Manual - Atarimania
Contents
1. Pressing A for an Ascending Sort replaces the previous prompt with PRESS Y TO BEGIN SORT PRESS E TO RETURN TO MAIN MENU Pressing Y causes the GT Data Manager to go to work The screen now reports Organizing VIDEO DB Next the computer beeps announcing that it has completed it s sort and adds following message to that immediately above Records Loaded 96 Records Deleted SORT COMPLETED Saving Dl VIDEO DB 16 below VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY TITLE COUNT OF MONTE CRIST CAT AND THE CANARY CITIZEN KANE ANGRY RED PLANET BECKET BLAZING SADDLES COUNT OF MONTE CRIST BEING THERE BLACK HOLE AIRPLANE ALIEN ALTERRED STATES ARLO GUTHRIE SEEGER BATTLE BEYOND STARS CAVEMAN BUGS BUNNY MOVIE CLASH OF THE TITANS CONAN THE BARBARIAN Record Count 18 PAGE 1 VINTAGE 1934 1939 1941 1959 1964 1974 1975 1979 1979 1980 1980 1980 1980 1980 1980 1981 1981 1981 17 This means that the re sorted VIDEO DB file has been saved to disk by repeating the steps we began in the middle of page 11 files beginning with the A s though the C s Let s test this and print out all of the The results should look like Figure 2 CATEGORY DRAMA COMEDY DRAMA SCIENCE DRAMA COMEDY DRAMA COMEDY SCIENCE COMEDY SCIENCE SCIENCE MUSIC SCIENCE COMEDY CARTOON FANTASY FANTASY FICTION FICTION FICTION FICTION FICTION Figure 2 Notice that the same 18 records have been printed b2. Record Count 22 PAGE 1 VINTAGE 1939 1966 1967 1970 1970 1970 1974 1974 1974 1976 1977 1978 1979 1979 1979 1980 1980 7 22 19 CATEGORY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY Figure 3 We have included listings below of information derived fram each of the other data bases included on your master diskette a list of all of the PHONE Address Book files where the ZIP code was between 90000 and 99999 Figure 4 a list of all of the paper back books in the BOOK Sci Fi Book Library Figure 5 and a list of all of the ATARI Atari Utilities published by VERVAN Software Company Figure 6 These sample data bases were included so that you can become familiar with how the GT Data Manager operates before beginning to create your own data base files Losing information on sample data bases is not nearly as frustrating as finding out that your only remaining diskette was damaged by the family cat and you cannot resave the information on which you have spent the last five hours We hope these examples will be helpful for you and that your experiences with the GT Data Manager will be rewarding ADDRESS BOOK PAGE 1 NAME L F STREET CITY STATE ZIP CODE JOHNSON PAUL 1313 STONED DRIVE CUCAMONGA CA 91730 MARTIN JULIE 362436 BROAD WAY LOS ANGELES CA 90010 VERVAN Software
3. INDUS GT GT Data Manager for Atari COPYRIGHT 1983 by INDUS SYSTEMS INC This manual is published and copy righted by Indus Systems Inc All rights are reserved This document may not in whole or part be copied photocopied reproduced translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior written consent of Indus Systems Inc The word Atari and the Atari logo are registered trademarks of Atari Computer or Warner Communications Inc Atari Computer or Warner Communications Inc was not in any way involved in the writing or other preparation of this manual nor were the facts presented here reviewed for accuracy by that company Use of the term Atari should not be construed to represent any endorsement official or otherwise by Atari Computer or Warner Communications Inc GT DATA MANAGER User s Manual Software and Manual by Carl M Evans Richard M Leonard Copyright 1964 VERVAN Software Produced using copyrighted Software Products of Monarch Data Systems Cochituate MA 01778 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Hardware Requirements 4 Getting Started 5 Record and File Limits 7 Sample Data Bases 11 Helpful 2 INTRODUCTION Welcome to th
4. The GT Data Manager can save its information to any previously formatted or initialized diskette single or double density It is somewhat simpler to operate the GT Data Manager if the master and data diskettes are in the same density however your GT Data Manager operates correctly with DOS XL in both single double 22 and mixed density modes Consult your DOS XL Operator s Guide for mre help in switching densities mid stream multiple drive systems etc New master GT Data Managers can be easily constructed by merely initializing a new diskette single or double density and copying the files DOS SYS ari GTBASE COM onto it This would cause the diskette to boot up in DOS XL s command processor mode with a Dl prompt You would then type GTBASE and then RETURN in order to have your GT Data Manager come on To autoboot your GT Data Manager the file GTBASE COM could be renamed to AUTORUN SYS or you could copy the file STARTUP EXC to your new diskette Either of these alternatives will cause the EXIT TO DOS feature of your GT Data Manager menu to re start the GT Data Manager in effect you won t be able to exit to DOS If you wish to have your GT Data Manager on a diskette containing a normal DOS XL menu and other files copying the file MENU COM from your DOS XL System Master Diskette will accomplish this goal start the GT Data Manager you would then utilize the menu s X eXtended command and type GTBASE and
