With regards to Bill's recent post, both of those are excellent ideas. I
do have a couple of comments.
Your name and callsign are embedded in the NA.EXE file when you register
the first time you boot up. If you rename NA.EXE to something else the
registration code will not be able to find itself and the registration will
fail. No big deal - boot up NA.EXE the first time and register it, then
quit and rename it to NA1030.EXE or such. This is an excellent suggestion
which had not occurred to me. I will certainly use the idea at K8CC.
Using a batch file to launch NA has been a big help at K8CC where we run
six to eight computers in a big multi-multi. All the shack computers are
set with the autoexec file to boot into C:\NA at startup. I try to be
really organized about how I name contest log files, usually using
year-contest-mode (98SSCW, 1998FD, 97CQWWPH, etc.). Understandably, few of
the guest ops are as regimented as I about file names so you'd find every
permutation across the various computers. Now, I startup the first
computer and get a file set up with a file called CONTEST.BAT that looks
like this:
na contestname -now
I copy the initial (no QSOs) contest file, current multiplier files, and
CONTEST.BAT to a floppy and then copy it to each of the logging computers.
This is the reason for having the system configuration (ports, computer
number, etc.) in the separate file (NA.CFG). The "general" stuff (which is
usually related to the computer hardware and does not change from contest
to contest) does not have to be set up over and over, while the "specific"
stuff (i.e. the specific contest to be operated) can be common between
computers. Makes setup a heckuva lot easier.
Anybody else have some tips to share with the community?
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