A post arguing the merits of having no or an as-low-as-reasonably-practicable barrier to entry for installing and configuring any software. Case study with Mutt versus Mothers.
documentation, mums, mutt, unix | in Tech 
While visiting the monthly auctions at Taylors Auction Rooms, Montrose, a friend happened upon a cardboard box. Not just any cardboard box, though. It was an old Gateway computer box. (Remember the black and white ‘cow spot’ branding, based on the Holstein breed of cow.)
Within the box was not a lovely, old, decrepit Gateway Pentium-233 or suchlike. Instead, a glorious Amiga A1200, basking in it’s original box; kitted out with a 209Mb hard disk too. Also in the box were several cases of floppies, endearingly labelled and scribbled upon; an ancient printer; and some failing Atari 2600 style joysticks.
Over the moon, I secured “LOT 3522 BOX OF COMPUTER WARE” for a small sum, along with a humorous lithograph, Saving the Hens by artist Barbara Robertson.
On bringing the Amiga home, I jacked it in and booted it up. The sound of the floppy drive whirring away brought back waves of nostalgia. Happily, I went straight for Syndicate, a cherished old game that I originally played through on the Sega Mega Drive (pre-owned from Electronic Boutique, with Genesis printed on the box art). Sadly, installation failed partway through Disk 3 of 4.
Undeterred I began a browse of eBay and stumbled upon many ways you can upgrade an Amiga. Foolhardy, I picked up a 4Gb Compact Flash (with IDE adaptor) “Hard Disk”, thinking, ‘Wow! What an upgrade. Now I can load all my games on.’
Not so fast. Many [most?] games don’t come with an installer. That’s where I found WHDLoad, which is an amazing shareware product that integrates your original games with installers (some of which even add value in fixing or patching sketchy compatibility and bugs). Games are made into a single file (or image) and by default the whole game is loaded into RAM when opened.
When I got Syndicate to install via WHDLoad, upon execution I was given an error message along then lines of ‘not enough RAM’. Taking a disingenuous stab as to why Syndicate (WHDLoad) would not run on my Amiga A1200, I thought: four floppies @ 800Kb (max) + Workbench 3.1 overhead ~800Kb = 4Mb RAM. The Amiga A1200 comes with only 2Mb RAM (as did my family 486 SX-25Mhz, which we upgraded to 4Mb for Sim City 2000 back in 1994/5).
So I started looking at Amiga RAM upgrade options:
Diving straight into upgrading Amiga RAM via an accelerator card, there are a plethora to choose from. Accelerators come with upgraded CPUs —from the slightly improved 68030 through to the beastly 68060 that necessitates uprated Power Supply Unit (PSU) and cooling—, some have Memory Management chips (MMUs) and Floating Point chips (FPUs). Most importantly (for my purposes), these accelerators facilitate RAM upgrades. 64Mb is not unusual.
Depending on the configuration, these accelerator cards can typically sell for anywhere between £100 and £400 on the likes of eBay. I was able to snap up a Viper II 68030 with 8Mb RAM for ~£80 (April 2012).
It took a genuinely scary amount of force to jam the card into place. I thought I was prepared for this as I had read up on forums such as the English Amiga Board, but it was still a fearsome moment, checking if that snapping sound was good or bad. Turns out it was good, but I had to tease it out ever so slightly afterwards to get a good connection. Accelerator fitted, I immediately found my next obstacle.
Before installing the accelerator card, the system loaded fine and everything worked, except for not having enough RAM to run WHDload games. I fitted the accelerator card, but now on booting I got an error message stating:
Loading failed: object not found C:\LoadModule failed returncode 10
Commenting the following lines in the startup-sequence (by inserting a semi-colon at the start of the lines) allowed the system to load, but when I then double-clicked a WHDload game to run it, the task bar at the top of workbench would quickly flash “attempting to load[…]”, but nothing further happened:
;IF EXISTS DEVS:scsi.device
; C:LoadModule DEVS:scsi.device
; EndIF
Thanks to a forum user Retro-Nerd, I came to the conclusion that my RAM module was not firing on all cylinders. Confirmed with a quick memory test. All was not lost. Retro-Nerd pointed out a fix. Un- comment (Delete the first semi-colon only) the following line in S:WHDLoad.prefs:
;NoMemReverse ;do not allocate memory reverse
Bingo! Worked a treat. Now most of my Amiga woes are gone. Though I could do with more fully-functioning RAM…and a couple of zip-sticks for Sensible Soccer…and an old CRT TV for authenticity (and for Playstation 1 and Sega Saturn light gun games)…and…
My love of the Amiga has been rekindled and I’m looking forward to playing some old timeless games with old timeless friends.