5. Capital A A RETURN is required since we did not enter information into all of the blanks The screen will now prompt you as follows WORKING FILE Dl VIDEO DB SEARCH FOR RECORDS 1 Before Key Field 2 Beginning with Key Field 3 Past Key Field 4 Between Key Fields Low Key Field A High Key Field Let s make this a short list and press C and RETURN again since this isn t a single character response and we will not have completed all of the blanks provided The next screen presented by the GT Data Manager will appear as follows 13 WORKING FILE D1l VIDEO DB A Print Entire Record S Print Part al Record E Return to Main Menu SELECT ITEM Pressing S no RETURN will cause the GT Data Manager to ask us field by field whether we want to print or not print Saying Y Yes to TITLE VINTAGE and CATEGORY and N No to UNCUT and QUALITY will result in the screen shown below PRINT PARTIAL RECORD WORKING FILE Dl VIDEO DB Field Label Print It TITLE Y VINTAGE Y CATEGORY Y UNCUT N QUALITY N Press Y to Print Field Pressing Y at this point will finally result in your printer beginning to operate The 18 records that fall into the A to C category will now be printed It appears that this file has been alphabetically sorted for the 18 records are in perfect alphabetic order as shown in Figure 1 on the next page The next fields however seem to be randomly organized If we wanted to see this same
6. deciding how many fields you are going to use keep in mind that you will be able to search or sort an entire file based on the contents of a field For example in the list we just showed you we lumped city and state into me field If we anticipate that we might need to do that some day we should separate that one field into two fields It is very important that you carefully think out what you want to store in the file Once you have created a file you can go back and alter the labels assigned to each field but you will not be able to alter the number of fields in an existing file This leads us to the next prompt When you enter the number of fields that you want in this file actually it is the number of fields in each record in the file the screen will clear again and you will be prompted to enter a label for the first field Enter an appropriate description and press the RETURN key For example in our address book file we probably would name label the first field NAME L F The next prompt asks you for Field Length 1 37 This is another of those critical parameters that can only be set once So again choose your value carefully Once you enter this value and press the RETURN key the screen will Clear and the same questions will be asked about the next field This process will continue until you have configured all of the fields When all of the fields have been defined the screen will clear a summary of the
7. list of video tapes A s through C s organized by VINTAGE Date Issued we would first sort the file VIDEO by the vintage field and then repeat the steps listed above 14 VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY TITLE AIRPLANE ALIEN ALTERRED STATES ANGRY RED PLANET ARLO GUTHRIE SEEGER BATTLE BEYOND STARS BECKET BEING THERE BLACK HOLE BLAZING SADDLES BUGS BUNNY MOVIE CAT AND THE CANARY CAVEMAN CITIZEN KANE CLASH OF THE TITANS CONAN THE BARBARIAN COUNT OF MONTE CRIST COUNT OF MONTE CRIST Record Count 18 PAGE 1 VINTAGE 1980 1980 1980 1959 1980 1980 1964 1979 1979 1974 1981 1939 1980 1941 1981 1981 1934 1975 CATEGORY COMEDY SCIENCE FICTION SCIENCE FICTION SCIENCE FICTION MUSIC SCIENCE FICTION DRAMA COMEDY SCIENCE FICTION COMEDY CARTOON COMEDY COMEDY DRAMA FANTASY FANTASY DRAMA DRAMA Figure 1 Step 1 in sorting the information in the VIDEO data base would be to press the L Sort File key from the main menu data base file earlier Since we were already working with the VIDEO we are not asked the name of the data base file we wish to 15 work with instead we are given the screen below SORT FILE WORKING FILE D1 VIDEO DB Fields In This File 1 TITLE 2 VINTAGE 3 CATEGORY 4 UNCUT 5 QUALITY Enter Field Number to Sort on Pressing 2 for VINTAGE adds the following prompt to the screen PRESS A FOR AN ASCENDING SORT PRESS D FOR A DESCENDING SORT
8. 1953 W 11th Street Upland CA 91786 Record Count 3 Figure 4 SCI FI BOOK LIBRARY AUTHOR L F ANTHONY PIERS BRADLEY M ZIMMER EVANS HOWARD ROBERT E LEE TANITH OFFUTT ANDREW J PIPER H BEAM PIPER H BEAM SIMAK CLIFFORD D Record Count 9 ATARI UTILITIES TITLE CASDUP CASDIS DISDUP DISASM FULMAP DOWNLD DISKPAK V COS MICRO MAP POWER SCREEN Record Count 10 PAGE 1 TITLE SERIES DRAGON ON A PEDESTAL XANTH THENDARA HOUSE DARKOVER MAN OF MANY MINDS ALMURIC ANACKIRE KING DRAGON FIRST CYCLE ULLER UPRISING SPECIAL DELIVERANCE VENDOR VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN VERVAN PAGE 1 Software Software Software Software Software Software Sof tware Software Software Software 21 Figure 5 MEDIA CASSETTE ONLY DISK ONLY DISK ONLY CASS amp DISK CASS amp DISK DISK ONLY DISK ONLY CASSETTE ONLY DISK ONLY CASS amp DISK Figure 6 BINDING PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER FUNCTION COPY TAPES CAS to DISK TRANSFER COPY DISKS 6502 DISASSEMBLER BASIC X REFERENCE DISK to CASS OPTIMIZE DISK SPACE CONTROL BAUD RATE CREATE SCROLLING MAP DISPLAY LIST EDITOR HELPFUL HINTS Sorting The GT Data Manager performs its sorting ascending or descending based on the ASCII value of the characters letters or numbers in the field For this reascn it is able to accept fields that c
