[fi_inst.txt] This describes very briefly how to get firth.iso installed when using e.g. virtualbox.org. The Firth LISA Operating Approach for Computers can also be called MAXIDOS, and the 1st-hand hardware for running Lisa GJ2 Fic3 will have a modified and yet very similar in all essential respects platform for free creative artistic meditative and erotic programming, writing, drawing, etc, which is a Yoga6dOrg MAXIDOS proper. The percentage of things which work with various hardwares and various VMs of this 'platform of many OSes' of a DOS-like kind with a kernel derived from a modified early FreeDOS from www.freedos.org but massively expanded and integrated in an open-ended textual manner do vary. THIS IS FOR THE CREATIVE PERSON PROPER. The use of English keyboard layout is assumed. However most keyboards with the same rough layout can be used if you just get used to where the new English keys are -- where / and \ and such are, etc. This firth.iso requires classical PC 1024*768 with SoundBlaster and that is exactly what Virtualbox.org can provide. For that we are extremely grateful. It means just abou every personal computer on the planet -- of all fast enough types, with any of the most common platforms -- can run Firth Lisa with F3, where the command F3V is appropriate for the language, in what clearly is the most sustained creative platform of all. A much more detailed, perhaps over-detailed, explanation is found where this Yoga4d Firth Lisa_CD was first released, in 2006, at the yoga4d.org/download or /downloads site (at the time it was called yoga4d.com). There is a text called, I think, INSTALL.TXT. This describes also how one uses the program DOGGY to glue the 10MB bundles together. But here they are already glued together. It also describes how to install Red Hat 8.0, the R1, R2 and R3 CD's. These you have to do doggy with if you like them -- they are the GNU GPL free version which became Fedora when Red Hat, Inc commercialised the 9.0. It is still the classical Linux and it should work fine with any VM. If you have more than one partition within one virtual or real machine then you need a boot loader menu and this is described in the INSTALL.TXT. But here we just put the firth.iso up and running. This is really the most fantastic operating system ever built, I see now, years and years later, running it with all its enormous richness compatible with the SoundBlaster stuff and with most but certainly not all graphical things working in the present (2012) www.virtualbox.org. It is the fountainhead of the Lisa GJ2 Fic3 work, of course. The word Firth means river in some languages and we chose it for the before-Lisp-oriented version of f3 since the language was much nearer Forth then. We assume that you have a little bit knowledge of stuff like this OR take you time, smilingly, to experiment until it works. Here: Make a 29 or 30 but not 31 gigabyte fixed partition for VirtualBox.org as described for the ViBe version of F3. I assume that you do this first, as that is simpler, and then do this. Assign as CDROM the firth.iso you get at yoga4d.org/firth.iso. It is GNU GPL and giftware and such and documents itself. Read in norskesites.org/fic3 or moscowsites.org/fic3 about how to get the file transfer FTP running for it, it is very very easy once you have got the ViBe version of F3 to work, we have prepared a tiny .iso that you mount when you have done what is here pointed out. Boot from the CD that is said to be this firth.iso in the device settings. This gives you a kind of A> prompt. Type FDISK Answer affirmative to any question about enabling very large disk. Select on menu create a primary dos partition. Assert it to be ca 29000MB, perhaps it proposes this. Don't go above 30000MB=30GB. Select on menu that this is A for Active. Select on menu to view partition list and see that it has the letter A on it. Press ESC or what the FDISK asks you to do to write this to disk. You are again then at A> prompt. Reboot the VirtualBox machine. Again comes the A> Type FORMAT C: It will ask you and answer YES to the question of erasing it all -- I assume that you are doing this either within a virtualbox.org file, or at a blank Personal Computer if you run it natively -- be certain what you do when you do this format, so you don't format anything but what you intended to format. It's your responsibility to do it right! Again reboot the virtual machine. Right-ctrl R is the www.virtualbox.org command that is done. By the way, just so it is said, get the knack of clicking right-ctr several times for fresh re-aligning of external and internal mouse pointer symbol when you run Firth. It is however easy when you have done it some times. Again you are booting from the CD. Again the A> shows. Type