IFT-Pro v 5.13

Windows 9x Installation Hints

For some time now, most new computers have had the proprietary Windows 95 operating system pre-loaded by the manufacturer because of the clever back-room machinations of Microsoft's Bill Gates. Windows 95 is a real challenge when it comes to being innovative on your PC (you can see why so many people are angry with Bill Gates!), so these notes will guide you in your IFT-Pro 5.13 installation. IFT-Pro was designed to run on a wide range of computers such as those used by most college level aviation programs. These computers can be DOS machines from the computer labs, or OS/2 machines, or Windows machines. IFT-Pro is a DOS application; it installs and runs best on Windows NT, OS/2, MS-DOS, and UNIX PC's; however, it requires the following steps to ensure that it runs properly on a Windows 95 machine:

1. Install IFT-Pro according to the instructions on the yellow "Windows" tip sheet in the IFT-Pro package;
2. Create a Win9x Shortcut by clicking on the right mouse button at the main desktop, thereby bringing up a menu. Drag the mouse to the right to the next menu, and click on Shortcut. The menus will disappear. Type "command" in the box which says Command Line:; then click on Next. A new dialog box appears asking for the name of the shortcut; enter "IFT-Pro", then click on Finish. This completes a shortcut to bring up the IFT-Pro DOS box.
3. Next, right click on the the new icon to bring up a menu. Select Properties, and a new window will appear. Left click on the Program tab; here you may want to enter "IFT-Pro 5.13". The next box is labelled Cmd Line:; enter "C:\Windows\Command.com". The next box is labelled Working: and should be set to the drive and directory in which you have already installed IFT-Pro (for example,"C:\Flight". The next box is for selecting an icon. When you are done, click on Apply, and then OK.
4. Next click on the icon to get a DOS prompt in the C:\Flight folder. Type "MEM" and check for the amount of free memory. The Largest executable program size should indicate at least 590k. If it is, then you can run IFT-Pro at this stage. If it is less than 590k, you will need to increase the task space as follows:
5. Click Start and select Run. Enter "Sysedit"; click on the Autoexec.bat file and rem the following two lines:

   REM c:\windows\mscdex.exe ... (Just type "REM" at the beginning of the line)
   REM c:\mouse\mouse.com ...

   These two lines are not usually needed in a Win9x system since Win9x supports these two devices automatically. Removing these two lines frees some memory. However, if your particular Win95 system does not have a separate mouse driver, and you get no mouse when you load your DOS box (sorry, folks, Win9x is a bit flaky with stuff like this!), a regular mouse driver is included on your IFT-Pro data disk. In this case, do not comment out your mouse driver as shown above; find a place for the IFT-Pro Win9x mouse driver (called "mouse.com" on the IFT-Pro data disk), and load it by adjusting the mouse line alone to load the supplied mouse driver ("mouse.com"). Save the autoexec.bat file, then select the CONFIG.SYS file:

6. Add the following lines to your CONFIG.SYS file in the same sequence as shown:

   
   DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
   DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
   REM the above two lines should be the first two lines in this file
   DOS=HIGH,UMB
   REM the above line should be the THIRD line in this file
   REM DEVICE=C:\SB16\SBDRV.SYS (not required by Win9x)
   REM DEVICE=C:\ATAPI\DECD.SYS (not required by Win9x)

7. Left click on File menu, and Save this file. Close this window, shutdown, and restart your computer. You should now have enough memory in this task box to run IFT-Pro. Happy landings!