PHY 406 - Microprocessor Interfacing
Techniques
Instant WINDOWS95
- Most things start either from a Double-click on an icon or by following the menus revealed by
Start in the bottom left-hand corner
- Clicking on a window moves the focus to that window (means that text and other input now
goes to the program running in that window)
- Filestore can be examined by using the My Computer icon and Double-clicking as appropriate
- Files do not show their extension (that is the three letters after the "." in MS-DOS terms), but
the extension is the key to Windows95 as to what sort of file it is, so, when naming files,
include the extension
- Files can have long names with spaces. Advice: don't use spaces. The "_" character can
substitute - it saves an awful lot of quoting of names for various operations. Advice: If you
ever want to transfer files to a Windows 3.1 or MSDOS system stick to "8+3" naming
conventions.
- Extensions ".doc" and ".txt" associate the files with the "wordpad" and "notepad" text editors
respectively - worth using them on text files to prevent confusion
- Extension ".vi" is for LabVIEW Virtual Instruments (VIs)
- Windows are moved by dragging on the bar at the top. Windows are sized by dragging the
sides or the corners
- The three buttons on the top right of a window are in left-to-right order:
- Minimise: Temporarily remove from the display, but keep active. Makes a panel
on the Toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The window can be re-activated by
clicking on the panel in the Toolbar at the bottom of the screen
- Maximise/Restore: Make a window as large as possible (possibly the entire
screen) or, if it is as large as possible, restore it to the previous (smaller) size.
- Quit: Click to quit
- Double-Click on the icon on the top left of a window also quits the program
- To invoke an MSDOS shell use Start>>Programs>>MSDOS prompt. To leave the shell
type the command "exit"
- To print a text file, read it into the notepad or wordpad editor -
Start>>Programs>>Accessories and print from there.
- You can start a session log-in to faraday from the X icon - double-click will bring up a normal
X login prompt (there is an additional message about a 2-hour session limit which is because
we are only using the demonstration version of the software at the moment pending a
purchasing decision)
See also:
Starting Up a Microprocessor Laboratory Computer
Shutting Down a Microprocessor Laboratory Computer
The Microprocessor Laboratory Computer Setup