Using BorayLetter on PC

I have been using BL on PC for about two years now. I have played many games over email and it works just fine if you have the right configuration. I have set up my system to run a special WinUAE configuration when doubleclicking a .bl file somewhere in Windows (for example an email attachment). This special configuration then starts BL with the .bl file I clicked on.

First of all, you have to install WinUAE. This is a rather compicated thing to do, and you have to get an Amiga kickstart ROM image as well... but I'm sure there are some other sites out there that can tell you how to do. But be sure to install your amiga system as a shared file system so it shares the files with your PC.

Now I will assume that you have a working WinUAE configuration on your PC. Now install BL on it (you need an archiver called lha to unpack the archive). After that, just doubleclick BL's install icon. When choosing screenmodes for BL, I would recommend you to allways select PAL and NTSC screenmodes. The screenmodes of Picasso96 works most of the time, but one of AmigaDos' flood fills that BL uses ("Fill within outline") is not implemented in Picasso96.

If you not are an amiga expert, this is the best you can do, running BL on your standard WinUAE configuration. This is probably hard enough if you never used the amiga before...

Advanced configuration

Now with BL installed on your WinUAE, we can start to configure BL to start with the doubleclicked .bl file in Windows. This is quite compicated and you need to have quite some knowledge of the Amiga operating system and scriptwriting. Still here? This is quite hard to explain as not two persons have installed WinUAE in the same way. So the best I can do is to explain how I have made my configuration. Here we go... My standard WinUAE hard drive "starts" at "D:\Amiga\Bench\", so I created a new direcory called "D:\Amiga\Bench\blstartup\". Then I created one more WinUAE configuration and called it "BL". In this new config, I set the hard drive to start at the newly created directory ("D:\Amiga\Bench\blstartup"). I set my BL WinUAE config to open a window directly on Windows instead of running in "full screen", it looks more like a integrated windows program then :-) Then I made a S dir in the blstartup dir (D:\Amiga\Bench\blstartup\S\). And here I made a startup-sequence file. (D:\Amiga\Bench\blstartup\S\startup-sequence). This is what it looks like:

dh2:Amiga/Bench/C/assign c: dh2:Amiga/Bench/C/

Resident >NIL: C:Assign PURE

makedir ram:clipboards ram:t ram:astor

assign bench: dh2:Amiga/Bench/

assign MUI:            Bench:MUI
assign Astor:          Ram:Astor
assign BL:             Bench:BorayLetter/Letters
assign pmods:          DISK1_VOL2:mods
assign DownLoad:       DISK1_VOL2:temp
assign mods:           DISK1_VOL2:mods/mina
assign LOCALE:         Bench:Locale Bench:MUI/Locale
assign KEYMAPS:        Bench:DEVS/Keymaps
assign PRINTERS:       Bench:DEVS/Printers
assign REXX:           Bench:rexx
assign CLIPS:          Ram:Clipboards
assign T:              Ram:T
assign work:           DISK1_VOL2:
assign ENVARC:         Bench:prefs/env-archive
assign SYS:            Bench:
assign C:              Bench:C
;assign S:              Bench:S
assign LIBS:           Bench:LIBS Bench:Classes Bench:MUI/Libs
assign DEVS:           Bench:DEVS
assign FONTS:          Bench:FONTS
assign L:              Bench:L
assign sel: bench:sel/


;C:MakeDir RAM:T RAM:Clipboards ;RAM:ENV RAM:ENV/Sys

mountenv >nil:
;C:IPrefs
;C:ConClip

;Path >NIL: RAM: C: SYS:Utilities SYS:Rexxc SYS:System S: SYS:Prefs SYS:WBStartup SYS:Tools SYS:Tools/Commodities

setenv BLMAIL execute bench:S/attach

run >NIL: BL BL:auto.bl

What I do here is to take over the system from my main amiga partition. I don't start Workbench or anything else that just takes time for this purpose. In the end it starts BL with a special .bl file (D:\Amiga\Bench\BorayLetter\auto.bl) copied there by another script on the PC side.... this happens before WinUAE is started by the script below: (C:\Windows\command\bl.bat)

@ECHO OFF
copy >C:\nil %1 D:\Amiga\Bench\BorayLetter\Letters\auto.bl
echo >C:\nil %1
d:\winuae\winuae.exe -f d:\winuae\configurations\Bl.uae

What this PC script does is to copy the file that is given as an argument to the special auto.bl and then run WinUAE with the BL configuration file which in turn executes my special startup-sequence that starts BL with the auto.bl. So for now, you can open a dos prompt and write "bl hello.bl" to display hello.bl with BL in a window on windows... Confusing? :-)

But to be able to doubleclick a .bl file in windows, you have to do one more thing - configure Windows! I have the Swedish version of windows, so I don't know the correct English names for the different menus and buttons, but I can guess. Open Explorer! (not internet explorer, but the ordinary file explorer). In the menu "Show" (I am guessing here :-) select "alternatives" and a dialog pops up. Click on "file types"! Click on "new type". Another dialog pops up. Fill in:

Description: BorayLetter
MIME:        application/x-bl
Extension:   .bl
Actions:     ...press "New" and call the new action "open".
Fill in the program for the action: C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\bl.bat

Here is a picture of it (in Swedish):

GOOD LUCK!

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