9. BRARY ATARIl ATARI UTILITIES Let s try a few of the functions of the GT Data Manager Let s begin by printing a record Pressing I for Print Records will cause you to see the following prompt NO DATA BASE SELECTED YET File Name Typing VIDEO since the VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY at 96 files represents the largest of the sample data bases and RETURN will generate the following prompt PRINT RECORDS WORKING FILE D1 VIDED DB A Print All Records S Print a Single Record E Return to Main Menu SELECT ITEM 11 Since we don t need to print all of the records at this time let s press the S no RETURN key is necessary at this point as is the case with many other of the single character responses of this GT Data Manager The next sub menu prompts as follows WORKING FILE Dl VIDEO DB Fields In This File 1 TITLE 2 VINTAGE 3 CATEGORY 4 UNCUT 5 QUALITY Enter Field Number To Search On Pressing l for TITLE no RETURN key pleasel brings up yet another sub menu WORKING FILE Dl1 VIDEO DB SEARCH FOR RECORDS l Before Key Field 2 Beginning with Key Field 3 Past Key Field 4 Between Key Fields Let s press 4 for Between Key Fields You will now be prompted as follows 12 WORKING FILE D1 VIDEO DB SEARCH FOR RECORDS 1 Before Key Field 2 Beginning with Key Field 3 Past Key Field 4 Between Key Fields Low Key Field Press A and the search will begin with all files beginning with the letter
10. RETURN In any of the above cases you will have to CREATE A FILE from the GT Data Manager menu before beginning to use the new master diskette 23 Printing Format Although the GT Data Manager has been designed to output the information you want to save on paper on a single line some creativity can be utilized depending cn the capabilities of your printer to produce multi line output records such as you might want for mailing labels In order to take advantage of this particular approach your printer must be capable of accepting right and or left margin setting commands This approach would involve constructing a mailing label file whose three or four printing lines would add up to the same length say 25 characters then telling your printer that it s right and left margins are only 25 characters apart then having your GT Data Manager print the addresses for a zip code range you have chosen A file format for doing this could be accomplished as follows Mr John Q Public 270 Main Street New York City NY III The dashes represent blank entries in the appropriate fields and would not print Additional information fields can be attached to this record such as phone numbers birthdates etc without affecting the ability to print mailing labels You will have to experiment somewhat with the mailing labels you will be using to determine what left and right margin settings form length settings etc will work best for you Th
11. ant to add a new record to an existing data base file H Modify Old Record This command allows you to alter the contents of an existing record ina file For example you may have to change the address and phone number of someone who has moved I Print Records This command will send any one or all records in a specified file to a printer You can also restrict the printout to portions of a record J Display Records This command will display the contents of any or all records in a data base file K Display Fields This command will display on the screen the fields defined for the records in any one or all of the data base files on that disk L Sort Files You will use this option when you want to sort a data base file You can sort on any field in a record You can sort a file on multiple keys and you can sort in either ascending or descending order The resulting sorted records are saved back to disk for later retrieval NOTE The sort routine cannot handle a file that is larger than 200 sectors 10 SAMPLE DATA BASES Several sample data base files have been included on your GT Data Manager master diskette to help illustrate various features and typical uses of this program Pressing A Files on Disk from the GT Data Manager menu will reveal the names of these four sample data bases FILE DIRECTORY DATA BASES ON THIS DISK FILE NAME DESCRIPTION VIDEO VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY PHONE ADDRESS BOOK BOOK SCI FI BOOK LI
12. e world of personal information management Need a mailing list Household inventory record catalog A list of all your software or books All of these and more are now easily available The GT Data Manager is a unique product in its class It is extremely flexible and powerful It even has capabilities that the best selling data base managers do not have Unlike these best sellers however it was written for the personal market It was designed to be used in the home or small business by average people not for data processing experts You will find the GT Data Manager to be extremely easy to use Special attention was given to the program operator interaction All operations are menu driven as far as is practical The result is that the program is truly user friendly The GT Data Manager is a unique software package that can be utilized in many ways in your home or small business It will maintain information and present it back to you either on your computer s display screen or in printed form on your printer You can keep a mailing list on disk and quickly access any individual s address or Phone number You can even go further by having the computer list out all names and addresses with a selected ZIP code or telephcne area code You could even list everyone whose birthday is in February Keep a list of your household property on disk and the GT Data Manager will print out your inventory The GT Data Manager will help you track your expe
