Thank you for your interest in Eamon!  Eamon was originally developed for
the Apple II series by Donald Brown, back in 1977.  It has since grown to
230+ adventures for the Apple II. The PC version was first converted back
in 1985. I converted about 20 adventures before I stopped to see if there
was enough interest to continue.

Of the original Eamon adventures, I converted many of the early games and
then I concentrated on converting mostly my own adventures, since I knew 
the programs and special events better than I did any of the others.

The Eamon system for the PC has gone through some evolution since it was
first converted.  The very early editions were for BASICA and GW-BASIC.
But these early Basics did not have any functions for trimming strings to
their 'natural' length or for easily dealing with upper and lower case string
comparisons.  I had to write my own functions for these, which slowed the
programs down.  Back then we were talking 8086 processors at 4.77 MHz, so it
was noticibly slow. (Almost as slow as an Apple II!) I later converted to 
QuickBASIC because it was a compiled Basic, which gave me my speed back. When 
QuickBasic 4.0 came out, it had upper and lowercase functions and functions 
for trimming strings of extra spaces - just what I needed! When DOS 5.0 came 
out, QBasic shipped with it. I adjusted (removed $INCLUDE) to permit
QBASIC compatibility.  But, since I need the $INCLUDE feature to save massive
amounts of duplicate, code I had to abandon the QBASIC version. I created a
utility program that will merge / remove $INCLUDE files so that someone
could more easily convert their own to QBASIC.

The adventures are currently distributed with both source and executable
files.  The source code can be run directly using QuickBASIC (or if you
don't have it, QBASIC after expansion.)  The executable files will run
on any PC, with or without QBASIC or QuickBASIC.

To install the Master disk programs and files from distribution floppies:

1.  Insert the diskette in drive a:
2.  from the DOS prompt (C:\> or D:\> etc. if you have multiple hard disks),
    enter A:\INSTALL a: c: MASTER
    (the a: represents the drive you are installing from, c: is the
    drive you want to install to. MASTER is the portion you are installing)

To install adventures from distribution floppies:
1.  Insert the diskette with the adventures you want.
2.  From the DOS prompt (C:\> or D:\> etc.), 
    enter A:\INSTALL a: c: ADV#nnn
    (where nnn is the number of the adventure to install).

Note follow the above procedure for each of the ADV#nnn.EXE files on your
diskette.

If you have the adventures on CD-ROM, you have your choice of installation
options:  either just drag the Eamon or EamonQ directory or use the INSTALL
batch file from the DOS command line prompt.  When you enter a drive letter
other than A: or B: for souce diskette, the intallation assumes CD-ROM
installation and installs all modules, not just a single module as the floppy
version does. You therefore do not need to include the module name. If you
us the drag and drop method, just drag the Eamon directory on the CD-ROM
to your hard drive root directory in Explorer (or File Manager in Windows 3.1). 
Then change the read-only flag with the command attrib -r /s from your \Eamon 
directory at the DOS prompt.  (A batch file called resetro.bat is included to
do this.

If you have any problems or have questions or comments,
e-mail me at:  biggraybeard@hotmail.com



