As the original author did several writing and copying text errors regarding what was ACTUALLY written in a real Startup-Sequence I had to clean up his mess. What an useless author that must have been!



ICPUG THE AMIGA STARTUP SEQUENCE
In this month's tip, Ken Turner takes you on a quick tour of the Startup sequence. The first sequence is taken from copy of Workbench 1.2 which no doubt everyone has seen but may not fully understand. Let's have a closer look at it line by line.



WORKBENCH 1.2

Echo "A500 Workbench 1.2 Version 33.56 23-APR-87*N"

This is the text that is printed onto the screen when the disk is loading. The "*N" introduces a blank line between the next screen message. You may place any text you like on this line such as "Freds copy of Workbench is now loading. Please wait"


Binddrivers
This command integrates any device drivers you may have in the Expansion drawer into the system for example a plotter and as such can be removed from the startup-sequence if you dont posess such a device. This shortens the loading time by a couple of seconds.


if EXISTS sys:system
path sys:system add
endif
if EXISTS sys:utilities
path sys:utilities add
endif

This portion of the sequence checks for the existence of the System and Utilities directories on your disk and adds a path to them. This has the effect of being able to run any routines in these directories from the root of the disk i.e Format instead of System/Format You can add more paths to your disk if you wish. If you have deleted these drawers from your disk you may remove these commands and speed up the loading process still further.


Dir RAM:
This forces the system to recognise the ram disk and therefore display a clickable icon on the workbench screen.


Path RAM: add
This operates the same as the Path commands above.


SetMap usa1
This sets up the correct "key map" for the keyboard. I find mine works perfectly OK without this command and could be deleted.


Addbuffers df0: 20
The Amiga disk drives load data into a memory buffer before it can be used elsewhere. If a program is small enough to fit into this buffer, it needn't be recalled from the disk again. There is a memory overhead of 544 bytes per buffer used.


LoadWb
Guess what this does!!


Failat 30
this command halts the startupsequence if the Amiga returns an error code limit of, in this case, thirty. This particular line is included for the benefit of the Setclock command below.


SetClock >NIL: Opt Load
The command setclock loads the time from the clock onboard the memory expansion board (if fitted).


Date
The Date command has been included to display the new system time & date.


endcli >nil:
Finally this closes down the initial CLI.



WORKBENCH 1.3

The new Workbench 1.3 startupsequence has a similar set of commands but ·also some interesting changes. By studying this file you will be in a good position to tune your batch file when Commodore finally release 1.3 on an expectant world.


Addbuffers df0: 10
The Amiga disk drives load data into a memory buffer before it can be used elsewhere. If a program is small enough to fit into this buffer, it needn't be recalled from the disk again. There is a memory overhead of 544 bytes per buffer used.

c:SetPatch >NIL:
This patches the ROM in 1.211.3 Kickstarts enabling recoverable alerts. The >NIL: stops a message stating that Setpatch is in effect from being displayed on the screen.

cd c:
This changes the directory path to C which speeds up execution time a little.

Echo "A500/A2000 Workbench disk.Release 1.3 version 34.20*N"

Sys:System/FastMemFirst
You will find this in the System drawer, moves the fast memory to the first in the queue.

Binddrivers
This command integrates any device drivers you may have in the Expansion drawer into the system for example a plotter and as such can be removed from the startup-sequence if you dont posess such a device. This shortens the loading time by a couple of seconds.

SetClock load
The command setclock loads the time from the clock onboard the memory expansion board (if fitted).

Date
The Date command has been included to display the new system time & date.

FF >NIL: -0
This command speeds up text output to the screen. -0 turns FF on and entering - n (in this case -n MEANS -n and NOT a number) turns it off.

resident CLI L:Shell-Seg SYSTEM pure add
The resident command erases, replaces or, in this case, includes a new command in the list of memory resident commands. If you list your C directory you will notice that some of the commands have a P included in the protection bits shown at the end. Any of these commands which are included in the startup-sequence and! or in the Startup II Sequence (see below) will be memory resident and will not have to access the disk drive.

resident c:Execute pure
(As above).

mount newcon:
The Mount command adds a new device to AmigaDOS. Newcon is used by the new Workbench Shell (a much more powerful CLI).

failat 11
This line traps the resulting error if the next batch file cannot be found.

run execute S:Startupll
By using Run and Execute together the Amiga will "play" another batch file in the background while the rest of the original startup-sequence finishes.

Wait >NIL: 5 mins
This line will wait up to five minutes for Startupll to finish.

SYS:System/SetMap usa1
This sets up the correct "key map" for the keyboard. I find mine works perfectly OK without this command and could be deleted.

path ram: c: sys:utilities sys:system s: sys:prefs add
Adds additional paths to other directories. For example, if you tried to use the Format command from the CLI without adding a path to the System directory the Amiga would tell you it was an unknown command.

LoadWB delay
Adding Delay waits for the Startup II sequence to finish before loading the workbench.

endcli >NIL:
Same as WB 1.2

There are two parts to the 1 .3 version of the startup-sequences. Part two is shown below. More commands can be added when you become proficient with AmigaDos and the Protect command.



WORKBENCH 1.3 Startupll

Resident c:Resident pure
resident c:List pure
resident c:CD pure
resident c:Mount pure
resident c:Assign pure
resident c:Makedir pure

All the above are included in the memory resident command list which helps speed up the startup sequence.

makedir ram:t
assign t: ram:t
makedir ram:env
assign ENV: ram:env
makedir ram:clipboards
assign CLIPS: ram:clipboards

The above list of commands make and assign directories to the Ram disk otherwise any text you may clip or copy in a word processor for example would have to be temporarily saved to the equivalent directories on your workbench disk.

mount speak:
mount aux:
mount pipe:

These lines add more new devices to AmigaDos.

resident Mount remove
resident Assign remove
resident Makedir remove

You can remove resident commands from memory but, if you have the memory to spare, they can be left resident to speed up subsequent use of these commands.

break 1 c
Signals to any other processes that it is OK to continue.



For the sake of completeness I have included below an example of a hard disk startup-sequence (Ken Turner's).

Mount DH0:
This lets the Amiga recognise the existence of a hard disk unit.

DefSYS DH0:
The command DEFSYS is a public domain command available from a Northern Dealer, who specialises in hard drives and memory boards, which very quickly and easily assigns the system directories to the hard disk in one go.

CD DH0:
Moves to the root of the hard disk directory.

Execute S:Startup-Sequence
Plays the full 1.3 startup-sequence from the hard disk.