1 WELCOME! June 1988 Welcome to HELP! Version 4.0. If you are a previous user of HELP! you will notice some very big changes in this version. A lot of effort went in to making this program very reliable and to have it not blow up. If you have never used HELP! before, sit back and feel the power as you command your system like you have never done before. Program Description HELP! is a program designed to get the most out of a HARD Disk based computer system. It was originally conceived as a way to help beginners use their systems. It soon became much more than that. As a professional engineer who was in charge of many PC based systems in a large corporation, I conceived HELP! to be a valuable tool in maintaining these systems. One of my primary goals was to incorporate all of the valuable utilities I have used or felt I needed into one powerful package. HELP! includes an extensive help system. At any time you can press and get help on the current subject. Pressing H from the main menu will give you an index to the help system so you can read about any command or feature of HELP!. HELP! is not a memory hog when it executes other programs. In fact it takes up less than 2K of memory. HELP! is also not memory resident. This means that other memory resident utilities should work fine. The way it works is this. The file HELP!.COM is loaded into memory first. This program is small and stays in memory as long as HELP! is running. This then calls HELPRUN.EXE. This is the guts of the program. This program is large, but does not stay in memory when another program is run from within HELP!. Hardware Requirements IBM PC, PC/XT, AT, PS/2, or compatible. Monochrome, Color, EGA/VGA Display Adapter or equivalent. Hard Disk (Recommended). 256K Memory Minimum. DOS 2.0 or greater, 3.0 or greater for directory renaming. List of Features for Version 4.0 * Copy a File or Tagged Files to different drive and/or directory. 2 * Erase will erase one or more files with one command. * Equipment Check displays CPU & Coprocessor type, display adapters, parallel and serial ports and extended and expanded memory present. * Move a File or Tagged Files to a different drive or a different directory. This differs from the move in that it does not make a copy of the file, but moves it somewhere else. * Locate a File or Files on your disk. This allows you to search for a file name in all of the directories of your disk. * Change the file Attributes of a file. This will allow you to protect and unprotect a file from change with the read only attribute or you can change the other attributes as well including the time & date Stamp. * Send files to your printer in either formatted or un- formatted styles. Also Hex-ASCII-EBCDIC file dumping is allowed. * Tree gives you a visual map of the directory structure of the disk. This is a quick way to change directories when cleaning up your disk. This also will have the directories marked which contained matches from the last Locate. * View allows you to view 1-4 text files on the screen. There is also a scan & compare command so you can see where files differ. Features Added or Changed in Version 4.0 Version 4.0 has one less file than it had before. This will clear up a lot of the errors people experienced when HELP! could not find the overlay file. The help system has been totally redone and is now an indexed system. What this means for the user is that it is much faster retrieving screens. Also when using the Help command from the main menu you can randomly access the help screens. It is almost like having then HELP! manual online at all times! The view command has been totally redone. The screen layout and the command sequences have been changed and are much more logical now. Many commands have been added to help you 3 navigate your file. Among these is the Search command and the Scan & Compare command. Scan & Compare allows you to compare two to four files from any point in the files (not necessarily the same point) and it will stop scanning at the first non-compare. The screen combinations have been enhanced also. You can now turn off the key status display and gain the file attributes display. This allows the viewing of far more files than the verbose file display. Also you can turn off the status window and have just a file window that fills the whole screen. For EGA/VGA users I've added a 43 line mode for EGA/VGA and a 50 Line mode for the VGA. HELP! auto configures itself by default. What this means is that if you are running an EGA that is in a 120 col X 43 line mode, HELP! will use the whole screen and add columns and rows to the file display and view displays and so on to use all of screen. The only requirement is that the display adapter use the EGA/VGA conventions of storing the size in low RAM. This covers most EGA style adapters. If your EGA/VGA does not have these modes the 43 and 50 lines are available from within HELP! and can be automatically used at the programs start. Your color selections have also been enhanced and are selectable from the options menu as they have always been. DOS's Mode BW80 can be used to send HELP! into it's monochrome color set for color adapter users who run with monochrome displays. This can also be turned on from the options menu. The Erase Subdirectory command has been eliminated and is now included in the Erase Command. This, I am sure, will be more convenient. The Equipment command has been added to the Utilities menu. This will display the Display Adapters and Monitors in your system, the number of serial & Parallel ports you have and the Processor & Co-Processor Type. Any Extended & Expanded Memory amounts will also be displayed. I've found this command to be an asset in maintaining multiple systems in a business. With two key strokes you can instantly inventory your system. The Print Command has been redone also. It is faster and now prints margins correctly. Also the ability to send output to other than LPT1 has been added. You can send output to any of your serial or parallel ports. You can also automatically program your serial ports on startup. There is room to display disk drives A - L on Drive and Format Commands. They do recognize A - Z however. 