look at the source for gorilla
[Simon:] Ooh! [LAUGHTER]
[John:] you'll see I had to calculate parabola,
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] Yeah [].
[John:] erm nibbles. Nibbles is an interesting one that I played one night and I was going cor! I can do this! Let's have a quick nibble, okay.
[Simon:] [yawn]
[John:] Loading and parsing nibbles, one or two players. I c I, I won't be able to do any of this but you can have a quick go. Erm... Shift F Five Shift F Five. Okay. Are you ready for this worm? It goes creeping round and you have to pick up numbers in order
[Simon:] Mm. Mm.
[John:] and you have to use your cursor keys
[Simon:] Ah, right.
[John:] to turn it. You don't have to play if you don't want to.
[Simon:] I don't think I'm capable!
[John:] Right, okay.
[Simon:] I wan I want to see Windows going, I want to see your mouse going on Windows.
[John:] Okay you want to see the mouse going on Windows. Now [whistles through teeth]
[Simon:] I'll tell you something else
[John:] Yeah?
[Simon:] on quite a few occasions, Windows ran until the first time I rebooted the computer....
[John:] Oh dearie me. Well if
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] it does that I suggest that we look at it again tomorrow. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] Yeah, yeah that's a good idea.
[John:] Erm [sucks teeth]
[Simon:] So start your mouse d have you rebooted yet? No
[John:] No I'm just thinking of using the, of using Laplink first, no, we'll do that tomorrow.
[Simon:] No, no need, yeah.
[John:] because we, it doesn't automatically draw up into Windows, that's what I keep thinking. Right.
[Simon:] Yeah, yeah.
[John:] Do you think it needs a hard boot? It should n't.
[Simon:] W er I, I've had a lots of problems with soft boots, but that's cos I use UNIX
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] and funny er
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] funny BIOS.
[John:] I, I have occasionally th just of sort of had a feeling I think I'll do a hard boot this time. Brr!... Is it very smelly in here or is it me?... [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] I dunno. [LAUGHTER] Maybe it is time to go and make a.... That's Alan Sugar doing that isn't it? That display is Amstrad's BIOS....
[John:] Yeah, they erm I got DOS Five, loaded it up, and it says unable to find a twenty line and I was, it was still under guarantee
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] just about, so I phoned up erm
[Simon:] graphics.
[John:] Rentaf Rentafone or whoever do it, and erm eventually got to spoke to so get to speak to somebody. Right [hands rubbing together]
[Simon:] Oh mice driver, mouse driver. Load your mouse driver
[John:] Okay
[Simon:] You didn't load your mouse driver?
[John:] No, I will do. I only having a look at it.
[Simon:] Oh, right.
[John:] Three Eight Six enhanced mode, standard mode. You know all about this?
[Simon:] There's on expanded mode and enhanced mode. The best one's, is expanded mode
[John:] Three Eight Six I reckon Three Eight Six.
[Simon:] You could set that up in your setup options so
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] you just start it in standard mode or in default mode.
[John:] Create file boot log.
[Simon:] Oh I don't remember that.
[John:] How about a boot log? Just in case something goes a bit wrong
[Simon:] Sure, yeah fine and
[John:] Troubleshooter, [LAUGHTER] for when Windows does not start correctly [], now that is very [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] very confidence inspiring isn't
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] it? Ooh well I can do with that cos I got a Three Eight Six, it should be perfectly fast. Mine's
[Simon:] Ah, but you need a thirty two bit controller
[John:] Yes
[Simon:] which you probably haven't got.
[John:] four bit controller [LAUGHTER] on this [] two bit controller.
[Simon:] Sixteen bit controller are standard.
[John:] I'm sure it'll be a sixteen bit controller.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] I must say n nobody knows, probably a two bit. Okay
[Simon:] Yeah. Wrong address.
[John:] Er er okay.
[Simon:] You don't need any of that stuff.
[John:] I probably might. It might be able to grab some er some of me video that's not being used.
[Simon:] Yeah. I just, I just typed in
[John:] I will start me mouse, excludes all of the.
[Simon:] That's using video memory.
[John:] So these are the include and exclude
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] things. Right, let's have mouse. Jolly good.... That's right, install.
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] I've never thought of that as a v verb [] Win
[John:] Slash B
[Simon:] What for?
[John:] block
[Simon:] Block
[John:] Okay?
[Simon:] Yeah, alright, I don't wanna debug it though so.
[John:] Erm used for troubleshooting when it doesn't start. You a D as well?
[Simon:] You actually have to pick a sub-option.
[John:] Does it, does it mean [LAUGHTER] does it, does it mean that when you use D it then doesn't work?
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] []
[John:] If you want it not to work use the slash B... Okay slash B and that's it.... Ah on one disk for Sue this, this sort of woman who was there sort of telling
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] a load of rubbish and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] erm Sue could probably do with spending a bit of time learning about DOS, but I don't see the point. I think she'd be better off spending, they've got Windows on the machines but they run under DOS
[Simon:] Right.
[John:] erm, but I don't see why she can't, whenever she wants to look for files, copy files and sort out other people's mess why she doesn't erm this is the first, this is it is it? Ooh, ooh, ooh ooh,
[Simon:] Nowhere
[John:] ooh ooh,
[Simon:] Hang on.
[John:] Can you can we use the, oh hang on, num lock off, can we use these
[Simon:] well hang on, we should, we should at least be able to oh if we cursor about, that's it.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] go into Windows setup.
[John:] Can I cursor with these?
[Simon:] Don't know.
[John:] Set up the mouse
[Simon:] Mouse Microsoft, oh it already thinks you've got a mouse. That's a bit of a shame.
[John:] Yeah, we've got a wrong driver... and I didn't have one in my things so I might have to regroup with a proper [whistles through teeth]... let's have a look in DOS and see what mouse drivers it's got.... Or Window. W i it'll be in Windo where will it keep its mouse driver, in DOS or Windows?
[Simon:] Er
[John:] Or do both
[Simon:] I you mean in terms of directories?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Er here i i i this is where you control it from anyway.
[John:] Yeah but where will the mouse driver live?
[Simon:] The actual file?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] system probably, but it might use them on. DOS... erm damn erm
[John:] just change, escape form that? Just escape and then we won't have done....
[Simon:] Now we got to cursor key to go through the options. Now systems... now systems
[John:] Ooh hang on, hang on, hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on.
[Simon:] What?
[John:] the other one, the other one is. Sorry erm it isn't a BUS do you think?
[Simon:] What?
[John:] This one. It's a special mouse port.
[Simon:] Oh then maybe this
[John:] Actually I think it's m I, I would try
[Simon:] Okay.
[John:] P S Two plus mouse... P S Two
[Simon:] And it's not?...
[John:] No, well I don't think so.
[Simon:] That system's. See that's the driver it's already using.
[John:] Yeah, because that's the one it found, if it doesn't find the Amstrad one
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] the Amstrad is hidden and it's patched.
[Simon:] Oh.
[John:] So it's messy. So
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I would give it that one and I
[Simon:] Right
[John:] think it might work. If it doesn't, then we're no worse than we are at the moment, really aren't we?
[Simon:] Mhm.... Oh dear.
