                      A brief introduction
                      --------------------

 Welcome  to the Background Music  Utility,   an  accessory  that 
allows  you to listen to various different pieces of music  while 
doing anything else in your computer.  The music will continue NO 
MATTER WHAT YOU'RE DOING,  and it will be automatically restarted 
whenever it stops.
 The  only disadvantage it has:  It eats away slightly more  than 
190  Kb of your precious memory,  so you may not find it all  too 
useful on half meg systems.   On floppy systems,  installing  the 
accessory will increase loading times.

                     Public Domain products
                     ----------------------

 The  products mentioned in this bit,  just like the  product  to 
which this documentation file belongs to,  are freeware, i.e. you 
can  copy  them freely and you don't have to pay for  using  them 
unless you really feel you want to (which would be nice).

- The Background Music Utility (BMU)
  Working  on the ST can be tedious.  Wouldn't it be nice if  you 
  had  one  of about 50 different pieces of nice  music  sedately 
  running   in  the background,  using the  ST's  built-in  sound  
  routines  (which'  capacity  you should   not   underestimate)?  
  Then  this accessory is perfect for you.
- Speedwriter II
  A somewhat older 'interactive animated correspondence' utility, 
  including its GfA Basic 2.0 source.  With this,  it is possible 
  to  send  remarkable  letters that you can see being typed   as  
  you look, including all cursor movements. Just a nice titbit.
- Write Protect Utility
  Nothing fancy,  this little thingy.  It's just a tiny accessory 
  that  constantly displays the write-protect status of drives  A 
  and  B (if connected) at the left top of the screen.  Works  on 
  all systems!  There's a source with it as well,  which supplies 
  you  with the ONLY RIGHT WAY to read a  floppy's  write-protect 
  status (works on all TOS versions,  with one or two drives,  on 
  any ST/TT system).
- Handy
  A tiny accessory that allows you to do three things: Access the 
  file  selector (handy when using one like "UIS  III"),  Specify 
  date & time, and freeze the system until a password is entered. 
  A source is included so that you can easily adapt the password, 
  and then compile it again (using GfA Basic 3.x).
- Son of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged
  Wowbagger  is  an  accessory  (including  an  editor  for   its 
  appearance  parameters)  that swears to you at  times.  It  can 
  swear  on  the screen,  or even on  the  printer.  Millions  of 
  swearing  words - most of them really ruthless,  insulting  and 
  filthy - are possible. Nice to copy on the boot partition of an 
  unsuspecting friend...
- Name Creator
  Although  this program will only appeal to those  into  reading 
  and  writing fantasy fiction,  this utility will be  useful  to 
  those  who  generally  need to think up fantasy  names  in  the 
  category of dwarves,  elves,  etc. Using a database of existing 
  parts of names (taken from  Donaldson,  Tolkien,  Weis/Hickman, 
  McCaffrey and Herbert, among others), you will be amazed at the 
  quality  of the many thousands of different names this  program 
  can come up with.  Creating anagrams is also possible -  though 
  doing  this  with large names will use  LOTS  of  memory.  This 
  program  is  being used professionally by a games  company  for 
  their role playing games.  Word parts can be added,  a  history 
  can be kept, etc...


                         The BMU Manual
                         --------------

 The BMU (which is short for Background Music Utility) is  easily 
installed  on your system.  All you need to do is copy  the  file 
"BMU.ACC"  into the root directory of your boot drive.  When  you 
boot  from floppy,  this is A.  When you boot from harddisk  this 
will very likely be C.
 That's all there is to it.

 THE MENU

 After  selecting  the 'B.M.U.' entry in the  leftmost  pull-down 
menu of the menu bar,  you will encounter a special kind of alert 
box,  which  offers  some interesting extras as  opposed  to  the 
standard GEM alert box.  For example, it is  not only possible to 
select your option by clicking the  left mouse button on it,  but 
your  selection  can  also be made by  using  the   corresponding  
function keys,   displayed on  the  left, as well as by 'walking' 
up  and  down the selection using the  cursor  arrow  keys.   The 
option  that is inverted is activated when you press  either  the 
RETURN or the ENTER keys.

 SELECT MUSIC

 There  are 58 pieces of music to be selected in this  accessory, 
and these can be selected using the "Select" button,  followed by 
clicking  on  the forward or backward  arrows.  Clicking  on  the 
actual  number  will cause the accessory to be  exited  and  will 
continue playing that particular song.

 TURN OFF MUSIC

 Well, I don't think I should explain this. I'm not going to.

 CANCEL

 Pretty straightforward.  This,  surprisingly,  does nothing  and 
exits back to the GEM desktop.