4 The Expert Level Can be set to get rid of some of the prompting such as Are You Sure? Are You Sure You Are Sure? and so on. In the Past error checking has been handled poorly by HELP!. This has all changed now. No more will the screens be messed up with Abort, Retry, Ignore? Trying to erase Read- Only files will not blow up the system, copying them will be allowed. Try it! I'm sure you'll like it! If you are printing and you run out of paper or you jam or something else occurs, this is now handled eloquently. Format now truly recognizes if it is a HARD Disk you want to format and prompts you as such. The Attributes Command appears on both the Main Menu and the Utilities menu where it used to be. The Locate Command now reads the tree when it is running. Any matches found will be flagged in the TREE so you can remember which directories contained the matches. The TREE Command will not be re-read when you make, erase or rename subdirectories. This is handled automatically now. You can flag directories with special attributes in the tree display. TREE & Locate will now operated to the maximum depth allowed by DOS. The TREE Display will automatically configure itself for the screen size and the maximum depth of the directories on your disk. This allows the entire disk structure to be seen without horizontal scrolling. You can also rename directories from within the TREE Command. Renaming directories only works on version 3.0 or later of DOS. The Date & Time Commands now allow you to set an AT compatible battery clock. This is prompted after the internal clock is set. There are many more changes that were made and there are many more planned for the future. Please if you have any suggestions or things you would like to see, write me. Installation If you have an older version of HELP! already, erase the files HELP!.COM, HELPRUN.000, HELPRUN.COM, HELP!.HLP and HELP.CFG before installing the new version. 5 There are 4 files supplied with HELP!. These are HELP!.COM, HELPRUN.EXE, HELP!.HLP, and this READTHIS file. The first three are all that is needed to run HELP!. The simplest way to configure your system, is to copy these files into a directory and type HELP! to start. This is the easiest but not necessarily the best way to start HELP!. The recommended way, is to copy these files into a directory that the DOS Variable PATH points to. This will give the advantage of being able to start HELP! anywhere you might be on the disk. Of course if you are going to use HELP! all of the time this would not be an advantage, but it would not hurt either. If you do not need the online help system you can get rid of HELP!.HLP. Any Memory resident utilities should be loaded before HELP!.COM is started. If they are not, the system will probably not run correctly and will not release the memory used by HELP!.COM when you quit HELP!. Some of DOS's commands are memory resident and should be run before HELP!. These are PRINT, GRAPHICS, MODE and others. And now the Pitch... HELP! is distributed under the user supported concept. This concept is an alternate way of distributing software. My belief is that you should have a chance to try software before you buy. This software is here for you to try. This does not mean that this software is free. I distribute my software this way because it offers the lowest overhead and I can keep my price low. This benefits all of us. Many good software writers have abandoned this method because people abuse it's intent. In a nutshell, try this program for a reasonable period of time, if you intend to continue using it, send $30. If you don't send $30, please do not continue using HELP!. In return I will send you the latest version and the documentation. Whether you choose to use it or not, feel free to pass it along to others. Quantity discounts are available as well as site licensing. Send all inquiries and monies to: Bruce A. Taylor 1103 Mendoza Drive St. Peters, Mo. 63376 License Agreement As a Registered user you are entitled to install this copy of HELP! on any machine you will be using so long as you or anyone else will not be using it at the same time on two machines. Non-Registered Users have the right to try a copy of HELP! to determine if they would like to register their copy. After a reasonable trial period, it is expected that the user will register their copy or cease using HELP! Under no circumstances shall a business use this software without registering that copy. Businesses can obtain a multicopy license in which they are limited to a certain number of copies. Any user whether registered or not is entitled to give away a copy to any one interested in trying HELP! but please do not include the documentation or the HELP!.CFG file when you make the copy. By not including the HELP!.CFG file you are distributing a copy of HELP! with all of the default options in force. A distribution copy must include either the file HELP!.ARC if you got the program as an archive or the following files: HELP!.COM HELPRUN.EXE HELP!.HLP READTHIS SysOps of bulletin boards and Distributors of Public Domain Software may distribute this program for a reasonable copy fee plus a reasonable compensation for your time and effort but may not distribute with the intent to profit from the sale as though you were the author. Warranty Bruce A. Taylor makes no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation, any warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Bruce A. Taylor shall not be liable for any damages, whether direct, indirect, special or consequential arising from a failure of this program to operate in the manner desired by the user. Bruce A. Taylor shall not be liable for any damage to data or property which may be caused directly or indirectly by use of the program. In no event will Bruce A. Taylor be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use or inability to use the program, or for any claim by any other party. INVOICE Please Send: QTY Description Unit Price Total ____ HELP! (Latest Version) $ 30.00 $ _____ Please Subtract Any Discounts (see chart below) $ _____ TOTAL $ _____ Discount Chart 10 - 24 15% Discount 25 - 49 20% Discount 50 - 99 25% Discount Site License and Limited Copy Agreements are also available. Name __________________________________________________ Company __________________________________________________ Address __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Send To: Bruce A. Taylor 1103 Mendoza Drive St. Peters, Mo. 63376