13. ese printer settings must be sent to the printer prior to turning on the GT Data Manager and having it print the file for you It should be noted that printing of mailing labels or comparable functions is beyond the scope of the GT Data Manager design intent and that if your printer is not capable of accepting programmable margins etc you are still receiving the benefit Of a very sophisticated information management and retrieval system 24
14. file definition will be displayed and you will see a prompt that says Press Y to Save File Press Y if you are satisfied with the record definition Pressing ANY other key at this stage will return you to the main menu without saving the new file definition RECORD AND FILE LIMITS While creating the file ome thing you probably noticed near the top of the screen was a line that said Record Size followed by a number You should keep an eye on this number as you go through the definition process This number is the sum of the lengths of all the fields defined up to this point The maximum record length that the program will allow is 128 Also the shorter the total record size you end up with the more data you will be able to store on the diskette How much data can you store in a file Well this depends upon several things The first is the length of the records in the file The second is whether you are working with a single or double density disk drive The third factor is how many Other files are on the same disk Let s look at an example where you have two double density disk drives We will assume that each record in our example file is 128 bytes long and that we are using disk drive number two in double density mode with no other files on that disk The largest size our file could be is about 700 sectors and each sector will hold 256 bytes or about two records So we should be able to store 2 700 or about 1400 records on that dis
15. ided with your GT Data Manager is contained in a later section of this manual Start by placing a FORMATTED diskette in drive number one then select the C Option from the main menu The program will clear the screen and print CREATE NEW DATA BASE at the top of the screen followed by a prompt which asks you to Enter File Description You should enter a short description of what the purpose of the file will be For example you might enter Address Book if you are going to use this file to maintain a list of names addresses and phone numbers The inverse video bar tells you the maximum length of the description you can enter In this particular case you must enter at least one character but may not enter more than 20 characters for the description This kind of prompt will turn up often in the program The next prompt asks you to enter a name for this particular file data base The file name can be fram one to eight characters long It must begin with a letter of the alphabet and contain no lower case or special characters In other words it may contain numbers and upper case letters The third prompt will ask you Number of Fields In Record 2 8 This is how many different items or parameters you wish to store in each record For example in your address book you might want to store each person s name street address city amp state ZIP code telephone number and birthday Each of these would be a field in a record When
16. ive will be used in all data management operations If you do not use this command then all operations are assumed to be for disk drive number one C Create File This command is used to create a new data base file The specific details of how to use this command are described in the section on GETTING STARTED D Modify File This command is used to perform two different functions You may either delete an entire file or alter the labels of the fields in a file The prompts are clear enough to guide you through E Exit to DOS This command simply returns control to DOS and for the DOS XL it will return you to the command processor level Dl prompt If the file MENU COM is contained on your copy of the diskette you can get a menu simply by typing MENU at this point In order to return to the GT Data Manager you type GTBASE from the command processor level Dl prompt or use the X eXtended command option from the DOS XL menu and typing GTBASE when prompted for the name of the extended command Be very sure you do not have anything left in memory that you may still need You will have to re boot the GT Data Manager or use the procedure described above even if you have a MEM SAV file on your disk You may also run into problems if the appropriate file such as DUP SYS is not on that disk F Format Disk This command will format a disk without having to exit to DOS G Add New Record You will use this command anytime you w