[John:] That's a socket, that'll [LAUGHTER] time for a cup of coffee I think, while we have a look at, and we'll have a look at the, the boot log file in a minute and see what it did.... Ee I'm glad you're here young man!... Let's go to M S DOS... and see if we can get the mouse working in M S DOS
[Simon:] . It, it was working wasn't it?...
[John:] Yeah. Now
[Simon:] Mouse.
[John:] something about using mouse in the in the DOS box.
[Simon:] Oh this must be like mouse. Right.
[John:] Double click, test. Let's have a test....
[speaker003:] Er...
[John:] [humming]
[Simon:] Oh this is where you really do need a mouse.
[John:] Yeah. Changing mouse options,
[Simon:] Mm yeah, very good bit confusing sometimes but. Er right....
[John:] What y what are you doing here?
[Simon:] Closing the, closing
[John:] Yeah, yeah
[Simon:] the window.
[John:] Closing, and what, what were you doing to close it?
[Simon:] Alt er I, I er er I a actually have three different methods there. All
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] of them began by pressing Alt in which
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] case the sort of top leftish menu highlighted.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] In some cases I opened that menu and selected exit.
[John:] Mhm.
[Simon:] And some of them just hit return. If I had a mouse I just click in the top corner.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Which is the iconic way of doing it.
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] Erm, I'll have a look in drivers.
[John:] Change
[Simon:] but erm
[John:] its settings for mouse... let's have a look in drivers erm... you haven't got a mouse, have you?
[Simon:] No.
[John:] any, any other sort of mouse I could have brought me mouse with me and we could have run it off the serial port... erm it's a pain that Amstrad mouse....
[Simon:] General help system.
[John:] What I would like erm the, the dreaded Vine Micros sell one that's Amstrad compatible. So we don't want P S Two mouse, so it might be a, it might be just a serial port there after all then.
[Simon:] Yeah, I don't know. It's erm I, I, I, I don't really understand that. How, how that bit of hardware works.... This is a er I think this is a slight defect in the design of the interface
[John:] Mhm.
[Simon:] erm, it, the,i the, the er means of closing a window is not always in the same place. Here it seems that it's going be generally it's in the top left menu, but some of them don't have menus. Erm
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] General General help mouse... program manager now general help Oh, I know what we can do.... Alt menu. Erm... we've already tried. Oh yeah try to get into.
[John:] Let's go into file menu and have a look at what, what drivers are about....
[Simon:] What do you mean? File manager help or file manager?
[John:] Er no, file manager look at the fi look at the drivers that are in DOS or in Windows....
[Simon:] Where's your Amstrad mouse driver?...
[John:] In the root directory I would think.
[Simon:] When you were
[John:] This would only have looked in DOS. Now I'll tell you what happens. It's a weird thing erm it starts off in the root and then it erm u used a single mouse fix to patch it and then DOS dots it.... erm, how d how do we erm [whistles through teeth] do it by... er sort of D I R by extension.
[Simon:] Erm I think if it, in this file menu there'll probably be an option to er t to specify
[John:] Ah
[Simon:] a wildcard. Er... y...
[John:] Name, type is presumably extension is it? Yeah
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] Yes. all quite tidy
[Simon:] all quite tidy
[John:] drivers and stuff together then.... directories
[Simon:] directories.... And there's something called mouse.... MyMouse, Mouse Com, Mouse Fix
[John:] Right. Right. Now MyMouse Com is for running the serial mouse.
[Simon:] Mhm.
[John:] Erm I mean nothing to do with this one.
[Simon:] So what happens when you run Mouse Com?
[John:] Erm, how about running how about running. No I think you'd run Mouse Fix first. How about running Mouse Fix and see what happens? It can't make it any worse can it?
[Simon:] Shell out of DOS first.
[John:] Oh it just gave us a nice thing saying I've fixed your mouse, thank you very much. And it's, I reckon.
[Simon:] No. yeah yeah, you're right
[John:] I reckon.
[Simon:] It's a funny thing for it to do.
[John:] have a go?
[Simon:] No it's alright.
[John:] Now we'll try, now having fixed the mouse we'll try and run Mouse Com....
[Simon:] Oh I hit enter. I double clicked on it
[John:] what it might have done is that probably didn't need doing because Mouse Com was probably already fixed and now we're unfixing it? [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Mm, well it will only be for this session anyway, movement? No.
[John:] Erm no. So we haven't got a better mouse driver. Let's get, go, let's have a look at DOS. Where's DOS?...
[Simon:] It's awkward using this without a mouse.
[John:] Right, let's get into DOS directory and pick up a Mouse Com or a mouse driver from there erm and execute, it will copy it into the root. Yeah?
[Simon:] Mm, into what?
[John:] We're overwriting that mouse driver there, because that is my old mouse driver I think. files
[Simon:] So a real mouse driver somewhere?
[John:] Well, that mouse runs
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] it runs everything erm and all you do is just say mouse.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Ah, do I see mouse, do I say mouse?
[Simon:] You say MyMouse don't you?
[John:] No no no no no, I don't say MyMouse. Erm, have a look at
[Simon:] See it's working. Okay so it's working, it's loaded.
[John:] It's alright in DOS.
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] And despite the fact that it's just been patched,
[Simon:] Mhm.
[John:] and run again, it still
[Simon:] Mhm, and generally buggered about with.
[John:] Erm... so, right.
[Simon:] Reboot it, start Windows without running your mouse driver, see if Windows will run it itself.
[John:] Okay.... soft boot? No hard boot with a mouse.
[Simon:] Mhm.
[John:] want a cup of coffee while it's doing it?
[Simon:] Yeah it's definitely time for a cup of coffee. Ooh! [sound of chair moving]
[John:] Who's been painting the chair then?
[Simon:] ?
[John:] [LAUGHTER] Who's been painting my chair [] Oh!... if I come into your bedroom in the night and pee on you,
[Simon:] Yeah?
[John:] It's nothing personal just I get lost! [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] ... [kettle boiling]
[speaker003:] ... [tape change]
[Simon:] haven't we?
[John:] We've got but it'll be alright
[Simon:] toothbrush... I always wanted to do that I read an article somewhere this journalist
[John:] Stick a pencil in [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] You can j you can just stick your pencil in your fan and it doesn't do any damage but
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] it's the sort of thing you want to try on someone [LAUGHTER] else's []
[John:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] get off []!
[John:] My fan stops by itself, mine,
[Simon:] Yeah?
[John:] wonderful.
[Simon:] Yeah?
[John:] I was even thinking of of
[Simon:] Is th
[John:] paying
[Simon:] is that just yours then going? Or
[John:] thermostatic fan.
[Simon:] mine going rather?... Oh that's yours.
[John:] Yeah it's noisy this one,
[Simon:] It's drowning my fan out!
[John:] [LAUGHTER] it cos I've got a Three Eight Six see,
[Simon:] Oh that's right.
[John:] a louder fan
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Vroom! Vroom! [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] All that energy rippling off the chip.
[John:] Right, well I've
[Simon:] Is that a key thingy? What's this here?
[John:] Don don't turn if off. That's the key.
[Simon:] Oh wow.
[John:] Take that off you see and no one can run programs.
[Simon:] Yeah. Unless they open the case.
[John:] Right now I I've, I've bought this copy of Windows. I'm not sure what I've done with the instructions, so it's [LAUGHTER] it []
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] Oh. I suggest you start with disk one.
