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Technical Difficulties

Voice Card  -  Volume 5  -  John Card Number 20  -  Tue, Mar 14, 1989 12:54 AM







This is a response to Vol 5 Roger 2 ("Telemetry card?")...

Several of you had technical difficulties in the last issue. I have taken more steps to reduce the chance of userlevel errors, but some of the other problems disturb me. I will not be happy until we have a dozen error-free issues under our belts.

If something does go wrong, please try the following procedure:

  1. Exit the current stack in as orderly a fashion as possible, preferably by hitting the QUIT button on the Archipelago main screen.
  2. Take a deep breath and re-enter Archipelago. If the problem persists, exit, choose shutdown from the desktop, and actually turn off your computer. Spend a few quiet moments in meditation and prayer. Then fire up your machine and try it again.
  3. What? STILL no luck? THEN CALL ME! I don't care if it's midnight or eight AM or noon or three in the morning. Really! I'm always awake! Give me a call and as often as not I can track down the problem or at least find a temporary fix.
  4. In any case, report your problem so I can track it down.
Some of you seem to feel that if anything goes wrong you must have done something bad. Not true! You are all good people and deserve reliable software.

Now then, as for Roger's problem:

I'm afraid you still haven't QUITE grasped the general procedure. You have been sending the same old transit stack from way back when. Although this stack may seem to be no more than an empty shell, it's actually rather complex and is being updated all the time. So it's important that you start with a fresh transit stack each time out.

Here is the procedure:

  1. Keep all of your Archipelago stacks in the same folder on your hard disk.
  2. When a new issue arrives, transfer EVERYTHING into the folder. You can "Select All" from the edit menu and drag.
  3. You will get a message: "Replace existing files?" Answer YES! In this way, updated stacks will automatically replace obsolete ones.
And that is all there is to it! As for the mysterious Telemetry message, I will try to talk about that project next time around.



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