07/08/94
To start of this month's column, here are two points regarding the Digital
Research Disc Operating System (DR DOS) that is supplied exclusively for use
with BBC A3000 Learning Curve Systems.

1. DR DOS requires an extra command to be entered before the Putfile and
Getfile commands can be used effectively on a system with one floppy disc
drive. The command that needs to be issued is APPEND which needs to be set
to NULL. This can be done by typing:

APPEND=;

The command can be entered every time you start the PC Emulator and wish to
use either Putfile or Getfile. Alternatively it is possible to change the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file that is executed every time the PC Emulator is run and
therefore sets APPEND to NULL straight away. This AUTOEXEC.BAT file can be
changed by using DR DOS's in-built editor. To edit the file, insert the
backup of your DR DOS disc and type:

EDITOR AUTOEXEC.BAT

When the editor has loaded the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, one of the settings shown
will be:

APPEND=A:\

This should be changed to APPEND=;. The file can then be resaved to the disc
using CTRL kx, this will also exit the editor back to the DOS prompt. Help
on how to use the editor can be found by using CTRL J.

2. When the DR DOS package is first run from the original, DR DOS requires
you to setup the system and make a backup of the DR DOS disc as the first
operation. The screen informs you that you must have a blank disc or a 720K
PC format disc ready to make the backup copy. If you are going to use a
blank disc it must be totally blank, not even have been formatted to
ADFS. If the disc has been formatted before the error message 'Cannot run
DISKCOPY.COM, or unexpected error returned from DISKCOPY'. This message may
also occur in other software if any ADFS formatted disc is put in the drive
while running PC software.

A number of Archimedes and BBC A3000 owners also have an Epson JX80 or
compatible printers. Many of these users are not aware that it is now
possible to purchase a RISC OS Desktop printer driver for this printer. The
driver can be purchased from Ace Computing whose address is: 27 Victoria
Road, Cambridge,CB4 3BW. The printer driver is called !PrinterJX but also
supports JX80 compatibles such as the Epson EX800 and Star LC10 with colour
option.

As I mentioned before, the success of our support strategy is very important
to Acorn and we rely on our dealers and retail outlets helping us in our
endeavours. This is why they get telephone hotline support from either
Acorn, their support centres or their distributor to answer any queries you
may pose to them. So, if you go to a dealer and get less than satisfactory
support from them, please let us know by letter at the normal address If we
don't know what problems you are experiencing we cannot sort the problems
out. Of course, if you want to praise the service you get from a dealer, let
us know!

Just a reminder about  writing  to  Customer Services. To ensure the mail 
reaches  us  faster,  the  correct  address  is "Customer Support, Acorn 
Computers Ltd, Acorn House, Vision Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4 4AE".