[John:] Th that's what I would say.
[Simon:] Unlike Works where you start with, start with disk four
[John:] Disk four, and then go on to
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] Then it's disk three, and then back to disk one and
[John:] Oh.
[Simon:] yeah. Oh, me biscuits! I'll ju I'm just going to go downstairs.
[John:] Oh okay.
[Simon:] like to go downstairs for
[John:] Right, put that in and type install, how about that for a guess?
[Simon:] Yeah, er
[John:] Cos it's Microsoft
[Simon:] yeah, yeah I think so, you could do a directory of it first
[John:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] now i now he says []
[Simon:] Do a directory
[John:] [LAUGHTER] it doesn't know []!... Right.
[Simon:] I think. Yeah, it might be called Setup, install install wouldn't it?
[John:] It might be Setup,
[Simon:] Have you never done this before?
[John:] Never ever ever ever. You, you've done this fourteen times
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] I've done it with D R DOS Six, which is much more complicated. It's really easy just to do it with Windows.
[John:] Now what have got there, that looks as if
[Simon:] The f the first thing they ask you, right is i it says
[John:] Expand.
[Simon:] it says do you know what you're talking about? You know, and the answer is no.
[John:] [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] It says
[John:] Go and read the manual [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] It says would you like to accept the defaults or would you like to specify things yourself. So I always say, oh specify things myself
[John:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] And me []! And me!
[Simon:] Yeah and then
[John:] Right
[Simon:] it asks you er what would you like to do with that and you say I don't even know what it is!
[John:] We've got a setup here.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] It looks like setup. I bet you're right, just cos you've done it forty times
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] you're bound to be right. And the setup sh! Oh,
[Simon:] [yawn] [yawning] Is there anything there called install []?
[John:] I don't think so. There's
[Simon:] [yawning] Oh []!
[John:] one way to find out.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Let's r log on to the A drive first presumably?
[Simon:] Don't have to. Er, oh! Er
[John:] Some of them you do.
[Simon:] yeah, sometimes you have to show added precaution.
[John:] Okay, so
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] we'll try install and see if the respond
[Simon:] Oh yeah, there are two ways to do it, D I R install.
[John:] good
[Simon:] There you go, installation WordPerfect? Ah! [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Oh! [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] That is the problem with typing install.
[John:] [reading] Would you like to continue []? No. [LAUGHTER] Cos it's on the
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] path.
[Simon:] It's a, yeah
[John:] Right, we'll have, we'll have
[Simon:] explicit that
[John:] A colon setup, thank you. From A colon
[Simon:] We'll try install,bu but give it an explicit path.
[John:] Okay.... I'm pretty sure it's setup.
[Simon:] Mm. We'll see. Yeah, guess so.
[John:] Thank you.
[Simon:] Well that's a good name for an installation program, isn't it? Setup.... This wouldn't work for me cos I've also got, I've got D R DOS Setup on my path, so whenever I'd type setup I'd get D R DOS Setup. [LAUGHTER] Or whatever it is I'm trying to configure [].
[John:] My, change someone's path [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Yeah.... Yeah. Ooh that's doing something. Chugging away on a floppy.
[John:] this is dead slow. This
[Simon:] Is it?
[John:] floppy. Erm, he, I complained about the disk. When
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] I complained before it went out of warranty and again after it had gone out of warranty and it was sort of very dodgy and I had
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] let him do what he did. Erm, but he basically de-soldered the resistor from the motherboard, soldered another one in to make it run slower.
[Simon:] How does that work? And why did he do that? And stuff like that.
[John:] Ah he said he was go he promised that he was going to bring a new disk, and then he hadn't and then he did this and I thought mm I'm not going to get a new disk out of him now it's out of warranty and at least it's working now and
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] it wasn't so. Okay.
[Simon:] But wh why would disks have different speeds anyway?
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] Were they at different transfer rates?
[John:] The processor speeds. The processor can't handle, you know s similar to weight space
[Simon:] Mhm.
[John:] in memory, but
[Simon:] It's like interleave factors and stuff
[John:] I mean my X T for example,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] just couldn't handle... [LAUGHTER] the transfer rate from that [].
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] It couldn't take one cylinder of it
[Simon:] Right.
[John:] It take two bytes at [LAUGHTER] a time []
[Simon:] sector and wait for it to come round again and take the next sector.
[John:] Yeah, and wait for it to come round again and t by which time it will have shoved it off somewhere and
[Simon:] Yeah, yeah
[John:] to take the next one. So...
[Simon:] Now why are you using append? Append is the data version of subst or something, isn't it? Append is where you look for data files if the path is not otherwise specified.
[John:] Right, let's see what's it's got.
[Simon:] It's just telling you to, to run it, to get rid of incompatible programs. Y you've used append to declare an append
[John:] It says that the
[Simon:] directory.
[John:] is running.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm, they used er well M S DOS Five Setup append for me to append to its path.
[Simon:] Why?
[John:] I don't know why. It did it
[Simon:] D you think it needs data files?
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] Cos append is like a path for data
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] rather than f for programs isn't it?
[John:] Yeah, and I usually consid I mean don't like it but I usually think it's reasonably safe
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] join and subst and stuff like that which I didn't touch.
[Simon:] Yeah,
[John:] I never use append cos I don't have any need for it. No.
[Simon:] Well you're going to have to get rid of it, so.
[John:] Well I can C, C to continue setup.
[Simon:] Er, recommended that you quit and get rid of it.
[John:] Alright, let's
[Simon:] Er
[John:] F Three to quit setup and have a look at it.
[Simon:] If this, this, this is Windows, you should be able to open a window into Setup Dot T X T and then resume your installation procedure where you left off. Rather than have to bail out and do it again.
[John:] Ah, okay, okay. [reading] It's not completely set up, if you quit Setup now you will need to run Setup again [].
[Simon:] I would a based on my, my hard-won experience of fucking around with Windows I suggest that you take all recommendations
[John:] yes
[Simon:] do it totally by the book, and
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] if it doesn't work,
[John:] Erm, right.
[Simon:] you start playing with things.
[John:] Okay
[Simon:] Why are you in reverse video? Are you normally in reverse video?
[John:] If I've set my prompt to that.
[Simon:] Ah.
[John:] Cos I like looking at I think it's easier... It's a change
[Simon:] Yeah it could be. Could be
[John:] to read sort of black on white rather than white on black.
[Simon:] change
[John:] Erm, I'll give you the prompt if you like to do that. Make it in blue and white,.
[Simon:] It's an escape sequence presumably
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] is it? Yeah, might as well.
[John:] So, we'll have a look at it in a minute....
[Simon:] What's Edit? Is that a thing that comes with DOS Five?
[John:] Yeah, it's a nice little editor
[Simon:] This is the editor that comes with DOS Six which is a clone of WordStar.
[John:] It is better than, it is a lot better than Headline, on the old
[Simon:] Oh yeah
[John:] on the old DOS, and that's not saying much.
[Simon:] No.
[John:] a right-handed mouse here.
[Simon:] I'm just going to put a rem statement in my autoexec which copies your prompt so that I can use it later....
[John:] Er I'm on the A drive, that's why. Right okay.
[Simon:] Wow, menu driven. Okay.
