Automated Archives GRS DEMO Installation Guide Automated Archives Genealogical Research System (GRS) represents the latest breakthrough in computerized research for genealogical and historical material. The installation of the software is very easy if you follow the instructions. If you have any problems, don't hesitate to call our TOLL FREE number: 1 (800) 748-4425 SYSTEM MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: An IBM XT Compatible Machine with at least 640 K RAM can be used to run the program. If other computer programs have previously loaded extensive Resident Ram programs that utilize quite a bit of memory, even when they are not running, it may be necessary to remove these programs to allow GRSDEMO to run. The program will work directly from a floppy drive, but will load and run faster if loaded on a hard disk. The program will make references to the CD. In the demo version a DATA floppy disk will be used to simulate the CD. For 5.25 inch format the demo comes on two disks, one program disk and one data disk. For 3.5 inch versions the program and the data are on one disk. GRSDEMO is copyright protected and the exclusive property of Automated Archives. You may make as many backup copies for your own use as you desire. INSTALLATION: The configuration file 'CONFIG.SYS' which is contained in your ROOT directory needs to contain the entry, FILES=20. Type this file, to determine the contents, by using the DOS command: TYPE CONFIG.SYS You may edit the file, with any standard ASCII text editor such as EDLIN. You may use a word processor if you can save the file out as an ASCII text file. If you intend on using the software from a harddisk, simply copy all the files from the Program Disk to a directory such as GRS, on your harddisk. It is usually best if you create a subdirectory to store your work files. This subdirectory can be called 'WORK'. See your DOS manual for instructions on creating sub-directories and copying files. Change your current default drive to the location where your program is located. For example if you are running the program from your harddisk in the C:\GRS directory, type: CD C:\GRS Start the program up by typing 'GRSDEMO'. The first time that you use the program, you will be required to complete a simple setup. This will allow you to change various program settings. PROGRAM SETTINGS: (a) Color Setup If you have a monochrome screen, the program will detect this and not allow color changes. If you wish to change the color settings for your color monitor you may do so with this option. (b) Path selection You will see a prompt in the middle of the lower section of the screen, asking you to enter the path where the CD is located. You should enter the drive letter of you floppy drive that will be simulating a CD READER (usually A:\). Note: The actual drive letter depends on how your system is configured and where you have placed the data. The next prompt will ask you for the location of your work files. If you created a special directory for them, enter the complete path name to the directory. Note: if you are unable to run the 'GRSDEMO' program, you may have entered an invalid path. This may prevent you from continuing. You may delete the setup file ('GRS.CTL') and start over. RUNNING THE PROGRAM: The first basic rule is that when you press the 'Enter' key, the program will process the commands that are highlighted. The 'Esc' key will back you up to your last state. You should see a message appear, that instructs you that system is 'Loading the CD'. When this completes a new screen appears (The Initial Screen). This screen gives you four options: Summary Search Data Search Load the CD Change Setup These options are activated by selecting the desired options by 'moving the bar' over the desired option and selecting return. Note the bar actually stays in the same position, and the list moves underneath. Lets cover the options from the bottom up. "Change Setup" is the option used for the changing colors and setting up directory paths. "Load the CD" is used when you wish to change CD disks. After inserting your new disks, run this option. "Data Search" is the most common way in which the program will be used. This is a search of the actual text that has been specified for searching. "Summary Search" is used to get a quick overview of what information is available. Some CD databases will contain "Summary Records". These record contain short descriptions of the material in each of the books on the disks. In addition to the description there is a Surname list from that book. Both the Summary and the Data searches run the same way. When you start up the search you will be given a choice as to how you want the results of the searches displayed. On the data Search, this will be 'alphabetically' or by 'category'. The 'alphabetical' will display a two window system. The first window is an alphabetical listing of all books on the CD. The second window will show screen numbers. Screen numbers are like pages of the book, except they are reflect complete display pages of text. Before a search is executed, the screen number list will show all the screens that are available. Automated Archives has devised a simple method to show a large amount of data on a single screen, through the use of multiple windows. These windows are side by side, with a highlight bar running from one window to the next. The information displayed in a given window is dependent upon the information in the window to the left of it. For example the screen numbers shown in the 'alpha search' belong to the item that is highlighted from the book- category screen. If you change the highlighted item in the book- category screen then the screen numbers will change to reflect the new book-category. In the 'Category Search' there are three windows. First the 'Category', second the 'Book' and third the 'Screen number' Moving around the windows is really quite easy. There is always one window designated as 'active'. This is the window with the double line border around the outside edge. Use the left and right keys to choose which window is active. Notice as you push the left and right keys the active window changes. The data within the active window is scrolled by using the up,down, pgup, pgdn, home and end keys. Don't be too surprised when you initially scroll up and down in the book-category window if you don't see any changes, because all the books will have at least 12 screens of data. To see the total number of screens in a book, first move the book you are interested in under the highlight bar and then change the active window to the 'Scr #' window. Press the 'end' key. The list will reposition with the last screen number of the highlighted book in the highlight bar. In the 'Category Search' the reaction is quite a bit more visible. With the 'Category' window active, if you scroll up and down, you will see both the book list and the screen numbers change. Again, the information of the 'Book' window is controlled by the item under the highlight of the 'Category' window. Another feature with the window system is the selection process. A selected item is something that will be searched on. This is very useful if you wish to manually limit the items that you are interested in. Next to the title 'Book' on the upper part of the screen you will see '(Selected = 76)'. This indicates the number of books (in this case 