ScuzzBlog: Diaries March 2022 Entry 14th March 2022: Post 1: CED - CygnusEd Professional Release 2. CED - CygnusEd Professional Release 2. CygnusEd or CED is not simply a text editor. It offers an editing system for the Amiga. To customise and to make the Amiga function you will need to be able to edit scripts. These scripts are read by the Amiga and then executed. I have discussed CygnusED previously and the importance of the text editor, and yet it seems to be a stumbling block for a lot of users that have become use to auto installs of software. The Amiga not only has an all important tool icon that implements certain commands, but also initiates secondary scripts and other functions which are specific to your setup. When the computer first boots it references the startup-sequence in the 'S' drawer which in turn refers to the user-startup which also resides in the 'S' drawer. The idea is that as you add software to the computer you will assign its location so that the computer knows just where everything is. The Amiga was first a floppy based system and therefore assumes your programs will be on the floppy disk in the floppy port. In placing software on the hard drive the Amiga needs to know where to look for the various drawers, files and tools. This is where the 'assign' comes in and we simply add assigns to the user-startup to tell the Amiga that say ... assign dpaint: work:dpaint. This tells the Amiga to look in work: for dpaint and not the floppy. Further, when mount files are required to devices we can add a script telling the device the various parameters of the drive. If scripts, files, text and even html files need editing we are going to be calling up the services of the text editor. CED is but one of many, albeit my favourite. Good news is that it came on an Amiga Computing cover disk. So familiarise yourself with the workings of the text editor, and appreciate its importance in driving your Amiga. I have added some notes to the later pictures in this blog as a way of describing the processes involved. CED - CygnusEd Professional Release 2. Sorry I had to backdrop 2B for this exercise. She also appears as the RAM DISK CED has rather an unassuming icon. CED will read any text file on the Amiga. The depth to the menu system provides all you will ever need from a text editor. OK let's open a file. This is a simple script I wrote to enable the Amiga to handshake across an Ethernet network. The script was created and then given an icon. That's how scripts can be initiated. This script is a mount file. Next let's open a PARNET MountList. The key elements are the parnet.device and the netpnet-handler as they need to be in the locations specified. Very often the script will advise just where other related files need to be located. If you move the location then you need to edit the script. A lot of problems regarding devices and tools relate to the dependant files being in the wrong location on the hard drive. CHECK YOUR SCRIPTS and Tools/icons. Next I will open a drive list. Note that the descriptive actually tells you to remove the semi-colon from the drives that exist on your computer. CD NET:work and CD NET:workbench have the semi-colon removed. The editor was simply used here to remove the semi-colon and save. DOSDrivers for various drives can also be edited using the text editor. Note the location again of the CrossDOSFileSystem. You would need to ensure that the location path is correct and you have the file in that drawer. This is a simple script to initiate a sharing protocol across a network. The text editor can be used for editing browser HTML files and the like. This is the contents of a startup-sequence. Let's open the user-startup in 'S'. Software that you add will often write instruction to your user-startup. However simple assign statements are generally added by yourself. Note the BEGIN statements to assigns. It is good practice to add this but not essential if you are lazy. The assign gives the path of software on your hard drive. This is a boot sequence that appears when you boot up the Amiga. Note the line 'Set Echo ON' near the top of the second image above this one. This will print the boot sequence of your user-startup script in the AmigaDOS window of your Amiga when it boots. It will also tell you if assigns fail. So what is a good way to track those paths of programs and software. Simple, use a program called ToolsDaemon. ToolsDaemon gives and additional menu to your Workbench that lets you drag and drop programs so that they can be run from a drop-down. The benefit is the software tells you the path. And this is the ToolsDaemon menu that fires up all your programs from a single menu. Cute or what. The menu that is. This is a Yorha 2B android that resides on the moon and fights for the glory of mankind. What happens is that aliens attack Earth and force humans to escape to the moon. They build sophisticated androids to wage war on the aliens to recover earth. So you play an android and do the fighting. Trouble is over hundreds of years the humans finally die out and become extinct... BUT nobody tells the androids. And they carry on not knowing humans are dead. So a battle and struggle between androids and aliens. That's what I meant when I said cute. The image is generated by DOpus using Fastview which is far more detailed than the 256 colour backdrop image. The image was captured using the PS4's own capture software and then transferred using USB to the PC. I used ThumbsPlus to change the resolution to the Amiga resolution for Workbench and then used PPaint to save the JPG as an ILBM so that the Workbench could see it. I then changed the Workbench prefs from pattern to picture to load it in. I then did the same for the windows setting. You change the Workbench pattern when you add a sexy picture ... or not. On a stock Amiga this is not advised as it uses a load of memory. Note also the RAM icon that I created using Iconian. The RAM icon is called up by the startup-sequence so you need to replace the stock icon with the one that you have created. Use the text editor to see where the icon resides and change using DOpus.

If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site

Last updated 14th March 2022

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith
scuzzscink 2022