[John:] It's nice, it's Mi sort of Microsoft standard.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] So, it is my config sys I'm looking for isn't it, while I find an edit.... You can have Edit actually, if y if you should happen
[Simon:] Ah!
[John:] to want it because it's Basic. It's a Basic program.... Erm,
[Simon:] With what Basic
[John:] it does. You need Q Basic, you need Q Basic
[Simon:] I haven't got Q Basic's supposed to be quite good.
[John:] It's not bad. I had a little
[Simon:] I was talking to this guy the other day who works as a programmer and that's what he uses.
[John:] Mm, it's pretty well structured and it's
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] you know it does the things you need to do.
[Simon:] Where does this come from?
[John:] Now we've got a load of stuff in here, erm after the path I would expect an append wouldn't you?.
[Simon:] Can you search for words?
[John:] Y... you sure can. You can even replace, search and replace.
[Simon:] Search for the word append....
[John:] ... I don't think it's case sensitive.... It'll be in lower case anyway.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Lying toad. Is it in my erm
[Simon:] It's in your autoexec, it won't be a
[John:] autoexec
[Simon:] You can only y
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] you can only put DOS commands in an autoexec file.
[John:] Okay, so let's.... I'd rather autoexec
[Simon:] No,yo you've just copied didn't you? So, so you've got your copy so you can edit this with impunity and it
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] probably won't be the first time you have to edit it either.
[John:] No no. And it might not anyway.
[Simon:] Beca becaus needless to say Windows has not examined all the things it wants you to fix. It's just found the first one, bombed out, told you to fix it.
[John:] Right....
[Simon:] I don't know what that does. What's that do? Switch E.
[John:] Right, path. Well let's try it, erm, you haven't got DOS on that.
[Simon:] What if you prompt prompt, oh it's not there.
[John:] [whistles through teeth] Can't.
[Simon:] I'll tell you what I have got that you haven't got.
[John:] Yes there's me prompt me prompt.... There's the prompt.
[Simon:] Oh. Er
[John:] Dollar E open square bracket, [whispering] ready []?... Dollar E open square bracket zero semicolon... thirty four semicolon... forty seven, M Dollar, P Dollar, G. Erm after the thirty four,.
[Simon:] Yeah. Probably,.
[John:] Erm, yes.
[Simon:] So it's escape, zero comma thirt semicolon thirty four semicolon forty seven M dollar P dollar G, Ooh er.
[John:] not even want to and see what happens next time yo you get it up.
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] want to reset your prompt to
[Simon:] Well I wouldn't remember that one either.
[John:] Ah.... Right. Oh yeah I had one of those, I've got on I've got one of those on the X T, date and time.
[Simon:] Right, I'm going to find out about append.
[John:] Thank you....
[Simon:] Er, I mean it's ancient, it's for things where you can't give a path as an argument. Use with care, blah blah blah. Slash E kept in the environment.
[John:] Ah right.
[Simon:] So it passes it when it shells out.
[John:] Mhm.
[Simon:] And the other one just specifies what the path is, doesn't it?
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] What was it? It was, path [whistling] er append C slash DOS.
[John:] So it's gon it's gonna muck up my path anyway erm
[Simon:] So it's looking for data files in directory DOS, why would it do that?
[John:] Why would it do that? Because it'll have DOS Help for a start. From wherever you are, you'd want
[Simon:] Well, would it not know where that is
[John:] okay, so we'll knock it out eh?
[Simon:] Yeah, bin it.
[John:] Then it won't object.......
[Simon:] Do you know what pisses me off? Is I haven't got any like super flash graphicy type programs. You know I always get, you know this could be an N D A display. When in fact it isn't, if you run the O S Two demo it looks super fa you know super fantastic.
[John:] ... I've got some of those. Now,... Alt S,
[Simon:] Oh yeah, so you need more.
[John:] It's that one, that's the same one, still on there. So...
[Simon:] What's the mode check?
[John:] Erm it checks the video mode I think so if it's, if it fails, mode black and white
[Simon:] Right. Yeah, yeah, mm, right, mm, mm
[John:] more appends. Seems to go back to the start again.... Yeah it goes d off the bottom and back up to the start. So that'll do, we'll save that, okay.... I could be doing this with the mouse but.
[Simon:] Right, back to the installation thingy. Oh have you got any Windows directories, on your hard drive
[John:] called Win, or Windows or no, not
[Simon:] cos if you do it i i basically can't cope with it. It tr
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] it does the worst possible thing,
[John:] It tries to be clever
[Simon:] it tries to cope with it when it can't. Rather than simply giving up
[John:] [whistles through teeth]
[Simon:] or,
[John:] Okay. [humming]
[Simon:] whatever the other alternatives are....
[John:] So I'm learning a lot and I haven't even got Setup running.
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] Yeah [].... Oh dear.
[John:] No, I've read sort of odd letters from b bewildered of, of
[Simon:] Yeah, yeah
[John:] [LAUGHTER] I've, I have tried for three weeks to get my Windows loaded [] and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] I keep getting mystery error number seventeen, or
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] something.
[Simon:] Well next time buy it factory loaded.
[John:] Right. The best way.
[Simon:] Is the answer.
[John:] ... is reading Setup inf, that's sounds good,.
[Simon:] Ye er, it says that, it says that before. Erm actually there is a kind of a readme file, which it might not be totally inadvisable to read before installing. Ah, you haven't rebooted so you will again
[John:] I've still got my old one drive
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] er
[John:] So we'll F Three and get out of that.
[Simon:] Yeah, but's let's have a look at that erm thingy file t to see if there are any other nasties waiting.
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] F Three to exit... and Edit Setup Dot T X T... On A.
[John:] On B.
[Simon:] Not necessarily Edit on A but Edit Sys Dot Dot T X T on A.
[John:] Have a look at A colon Edit or just have a look at it? Ar
[Simon:] Dunno.
[John:] are we going to edit it or just to see it
[Simon:] No, we're not going to edit it
[John:] No, right we'll
[Simon:] Why, have you got a read only editor?
[John:] w we'll browse it.
[Simon:] Ooh!
[John:] [LAUGHTER] It's only a list show word thing.
[Simon:] Right.
[John:] Erm, I, I just call it browsing.
[Simon:] Ah, well the reason I always use an editor is so you can go back on yourself.
[John:] Mhm. You can d do things in this.
[Simon:] Yeah, oh show me. show me,
[John:] it's A colon have a c
[Simon:] impress me.
[John:] have a copy of this over the, over the magic link
[Simon:] Aargh!
[John:] and send your registration thing off shortly.
[Simon:] Oh, no naturally.
[John:] And you'll have to tell me the name of your
[Simon:] Er Setup Dot T X T.... Ooh. Ooh that's a bit dark, I can't see that at all.
[John:] No, I think probably if you pay for it you get it in [LAUGHTER] black and white [].
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]... Right, information about... Blah, blah TSRs and stuff. Yeah it's mainly TSRs of course
[John:] [cough]
[Simon:] blue you know, I think it says, top of file. Yeah
[John:] y y you s
[Simon:] any, any of those.
[John:] you can just go down a bit like that.
[Simon:] Hang on, hang on
[John:] Or you can page up and page down or
[Simon:] you're missing the content here. Er but okay yeah if you can scroll back that's ideal isn't it?
