🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm posting this for a friend who wrote it last year:

Hello- It was mentioned to me that the Tops Installer
has been much maligned in these here parts recently.
Being its author I thought I should respond. I do not
know what has been said, but will attempt to explain a
few things about its behavior.

First some history. The program was begun in late 1985.
The System file and the resources accompaning it were
in a state of flux. In order to run Tops, certain
System resources need to be present. At that time, and
for most of 1986, the resources needed could not be
guaranteed to be present. Thus, the Tops Installer had
to put them there. These resources included AppleTalk
(.MPP, .ATP, NBP0, NBP1) and the now infamous INIT 31.
There are no means to determine the version of these
resources. So, the Tops Installer had to assume that
the System on the source disk has the latest versions.
The Installer would thus always replace these resources
in the target System File if they already existed, to
make sure the latest of these resources were present.

Which brings us to 1987 and the new, improved, System
4.1. We all now know that there is a new INIT 31 with
wonderous init time properties, very different from its
previous behavior. And you probably also know that
System 4.1 needs this sucker to run.

So you get your new System 4.1 and you update your boot
disk. Then you want to install/update Tops. When the
Tops disks were duplicated, the current System was 4.0,
with an old INIT 31. Thus, the Installer erroneously
replaces the new INIT 31 with the old INIT 31 and all
hell breaks loose.

We could have done an analysis of the various
resources, say by size or by the first few bytes, and
then kept a list of each of these resources for every
version that we could find, but the list would be
rapidly out of date (we were getting alpha and beta
systems almost weekly sometimes). The overhead, we
decided, was way to much for us to maintain, not to
mention the room for error. And trying to keep all the
Installers out in the field updated would be a
nightmare. So we settled on the current scheme.

The fix is really very simple.  Copy the Tops
distribution disk to a double sided one. Then update
the System to 4.1 on that disk using the Apple
Installer. Now the correct INIT 31 will be installed
with Tops. Or, if you hate the Apple Installer you
could make a copy of your System Utilities disk, copy
the three Tops files over (Tops, Tops Help and (if you
need it) Interbase), and move the Tops DA from the
System on the Tops distribution Disk to the System on
the new System Utilities disk using the Font/DA
Installer. Now you can use the Tops Installer and
everything will be hunky dory.

Sorry for all the problems this has caused. But keep in
mind that System 4.1 caused many more problems than
just this. I for one am glad to have 4.1 and all its
new features, and have gladly put up with the
inconveniences.

For the record, Tops itself was written by Gary Fitts,
Gary Stroud and Flash Pflaumer. Anaya Rose and Tim
Maroney did a lot after the initial development. Gary
Fitts did the Mac side solo and is one of the unsung
heroes of our time.


Tracy Lakin





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Chris Muir            |   "There is no language in our lungs
unisoft!gethen!cbm    |    to tell the world just how we feel"   - A. Partridge