World Of Commodore 2004 Release Now Available
Installing WiNGs from 1581 Disk &
Downloading WiNGs Install Files

Instructions and Tips for a smooth Install:
  1. Boot issues and supported drives
  2. Why Does it Say, "Init file not found?"
  3. Installing WiNGs from 1581 disk to IDE64
  4. TIPS and FAQ


Downloading Options and Information:
  1. Downloading WiNGs for the first time
  2. Upgrading from an older version of WiNGs to a newer version
  3. Upgrading a single WiNGs file


[ Top ] Boot issues - and supported drives

There are a few things to be aware of when running or installing WiNGs from a 1581 diskette. I will try to cover those issues here:

1581 drives, as well as 1571 and 1541 drives, do not natively support CMD FS directories. However, for WiNGs to function properly it must be able to use directories. Directories are an important organizational structure for WiNGs and it cannot function with out them. For this reason, the WiNGs File System software for these 3 CBM drives overrides the standard CBM rom and allows the drives to create and access directories the same way a CMD device does.

However, from the Ready. prompt, or any program outside of WiNGs, the CBM drives revert to using their built in rom. Because of this any '81, '71, or '41 disk that you create a directory on in WiNGs may appear to be corrupt outside of WiNGs. The disk is in fact not corrupt. But it has been converted in a way that essentially is using a CMD File System on a disk whose drive rom does not know how to read that File System.

When you read the directory from the 1581 drive from the Ready. prompt, you should see the file "booter" as the first file. As well as a wings directory entry and the rest of the listing may appear corrupt. Simply load and run the booter. WiNGs will boot regardless of how the Ready. prompt has shown the directory listing.

Supported drives include:
1541, 1571, 1581, CMD HD, IDE64 HDD, IDE64 Compact Flash

Partially supported drives include:
FD2000, RamLink
(Some combinations of Ram and Device numbers may cause an incompatibility between WiNGs and these devices. To be safe, if you have a real 1581 drive, use it instead of the FD2000 for booting WiNGs.)


Unsupported drives include:
FD4000, IDE64 CD-Rom
(There are some subtle differences between the FD4000 and the FD2000. The FD4000 is not currently recognized by WiNGs. IDE64 CD-Rom is not currently accessible from within WiNGs. Support is currently under development.)

Other Unsupported Hardware:
Any and all printers and printer interfaces that are connected via the serial port, should be disconnected before trying to boot WiNGs. WiNGs will fail to boot properly if one of these devices is connected.

[ Top ] Why Does it Say... "Init file not found" ?

There are some hardware compatibility issues that may interfere with WiNGs' device drivers. When it says that it can't find the init file, it is because it is unable to find the init file in the path. The path consists of the root directory of the device/partition that the booter was loaded from. As well as the wings directory, (and its subdirectories,) that is in the same directory as the booter was loaded from.

When you load and run the booter, it is the C64's kernal and the drives built in Dos that is loading stuff into memory. Once the booter runs, it reprograms the Dos in each of the supported drives with a special multi-tasking-capable custom Dos. From then on it uses the custom Dos to load everything else. The first thing it looks for is the init file. The init file contains the list of all the other things the system should load in.

Sometimes unsupported drives or devices on the serial bus or the expansion bus will cause the supported drives to not get their custom Dos loaded in properly. And if that happens, then the system will not be able to read from that drive, and consequently will not find the init file. An example of this is, serial bus printers. Printers or printer interfaces on the serial bus will confuse the WiNGs drive detection routine, and will prevent the other supported drives on the bus from working. Certain combinations of FD-2000/FD-4000 may also cause a problem.

My suggestion is, start by stripping your system down to the bare minimum. SuperCPU, Harddrive, and T232/Swiftlink if you have one. GeoPrint cables are fine to leave on the user port too. Try booting up with only that connected and you should have no problem. After that, once you've got it booting with a minimum setup, try adding on your other hardware a piece at a time until you discover which device is causing the problem. And if you're kind enough... report back to me what combination caused the problem!! :)

[ Top ] Installing WiNGs - from 1581 disk to IDE64

The process of installing WiNGs from a 1581 disk to an IDE64 is just the process of getting the complete directory structure of files that is on the 1581 disk onto the IDE64's HDD or Compact Flash card. So I'll go over how to do that here:

On the 1581 WiNGs distribution diskette is a file called booter, and a wings directory. As mentioned in the section above this directory is not accessible outside of WiNGs. So in order to get access to the contents of this directory to be able to copy them you have to be booted into WiNGs. To do this, load and run the booter.

