                          Console Menu V1.4
                       Written By Andrew Bond
                        (c)1996 Andrew Bond
                email : digidev@cix.compulink.co.uk
                           23 March 1996

First!
------
I've finally had a few hours to update menu. I've just finished it, and
have not really got time to throughly test it. I'm leaving that to you!

What is it ?
------------
Console menu, formally known as Coleco menu. Lots of people seemed to be
using the menu for other emulators, so I renamed it!
Most of this documentation is still orientated for Colemdos, however it is
relevant to most emulators.
Console Menu is a front end for console emulators, primarily COLEM for DOS.
It will display all game files in any specified directory or zip, then run
your selection using a specified emulator, with any parameters you wish.


configuration file
------------------
Firstly I know colemdos now supports independent rom cfg files, i.e. if you
load a game dkong.rom it will look for a file dkong.cfg containing the
parameters for that rom.
However I don't like that method of configuration for one big reason, it
requires lots of tiny files. Most modern PC's have a cluster size of
16 or 32k in size. Taking a 32k cluster size for example, a 1 byte file
actually takes 32k of disk space, not 1 byte as reported by dir.
If you have 100 .cfg files, each of say 20 bytes, they will occupy a whopping
3.2mb, yes mega byte of disk space!
It is for this reason that I have extended the config file for menu, now
every setting you desire for all your games can be stored in one file,
occupying at most, 32k of you disk, instead of 3.2mb

Whats New Since Last Version?
-----------------------------
Parameter passing using temporary parameter file.
Support for a well known hand held console rom format
Tidied up a bit
Support for sub directories
 (this is great for dumping the msx collection from a well known ftp site, including
  the nice dir structure, and using them all in this format. )
Anything else I forgot to mention here that you find, remember kids, what ever happens
its a feature not a bug!

Commands :-

	Please see example menu.cfg for an example of all commands.


ZIP Support
-----------
You can now play games directly from a .zip file, greatly reducing required
disk space and file count.
To use this option you must specify a zip file, with the ZIP command, and a
temporary directory with TMP.
PKsoftware's PKUNZIP must also be accessible in you dos path.
Make sure the zip file you use only contains MSDOS filenames, some ZIP files
you find may contain long files from other OS's.
To be sure, I would suggest creating any zip file yourself, with pkzip.
BOY ROM names can't be read from ZIP files, as this would be just too slow.

How much ?
----------
Its freeware, however if you like it please mail me a list of your game files!
Seriously, please drop me an email so I can get some idea of how many people
are using menu.

Menu is NOT Public Domain, it is a copyrighted software product and may not be
disassembled, reverse engineered or otherwise modified in any way.

Thanks to Marcel de Kogel & Marat Fayzullin for a great emulator!
Thanks to Dave W ( http://www.csun.edu/~hbbuse08 ) for a great Emulation Page!
You will always find the latest version on Dave's page.


Technical
---------
There is no fixed limit on the number of games that menu can display. However
as the number of games rises, so does the memory consumption. There will be
a point where menu will be using so much memory that there is not enough left
for the emulator to run. This may be resolved in a later release by paging out
menu when invoking the emulator.
Note : If and when you have enough roms for this to be a problem, you can 
now split them up into sub-directories which will overcome this.
Menu has been deliberately written as a 16bit program, using only base memory,
this means that its small, and should not upset COLEM's dpmi usage.

digidev@cix.compulink.co.uk