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] That's all you need. Erm so do you need any of those drivers, Himem, ANSI or whatever,?
[John:] I do I do.
[Simon:] Do they appear in that order?
[John:] Himem Sys. C M and ANSI Dot Sys.
[Simon:] Who knows?
[John:] Not sure about the ANSI but I would put the Himem before the erm Three Eight Six.
[Simon:] Yeah you'd have to, wouldn't you?
[John:] Or it wouldn't do much.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm I'm not using Compaq, okay so I'll page down. I haven't got
[Simon:] Not using a Teeger Or a Safari?
[John:] No.
[Simon:] Bet you wish you were using a Teeger
[John:] I'd swap them. I wouldn't mind. You've got one on. [LAUGHTER] I'll swap you for an old X T Myrtle [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Hey, I've got erm, I've got a er a possibly V G A card with me somewhere.
[Simon:] Ooh.
[John:] I think it's under the bed actually.
[Simon:] Right.
[John:] I probably, I probably knelt on it when I was getting the computer.
[Simon:] Oh no!
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] Er
[John:] displays. this is a par this is a paradise
[Simon:] Increase conventional
[John:] type and it, it's
[Simon:] Is it?
[John:] it's compatible with most software.
[Simon:] Aha. So it's not
[John:] A T I Graphics
[Simon:] It's not G G I S
[John:] These are the super
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] advantage with
[Simon:] Well Teegers are quite flash aren't they?
[John:] Oh very, yeah yeah.... Okay er
[Simon:] Er any of those
[John:] Hallity is the six forty four eighty sixteen colour, no. Erm this is a
[Simon:] S Threes are accelerators aren't they?
[John:] Yeah, S Three yeah.
[Simon:] You're not using stack fortunately.
[John:] Or that [reading] do not use Smart Drive to cache the compressed file []. Now I haven't got Smart Drive in.
[Simon:] Mm it's only I had, that's the problem I had with Smart Drive and
[John:] I'll take the
[Simon:] disk doubler. It, okay i er Smart Drive's actually er
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] good, recommended
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] but not if you've got a disk doubler of some sort.
[John:] Okay so I reckon
[Simon:] Leave that
[John:] probably get it loaded and doing something and then optimize the Smart Drive.
[Simon:] Er well that's no er yeah
[John:] Well you'll probably do it all in one go.
[Simon:] That's the other problem with Windows is there're a lot of things you can't twiddle after you've installed it.
[John:] Right okay.
[Simon:] And not only not only can't you twiddle it, but it will let you twiddle it, not
[John:] And then it and then [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] surprise it's now a disaster. And you c you can, you can't
[John:] Er thank you
[Simon:] you run it and it crashes and
[John:] Right. Okay.
[Simon:] So do it right first time.
[John:] Ah, what what it is to have an expert. That's great.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm erm now... set up Sys, Smart Drive.
[Simon:] Block device drivers. Ooh what have they got. Presumably that's a character device driver is it?
[John:] removal, hang on Setup does not modify... boot drive okay. Reference, contains references to block device drivers. Are they ta are they tape drivers or CDs?
[Simon:] Disks tend to be, tend to be block device drivers and serial ports tend to be character device.
[John:] Yeah, but erm ooh I wonder I think it might be a good idea,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] to take me laplink out. So if we're going to do any laplinking
[Simon:] It might be prudent, yeah
[John:] it might be better to do it before we put Windows on.
[Simon:] Mm, yeah, yeah. Windows directory in disk start up, er blah.
[John:] Rem it rem it out and put it back in later and see if it crashes.
[Simon:] Yeah, That's a good thought.
[John:] Okay, files are already installed and Setup cannot be. That's a thought, check for a read only er cos I do have a habit of making some of me DOS files read only.
[Simon:] Yeah but there won't be any Windows files on your disk
[John:] No.
[Simon:] so be alright.
[speaker003:] Right.
[John:] changes.
[Simon:] Those changes. That's good. Oh yeah and then you go through this like, that's quite good actually, you go through this erm split screen editor with with its proposed autoexec bat in one
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] and yours in the other. And then in er on a case by case basis it says implement this change?
[John:] Yes I
[Simon:] Or don't or manually type it in. It's er
[John:] I was told
[Simon:] excellent
[John:] I was told this is the up to date version of
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I asked that when I bought it of course.
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] XGA, you wish [].
[John:] No, P F Two. Out of environment space.
[Simon:] That's not very likely... er you haven't got a network
[John:] got a network.
[Simon:] T S Rs
[John:] Right. Got T S Rs
[Simon:] you must have billions of them,?
[John:] Erm I don't load many of them, apart from the, you know, the usual DOS ones.
[Simon:] Right, which are what?
[John:] Erm... Well, ANSI
[Simon:] It'll try and take them
[John:] ANSI DOS Sys graphics
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] and things like that. Erm
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] mouse drivers
[Simon:] Right, mouse drivers
[John:] mouse drivers, take the mouse drivers out.
[Simon:] Yeah, cos if it own
[John:] it'll, it will look for
[Simon:] mouse driver
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] er th it'll install for you, so. Oh as I remember it installs a backward compatible mouse driver which will... do
[John:] backwards.
[Simon:] will do all your previous mouse jobs but also work with Windows. I reckon
[John:] I know there should be, I should have an up to date driver for this one, and I haven't. Okay like it.
[Simon:] In cache..
[John:] Good name for a computer.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] yeah it's erm append
[Simon:] Append, do not use.
[John:] names ooh.
[Simon:] This is a different setup thing than the one I had, I think.
[John:] Ah so you don't know how to do it at all then, right. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Well, probably it's got like an expanded
[John:] No.
[Simon:] list,
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] than
[John:] Hopefully it's easier
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] than the one you normally use.
[Simon:] Yeah. Root Com.
[John:] Ah.
[Simon:] Erm, you haven't got that have you?
[John:] Erm I have got a copy
[Simon:] Mm but
[John:] erm
[Simon:] you don't use it.
[John:] but I haven't loaded it yet.
[Simon:] Just as well. [LAUGHTER]
[John:] [LAUGHTER] I was just thinking that. Boot Sys, ah actually it might be a Boot Sys I've got..... Right I don't think we'll try and get fancy, like Boot Com and Boot Sys, until we've had a good play with Windows. Cache Two Point, haven't got one of those. Or that.
[Simon:] How many partitions have you got in the hard disk?
[John:] Or that. Just the one....
[Simon:] sixty five megabytes?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Cor
[John:] Graphics. See that's erm
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] that's a T S R. Could cause unexpected results. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] []
[Simon:] Yeah. Yeah. But why the graphics is just so you can do screen dumps isn't it?
[John:] Screen dumps. Erm screen
[Simon:] In certain circumstances.
[John:] And something else. Erm, it definitely does, is it, you can't do screen dumps without
[Simon:] Isn't it one of those sort of semi obsolete things that only applies if you've got M S DOS
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] One?
[John:] Yeah, I think so.... Er I might have it in
[Simon:] Graphics.
[John:] Still we will get shot of it.
[Simon:] [reading] Print screen key to print the graphics display on y on your printer [] So what does the print screen key usually do?
