Total
Legal Accounting 3
SECTION 000
- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
You will require the following minimum configuration
to use T.L.A. under MS-DOS: -
T.L.A. can be run in pure DOS mode but unless your
computer is a genuine IBM, the memory management program will be difficult to
setup. This is a limitation on DOS and PC BIOS’s. Help can be sort form
Microfocus (the manufacturers of the language used in T.L.A.) or ASE as agents
for Microfocus in Australia. Horizon Information Systems recommends, though,
that you bypass the issue completely and always run T.L.A. in a DOS window
within Windows 3.11 or above. Microsoft has done a far better job of memory
management with Windows than they have done with MS-DOS.
Apart from the above restriction, T.L.A. requires
the following to run successfully.
A) I.B.M. 386 (or above) style Personal Computer - or
compatible, with at least one floppy disk drive and a hard disk.
B) At least 520KB RAM (Random Access Memory) free in
conventional memory space and a total of at least 4MB of extended memory available.
This generally means that the computer needs 8MB of RAM total when using
Windows 3.11 and 16MB of RAM when using Win95 or above. Insufficient memory
might allow most functions to proceed correctly, but might terminate
unpredictably when certain large programs are loaded. Care should be taken when
loading, so-called, RAM resident programs (TSR’s) and/or network drivers. These
use conventional memory and may not leave enough space to T.L.A. to function
correctly.
C) You must be using PC-DOS or MS-DOS operating system
version 2.00 or greater. Multi-terminal installations require DOS version 3.20
or greater.
D) At least one printer (parallel or serial interface)
is required for printing. A narrow carriage printer (8”) is all that is
required. Laser printer support is available but it should be noted that only
A4 stationary will function properly in these printers and that Laser printers
do not print edge-to-edge so very wide reports might loose a character or two
on the extreme right-hand-side. Postscript
printing is not supported.
E) You may use a monochrome, composite or RGB monitor
with CGA, EGA or VGA colour, if desired. T.L.A. normally senses the monitor you
are using and adjusts the screens appropriately. You can also choose the screen
colours if the default colours do not match your screen.
F) Your CONFIG.SYS
must contain the following lines:
FILES=99
BUFFERS=40
Under no circumstances should T.L.A. be run with
less than 40 files specified. The result of this action will be unpredictable.
If you use the minimum RAM it will be necessary to
reduce the number of file buffers in your CONFIG.SYS
to 10. If you are installing DOS-5's SMARTDRV.SYS,
the buffers may also be safely reduced to 10. However, lowering the number of
buffers below 10 will degrade the performance of T.L.A. greatly. This is not as
crucial in WIN95, and above, as Windows maintains the file handling and
buffering itself. However, NT4 still needs some manual control.
The device driver ANSI.SYS may be installed but is not necessary to the running of
T.L.A.. It can be left out if your computer has limited free RAM remaining
after other drivers have been installed. Where possible, run such TSR’s in
upper memory.
Windows 95 and above, dynamically allocate memory
and other resources so CONFIG.SYS is not necessary.
