I started working through the beginning stages of this - meaning I started getting software installed and setup on both the Amiga side and PC side.
Right off the bat, my Spidey Sense started tingling after I watched the first half of your video for a second time to refresh my memory (the setup half). A-Talk III. . .
I went to my backup disk collection, which includes 2 large sets of 3-ring binders, 4 disks per page. There on the last sheet in the 2nd binder I had a pristine backup copy of A-Talk III. I looked everywhere but never found the original disk(s).
Anyway, I popped it in the drive. And there she was.
- A-Talk III's launch window.
And there was the HD-Install option, which you've included in your post.
- Install options for A-Talk III.
Right off the bat you can see this piece of software is very high-quality and at a professional level. I can understand why you gravitate towards it so strongly. It is literally filled with options. Now, I went through the HD-Install steps (which were very clear and helpful off the disk). But I made sure to reference the manual along the way. One part of it I wanted to point out to anyone out there (like myself) who is still feeling their way through things.
In your post, you correctly mention to use the ASSIGN command in your Startup Sequence to point directly at A-Talk III. (For those that don't know, the ASSIGN command tells your Amiga to run a program automatically whenever you boot.) Of course, the path is completely dependent on the name of your drives and partitions. In the Appendix of the
manual, page B-2, they suggest the following:
Code: Select all
IF EXISTS disk:at
Assign AT3: disk:at
Path AT3: add
EndIF
The partition named
disk: in the code sample is the one that you entered during the beginning of the install process (and the install only succeeds if you create a valid path for the software to be installed in). This is required so that A-Talk can find its settings, phone book and script files.
I only bring this up because everyone's systems could have various names. In fact, with my GVP SCSI hard drive, my partitions have the unusual names of QDH0: (System) and QDH1: (Fun). So during the install, I actually had to tell A-Talk III to install to:
QDH0:Utilities/ to get the program where I wanted it, and use that same path in my Startup Sequence.
Anyhoo - it's a minor thing. I think the manual's code suggestion is written so that if the machine can't
find the program being assigned during Startup the machine won't hang or do some other unexpected thing if it can't find the program to assign. I'll post my results here if I can get the 2000 onto Particles.
Couple of last things about A-Talk III I found really interesting. In the acknowledgements section of the manual, Dave Haynie and Robert J. Mical (among others) are called out for various features they assisted with - pretty cool! And that odd looking "FD Install" feature in the image attachment (ever hear of Floppy Disk Installation?). This is for non-NTSC USA Amigas only. It moves over special fonts and keyboard setups. I only have Disk 1 -and it still asked me what language I wanted during the install.
I think the XPR installation is for users who need support for "Multiple Serial/Printer/Scripts'. Pretty robust package.