BigTime -- System Manager Compliant Digital Clock
for the HP-95 Palmtop PC

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         Wednesday, May 24, 1995         
                                         
    Time    Chime   Minute  Month    Year
        Date     Hour   Second   Day     
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(C) Copyright 1993-1997 Richard E. Harvey, All rights reserved.
P.O. Box 5695
Glendale AZ 85312 USA

Email:
 r_harvey@compuserve.com

CompuServe:
 71011,3076 

Internet home page:
 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/r_harvey

All rights reserved. Reproduction or distribution of the editorial
contents or programs in any manner without express written permission
of the author is prohibited. While every effort has been made to
assure the accuracy of the materials presented, no liability is
assumed by the author. These materials are made available solely on
an "as is" basis, and the user (and not the author nor any other
party) shall bear costs of incidental or consequential damages in
connection with or arising out of the furnishing, use or performance
of these materials.

This special edition of BigTime may be distributed only on CompuServe
in HP or Palmtop forums. You cannot include this program in any
other product or resell or give out copies in any way without express
written permission of the copyright holder. This file, BIGTIME.TXT,
must be included with BIGTIME.EXM.

This is not shareware or freeware or demoware. If you like the
program, you may use it. If would like to use it in a business or
anywhere a site license is appropriate, you should pay me something
for the privilige--send what you feel is a fair payment.

BigTime is available only because of the request of Dara Khoyi
[CompuServe 74147,242] who uses the program with an HP200LX to
fix a problem with running DOS applications. Contact Dara for more
information.

--( BigTime )--
BigTime is a program excerpted from the "HP95 Productivity Pack."
The package includes a system info program, spelling checker and
other utilities. Also available is the "HP95 Utility Pack," which
adds many DOS commands missing from our little Palmtop PC--and even
a very cool cursor fixer device driver (not a TSR!).

This program turns your HP 95 into the world's most expensive digital
desk clock! While its job is simple, using BigTime, and trying the
options, is fun. BigTime also makes it easier to adjust the computer's
clock.

Most of the time, the bottom two lines of the window are blank.
 Main battery level is in the upper-left corner; the time covers most
of the display, and the date is below the time.

--( BigTime Settings )--
Each time you restart BigTime, it assumes a few standard settings:

 * Time format the same as the HP 95 Setup program.
 * Long spelling of months and days.
 * Quarter hour chime disabled.
 * Function key help lines off.

--( Customizing BigTime )--
BigTime shows the time and date in several formats. These keys
customize how BigTime works:

 F2  Changes time display format.
 F3  Changes date display format.
 F4  Turns quarter-hour chime on or off.

Cycle through the four available time formats by repeatedly
pressing F2; the options are combinations of 12- or 24-hour clock
with or without seconds. The F3 key cycles through the date formats:
long or short spelling of days and month names. These keys work even
when the function key help lines are not showing.

The chime feature beeps a single note at a quarter past the hour, two
tones at half past, three at a quarter 'til, and four short tones on
the hour. Press F4 to turn chime on or off. BigTime places a star near
the bottom of the screen when the feature is active.

NOTE: Changing the way BigTime shows the time does not change the way
other HP 95 applications work. Use the HP 95's Setup program to change
the time and date display format for other programs.

--( Adjusting the Clock )--
One nice feature of BigTime is that it makes it painless to adjust the
clock. Function keys adjust the time and date forward or back.

NOTE: To ensure that you don't accidentally change the clock, BigTime
can only adjust the clock when the function keys are displayed. Press
MENU to turn the function keys on or off.

Adjustments you make to the clock stick -- it changes the system clock,
not just BigTime's display. It is easy to do, but keep a few points in
mind:

 * Be sure to turn on the seconds display so you can see the effect of
   adjusting by just a second or two.
 * 24-hour format makes it easier to tell if you are setting the clock to
   midnight or noon. In 24-hour format, midnight is zero.
 * Function keys move the clock forward. To move the time or date
   backward, press SHIFT plus a function key.