[John:] It prints erm it prints words not, not pictures so if you prin
[Simon:] Ah right
[John:] if you printed that, what you got on there
[Simon:] You get the text but not the menu bar
[John:] This lot this lot all comes out as sort of Xs and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] stuff and gets thrown out, so that it cuts everything, cuts it all out.
[Simon:] Not really something you need on a routine basis is it?
[John:] get the, get the graphics off, cos there might be graphics in there from
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] an old, an old one. Okay. disk. No, took that out years ago.
[Simon:] Yeah, R E M M
[John:] No. Someone's I B M Intell, no haven't got that. Join, wouldn't use that.
[Simon:] No.
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] Dot Com. Load it from starting Window.... Presumably you have got a keyboard command?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] ?
[John:] Yeah. Okay, so that's erm, keyboard and graphics so far.
[Simon:] [yawning] Yeah [].
[John:] menu. I've got erm
[Simon:] Oh and ANSI Dot Sys to be at the end.
[John:] Yeah. I haven't got a.
[Simon:] quite common that one.
[John:] Mirror in use. Ye yes.
[Simon:] You cannot remove it.
[John:] Okay.... no no.
[Simon:] So that, that editor is written, is erm is written in the interpreted Q Basic?
[John:] The one that I was using? Yeah.
[Simon:] Yeah. Cor. So presumably th those menus are all like, thirteen instructions
[John:] They're they're standard sort of Microsoft menus with sort of
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] for files
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Alt F X to exit.
[Simon:] But what I'm saying is that the er m Q Basic must have the facilities to put those menus up by just sort of saying put up menu.
[John:] Yeah, it's part of the erm Q Basic
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] It's erm I haven't d
[Simon:] Cos I've got G W Basic and it's
[John:] I haven't done anything with it. I've just sort of, I've just looked at it and thought, that will be good one day when I ever get round to programming.
[Simon:] Does thi that comes with M S DOS Five does it?
[John:] Yeah. I mean M S DOS Five I think was very good. Okay it was only keeping up with
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] With D R DOS
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] erm
[Simon:] but it was an important step.
[John:] Yeah. P C Quick
[Simon:] utilities P C Quick. Do not use. That's crap. Well okay, put it this way, there's a big dispute. P C, Windows say do not use P C Quick, use Smart Drive.
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] The people who make P C Quick say do not use Smart Drive, use P C Quick, it will work. So there's a big argument over wh and they're both saying their one's better. They're both saying that they
[John:] Well I'm sure, I'm sure Microsoft will prove it doesn't work by changing something and not telling.
[Simon:] Changing the code, yeah. Yeah, and then say told you so.
[John:] all in backwards so that on, on April fool's day or something. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] I mean it's so easy to put stuff like that in isn't it? That
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] only DOS, only Microsoft programmes would know about. Right, little piece of code in to scramble everything. [sucks teeth] Print
[Simon:] Print?... Well you're not on a network so you're alright.
[John:] Printer assist, no.
[Simon:] Screen saver. We're going to start screen savers, that's one of the, one of its many nice features.
[John:] Mhm. page, no. I keep looking at them and thinking I wouldn't buy one of those. no.
[Simon:] There's loads of stuff.
[John:] Subst no.
[Simon:] Didn't we have P C Quick before?
[John:] Yeah, this is P C Quick's dish disk cache
[Simon:] Ah, ah right. Erm
[John:] U M D.
[Simon:] [reading] there is no reason to use two disk cache utilities with Windows []. Is there ever a reason to use two disk cache utilities? Sup
[John:] Again have a read and write cache
[Simon:] Super P C K say it's better. I actually use Super P C, well I've got, I've got three machines around the office. Some of them use super P C K and some of them use Smart Drive and buggered if I can tell the difference.
[John:] [LAUGHTER] So they're both better than the?
[Simon:] Yeah....
[John:] Sys
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] act like X M A, it's incompatible, okay haven't got that.
[Simon:] No, you're alright. And you're as well so
[John:] and that's the end of the file.
[Simon:] [yawn] [yawning] So [] go back and edit your config sys.
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] And your autoexec.
[John:] hopefully you will remember which. So which shall we do first?
[Simon:] do both, do both.
[John:] Yeah, which are we doing first?
[Simon:] Config first.
[John:] Right....
[Simon:] Ooh this is fun. I like installing stuff actually, even though it's sometimes frustrating.
[John:] Ooh, it's a bit bright isn't it,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] get out of the erm
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] the green screen.
[Simon:] Yeah. Okay so
[John:] So
[Simon:] you want to to ANSI Dot Sys and make sure it's after erm
[John:] [sigh]
[Simon:] which it looks like it isn't. There's Himem.
[John:] Oh. Nobody's turned the mouse on. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Er
[John:] I don't, I don't put the mouse on in the erm the config sys or autoexec bat
[Simon:] What was
[John:] two of them.
[Simon:] You got Hi yeah, Himem, EMM, Smart Drive and C, so they're in the right order.
[John:] right order
[Simon:] Er Display Dot Sys, problem with.
[John:] Right, let's have a quick look through.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] We had a Keyboard U K somewhere
[Simon:] Oh yeah
[John:] countries
[Simon:] that, that, had to go before Windows.
[John:] File control box and files and buffers it will have to probably
[Simon:] It'll change those
[John:] don't need files, but it'll do those.
[Simon:] It'll play with them so
[John:] Right. Yeah, shell, it'll sort that out.
[Simon:] What's H D Three Eight Six?
[John:] Oh it was one that came with this which was remmed out.
[Simon:] Oh, okay yeah.
[John:] Erm
[Simon:] be nice. Er DOS high.
[John:] prior to DOS Five.
[Simon:] Erm, then install equals K B Dot Com, cos that's going to go before Windows is running, so that's alright. Er, why have you remmed out fast open?
[John:] Erm, I think I read it in a magazine somewhere.
[Simon:] Yeah?
[John:] Get used, space.
[Simon:] It does use a fair amount of environment space
[John:] I was looking for space for something, I've forgotten what it wa Oh I had a big spreadsheet
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] and it suddenly starting erm swapping, fucking about a lot
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] swapping, flashing.
[Simon:] Okay, and it's got Smart Drive is remmed out er, it'll probably try and put that back in.
[John:] Okay, well we can put it back in for it if it likes.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Erm it can set its parameters to what it thinks is suitable then.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Okay, erm now we'll rem out that I think.
[Simon:] Okay. Yeah, that would be prudent but, yeah use Smart Drive because it, as you say it'll probably insert it with parameters it thinks are appropriate.
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] Erm it didn't say to put Smart Drive after ANSI did it? It said to put ANSI before Windows, or keyboard before Windows?
[John:] Keyboard before Windows.
[Simon:] Oh Setver that's the thing that make it pretend to not be the
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] version that it is. I've got one of those.
[John:] It, and the other thing is that I, I presume that it would h it would have a file
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] it would have a list of, and it would sort of say that sort of command Dot Com,vers version three or something.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Doesn't, it holds it all, it holds it in its, in itself
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] and saves itself again.
[Simon:] Ah.
[John:] And I though oops, I don't like playing with this
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I knacker it up I can't be a different version.
[Simon:] Mm I haven't got that, and of course I couldn't run your version of setver unless I had setver cos it would say [LAUGHTER] incorrect DOS version []. [LAUGHTER]
[John:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] Incorrect Setver []
[Simon:] Actually that would, that would be interesting to see, that, erm
[John:] No, I think I'll try. Set Setver isn't it?
