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Wheels - laying more than a patch
by Bruce Thomas

Someone once said 'The more things change, the more they stay the same'. Obviously, that person never changed from using GEOS V2.0 on a Commodore 64 to using the new Wheels upgrade from Maurice Randall of Click Here Software Company.

The first thing that struck me as being different was the sticker sealing the envelope. This identified the contents as Wheels V4.0 for the C-64 and reinforced the automotive theme by listing my VIN (Vehicle Identification Number). It is not surprising that this theme runs throughout the entire package as Maurice runs his own auto repair shop and used to race cars as well.

The envelope contained a Cerlox-bound manual (46 full size pages plus an Index and Appendix), an insert outlining other software products and planned improvements plus one 5 1/4" disk.

Got a Licence?

The first thing you need to know, before even ordering your new set of Wheels, is if your system is big enough to drive. Wheels is designed as an upgrade to GEOS V2.0 so you must have an original boot disk. The minimum hardware required in addition to your C-64 (or C-128 in 64 mode) includes a 5 1/4" disk drive (1541 or 1571 preferred), an input device (joystick or better yet a mouse), a TV`or monitor of some kind and at least a 1700 (128K) RAM Expander. This last item is the most important as Wheels will not operate without some form of RAM Expansion.

When GEOS V2.0 arrived in 1988 the thought of a single user having 16 MBs of RAM was a pipe dream - on any platform! Today, with my RAMLink max'd out and my SuperCPU topped up, I have 32 MBs of usable RAM on my 64.

In 1988 a C-64 ran at 1 MHz. Today we have options of 1, 4, 8 and even 20 MHz speeds.

In 1988, if you were lucky, you could fit 800 KB on a floppy. Today we can put 1.6 MBs on a floppy disk using drives still available new (and 3.2 MBs on an FD-4000 if you find a used one).

As you can see, things have changed but, using GEOS V2.0, they nevertheless stayed the same. The system wasn't designed with the flexibility required to handle the hardware that would be developed. As users, we were stuck - unable to go where we wanted to with our new machinery.

Wheels changes all of that. Wheels was designed from the ground up to handle all of the high performance accessories the modern day Commodore user has at his disposal.

Your Wheels boot disk will crank over at 1, 4 or 20 MHz with no changes at all (the Flash 8 unit hasn't been tested). Do you have a populated RAMLink or SCPU? Believe me, there is nothing quite like seeing 15471 KB Free in a 16 MB partition. Do you want to use the Native mode of your FD or HD drives? Support for this is built-in as well as the use of subdirectories to organize your storage.

The more your system has, the better ride you'll get. If you have met, or exceeded, the minimum requirements it is time to get things into gear.

Park it

Before driving your new set of Wheels you need to install it. To follow the theme maybe this should be 'in stall' (as in park your wheels in your stall and register it as yours).

The disk is copy protected and only one file is visible in the directory. The 'Installer' should be run after booting with your original GEOS V2.0 disk. You will be prompted for your name (for the registration papers) and your original disk during the install process. Once the program verifies your boot disk and the condition of your drive it unpacks all of the necessary files and creates your original Wheels Master Disk. Put a write-protect tab on this disk immediately.

Wheels for the first time

After running 'Starter' (what did you expect it to be called?) the screen turns black as the system loads (use the 'up-arrow'S* JiffyDOS shortcut instead of 'Shift-Run/Stop'. On fast systems your finger isn't off the Stop key before the program loads and you are left staring at a black screen). After a short while an image of a wheel spinner fills the screen.

Before the process is finished you will have to answer a few questions. What type of RAM do you want the system to use? What boot options do you want to be applied to your RAM? What Input Driver do you want to use? These questions only appear the first time you boot the system (or when your hardware changes) and are saved to the disk, which is why your original should be write protected. Any real drives numbered 8 to 11 are identified and installed during the boot process as are your input and printer drivers.

Once Wheels is running you will be looking at the Dashboard. This new System File replaces the Desktop. The screen displays a menu across the top and a clock in the top right corner (flashing 'set clock' annoyingly until you do). The only Icons you will see are down the left side of the screen representing your mounted storage devices.

The active drive will appear reversed compared to the other icons. Double-Clicking on a drive icon will pop up a directory window for the disk/partition identified by the name under the icon. This is where things really start to change.