When WiNGs is booted you will find yourself at a 40 column text screen where you are able to type in commands. The WiNGs fileman will be used to copy the files from the 1581 disk to the IDE64. The WiNGs fileman will only run in an 80 column WiNGs text console, so to switch to 80 column mode, press and hold the commodore key while you press the back arrow at the top left of the keyboard. You may press this key combination to switch back and forth between 40 and 80 column modes.

To start the fileman, type "fileman" and press return. More information about how to use all the features of the fileman is available under the Applications section of this website. Press control key to switch your focus to the bottom panel. Using the cursor keys move the pointer until it is beside the word "mount." Mount is a directory which contains all the drives connected and recognized by WiNGs (except for the 1581 drive you booted off of.) Press return to move into the Mount directory. Inside you should see a list of more directories. One of which is "dr0." dr0 is the IDE64's HDD or Compact Flash card. Move the pointer to beside this directory and press return to switch into it. The bottom panel of the fileman is now focused on the root directory of the IDE64's HDD or Compact Flash drive.

Press control once again to switch your focus to the fileman's top panel. you should see the "booter" and the "wings" directory. Position the cursor and press space beside both of these to select them. The asterisk indicates which files and directories are selected. Only the "booter" and "wings" directory should be selected. When they are press the 'c' key to begin the copy.

The copier will indicate that there are 2 items to copy. One is the booter which is a single small file. The other item however is a directory which contains many other directories and lots and lots of files inside them. Copying could take an extended period of time. Please have patience, and do not interupt the process. When the copy is complete, the copying dialog box will disappear and the middle bar should have the message "copying complete."

At this point the copy of WiNGs to your IDE64 is complete. And you may quit the fileman with the shift Q key. You can now reboot your computer. The IDE64's HDD or Compact Flash card will now contain the booter and the WiNGs directory. You can boot from this booter at any time. It will be Fast!

[ Top ] TIPS and F.A.Q.
  1. Will WiNGs boot off an FD4000 drive?

    - No. Currently WiNGs does not know how to read from an FD4000 drive.

  2. Can WiNGs read my CD's?

    - Not at this time. WiNGs does not yet have access to IDE64 CD-rom. You should use the "man" from the Ready. prompt to first copy files over from the IDE64 CD-rom to your HDD or Compact Flash card.

  3. How do I listen to wav files in the GUI?

    - First, you must start the Graphical Interface. Type "gui" at a text console and press return. Using commodore key and back arrow switch back to the 80 column text console screen mode. Start the fileman by typing "fileman" and pressing return. Navigate to a directory which contains .wav files. Flag the files you want with the space bar, and press capital W. Answer yes to enqueue to wavestream. Use the commodore key and back arrow to switch back to the graphical interface. Wavestream will have opened itself up and will be loading in the files.

  4. How do I listen to wav files without the GUI?

    - Using commodore key and back arrow switch to the 80 column text console screen mode. Start the fileman by typing "fileman" and pressing return. Navigate to a directory which contains .wav files. And press return while when the .wav file you want to play is selected. The .wav file will begin to play. Press Run/Stop to stop the playback and give you control over the fileman again.

  5. How do I play a movie?

    - Start the Graphical Interface. Type "gui" at a text console and press return. Using commodore key and back arrow switch back to the text console screen mode. Switch to a directory that contains a movie file. Type "vidviewer filename.mov" and press return. Use the commodore key and back arrow to switch back to the graphical interface. The video viewer will have opened itself and will be loading in the movie file.

  6. How come sometimes when I make a change and then reboot the change is not saved?

    - After making a change, before rebooting you should type "sync" at a text console and press return. This ensures that the 'disk cache' is flushed and all disk changes are fully written out to the physical disk.

  7. How do I know what commands I can type?

    - Start the fileman by typing "fileman" and pressing return. Navigate to the /wings/programs directory. All the files in all the directories inside the programs directory are runnable programs. Most of them can be started by typing their name at the console, some of them require that the gui be loaded first. If the program needs extra information like the name of a file, it should give you a line of help text telling you what it wants.

  8. What do I do if the system locks up?

    - Not much. Save your work and sync often. It is much easier for a multi-tasking operating system to crash than it is for a single tasking system like Geos or Wheels. In WiNGs while some programs may be running fine, you could start up a 3rd or 4th program or more and if any one of them has a major bug, it can crash the whole system.

  9. How come the "Friends" Jpegs on PureMedia volume i are reported as Bad Jpegs by the WiNGs JPEG viewer?

    - Because I must have made a mistake when creating those CD's. Unfortunately there is no way to view those images. They really are "bad ones" as the viewer reports.

