The Brain Wave Lab ================== Marc Marc, update januari 2003 SPECIFICATION PC ================ Pentium I or higher 200 Mhz or higher 32 MB memory or higher Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP Sound card: general MIDI Drive (sound blaster compatible 16 bit or higher) 25 D-sub parallel port (LPT) to connect the goggles. To be prefered: using 'Direct Draw' and 'Direct Sound'. WARNING: ======= Those who are using a pacemaker or suffer from any kind of brain seizures, epilepsy or anything else which indicates an over-sensitivity for light flashing and pulsed sound, should not use The Brain Wave Lab without first consulting a regular doctor. Also do not used any kind of drugs when going into a session. START ===== Hardware connection (if available): - Disconnect the printer from the printer port (if connected to the parallel port) - Connect the connector of the BWL interface to the parallel port - Connect the BWL adapter to the BWL interface Software: - Start the STEEM.exe program (you can find it into the folder C:\brainlab\ - Hit 12 or the key Pause/Break to jump to the BWL program). - Wait a second and hit the right mouse key to start a session. - To stop the session: simply hit the right mouse key again. STOP STEEM --------------- Stop STEEM and return to windows by hitting F12 or Pause/Break again. FULL SCREEN / WINDOW -------------------- The best is to run in full screen mode. When you want to run in the window mode: hit F12 At the top a menu bar appears. Click the icon at the most right hand to minimise. hit F12 to jump to the BWL program To turn from window mode to full mode: If BWL not yet active then hit the maximise window button of the window. If BWL active: hit F12 to stop the BWL program and then click the maximise window button. Steem tries, at start up, to switch to a lower screen resolution. It would be good if you once switch your monitor to a 640x480 256 colour resolution and if possible store the screen settings on your monitor (Hsize, Vsize, Hpos and Vpos). Then Steem easily can switch to an optimum resolution when in full screen screen mode. You then gain some operation speed (for slower computer to be preferred). You need DirectX installed on your computer for full screen to be possible. If you do not reduce the screen size then a 16 bit colour mode is a lot more convient for STEEM than a 24 or 32 bit mode. Things that can go wrong: ========================= Below you will find some trouble shooting hints. If you can not solve your problem then report to me. Maybe we can help you out and by this help others too. Email to marcmarc@xs4all.nl your experiences and mention what kind of system you have. SOUND ----- The BWL program can both generate sound chip and MIDI sounds. So you have all the musical possibilities available now. When you install the software the MIDI support is initiated for use with a internal Sound Blaster compatible MIDI synthesiser (general MIDI). If you do not get any sound card sound you should the BWL prg (F12) and find the STEEM menu option for sounds (6th icon from the left - indicated as a keyboard - and see if any change in settings will help you out. It is preferred that you use the MIDI emulation from the sound card rather than a soft midi emulator. But, you may try out any soft Midi emulator and see how the performance is. STEEM also emulates the original BWL ST sounds. This is, when MIDI works on your system, only interesting for the emulated Noise sound. In the MIDI mode of a session you can combine the MIDI sounds with these noise sounds. If at startup of STEEM an error message about the sound card pops up, it is most likely that the sound card is occupied by another application and was not shut down by EndItAll. Check your at your windows StartBar whether an icon is indicating a standby music player and close it before starting STEEM. VOLUME ------ The demo sounds are made with the following windows volume settings: Master at 80% (= total end volume) Wave at 80% (= end volume for the internal Noise) Synthesizer at 80% (= end volume for midi sounds) It is important to have a correct balance between the midi sounds and the noise sounds. The noise should not be too extreme at front. GOGGLES ------- The LPT1 port is used to control the LEDs in the goggles via the printer port. In case you do not get any LED flashing from the goggles you have to check which LTP port is used on your system and changed the port setting in the STEEM program according your system. When you have STEEM with the BWL program running: hit F12 At the top a menu bar will appear with several icons visible. These are to change the settings for the STEEM program. Click the 'keyboard icon' (6th from the left) Find the option parallel port in the dialogue. Select which LPT port your system is using and click OK Hit F12 again to jump back to the BWL program and try again. other STEEM Settings ==================== ROM TOS ------- The BWL ST operating system is required to have the emulator working. With this package comes a file dump of the TOS 2.06 system. You do not need to do anything about it. It is already installed. MEMORY ------ The STEEM emulator is set to emulate a 2MB BWL system. This is enough to have the software working. JOYSTICK AND OTHER PORTS ------------------------ All other emulated ports are set inactive because we do not need them for using the BWL software. Short cuts and reset -------------------- Several short cuts are already set for you: F12 Toggle from STEEM (the emulation) to windows and back F11 Whenever an irritating scrolling text appears in the STEEM window: hit F11 Alt+Control+R To reset the BWL system within the STEEM program This may become necessary whenever the BWL system crashes and a new start of STEEM or the program which runs under STEEM does not start properly anymore. How to reset: When a crashed BWL emulation: first hit F12 to exit emulation. Hit Control+Alt+R --> the STEEM window will turn blank. Hit F12 to jump into emulation and wait for the Atari desktop to appear. Select the BWL_P4xx.PRG and double click to start it up. A text will appear. Hit any key after a couple of seconds. The BWL software is back again with the DEFAULT.ALL file loaded. Load any other file when required and continue (LOAD-->ALL-->select drive and file-->OK) DIRECTORIES & FILES ------------------- A BWL disk of 720Kb (80 tracks/9 sectors) is put as a file on your system and is declared as a virtual A:\ disk in the init file. The BWL program and all files that can load into the program are located on this image file disk. There also exists a virtual B:\ disk station. This contains the program Columns, a game. These virtual disk stations can be seen from the windows explorer as DISKA.ST and DISKB.ST In the PC mode you can not see their contents but, if you go quit to the STEEM program by quiting the BWL program with its own QUIT button, you then return to the BWL system desktop and can view the contents of the virtual disk stations A and B and you will see that there also is a C drive. This is the virtual hard disk partition. You will find there copies of the DEMO files. You may store DEMO files in the C:\ drive. When you want to have access to the files from the virtual disk in the PC mode, you can copy files (when being in BWL system emulation mode) to the C:\ drive. This C:\ partition then can be found in PC mode in C:\brainlab\harddisk.c\ I advise you to create a folder of your own to store your session files. You easily can do this: With windows explorer goto C:\brainlab\harddisk.c and create the folder "MY_FILES". You can access this folder from the BWL program by selecting in the file selector the C drive and open the "MY_FILES" folder. Hence that you should create the folder with not more characters than 8 (and 3 for the extension if desired). Storing your files in this folder is to prevent that when you install a update your files get overwritten by a new vertial Disk A:\ and/or B:\. You also can access the file in MY_FILES from the PC and exchange them with your friends. DEFAULT.ALL ----------- When you start the BWL program already the DEFAULT.ALL session is loaded. Whenever you start the BWL program from the BWL system desktop, this DEFAULT.ALL file is loaded. You may rename another file as DEFAULT. When you quit the BWL program by quiting STEEM, you will next time when you start STEEM find out that the BWL program contents your last loaded file and settings as where you left off. Every time when you Quit STEEM, its make a data image of the BWL program and uses this the next time. SPEED ===== The best is to run the BWL program in the full screen mode and have all other window tasks ended before you start the STEEM program. This will lead to a better stability of the execution of a session. An easy way to quit all running tasks is to use the free ware program ENDITALL. This program is included to your download and located in the C:\brainlab directory. Unzip it into the temp directory and then install it at any location you want. Make a shortcut on your desktop so you can use it any time when heavy applications turn out to run better with all background tasks eliminated.