No Roadside Emergencies

The original Wheels disk contains a program called MakeSysDisk which is used to make spare boot disks or partitions, as well as more Master Disks (MakeSysDisk can only be run from a Master Disk). Keep in mind, though, that your name and VIN are stamped on every Boot and Master Disk you make (and visible in the Dashboard and Toolbox Info boxes). Once you have made a few spares put your original away for safe keeping.

Boot disks can be created on 1541 disks, 1571 single or double-sided disks, 1581 disks and RAMLink, RAMDrive, FD and HD drives with 1581 or native mode partitions. Unlike GEOS V2.0, which had to be in partition #1, Wheels can boot from any partition on your CMD devices and any Drive #8-11 (with exceptions for RAMLinks).

The Dashboard

Maurice really put a lot of effort into programming this new system. He also put a lot of thought into the names he used. The Dashboard may seem like an odd name for a piece of software but, when you think about what is constantly in front of you when you're driving, it makes perfect sense.

Along with your new set of Wheels comes the need for a new way of thinking. Up until now, GEOS didn't allow us to fully utilize our CMD hardware. While it is easy to create subdirectories and partitions on these devices, from BASIC or JiffyDOS, the GEOS system didn't recognize anything but standard Commodore formats.

The Dashboard has easy menu options to create subdirectories and for navigating around your directory structure. There is no chance of mis-using these commands as they are only active if the selected object is a CMD partitionable device or native mode partition.

One of the great features of Wheels is the ability to have four drives active at once. Not only can you open windows for each drive but you can copy to/from any window you want to. The windows are totally resizeable and can display from 1 to 20 icons at once. If you prefer, a text display is available and operational also.

Each object on the Dashboard is treated separately and options work on the selected item only. Once you have opened a window you can select the drive icon again. This makes it possible to open more than one partition on a single drive.

Customizable Function Keys provide the user with full control over window contents. Do you want to see just the Applications or Desk Accessories and Fonts? Do you want to see empty directory slots (try the MODIFY setting) or a continuous stream of icons?

The Toolbox - 4 Wheels Drives

The Toolbox is an application that can be run by the user at any time. It also runs invisibly during the boot process to inspect your hardware and install the proper drivers. While I previously described four drive operation in respect to the Dashboard it is really the Toolbox that makes this possible.

This program takes the place of Configure allowing you to setup which drives will be active and what format they will have. CMD devices can be installed as 1581's (using 1581 disks/partitions) or native mode devices (accessing 1581 and native mode disks/partitions) changing the disk icon on the fly to indicate the selected type.

The Toolbox even revitalizes your 1581 drive with a special driver that allows it to use 800KB FD Native mode disks. With these disks (yes, the 1581 can format them) you will have full access to subdirectories just as if you had an FD drive (I have both drives and this is cool).

The Toolbox also detects and utilizes an accelerator if one is present. No boot disk customization is required to run with an accelerator. I can disable my SCPU and boot from the same RL partition as I do with my SCPU enabled. Any RAM`installed in the SuperRAM card of a SuperCPU is also automatically detected and used by the system. The Schnedler TurboMaster accelerator will power Wheels as well.

Under the Hood

Maurice didn't just replace the Desktop and Configure programs. He rewrote the Operating System Kernel as well.

The changes to the kernel affect the appearance of the menus in all of your applications (no dividing line separates the menu items). Dialog Boxes have been reworked to handle the new hardware (when you see a DISK icon you may be able to access subdirectories in the current partition). In addition to pressing the RETURN key to activate an OK icon you can now press the first letter to activate some system icons ('C' for cancel or 'D' for disk).

Running an application from Drive C or D does not renumber the drives and you have full access to the data files on the drive you run the app on (once you select the DRIVE button you are limited to Drives A and B as that would require a rewrite of each application to change). Don't double-click your data files on Drive C or D as the apps will load but won't find your file. Rather, load the Application and then OPEN your file.

Roadworthy

By now you are likely wondering how all of the new features of Wheels will affect what you have been doing with GEOS. I`have run the major BSW apps plus as many auxiliary programs as time permitted under Wheels with no ill effects. Desk Accessories seem to work just as they always did (with special color help). Programs written with four drive capabilities function flawlessly. Your old printer drivers still work under Wheels.

Custom mouse drivers (for the 1351 and SmartMouse) configure the right button for 1 MHz clicking. After years of using a 4 MHz TurboMaster I find this helpful. Quite often the accelerator would have to be manually set to 1 MHz to allow easy selection of a pattern in geoPublish or just the right font size in geoWrite. With a simple right click I can now access what I want easily. Drivers are supplied where the right button double-clicks and also with the buttons reversed for left-handed users.

