Hi, i've been trying to check out magazines and articles on the amiga but I still can't seem to find what i'm looking for. I've used Windows and various *nix types but i'm a bit confused as far as the Amiga goes. I have a few questions to start with and was hoping you guys might help me out. For instance what is Directory Opus, and Workbench. I get workbench is the AMIGAOS or i thought. I downloaded Amikit to go with my Amiga Forever and it uses Directory Opus and doesn't look that much diffrent from Workbench. Is it just another Window Manager or Shell? That and how is the file/directory structure in Amiga? I've tried to downloaded some programs to install and I can't find the files. The one I did find, (I downloaded 303tracker from aminet, i'm a electronic musician so naturally i wanted to check out the audio software) and when i tried to install it, it said i didn't have enough harddrive though i had about 2 to 4 gigs of space.
I think the 'Emulator' uses a version of DOpus but don`t quote me as I only use an actual Amiga. I use DOpus IV given that this version has lived with me since my early days and has been customised to do most things that the Amiga Workbench does through the old pointy clicky icon processes. No different you just have to set the menus and buttons up to activate the programs or tools. I believe that DOpus V is even more intuitive and can be set up to replace the Workbench. I prefer ToolsDaemon to launch programs and DOpus for file management, archiving and crunching etc. I love my own icons and I tweak and design scripts from the Workbench to do all the grunt work. If you can sweet talk an old Amigan he will send you his cfg file ready customised for your own use. There are even cfg files on Aminet though not sure how they work with an Emulator.
The Workbench is really the heart of the Amiga and somewhere that you go to make the magic work. The other partitions are for your work and projects and possibly games. I have many drives and partitions on the Amiga set up to do a host of things. Customising Prefs, user-startups, assigns, mount lists, scripts etc are all products of the Workbench though the management of files in the Workbench can be done through DOpus.
Here is an extract from the site with a taste of the DOpus commands. The CONFIG section is the most interesting allowing you to set up buttons to access drives, tools and commands. Archiving and unarchiving is very useful along with crunching and decrunching disks.
THE BUTTONS:
ALL: Selects all drawers and files in the source window - saving you time.
NONE: Deselects all selected files in thesource window.
PARENT: Moves back to the previous drawer you were in.
ROOT: Moves back to the root directory.
COPY: Highlight one or more files in the source window, click on copy and the file(s) will be copied to the destination.
MOVE: Just like Copy, except the file(s) in the source window are deleted after the copy operation.
RENAME: Click on one or more files and then on this button and you`ll be asked to enter new file names.
DELETE: Highlight files and drawers and click here to delete them. WARNING. You can`t get these back once you have deleted them.
MAKEDIR: Prompts you for a name and then creates a drawer with that name in the source window.
ASSIGN: To be covered in next TUTORIAL
CHECKFIT: Adds up the sizes of all selected FILES/DRAWERS and sees if they will fit on the drive in the destination window. The result is displayed in the status bar.
GETSIZES: Similar to Checkfit but a quicker approximation.
HUNT: search the selected files and drawers in the source window for a given file name.
SEARCH: Scan through the files and drawers selected for a given file name.
RUN: Executes the selected programs. You`ll be asked to enter parameters, see the individual manual for details of these perameters.
DATESTAMP: Changes the date stamp of the selected files to that entered. For the current date press the space bar and then return.
PROTECT: To be covered next TUTORIAL.
ICONINFO: Changes icon perameters, similar to that given in the REQUESTER when you click on INFO menu on the WORKBENCH.
ARC EXTRACT: Extracts files from compressed `LHA` archives to the destination path. LHA is a common compression system used by Public Domain software and BBS systems. Not available on 1.3 Amigas.
ENCRYPT: Adds or removes password protection files. Select a file, click on this and enter password, now you can only access it if you know the password.
To remove the password click on this button and enter the password with a minus symbol `-` at the front of the password.
READ: Displays the selected TEXT files.
HEX READ: Displays a file using the HEX numbering system, probably only useful to programmers.
SHOW: Displays an IFF, Animation, icon or font file.
PLAY: Highlight an 8SVX sound file and click on this button to hear it.
PRINT: Print
PATH NAMES: These two allow you to type in PATH names rather than clicking on drawers - if you know the full path name this can save you a lot of time.
HELP: Directory Opus has a comprehensive built in help facility. To use this press `HELP` on the keyboard and then click any part on the program, a help screen will then be displayed. You can keep on clicking on things to get help until
you press `HELP` again.
Directory Opus: Dopus Library v22.6
Copywright 1990-94 Jonathan Potter
Compiled on Oct 31st 1994.
Good luck and if you enjoy the emulator why not get the real thing :-)
scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