Accelerator Card, Amiga, Amiga 1200, Amiga A1200, RAM Upgrade, Syndicate, WHDLoad | in Gaming, Tech The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from Dune, by Frank Herbert, via Dawn Ardent:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Fear is an internal force that acts against your best intentions. It cannot be killed, but it can be fought, on a daily basis. Fear wields arms such as procrastination, laziness and depression that will thrash wildly to stop you from doing what you know to be necessary, or what you truly love. Fear is out to get you; to dominate and suppress you; to break your commitments and promises.
But fear comes from within. So why is it part of us? A scum that cannot be skimmed or conquered. It is perhaps a necessary byproduct of our perception, critical thinking and decision making functions. Fear may be a basic and primal survival mechanism. Definitely, it has borne me through some difficult times (via a state of unthinking autopilot).
Surviving and living are very different. The former requires submission to fear and a miserable, hollow life. The latter requires a control of fear, and —I think— a curiosity and thirst for new experiences and challenges. Living is growing. Surviving is entropy and death.
When you feel the desperate, smothering blackness of fear all around you, recall the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. Think it, say it, shout it, scream it out. Whatever it takes. Then do something about it.
Do you have a job? A partner? A family? Hobbies? What commitments are gnawing at you, and what promises have you made? How much time do you really have?
Does free time become an ever-elusive myth as we grow older (year-by-year)? Or do we just become poorer at managing our time?
The aim of this exercise is to provide a way for anyone to fix time.1 If you often feel like you are treading water, the following exercise can be a great help.
So let’s start. Do you keep a notepad and pen/pencil(s) with you at all times? That’s rule #1 towards being awesome. Taking the load off your brain by writing things down will give you control. Expand your short-term memory. Write it down.
Scrawl out your weekly division of time (for a typical, routine week) —lets’s call it a time planner—. Each day has 24 blocks; within each block a maximum of three meaningful tasks.
Fills up pretty quick, huh? Any space left? Now what happens when you want to add something to the heap? Or when someone asks if you can do something for them? By planning your day-to-day life, you’ll know if you do [have the time] or not.
If you hold yourself to it, and you are honest, your estimating skills (for yourself at least) will get better the more you do this: ‘No, task xwon’t take one hour, it’ll take two, three, or five. Hmm. I really like this task and I know how complex it is because I’ve done it before. Now, where am I going to have three hours with enough energy and nothing risky either side? Ah, next Wednesday. It’s in the book.’
Capture progress in your notepad as you go: Planned: 3 hours. Actual: 2 hours. Difference explain: ‘I was in the zone.’
Or (as happens quite often):
Planned: 1 hour. Actual: 3 hours.
Difference explained: ‘I seriously underestimated the task and my motivation/energy was fighting me. I let resistance sap at my performance.’
To make time for something, you often have to not do something else. Your cup brimmeth over already and compromise is a ghastly word I refuse to say. Real artists ship.
By continually replacing things you have mastered/finished/failed at2 with things you want to do that will make your life better, you are winning. Congratulations.
So how’s your time planner looking? Good? Great. Let’s call it a diary now. Anything you want to change or add? Keeping current with your diary will pay off heaps when others ask for your time: ‘Yes, I can work on that experiment tomorrow night and mail you the frenzied, super-smart simians then.’
Once you’ve got the right things to do, then there’s nothing left but to do them. That’s the power of Think Vs. Learned. And at the core of it, you’ll do well in life by picking the right things to do with your time, then doing them.
1 If you are already really good at this, I’d like to hear from you. How do you do it?
2 Failing is only bad if you don’t take the time to learn why and how you failed. Likewise, success is only good if you learn why and how you succeeded. Important lessons. Character building.
Productivity, Thinking | in Writing