17. kette Equivalent storage on a single density diskette would be about half of that 700 records Also if we decrease the length of the records in the file minimum allowed length is 10 then the maximum capacity goes up accordingly Since the GT Data Manager is totally RAM resident you can achieve similar results with a single drive system if you use a separate diskette for your files There are other less important length restrictions but these will be displayed in the appropriate prompt while you are running the program THE MAIN MENU The GT Data Manager main menu gives you twelve major functions from convenient menu format This section of the manual will briefly describe the options available in the main menu A File Directory This command gives you a list of the data base files on the disk The directory for the data bases is maintained in a file called INDEX This file is first generated when you create a data base and is updated to include any new data bases you may add to that disk When you use the A option the program will interrogate the INDEX file to find out which file names to search for con that disk All data base files must have the extender DB or they cannot be accessed This extender is automatically assigned to all data base files created by the GT Data Manager B Change Drive This command is of use primarily to those of you who have more than one disk drive This command allows you to specify which disk dr
18. nses when you enter all checks and payments into a GT Data Manager format At the end of the year you can quickly obtain a printout of all your expenses or of selected expenses With the GT Data Manager you can even request a list of all utility payments mortgage payments or even more Whatever you keep records for the GT Data Manager can do it for you more accurately and with greater utility HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS The hardware required for using the GT Data Manager is Any Atari computer with at least 48K RAM An Indus GT Disk Drive for Atari or compatible drive single or double density Any Atari compatible printer Optional A Printer Interface Module Optional GETTING STARTED Insert the GT Data Manager diskette into your disk drive and boot up as you normally would The GI Data Manager will automatically load and display the title and copyright screen Press any key and the main menu will appear You are now ready to begin managing your data The main menu will display ten options which may be selected by pressing the appropriate key The options are A File Directory G Add New Record B Change Drive H Modify Old Record C Create File I Print Records D Modify File J Display Records E Exit to Dos K Display Fields F Format a Disk L Sort File If this is the first time you have used the GT Data Manager then the first thing you will need to do is create a file A review of the sample data base files prov
19. ontain a mixture of numerical and alphabetic characters This will explain why sorting a file of alphabetic information will place a lower case a whose ASCII value is 97 following an uppercase Z whose ASCII value is 90 In most cases this will not be noticed but it can be useful to know especially if your file contains such characters as ASCII 36 ASCII 40 or SPACE BAR ASCII 32 Deleting Data Base Information You should always utilize your GT Data Manager Menu to do any deleting or changing of your data base information and not your DOS XL Your DOS XL will not understand the intricacies of updating the INDEX file and other special record keeping functions performed by the GT Data Manager Changing Data Base Selections To save you the trouble of selecting which data base you wish to work with for each menu selection the GT Data Manager will assume you are continuing to operate within the same data base until you tell it otherwise The most obvious and easiest way to let it know you wish to change the data base you wish to work with is to ask it for Files on Disk the A choice on your menu if you re wanting to see what other data base files exist on your disk you don t necessarily want to continue operating on the currently selecte data base Exiting to DOS will achieve the same result but can be more complicated depending on the organization of your master diskette Creating New GT Data Manager Diskettes
20. ut that the VINTAGE colum proceeds in ascending date order This might be a way of finding the identity of that old movie classic you can t remember the name of but want to see but what if you re in the mood for a commedy Using the same VIDEO file let s print a list all the COMEDY category files The following represents a quick sequence of answers to the several screen s worth of prompts you will use to get the print out aie PU s bes a A m y 18 Print Records File Name Print a Single Record CATEGORY Field to Search On Search Between Key Fields Low Key Field High Key Field Print Partial Record Print Title Print Vintage Print Category Do Not Print Uncut Do Not Print Quality Print Field The resulting printout will appear as shown in Figure 3 below that were comedies are now listed for your review All 22 video tapes As an additional bonus since this entire data base was most recently sorted by the VINTAGE field all of your comedies appear in ascending chronological order VIDEO TAPE LIBRARY TITLE CAT AND THE CANARY OUR MAN FLINT IN LIKE FLINT KELLY S HEROES MAGIC CHRISTIAN MASH BLAZING SADDLES HOLY GRAIL PYTHON YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN PINK PANTHER STRIKES SMOKEY amp THE BANDIT EVERY WHICH WAY BUT BEING THERE LIFE OF BRIAN MUPPET MOVIE AIRPLANE CAVEMAN FAWLTY TOWERS SERIES IN GOD WE TRUST JABBERWOCKY SECRET POLICEMAN S UP THE ACADEMY
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