A variety of copyrighted freeware externals were used in this stack. The opening music clip is of Brandeburg, obtained from a commercial CD-ROM featuring freeware sound bytes. See the "About At Ease Deleter" under the File menu, while running the program, for more information.
Users may not distribute modified copies of this stack without the express permission of the author. Feel free to distribute this stack with this READ ME file, in original form, to anyone.
Requirements
This program was authored in HyperCard 2.3 and saved as a standalone application. It should work just fine on Macintosh computers using system 7 with 1.2 MB of RAM or more available for application use. A color screen helps to show the color pictures. If you don't have enough memory allocated, or available, the color pictures won't show up and sounds may not play.
Introduction
After making use of At Ease in the classroom over the last few years it has been frustrating when a student’s disk has become full and requires file management. At Ease Disk Manager 1.0 enables users to easily delete files from any floppy disk while still protecting files on the Hard Drive and Desktop. Users that have upgraded At Ease may find new menu items under the File menu that do this same task. However, many of use can't afford upgrades and will find this program useful.
If you have additional drives in a SCSI chain, zip drives, etc., this program MAY NOT PROTECT THEM from accidental file deletion. In other words, this program is DESIGNED TO PROTECT the basic computer setup used at many schools: A macintosh computer with an older version of At Ease (1.0), internal hard drive, and student floppy disks.
If you would like to protect a more complex system of drives, such as several external hard drives connected to your Macintosh, please contact me at the address given below. I won’t release any more versions of this program unless a lot of people write and let me know of desired changes, problems, and suggestions. It's simply a question of time and demand.
Upgrades to At Ease and the Macintosh system (Copeland/8) will naturally replace this produce within the next year or so - except for all those that refuse to upgrade older versions of At Ease 1.0! Early reports, featured in MacWorld, indicate that At Ease 3.0 is a superior product with a variety of new features available for users. Personally, I'm more sold on At Ease with the recent improvements that they have made but will not upgrade at this time because of budget constraints. If you are in a similar situation at your school/business/home, you'll probably like this program.
Known Errors & Compatibility Problems
The newer Macintoshes have a control panel bundled with the system, enabling them to read IBM disks. IBM/PC disks may return errors and do not work well this program.
The newer version of At Ease, 2.0.3 and newer versions, are also incompatible with this program. However, the new version of At Ease 2.0.3 has file deletion and rename functions available under the File menu and should be used in place of At Ease Disk Manager.
If you attempt to use this program from the Finder, rather than from At Ease, you may experience errors.
Problems with the error message "File is busy" have been experienced when attempting to delete the contents of an entire disk or a folder. Normally, file busy means that the file is opened or being used by another application. Sometimes ejecting a disk will do the trick. Other times you might have to try a different machine, quit and restart At Ease Disk Manager, or restart your computer. For deleting files you may just want to use the "Delete File" button to delete files one by one if you continue to get "File is busy" error messages. Until I can get some feedback from the people that make externals I have no idea how to fix this problem. Your suggestions are welcomed.
Whew - with all the disclaimers and incompatibilities, what good is At Ease Disk Manager to you anyway? Bottom line - if you use At Ease 1.0 and want to be able to manage files while running At Ease, this program may be for you. Remember that you must have just one main disk (hard drive) that this program is stored and run from. If you have lots of money and are running more than one hard drive I recommend that you purchase the upgrade to At Ease (since you can obviously afford it).
Instructions For Use
Start by making sure you have an older version of At Ease (1.0) that is compatible with this program.
1. Copy At Ease Deleter to your hard drive.
*You must have At Ease Disk Manager on the hard drive you wish to protect.
*Do not store At Ease Disk Manager on the desktop.
2. Open the At Ease control panel and add At Ease Disk Manager 1.0 to the list of
applications available for student and teacher use.
3. Make up some dummy copies of files/programs on your hard drive,
desktop, and a floppy disk and test the program before letting students use it.
Promptly report any errors/problems to the author.
Thanks!
I would like to extend my personal thanks to the people that attempted to beta test this program.