[Simon:] Well you could yeah I guess you I er mean it's something they had to write into the program to check the version number isn't it?
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] [whispering] []
[John:] So Smart Drive remmed let it put one in when it doesn't find one. Okay, now all these device highs should be alright.
[Simon:] Yeah. Oh Ram Drive Dot Sys oh that's remmed, okay, so there's no
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] problem. Yeah. Share should be okay.
[John:] Now, Share
[Simon:] you don't need Share do you, cos you've got Five Point O.
[John:] I read somewhere, at some stage, some problem that's got rid of by using Share. We'll take it out before it objects to it I think.
[Simon:] I mean it's basically in, if it's, if in, the main reason that people brought Share in for the large media restriction of pre
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] DOS Four, isn't it?
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] Erm, cos otherwise it's er it's only if you have multiple applications running. Which I guess theoretically you can do under Windows but presumably it has its own locking mechanism.
[John:] And that should handle it. Okay.
[Simon:] Yeah. Okay, so goodbye to that.
[John:] So, Alt F. to save
[Simon:] autoexec
[John:] ...... I do have to type it again.
[Simon:] [yawn]
[John:] Because it's a program and you can't just have three. You could use your DOS key... Edit.
[Simon:] so far so good....
[John:] ... Right, MyMouse is remmed out cos I don't want I don't erm I, I choose when I start, which mouse driver I start on one, one of the mouse port and one of the serial erm times.
[Simon:] Two Why did you do that?
[John:] Well one of them is this.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] [LAUGHTER] If you've ever used one of these you'll know why I use the other one.
[Simon:] Oh I see.
[John:] And that erm probably, possibly could run it off there as a P S Two mouse but erm I've heard
[Simon:] That's intelligent
[John:] that Amstrad mice are sort
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] of electrically incompatible.
[Simon:] Ooh, erm, yeah
[John:] Erm and I thought I don't want the risk of blowing.
[Simon:] I've, I've fried a mouse and a port doing that.
[John:] Yeah so I thought well. Right
[Simon:] you fool I thought
[John:] what are we looking for then, down here?
[Simon:] Stuff basically, just anything.
[John:] Path.
[Simon:] There's Keyboard Com again.
[John:] Well this is what DOS Five for.
[Simon:] So you've bo you've got it on the, on the erm config sys and on the autoexec
[John:] And on the autoexec, yeah.
[Simon:] That can't be right, can it?
[John:] No.
[Simon:] Well I guess
[John:] yeah. Mode, mode check. There's a big menu here for mouse type,.
[Simon:] What is that? Is that
[John:] Er rem, let's get rid of that.
[Simon:] What is Mirror?
[John:] Oh it's remmed out. Sorry?
[Simon:] What is Mirror?
[John:] Erm you know that delete undelete
[Simon:] Right.
[John:] erm
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] keeps a file of what's gone
[Simon:] Yeah
[John:] and how to get it back.
[Simon:] Yeah, yeah. That's a good sor that is it. It's, presumably it's a T S R is it?
[John:] Yeah. Er rem.
[Simon:] What does that call do. Oh you're gonna anyway
[John:] Oh that, that's erm that gives me date and time. In great big, something is resetting my clock.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] It's leaving the time
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] But it's resetting the date.
[Simon:] Shit.
[John:] And erm I'm using me diary for my students and wham straight into it
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] and start s set an appointment for
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Hang on, what year? This shouldn't be a Tuesday, where are we? Whoops.
[Simon:] Oh no.
[John:] So I've just, I'm run I, I'm running
[Simon:] No, that's terrible
[John:] my important things now I'm running with a batch file.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] And wel when it, when it boots up it shows that, and save that
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] nothing else not nothing needs
[Simon:] Yeah, that's right
[John:] changing does it?
[Simon:] No, no, that's fine.
[John:] Right, so we'll just exit.
[Simon:] Oh save anyway in case you did change something and you forgot it.
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] Being redundant. [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Right, meanwhile, back at the setup.
[Simon:] Back at the boring old setup program unless you bloody setup Dot I N F file again. I got so sick of looking at that.... I also got so sick at waiting for the bits that happen after you get through setup
[John:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] There's more []?
[Simon:] Oh God yeah. It sits there all day. Decompressing
[John:] Many many many disks full. Yeah.
[Simon:] them.
[John:] Right... Er... keyboard getting sweaty.
[Simon:] I, I have a superstitious belief
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] that if you're working on a floppy drive it's still better to have your log drive as a hard drive.
[John:] Yeah I, I
[Simon:] Presumably crea creating temporary files and things like
[John:] Yeah,
[Simon:] that.
[John:] yeah, yeah. But a lot of these installs want you to log onto the A
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] drive and then run it from there.
[Simon:] Oh it's not rebooted. Oh that's easily done.
[John:] What a silly sausage, you will take that out before we reboot.
[Simon:] That's a good idea.
[John:] I've n I've been using the other keyboard all on the X T and I can't get used to this one yet. I'm still going over here for the function keys.
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]... I wonder what happens if I optimize that super store host partition. Well maybe I'll find out one day. Wendy assured my she's got backups of everything.
[John:] That looks very very impressive by the way, that.
[Simon:] It is. It's a shame I never got
[John:] Does your monitor colour?
[Simon:] No. It erm I think the card does actually. Er I think it's a colour card.
[John:] That's nice, if you want, oh you'll probably want to keep it won't you? I was thinking that if you do want to get a colour one at some time
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Brenda is looking for a computer at the moment.
[Simon:] Oh, right.
[John:] Erm, so you might be able to sell her a monitor.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] Or you might not I mean might not, you might not want
[Simon:] Then again I'm not sure I can afford a colour one, cos it's a couple hundred quid really. Well I've seen 'em for a hundred now actually, a hundred quid.
[John:] There are C G A ones about.
[Simon:] one thing you've got to watch out for apar I go I remember I, I was thinking about getting colour monitors for work and I read lots of articles about them
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] and the cheap ones have sort of fuzzy dot resolution and
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] they're actually more
[John:] What do you think of that one?
[Simon:] trouble than they're worth. I think that's good.
[John:] I think that's very good. Especially especially I was looking at the C G A monitor all night,
[Simon:] Mhm.
[John:] every letter composed of dots that seem to be six inches apart. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Yeah. No, I think that's very comfortable, especially in that, that blue and, whatever that is, configuration. Blue and other blue I guess.
[John:] Oh.... It's a bit easier to read isn't it?...
[Simon:] So, ooh hang on hang on, you're not logged into A cos you haven't put the disk in. You want to abort at that point, oh yeah retry'll do.
[John:] no we won't forget about the A colon cos it's going to take it out of C drive first....
[Simon:] So does Sue use WordPerfect on this machine?
[John:] Yeah, erm she's go she's quite good at it actually. R Good, good typist, she's learning the, the limitations. I mean what does Wendy think of it?
[Simon:] Wendy likes it. I, I
[John:] I I would not, I genuinely would
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] not give it room on the disk
[Simon:] Yeah. That, that's always been my attitude and
[John:] I think it stinks.