Maurice has taken a rather bold move in light of the present proceedings against Microsoft. Under the 'wheels' menu there is an option to activate geoShell if it is on your system. Now, Click Here Software isn't as big as Microsoft and, as far as I know, nobody else offers a CLI for GEOS, but Maurice may be asking for trouble down the road. All in all this integration is a welcome addition and some new geoShell commands ship with Wheels.

Potholes

While the overall manual is well written, and covers a lot of what the system can do, I found a number of items that were lacking.

While Maurice kept most of the keyboard shortcuts from the old Desktop some have changed to accommodate new features (C= M is now Make Subdir instead of Rename File). Care must be taken when using shortcuts as some depend on which Dashboard object is active. After adjusting to the highlighted object concept there are still some surprises is store.

An important example is the C= E shortcut to 'erase' a file or disk. The first time I used this I opened the boot partition on my RAMLink and then changed the partition in the open window. While the contents of the window changed, the name under the icon didn't (this facilitates the multi-partition concept mentioned earlier). The disk menu commands function on the disk/partition named under the icon while I was expecting to erase the highlighted object (in this case, the open window). Luckily a dialog box opens up asking for confirmation of the process. This DB presently only lists the Partition number and not the name so it would have been easy to erase my boot partition if I hadn't been paying attention.

One function of the Toolbox that works almost too well is removing drives. To set up your system the way you want you can remove or add drives into any available spot. The first time I tried this I thought I would move them all around and so removed all of my drives from the configuration boxes. When I tried to add another drive I was instructed to insert a disk with the Toolbox on it. Can you all say REBOOT? Anyhow, this isn't in the manual so take it from me - DON'T REMOVE ALL OF YOUR DRIVES IN THE TOOLBOX!

1581 subdirs are not supported and will crash the system. A native mode subdir will have an icon like a folder with CMD marked on it. A 1581 subdir shows up as a C= 64 file - don't try to open it.

As mentioned, the TurboMaster will work with Wheels but no explanation is provided. Due to the configuration of this unit it requires some special handling to work with a RAM unit. While an adapter was made allowing it to run under GEOS with a 17xx RAM unit this won't work under Wheels. You need a geoRAM or bbgRam unit plus a cartridge port expander to run Wheels at 4 MHz.

Chapter 7 in the manual covers a number of applications and utilities that won't work with Wheels. These include DBGetFiles (Wheels can handle up to 255 files in the requestor box so this is no longer needed anyhow), geoCanvas, geoWizard and most screen savers. Basically, any program that patches the kernal or allocates expansion RAM`will have trouble with Wheels and the new manner in which the hardware is handled.

Included with the package is a listing of some features not implemented in this release. These include an ashtray and printer icon on the Dashboard, integrated screen saver, drive swapping in the Toolbox (the Dashboard supports drag and drop swapping for all four drives in the same manner the Desktop did) and a RESTART program that will maintain the contents of a RAM disk. The Info Box can't be viewed at present but the InfoViewV2 DA works well for now. Also missing is the ability to automatically set the clock from any detected time device during bootup; here again various Auto-execs like CMDTime work just fine.

Maurice is working on filling many of these potholes and plans to have the next release finished in the fall (as well as Wheels128). If you purchase Wheels now you will receive the next release free provided you send in your registration. The original program comes on 5 1/4" disk only but the upgrade will be available on 3 1/2" disk also.

Maurice has an excellent track record of sending out upgrades as evidenced by his distribution of geoShell and geoFAX and he is open to suggestions for new or improved features. Knowing Maurice's track record I know these Wheels won't stop rolling until they are better than the top-of-the-line all-season radials anywhere. Needless to say, there will be plenty to discuss in future Graphic Interpretation columns.

Cruisin'

The ads for Wheels feature a nifty little slogan - "Let's roll down our windows and go cruisin'". While it alludes to the freedom the system offers I don't like this slogan.

We can cruise all right - and at any speed we want to, but Windows are what Wheels is all about. In fact, you can open 16 windows at one time (and from the same drive if you want). Rolling our windows down out of sight is the last thing we want to do with Wheels.

The system offers many enhancements over GEOS V2.0. Not only in the interface we use but also in the advanced use of our hardware. Just as GEOS originally did for the C-64 in 1986, Wheels provides a way to do things that we couldn't do before. That is why we need Wheels - to go places. Places we may never have taken our hardware before, but always wanted to.

It is for that reason that I propose a new slogan for this system. Wheels - taking you where you want to go today.