Help: Bootable floppy with 1MB of text as Amiga Guide?

[TenLeftFingers]

I have 1.2MB of text that I'd like to
a) Fit on one floppy, and
b) Make self booting into Amiga Guide (or similar) presentation format on any Amiga.

I found a nice tutorial that covers Amiga Guide creation, but it only covers A500+ and upwards - I want to include A500. Any ideas how to get around that limitation? http://ale.emuunlim.com/guides/amigaguide-create.shtml

Then just crunching and booting/decrunching/execution - thanks in advance )

[AMIGASYSTEM]

AmigaGuide and Multiview only work from OS2.1 and higher

[AMIGASYSTEM]

To compress the text and make it self-extracting you can use Powerdata, we talked about it HERE

[emufan]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

To compress the text and make it self-extracting you can use Powerdata, we talked about it HERE

i was about to refer to this posting and advertize pploadseg together with PowerPacker

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by emufan

i was about to refer to this posting and advertize pploadseg together with PowerPacker

Yes, PPLoadSeg working with compressed files PowerPaker and CrunchMania (Libs, Exe etc..). Car unpack the data files compressed with Powerdata (icons, texts, image sound and various data) it must command PP (PowerPacker Patcher).

[TenLeftFingers]

Thank you so much AMIGASYSTEM & emufan. Amiga Guide is out of the question then as I want this to work on as many systems as possible. Any recommendations? Maybe I can use Blitz Basic to produce something like a TOC and print the individual entries when each chapter number is typed in? I'm thinking of the old text adventures

[emufan]

there were some disk magazine creators out there. maybe something you can try.
i'm clueless in this regard, but i remember once i saw such thing.

#1) on the ftp: DMC GOLD, cool disk mag creator.
something like this one

#2) or UltraCard/Foundation.
in posting #7 is a youtube link, switch to 46m, there is a short howto of HyperBook,

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by emufan

there were some disk magazine creators out there. maybe something you can try.
i'm clueless in this regard, but i remember once i saw such thing.

#1) on the ftp: DMC GOLD, cool disk mag creator.
something like this one

#2) or UltraCard/Foundation.
in posting #7 is a youtube link, switch to 46m, there is a short howto of HyperBook,

DMC Gold is very nice (was coded by a member of Area 51, my old scene group).. can't remember if it works on all models though been such a long time since I used it.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

AmigaGuide and Multiview only work from OS2.1 and higher

Isn't there an older 1.3 compatible version?

[thomas]

AmigaGuide works well with 1.3.

http://aminet.net/package/text/hyper/aguide34

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Thank you thomas i did not remember AG_V34

[Daedalus]

Yep, there are lots of tags that don't work under the 1.3 version, and of course it doesn't work as a datatype, but the stand-alone viewer is available.

As for booting and decrunching, once you have the crunching sorted out it's just a matter of making a custom startup-sequence to load the viewer and a minimal environment.

I'm foreseeing an issue with using AmigaGuide: AmigaGuide can link to other documents so you can have your text split into different chunks. But it expects the files to be already decrunched, and an A500 obviously can't have all that text decrunched at once.

[-Acid-]

For the crunching and decrunching he could use crunch mania to process his files then use the small real time decoding util "rtdd" that comes with it, simply add it to the startup-sequence and it will magically decrunch the files as they are loaded.

[retrogamer]

Are there any torturial to use crunch-mania 1.7?

[emufan]

amiga-stuff.com lists some version of Crunchmania, which all comes with manuals.
just in case you only found a exe of the cruncher.
just tested 1.9 which has a good gui, which makes things easier.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

For the crunching and decrunching he could use crunch mania to process his files then use the small real time decoding util "rtdd" that comes with it, simply add it to the startup-sequence and it will magically decrunch the files as they are loaded.

Si Crunch-Mania It is a great Crunching/Decrunching Exe-Dati, but he works in a different way. Powerdata he works in background,handy when you need to squeeze as much data.

PowerData demonstration video
[ Show youtube player ]

[TenLeftFingers]

@Daedalus, would you have a reference for which tags work under 1.3? I'm only after the minimal navigation (TOC for the chapters and a back button or similar in each chapter - a chapter being only a few pages).

Edit: Is 1.2 that common on A500 machines? If not I can stick with Amiga Guide. There'll be a lot of them at the event in January and I don't want to leave anyone out. Trying the diskmag creators now

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by TenLeftFingers

Edit: Is 1.2 that common on A500 machines?

Not to my knowledge; can't remember anyone back in the day that actually had KS 1.2 on an A500. Only very early models I'd imagine...

[nogginthenog]

My first A500 came with Kickstart 1.3 but Workbench 1.2. Guess I was lucky.

[Daedalus]

@TenLeftFingers

I'll have a look at the developers' material for it when I get a chance (don't have any of it here and can't seem to find it online), but from memory all the basic functions are there so you should be fine. It's more formatting things like word wrap, possibly linking to other files and things like that that aren't supported on the early versions.