 HOW IT WORKS

 Some  time ago (summer 1990!) I got a program written by a  chap 
calling himself Leelee,  sent to me by nice Mr. Carl Lfgren from 
Sweden. It enabled songs to be played from a loader and driver in 
an executable bootsector.  This was basically very simple, as TOS 
(or,  rather,  XBIOS) has a very convenient function built in  to 
play sound data.  It's function number 32,  but I am not going to 
explain  this  further as you can read all about it in  any  good 
reference book ("ST Internals", for example).
 So what I did was taking all those songs,  slamming them in  one 
accessory,  and writing a selecting bit. That was about all there 
was to it.
 Much later,  on March 15th 1993 to be more precise,  a very nice 
chap  by the name of Mark Matts (cheers,  mate!) sent  even  more 
song files.
 The accessory itself properly allocates memory,  so there is  no 
danger  of the musix accidentally being overwritten by  something 
else.  Everything  is perfectly legal,  and all  programs  should 
continue to work with it.

 WHEN DO THE MUSIX STOP?

 The musix stop only when YOU tell it to, or when another program 
(usually  accidentally) turns them off  by using   the   keyboard  
bleep  (chr$(7)).   This  latter case can happen,   for  example,  
with "GfA Basic" when it encounters a syntax error,   or with  my  
"Ultimate    Virus   Killer"   when   it   finds    an    unknown 
executable  bootsector.  In that  case,  however,  the  accessory 
should notice the music was turned off and restart it after  some 
seconds.
 A piece of music will continue playing indefinitely if you don't 
intervene.

 LIST OF MUSIX

 I got the music as a list of files on disk,  so not all of their 
names are known to me.  However,  I would like to supply you with 
the list of musical pieces anyway - as far as I know them.

  01      Air on a G-String
  02      Ala Turka
  03      Badine
  04      Beguine
  05      Blues
  06      Coming Bach
  07      City Roads
  08      Dampfoot
  09      Fr Elise
  10      Entertainer (theme from "The Sting")
  11      'Gggra'?
  12      'Ilsezlen'?
  13      Jukebox
  14      King of the Road
  15      Michelle
  16      Hommage
  17      Popcorn
  18      Prelude
  19      Ruby
  20      Sailors
  21      Sonta
  22      Stupid
  23      Tango
  24      'Ultmusic'?
  25      I Wanna be in America
  26      Axel F
  27      Big Spender
  28      Blueberry Hill
  29      Boxer
  30      Brasil
  31      California
  32      Change
  33      Circus Rentz
  34      Country Tune
  35      Cucaracha
  36      Cockles and Mussles
  37      Dallas Theme
  38      Danube
  39      Dynasty Theme
  40      French National Anthem
  41      Ghostbusters Theme
  42      Irritate (?!)
  43      Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
  44      Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
  45      Magnetic Fields Part ?
  46      Monty Python Theme
  47      Muppet Show Theme
  48      M*A*S*H Theme
  49      Star Trek Theme
  50      Popcorn (another version)
  51      Star Wars Theme
  52      Swanee (?!)
  53      Yellow Rose of Texas
  54      Thank You
  55      On Top of the World
  56      Tubular Bells
  57      USA National Anthem
  58      Yankee Doodle

 If anyone knows some more legitimate names,  please write to the 
address mentioned below! Please also write to me if you have some 
extra  Xbios  32 song files - there is a  program  around  called 
"Musix32" that makes these, so there should certainly be more.

 HISTORY

 There  have been various incarnations of this  program.  Version 
1.0  was  pretty  OK but took up about  130  Kb  disk  space.  It 
could  only  play about 24 songs.  This was  the  first  version, 
summer  1990.  Version 2.0 was made in February 1993.  The  basic 
difference was that the accessory was now compressed,  taking  up 
about 100 Kb less disk space.  Version 3.0 was finished on  March 
15th 1993, with a lot more music included (a massive 58 tunes can 
be played now). Cheers to Mark Matts. The accessory, despite over 
210 Kb of tunes having been added,  only grew about 7 Kb  (thanks 
to "DC Squish")!  Don't let the small file size mislead you - the 
program gulps up about 350 Kb of your memory! Version 3.0, on the 
contrary to the previous ones, should now work on ANY system.

 COMPATIBILITY

 The   program  should work on ANY resolution and on ANY machine, 
even  the  Falcon.  Any incompatibility problems  whatsoever  are 
unknown and unexpected.

                           The Address
                           -----------

 I can be reached at the following address.  There,  I would like 
to receive possible donations too!

 Richard Karsmakers
 P.O. Box 67
 NL-3500 AB  Utrecht
 The Netherlands
 Email: cronos@worldaccess.nl

 The  program on this disk and its manual are copyright  1993  by 
Richard  Karsmakers.  However,  you may copy them as much as  you 
want  as  long as the package remains complete  (i.e.  program  + 
document file + other associated files).
 Death to The Men With Suits!