now SYS C: Also, so it is said here, the Firth is using a very early form of FreeDOS. This has workarounds. One is that the isolated dot . must not be used as target in the COPY command. Another is that the disk size reported by DIR has little to do with reality. More about this within the U menu and text CODEOVER.TXT inside the Firth. Now type C: DIR D: DIR D:\DISKETTE\ (pls notice the completing back-slash, necessary in DIR.) and the main bulk of the .iso file should show in the file-list, as a CD. This you can also do from a physical CDROM-device. Be prepared to press arrow-up to repeat DIR D: a couple of times, or to answer R for Retry a couple of times. This is normal throughout Firth when CD is accessed -- also to wait long at the CDg mount on occasion, after you have mounted a new one with the VirtualBox.org, or inserted a real one if you use the Firth natively on a 1024*768 classical PC. As you probably know, The FTP is important when using VirtualBox, or a partition handling USB such as the Red Hat 8.0 or a newer Linux, when run directly on hardware, as Firth only reads from CD and does not access USB and can write only to floppy and serial port and parallel port and telephone modem. However the FTP is superfast and as elegant as anything should be for the F3 enthusiast. Filelists including a very large .ZIP has shown. Type now, with the C> prompt showing (and try E: or F: or something if D: didn't work above, and when you find the letter that is right for the DIR, put that in the next line instead of D:, in case): (if any question at any point in these processes about overwrite y/n confirm -- by a letter 'A' for 'All files' if that is an option, as it is with the unzip which is upcoming -- or by the letter 'y' for 'yes' if the A is not an option in another command.) COPY D:DISKETTE\*.* You see that this line has no dot in it. Any dot would freeze the command line, if I remember correctly. Let it now spend some time fetching the main stuff from the CD. You could, but it is not necessary, do an extra COPY by accessing the floppy-emulation-part of the CD-iso by writing also COPY A:*.* but all the files we need are really within the big .zip as soon as we have done the earlier commands to prepare for right use of this stuff in an isolated format (where you are respectful of licenses and forgiving for all adolescences and anarchistically minded as to all the fresh young wild stuff also here, erotic fiction also -- though the major portions by far are open source programs). The file CWSDPMI.EXE (or what it is called) and the file UNZIP.EXE (which is, like ZIP, a true 32-bit program and so very powerful, when we talk the Firth platform proper -- be aware of many such subtle differences compared with other DOS and DOS-like platforms; this is all documented within it, I think) are now in place at C:, when the minutes have gone and the D: has been copied into the C: as for top level files. This you can check by DIR while the C> shows, if you like. The presence of the CWSDPMI stuff allows much more memory to be used by means of a .SWP file. This is necessary for UNZIP to take less than a month to complete. In fact with a fast PC it may merely take half an hour. In any case, you got to allow the PC to work after the UNZIP command. But first we must fetch it by a COPY: COPY D:*.ZIP UNZIP LISA_OAC.ZIP Be ready to answer 'A' here for overwrite ALL of kernel.sys or whatever. A similar 'unzip' command in Red Hat 8.0 or in CentOS or in Fedora or the like would go much faster due to the enhanced memory handling of these platforms but this is pretty much as any fairly normal Dos can be tweaked to do. Still, a slow PC will certainly take a day. Let it complete! Wait a minute, then reboot. Congratulations, if it works. Type XO when it is done starting, and press lineshift. Get the newest dosboxex.iso for overwrite of all files in its boehm\boehmian folder into the c:\boehm\boehmian of your firth, and get the firthftp.iso and associated info files on how to enable the file transfer protocol FTP for use with VirtualBox.org (and such) as described at the F3 resource centres, norskesites.org/f3. The command F3V runs all that F3 does but handles proper exit of graphics with just one line added in the main FIC3.TXT to make up FIC3VIBE.TXT. The main thing with Firth F3V compared to Dosbox F3 is that you can be sweetly reckless about speed if the hardware you have is already fairly ok with Dosbox. PcSpeaker may not work. When all is installed, start up your Firth and type U for Utility menu. There are STILL (many) more programs in the platform than what we have enabled here. --Aristo Tacoma, with Lisa, Athina and Helena Salinger, Oslo, February 14, 2012. YOGA4D.ORG/cfdl.txt license applies.