[Simon:] and that's always been my attitude and Wendy has slowly
[John:] Microsoft Works
[Simon:] Yeah, Wendy's convinced me that, that if you're a power user, which she is
[John:] Yeah!
[Simon:] you could do a lot with it
[John:] If you're a power user you can afford Microsoft Word, or AmiPro or something decent. Wordwriter
[Simon:] all that stuff
[John:] I mean I know it'll do it,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] it'll do everything I mean D Base and all the other things
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] will do it,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] but if you were to spend five years learning weird codes
[Simon:] [moan] It's not that bad I mean
[John:] Ah bu it's, I mean thing about WordPerfect is you
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] do everything twice. You say erm you want to go into sort of C colon my D I R
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] right and it says, and do you really want to do it? Yeah, you press enter again
[Simon:] It wants you to press enter again by the way.
[John:] What!
[Simon:] You do everything twice in this setup program.
[John:] [sucks teeth] [reading] To learn more about Windows press F one, to set it up press enter []. Ping.
[Simon:] Oh, you're not going to the help are you? Right, here you go
[John:] No I pressed enter
[Simon:] this is express or custom. This is where it's says do you know what you're talking about?
[John:] I am. Which would you recommend?
[Simon:] Er, I only used custom because
[John:] Which do you
[Simon:] I was, I was hybridizing it with D R DOS.
[John:] Aha.
[Simon:] Erm, so I'd go for express.
[John:] This is a funny machine, the Amstrad
[Simon:] Ah.
[John:] so I would go for the recommended and hope by this version of Windows it knows about Amstrads and will sort it out. Because
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] D R DOS, er sorry M S DOS Five did, I thought I was going to have a lot of trouble, and it didn't. It knew about Amstrads,
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] knew about funny way of handling the A Twenty line and voomf!
[Simon:] Great, okay, we'll hav let's have a go at express. Ah there is something about er an A Twenty handler for Windows. Something
[John:] Mm.
[Simon:] called Win A Twenty in fact.
[John:] There is, I've
[Simon:] Er
[John:] got one. Er
[Simon:] It's a device driver that it loads. So yeah go for express, you can always try custom later.
[John:] Press enter. [mimics sound of hard drive access]...
[Simon:] I, I, I don't know how to use WordPerfect and I hate, I occasionally have to. We get some disks from the States once a month, that are in WordPerfect
[John:] Yeah
[Simon:] and I have to translate them into DOS, and it's a hassle and I don't like. But Wendy, you know, can do a hell of a lot with it.
[John:] I mean that is so simple to do and such a, so much better than the WordPerfect setup which
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] last night on the X T
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] ten minutes of disk fifteen minutes of disk maybe.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I remember thinking, come on you're having me on. You're
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] just going to sit, see how long I'll sit and wait here and
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] still think you're doing something. Cos
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] I'll
[Simon:] that's the installation program not the
[John:] Yeah,o on this erm this was the server
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] so, every now and again it was sort of, it would sort of flash and say the server was being accessed and sort of brrp [exclamation] it was gone.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] And then there'd be a five, ten, fifteen minute wait and nothing.
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] Nothing happened with the
[Simon:] No, Five Point One's probably not written with the X T in mind.
[John:] No. I don't think so.
[Simon:] But, yes I mean it's very good to have this kind of feedback system when you're doing a time consuming operation.
[John:] Yes and you can look at it and say, okay, we've go time to go and make a cup of coffee, or oh, this is going well.
[Simon:] Actually it looks like we've got time to make a cup a coffee.
[John:] by the time we've calculated what's th the remaining sixty five percent of [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] which is now s down to sixty. Optimization complete.
[Simon:] Well that's the second time I've done that tonight, so it, the algorithm th the os optimization algorithm doesn't always get it right first time. Or doesn't, you know, exhaustively optimize it on the first pass, all the time.
[John:] Beep. What!
[Simon:] Sometimes it does
[John:] Insert disk labelled, okay. Now while it's there I'm going to move this. I won't pinch any of
[Simon:] you can't can't.
[John:] I won't pinch any of your
[Simon:] Well at least take the floppy out before you move it.
[John:] Why? Cos the
[Simon:] cos the heads are very nearly in contact with that, and they'll
[John:] Okay.
[Simon:] bounce on it.
[John:] Right, can hang on to that for me?
[Simon:] Yeah sure [LAUGHTER]
[John:] Without pressing too many keys. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Oh
[John:] Control del.
[Simon:] This is quite a nice keyboard, it's a, yeah I like it.
[John:] It's [mimicking] very nice [] I think. It's quite wonderful.
[Simon:] Mm.... And four megabytes, cor blimey.
[John:] Cor blimey, it's no good that four megabytes. You wanna buy it then? You want to buy four megabytes. I c i it's about four about hundred and eighty quid to update to sixteen megabytes,
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] which is the only update I can do, cos they're in banks of four.
[Simon:] Right, so you've got to swap them all out.
[John:] So I've got to take the four one megs out and put four four megs in.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] And some people do sort of Amstrad kits and
[Simon:] Four hundred and eighty quid! Wow.
[John:] and I think for four hundred and eighty quid I could get a very nice real computer. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] No, it is very nice, it was very good when I first got it.
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] It's just like anything else, once you've got it there are
[Simon:] As soon as you buy it it's obsolete, because it's a computer.
[John:] That's it. That's it. So one's done. Number seven, number two.
[Simon:] , I thought it came on seven disks not six....
[John:] Right.
[Simon:] Ooh, what will happen?
[John:] The second disk in. I bet it reads.
[Simon:] The really critical phase is on about disk three
[John:] [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] it, it starts installing itself under Windows. [LAUGHTER]
[John:] As long
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] as long as it's not like WordPerfect's critical stage
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] which is when you've been there for a for genuinely over an hour and a half. It says now we're going to set up your printer drivers and you'll have WordPerfect going, and it goes [exclamation] [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER] But yeah, when it, when it, when it starts in when it starts installing itself under Windows is when it first really goes splat and you know
[John:] Oh
[Simon:] it'll just say... privileged instruction violation,
[John:] Hey this is g this is going well
[Simon:] stuff you.
[John:] I don't think there is time for
[Simon:] No.
[John:] for coffee on this.... Go on, ask for disk three next. [LAUGHTER]
[Simon:] [LAUGHTER]
[John:] [LAUGHTER] and get disk three whether you ask for it or not []
[Simon:] [yawn]
[John:] Ah,thi this is very helpful. Sort of just having someone being there cos otherwise I'd, I'd spend a you know
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] two days reading the manual before I'd dare
[Simon:] Yeah.
[John:] do it.
[Simon:] It's a fairly good
[John:] It's a
[Simon:] installation program. It's just
[John:] Yeah.
[Simon:] I had a lot of hassle cos I was mixing it up with D R DOS.
[John:] Mm. I think
[Simon:] And also I took shortcuts which I shouldn't have taken.
[John:] any of the Microsoft installations try at being
[Simon:] Mm.
[John:] very very helpful, and you can see what's going on and grrr!
[Simon:] Whoo! Stepping, stepping, machine guns ready to go. [quoting queen song]... Presumably that er, that noise i indicates that it's crossing cylinder boundaries a lot. On its own particular
[John:] Ooh we've got a
[Simon:] Ooh ooh it's booted with a