    * This has been fixed and only applies to PureMedia volume i CD's that were given out at the Lucki Spring Commodore Expo 2004.

  10. Will the RR-net work with WiNGs to get me online?

    - The RR-net is not compatible with the IDE64. For this reason it has been difficult to work with it. And currently no device drivers have been written to use it. Support is instead focusing on the ETH64 ethernet adaptor which works specifically with the IDE64.

  11. I have Mail v2.3, isn't Mail v2.5 available?

    - The splash screen has not been updated and still says v2.3. To know the true version number of Mail, go into any inbox and the version number is displayed at the top left corner of the screen. The splash screen will be changed to say 2.X as soon as I can test that my changes haven't broken anything.

  12. How come my fileman can't make new .d64 images?

    - The fileman actually makes "new" .d64 files by creating a renamed copy of a blank.d64 file that it has stored internally. This blank.d64 image file takes up 170k of precious disk space. And there is simply not enough room for it on a 1581 distribution disk.

    To make this feature work, navigate into a copy of a plain .d64 image with the fileman, and delete all of its contents. Then rename this .d64 to "blank.d64" and move it into the fileman's 'app package'. Using the fileman, to navigate into an app package, place the pointer beside the application and press C= o.

    The blank.d64 is included in the WiNGs download & install from this site. As the download does not have the same size limitations as a 1581 diskette.

  13. How come WiNGs doesn't boot on my system?

    Make sure you read the documentation above about boot issues and supported hardware. The most common reason for WiNGs to not boot is because it is trying to be used with unsupported hardware. The first things to check are:

[ Top ] Downloading WiNGs - for the first time

The WiNGs installation consists of 4 files: Booter, init, gunzip, and wings.zip. Each of which is available for download below

These files must be placed in the "root" directory of a supported device. Such as a CMD HD, CMD RamLink, IDE64, or 1581. (1541 and 1571 are supported but are too low capacity to install WiNGs on.)

To begin the installation, load and run the booter file. A core WiNGs system will boot up and the installation will ask you where you want to install wings. Type "/wings" (without the quotes) and press return. The installation will begin. When it is complete, a message on the screen will notify you, and tell you to restart your Commodore.

In addition to the 4 files you downloaded a new directory will exist called wings. The original 4 files are no longer needed and can be deleted. Everything needed to run WiNGs is inside the new wings directory.

To boot WiNGs, change into the wings directory and there you will find another file called booter. Load and run this file.

For further information about how to get started see the tutorials section of this website.

In order to download these files, you may have to right click or control click and choose specifically to save the link as a file.

[ Top ] Upgrading - from an old version of WiNGs to a newer version

If you already have a working recent version of WiNGs and you wish to upgrade to the newest version, download the file wings.zip available below, and follow the install instructions.

Boot into your current version of WiNGs and create a new directory in the root of the filesystem called wingsnew. (This can be done with the WiNGs fileman. To get to the root of the filesystem, keep selecting the parent directory until this option is no longer available. Pressing n on the keyboard will create a new directory) Move the downloaded wings.zip file into the wingsnew directory.

Change into this directory and either type "gunzip wings.zip", or with the fileman press return on wings.zip and choose yes to unzip the archive.

When the unzipping is complete, restart your Commodore. Before booting into WiNGs again, use the Ready. prompt, or a utility like FCOPY to rename the wings directory to wingsold, and the wingsnew directory to wings. Use the booter in the new wings directory and you will boot into the newest set of files.

If you have any problems with the newest files, use the Ready. prompt to change the names of the directories so that you will use the old wings directory again.

It should be noted that address book data, and Mail boxes, and custom script files or modifications to the init script will not transfer over to the new install. These customizations will need to be applied to the new wings files.

[ Top ] Upgrading - a single WiNGs file

While you are running WiNGs, you can dial up to the internet to go online, and use a special utiltity called "update" to update a single specific file.

Change into one of the WiNGs system directories. For example, "cd /wings/programs/sound/", to go into the sound applications directory. Now type, "update wavplay", and press return. The update utility will send a request to the Official WiNGs Website asking for the latest version of wavplay. If none is available it will tell you so, but if one is available WiNGs will first make a backup of your original file and then proceed to download the newest version. And finally if the download was successful it will replace your old file with the new one. And that's it, you have the latest version!!

There is an alternative use for the "update" utility. You can use it to acquire new files you don't already have. Just type update and the file you want to try to get. If it exists, it will downloaded straight to your commodore. If it doesn't exist, it will simply tell you so.

There will be periodic notices made on the website of new files available. In many cases it will be easiest to get these files simply by using the update utility. You can even update the update utility!!