--( Battery Level Report )--
BigTime also shows the battery level on the upper left corner of the
display. It checks the battery once every other minute. You can force
BigTime to check the battery again by pressing Space (the space bar
key) to redraw the screen. The battery level is not necessarily actual
voltages; think of it as a guideline: Above 2.5, all is well. Above
2.0, the battery is marginal. While below 2.0, and on down to 1.8, the
battery is exhausted.

Please dont discard the batteries just because the 95 doesnt like them  try u
sing them in flashlights, toys or radios until they really are exhausted, then d
ispose of the batteries carefully.

--( Power Consumption )--
BigTime is designed to maximize battery life. It does as little work
as possible , then nods-off; you can tell that its resting because
occasionally a second will catch it off-guard, and it will quickly
display the time, only to have the next second soon replace it. This
effect is also evident in other programs that show the time in the
upper right corner of the screen; its more obvious with BigTime
because the numbers are so large.

BigTime runs in text mode, and writes directly to the video display
buffer. The obsession with speed isn't because it has a full agenda
of important tasks it's performing, but because the less time it
spends working, the more time the computer can spend sleeping.

Turning off seconds display will extend battery life very slightly --
usually not enough to really matter. That's because when just the
seconds field has changed, that's all BigTime will repaint, but when
the minute rolls-over, it will repaint the hour and minute fields.

NOTE: The HP 95 will turn off the display and go to sleep when the
timeout expires, regardless of what programs are running. Use the I95
application to change the timeout. When the computer is plugged-into
an AC adapter, display timeout is disabled.

If you place your computer near an AM (medium wave) radio and tune
the radio between stations until you hear a pulse, you can tell how
much power a program uses. The longer or more frequent the pulses, the
more power the program draws. BigTime makes just a short blip-sound
about twice each second, while some other programs sound like a drum
solo. The more complex the task, such as recalculating a spreadsheet,
the busier the computer will sound.

--( Quitting BigTime )--
There are two ways to exit BigTime:

 Q   Quits the program and returns to what you were doing.
 ESC Returns to the previous program without quitting.

If you have customized how the time or date is displayed, or turned on
the chime feature, and you want it to stay that way the next time you
start BigTime, use ESC to suspend the program. Remember, though, to
release the memory used by BigTime, you must quit by pressing Q.

HINT: You can leave BigTime running all the time -- it needs less than
1.5K of memory. It really doesn't matter, because it restarts as
quickly as if you left it running. While you must quit other HP 95
programs before running MS-DOS programs, you can run DOS programs
while BigTime is suspended. Available memory will be reduced by just
the memory it consumes.

--( BigTime Key Assignments )--

ESC	  Return to previous application. BigTime remains suspended
	  in time (and memory).
Q	  Quit and unload the program from main memory.
MENU	  Toggle function key display on/off. Also F1 key.
F2	  Select time display format.
F3	  Select date display format.
F4	  Toggle quarter-hour chime on/off.
F5	  Adjust time forward one hour.
SHIFT+F5  Adjust time back one hour.
F6	  Adjust time forward one minute.
SHIFT+F6  Adjust time back one minute.
F7	  Adjust time forward one second.
SHIFT+F7  Adjust time back one second.
F8	  Adjust date forward one month.
SHIFT+F8  Adjust date back one month
F9	  Adjust date forward one day.
SHIFT+F9  Adjust date back one day.
F10	  Adjust date forward one year.
SHIFT+F10 Adjust date back one year.
SPACE	  Redraw the display.

--( Installation )--
After copying the program files to your HP 95, you have to let the
computer know about the applications, and what hotkey you would like
to use to start the programs. We do that in a standard text file
named APNAME.LST. The file must be in the _DAT directory. The
complete path is:

 C:\_DAT\APNAME.LST

You can edit this file with Memo. Lets see how to give BigTime its
own hotkey. The program file name for BigTime is BIGTIME.EXM. If you
would like to assign the program to ALT+APPT (a natural choice: its
the clock symbol key), the keycode is B300. Assuming BIGTIME.EXM is in
the root directory of the C: drive, the line you would add to
APNAME.LST looks like:

 C:\BIGTIME.EXM,B300,BigTime

All three fields are required, and each must be separated by a comma.

