Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!pacbell!sactoh0!hrlaser From: hrlaser@sactoh0.UUCP (Harv R. Laser) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Dealer Location Hotline (Was: Amiga Ads) Summary: they CAN autoboot the demo! Message-ID: <2077@sactoh0.UUCP> Date: 12 Nov 89 19:13:48 GMT References: <3722@nigel.udel.EDU> <23912@cup.portal.com> Distribution: na Organization: Sacramento Public Access, Ca. USA Lines: 54 In article <23912@cup.portal.com>, krag@cup.portal.com (Kevin Ray Grotjohn) writes: > Therre is such a demo that I've seen in Bay Area Stores. And it's not bad. > But if someone walks off with the disk, it reverts back to the blue screen > with a requester -"You must insert Dealer Demo in Unit 0!". Also I > observed people watching the demo. The demo is floppy based with music, > it puts up a "please wait information loading" screen between anim and > musical segments. Every person I saw left when that came up, it's too long > of a wait to hold someones interest, gives the impression of a slow screen. > > I assume this came from Commodore. Why can't they provide a self booting, > locked A590 and A500 with a rotating demo to each store? > > krag@cup.portal.com That new dealer demo disk comes with two IconX'd scripts on it... one will install the entire demo on a hard drive. The other will install it on the autoboot BOOT: partition of a Commodore-supplied hard drive so that all the salesoid has to do is to power up the machine, the hard drive boots, and the demo is automatically loaded and run. For a dealer with a buncha demo machines it shouldn't be a big deal to simply dedicate one of them to the demo and let it run continuously all day. For a dealer with only one or two demo machines, the autoboot on powerup script might not be such a good idea 'cuz to use the machine for something else he'd have to reboot (to get outta the demo) and then make sure he control-D'd fast enough to keep the demo from autobooting again. In that case he could use the other IconX'd installer to just move the demo disk to the hard drive without making it autobooting. Regarding the lack of information on the demo's "more information if you press this key" screens... I talked to the guy who made the demo and he said he was pretty much left to his own devices as to the wording to use on those information screens. And the other poster (B. Kesseler, I think) was right about that... there's nota whole lotta information there. Then again if you already own an Amiga and know what it can do you already know everything the demo is going to show & tell you anyway, so it won't seem like much. The demo is, I think, more geared to showing off to someone who walks into a store and has NO idea what an Amiga can do, some real basic information about the machine's basic features. In an ideal world, after watching the demo, a potential customer would then find a salesperson and say something like "Hey, I watched that demo.. can you show/tell me more about [insert specific area of interest here]" -- Harv Laser | SAC-UNIX, Sacramento, Ca. People/Link: CBM*HARV | UUCP=...pacbell!sactoh0!hrlaser