Collection of Education/collectionofeducationcarat1997.iso/COMPUSCI/BERTAA32.ZIP/BAF32.DOC

Text File | 1994-04-15 | 20KB | 408 lines

                         Bert's African Animals
              (Including All the Bert's Coloring Programs)
                   A Coloring Program For Introducing
                     Young Children to the Computer

                  Unregistered Version 3.2 User's Guide

                              Introduction


    This instruction manual was produced for use with the Bert's African
Animals program. Several other Bert's coloring programs are also
available and these instructions are for use with these programs as
well.

    Bert's African Animals is an enjoyable coloring program for children
of all ages, but is especially useful for introducing young children to
the computer. Bert's African Animals was designed by educators to be
used by young children with a minimum of assistance by adults. As a
coloring program Bert's African Animals is superior to many other
children's coloring programs in that it allows the user to place the
various animals, all in four different sizes, on a variety of
backgrounds. This allows children to easily create their own picture
before coloring. The opportunity to create their own picture will allow
children to take pride in their unique creation. Bert's African Animals
also has a voice feature, which can be turned on or off, allowing the
animals to speak their names, much to the delight of children.

    When first started Bert's African Animals displays a title screen
and then the drawing surface with eight buttons on the left. Children
can operate the program with the mouse alone. A window is provided which
allows children to write a short story about their picture using the
keyboard. The fact that they created the picture will help provide the
motivation to write about it. One of the best ways for children to learn
to read is to write, even if their initial attempts include phonetic
spelling which is not always correct. If your child is not ready to
attempt writing his/her story, then another good strategy is for you to
type in your child's story as he/she dictates it to you. Then have your
child read back the story he/she created. This is another very effective
beginning reading strategy. They will love creating a setting, writing
or dictating their own story and printing out a copy.

                              Installation

    Bert's African Animals requires an IBM compatible computer with at
least 512K of memory, a VGA display and a Microsoft compatible mouse. A
Sound Blaster card will improve the voice quality considerably. The
computer's speaker will be used if a Sound Blaster card and driver are
not found. The program installation process is quite easy.

    First, make a backup copy of your Bert's African Animals program
disk. If necessary consult your PC-DOS/MS-DOS manual for a description
of the DISKCOPY command. Save the original program disk in a safe place
and use the copy as the working program disk.



Bert's African Animals Version 3.2                          Page 1 of 7
    Second, while it is possible to use Bert's African Animals on a
floppy disk system, a hard disk system is a necessity for reasonable
speed and storing a number of pictures your child has created. To
install Bert's African Animals on a hard disk use the following steps:

    1. Insert the floppy disk in your computer in drive A. (or B if
necessary)
    2. Type A: (or B:)
    3. Type INSTALL A C

    Any hard drive letters can be used, for example INSTALL B D will
install the program from floppy drive B to hard drive D. The
installation will create a directory called BERT3 on your hard drive and
you will need to enter a CD\BERT3 to change to the Bert's African
Animals directory before running the program. Once installed just type
BERT to start the program. If your computer gives a series of beeps when
you run Bert's African Animals it is probably because it cannot find the
image files it needs to run, and other problems are showing up as well.
All the files for Bert's African Animals need to be in the same
directory for the program to operate successfully. You should not mix
the .DOT image files from Bert's African Animals with those of versions
previous to 3.0 as they are in a different format.

    If you are installing more than one copy of the Bert's coloring
programs, ie. - Bert's Dinosaurs, Bert's African Animals, Bert's
Prehistoric Animals, Bert's Whales and Dolphins - you will get warning
messages during installation such as the following:

PKSFX: (W18) Warning! c:/bert3/BERT.EXE already exists. Overwrite (y/n)?

    You should type a letter N in response to this message, which will
speed up installation. Actually, typing a Y will not hurt anything, it
simply writes over the file with an identical copy.

    Users with a Sound Blaster card must copy the driver file CT-
VOICE.DRV, which comes with your Sound Blaster card, into the BERT3
directory. This file is usually found in the DRV subdirectory which is
in the Sound Blaster directory. The Sound Blaster directory has
different names depending on the model you have, for example SB16 for
the Sound Blaster 16 ASP. To copy the driver file you would type:

                  COPY  \SB16\DRV\CT-VOICE.DRV  \BERT3

    You should change the directory name SB16 in the example above to
whatever is appropriate for your Sound Blaster software. If the CT-
DRIVE.DRV file is not found in the BERT3 directory the program will use
the computer's speaker for voice output. For computers with normal
speakers the voice is quite recognizable. However, many of the new PC
computers are using cheap piezoelectric devices which makes the voice
sound like a duck. Users with piezoelectric devices or parents tired of
listening to animal names may wish to turn the voice off.

   If sound is not coming through the PC speaker or the Sound Blaster
output, then you have the CT-VOICE.DRV file in the BERT3 directory, but
have other problems. It is possible that your current Sound Blaster
setup is incorrect. First, check your AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the root

Bert's African Animals Version 3.2                          Page 2 of 7
directory. It should have some lines that look something like this:

    SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
    SET SOUND=C:\SB16
    C:\SB16\SB16SET /M:220 /VOC:220 /CD:220 /MIDI:220 /TREBLE:0
    C:\SB16\SBCONFIG.EXE /S

    Your parameters may very well be different, depending on what I/O
port address, interrupt number and DMA channel your system is using. You
can check the SET's by just typing SET from the C:> prompt.

    You can also try reinstalling CT-VOICE.DRV by using the INST-DRV
program with DRV as a parameter, ie. type INST-DRV DRV. This install
program can have different names or a different parameter like \SB\DRV,
depending on the card you have. Check your manuals for details. You can
check your Sound Blaster card with the program TEST-SBC or TEST-SBP.

    If these items all appear to be in place you might want to try
reinstalling the Sound Blaster software from scratch. Be sure to install
everything. The Bert's coloring programs are DOS programs and having the
Sound Blaster work with a Windows program does not mean the DOS Sound
Blaster environment is OK.

    Operation of Bert's African Animals is quite easy. The eight buttons
are configured to do the following when the left mouse button is clicked
on them:

                           The Command Buttons

    SELECT AN ANIMAL

    When beginning a new picture six small backgrounds are displayed.
The user clicks with the mouse on the selected scene to have it drawn on
the screen full size.
    Next, a group of six animals are displayed. Clicking the mouse on
any one of the animals will select it. If the stop sign is clicked on,
no animal will be selected and you are returned to the drawing surface.
    Clicking the mouse on the box between the stop sign and the green
arrows sets the voice status. Voice can be set to on, off or voice only
- meaning