Accessinl! The Multlface - Romantic Robot Multiface ST Manual

1.3 ACCESSING THE MULTlFACE
MUL TIFACE ST
must ALWAYS be Initialed by pressing Its FREEZE BUnON before any operalion.
By way of design, the
MUL TlFACE
Is In principle INVISIBLE and UNDETECTABLE - thus when you
switch the ST ON with the
MUL TIFACE
aUached, it will behave as If the
MUL TlFACE
was
NQI
there.
After all, you may wish to use the ST at times for many purposes which do not require the
MUL TlFACE.
On the other hand, If you DO wish
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use the
MUL TlFACE
sooner or later, you MUST nrsl set
It
up by
pressing the FREEZE buuon. Please BEWARE, as the
MULTIFACE
will start by reseulng the ST and
Itself, so all contents of memory, registers, etc. will be ERASED to start with. From then on,
MUL TlFACE
will
be
totally non-destructlve and pressing the FREEZE bUUon will have the desirable effect of freezing
the program and put It under the
MUL TlFACE
control (to resume it later,
if
you wish).
It Is good practice to press the freeze bUUon Immedialely upon switching the S1 ON - It is also the
quickiest way, as you do NOT need to wait for the desktop to load.
MUL TlFACE
welcomes you with:
BOOT . : Boor.HIDE
am
BOOT .IiJESET l!1LEAR ENU INSTANT
AVE-BO AD
As on every
MUL TlFACE
menu, any functional key, or more precisely usually the initial letter of a
function, Is shown In Inverse. There are a few exceptions - < ESC>, < UNDO> and < ENTER>
keys are shown entirely In Inverse and In some functions
It
Is not the Initial letter which I s Inverse.
Quite simply, pressing whatever Is shown In Inverse does the Job. In the WELCOME MENU, pressing
Shifted A or
B.
executes an autoboot program on a corresponding disk (drive): If there Is no autoboot
program, the STwill come up with the desktop menu. There Is a MOST Important dlnstlnctlon between
booting up by Just pressing
~B.
or Shifted
M:
both will boot Just the same, but
M
leaves the
MULTlFACE
INVISIBLE, It HIDES
It,
whilst Shifted AlB will result In having a cartridge Icon displayed
and making the
MUL TIFACE
accessible to other software and hardware. There are two differences:
a) If you leave the
MUL TIFACE
visible, you can access the DISK ORGANIZER by dOUble-clicking
the CARTRIDGE ICON: this Is essential for hard disk owners, who would first activate the
MUL TIFACE.
then load their hard disk drivers and double click for the DISK ORGANIZER - this
way Ihe ST wAI NOT
be
resel again and hard disk drivers will remain unaffected. For drives A and
B you may find It qUicker to call the DISK ORGANIZER directly from the MAIN MENU
b) In all other cases the
MUL TlFACE
Is better off INVISIBLE, namely for programs which crash
if
they can delect any hardware device In the cartridge port - with the
MUL TlFACE
INVISIBLE, they
sholAd load and run fine and you should be able to freeze most of theml
The function of the FREEZE BUTTON I. totally INDEPENDENT on whether the
MUL TlFACf
wal left INVISIBLE (hidden) or NOT - you can FREEZE and Ule 'he
MUL TIFACE
ANY DME .
The only time when the
MUL TIFACf
Is not accessible
II
If a program was NOT booted from
the WELCOME MENU -the onlY
way
to FREEZE. program Is to first BOOT
It
by the
MULTlFACE.
BEWARE: If the
MUL TlFACE
Is left INVISIBLE and you later RESET the ST by uslng the reset button,
the
MUL TlFACf
will
be
reset as well and It will return to the PAEWELCOME MENU state: pressing
the FREEZE button wUl reset the ST and bring the WELCOME MENU.
Other options on the WELCOME MENU are:
C
fully resets and clears the 8T so that you need not switch the power on/off (the Atarl reset button
Is lor warm reset whereby the user RAM Is cleared but the system sel-up Is preserved).
M
takes you to the
MULTlFACE
MAIN MENU (see 2) -here you may wish
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toad (see 4) programs
saved by Ihe MUL TIFACE, use the MULD-TOOLKIT to Inspect the Atarl ST ROM/AAM (see 6) or
format disks (see 5). You can a so ..ve (see 3) the contents
of
an empty (on power-up) or,ln the
more likely, albeit unfortunale, case, crashed Atari.
The Disk Organizer (see
7)
can
be
accessed from the MAIN MENU as well.
INSTANT S.AVE (s~ 3.2) and LOAD (see 4.2) shortens the savlng;1oadlng processes.
E1
(a hidden option!) can rectify a partially disabled Joystick/mouse. Should you upon re-loadlng or
upon continuing a program find that the Joystick does not flAly function, please freeze the program
again by pressing the magic bUUan, then press F1 key and return back to program.
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