76) that have been selected for searching. Initially, all books are selected. To select a book, scroll the book you are interested in under the highlight bar and then press the 'space' bar. The color of the item will change and the number of items selected will update. (All the items selected and no items selected will have the same number - which is all the items). You can use this to limit your searching to a particular category of materials. In the production CD's there can be dozens of categories. If, for example, you are only interested in marriage records, you could limit your search to only that category by selecting that single category. Note that when you select a category, all the books within that category are selected, when you 'unselect' the category (by pressing the space bar one more time with the category under the highlight) all the books under that category are unselected. Whenever you press the 'Enter' key, the computer will preform a search on all the books that are selected. SEARCHING: Every word of the text is indexed! That means you are not limited to any particular item like a name or date, but you can even search on occupations or anything you can conceive of. Yes you can even search on the word 'the' and find every occurrence of it. I'm not quite sure how that would benefit your genealogical research, but if you really want it, no problem. The more often a word occurs, the longer the processing time will take. If you do search on a common word or name, it will take a little while to load all the information into the program. The Search Screen is very simple to use. You can enter up to eight separate search expressions for the computer to find at a single time. In genealogy a search expression is comprised of things you know, such as the name or dates or locations. The computer is trying to find information that can be displayed on a single screen. For example, if we type in "POTTER JOHN", the computer will look for all the places that both the words "POTTER" and the word "JOHN" occur close enough to be displayed on a single screen. Those words do not have to be in any particular order, just close. This way you can find references that mention the last name in one sentence and the first name in another. However, this will allow matches to occur that do not specifically belong to "John Potter". For example if a paragraph mentioned "Mary Potter" and "John Smith" then a match would occur. This can be quickly dismissed by the operator when the match is displayed. Each of the eight search lines represents a separate search. If on the first line you entered "John Smith" and on the second line you put "Mary Potter" you would get matches or either JOHN SMITH or MARY POTTER but you would not get entries of JOHN POTTER. On a single entry line you can enter up to 256 characters. This means that you could enter "JOHN SMITH California Blacksmith" and it would only return matches that had all four words within them. The search ignores case differences, so you can type the search in either upper or lower case, or a mixture, it doesn't matter. After you have entered all your desired search expressions, press the 'Enter' key and the search will begin. A window will come up and will tell you that a search is in progress. When the Search is done, it will tell you. Another window will then come up, that say 'Processing Books'. This section of the program takes, the results of the search, and figures out how many occurrences, occurs in each individual book. When the process is complete, it will instruct you how many total occurrences were found, in how many books. A special note: If you search on very common names or words, you could have thousands of potential matches. The program will drop out of the conversion process when over a 1000 matches occurs. Most of the time, this is an indication, the you probably will want to narrow your search, by making it more restrictive. It may be that you really do want to process every occurrence of the word 'the'. If more than 1000 matches occur. A special screen will be brought up, that tells you of the interruption. You will be given a choice of either continuing the full load, or looking at the list of matches. To continue the full loading process, press the 'F6' key. The processes will continue, until all the books are processed. This may take quite a while, but it may be necessary to find your specific ancestor. After the Books have been processed, Press any key and you will be brought back to a screen that shows the books and the categories again. This will be just like, what you saw before, except that the categories, books and screen numbers, now will only reflect those items that matched your search expression. For example you may find that instead of four categories, you now have only one category showing, with a smaller number of books within that category. Also the text records may skip over large blocks of numbers. The screen numbers reflect only those screens that contain words from your search expression. There are two separate ways to view a particular record. You may move the 'Active' window to the Scr # and scroll up and down till you get the desired text number under the highlight bar. You may 'Select' the item by pressing the space bar, and the item will be brought up. If you wish to see the first screen #, that is already highlighted, you may simply hit the 'F5' key without moving the active window. You are now viewing the full text from the original record. The words that you searched on are Highlighted within the text displayed. You now may move around within the text, by using the PgUp, PgDn, Up arrow, Down arrow. If the text is wider that the display screen, you may use the left and right arrows to position the text. The Pageup and Pagedown keys will take you to the previous page in the original book. If you are at the top of a book, it will take you to the last page of the previous selected book. There are two ways to see the next occurrence of your search expression. You can press either the 'N' or '+' keys to see the next item within your book, or 'P' or '-' to see the previous item. This is fine for checking every possibility. If you see that a particular books contains matches, but they do not match, you may press the 'ESC' key and that will take you back to the book list. You may then move the next book you wish to check under the highlight bar and then press 'F5' again, and you will be moved to that book. If you used a category type display, you can skip over whole sections of books that don't meet your needs. If you see that there are areas that you are not interested in, you can select the items, that affect you, and do the search again. Each subsequent search, will be further restricted by the new search that you are doing. You can keep on doing this until you either have no hits or just exactly the group of records you really want. By pressing the 'Esc' key you can return to the results of the previous search. With this introduction, you will be able to do find out many interesting facts that may relate to your ancestors. The INTRODUCTION DISK is intended for demonstration only. It does not contain near the amount of material that is contained on our standard CD-ROM products. We hope that this system will facilitate your search for your ancestors and provide many enjoyable hours of discovering your hidden heritage.