Welcome to help for Tom Bombadil's sound configuration program.
 
BASIC HELP
Use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to move the selection arrow
on the menu. Some menus have more items than will fit. Arrows at the
top and/or bottom of these menus indicate the direction of the extra
menu items. Using the up and down arrow keys will allow you to scroll
to the other selections. Press the <ENTER> key to choose the current
selection. Hitting <ESCAPE> will abort the current menu selection.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
This program allows you to tell the game GET LOST! what type of sound
cards you have on your system. You should use this program before
playing the game. Also run SETCFG whenever you change your sound cards
or the settings on those cards. Otherwise, the game GET LOST! may not be
able to generate music and sound effects during the game. You might also
want to run SETCFG for people who are easily impressed. It is a
violation of SETCFG's warranty to use it for world domination.

The SETTINGS DISPLAY (the window in the top right of the screen) shows
what this program currently thinks your sound card configuration is. As
you go through the various parts of this program, the display window
will change to reflect your selections. Upon exiting, the settings
displayed are the ones that the game will think belong to your computer.
Please feel free to admire the brilliant colors your monitor is
producing. Pat yourself on the back for having the extra bit of
intelligence to play a Tom Bombadil's Software Emporium and House of
Curiosities game and the diligence to read through pedantic help
descriptions. We're doing our best to provide you with the highest
entertainment value possible. You should feel proud to be smart enough
to insist on such high standards.

SELECT DIGITAL SOUND CARD
Here you choose from the menu the sound card description that best
matches your preferred digital sound card. For many people this will be
a Sound Blaster or something very similar. Some sound cards require
further information such as port number, IRQ, and DMA channel.  If this
information is needed, more menus will pop up. Defaults (if they apply)
will be clearly marked. Please choose the items that will work best for
8 bit digitized sounds. If you don't have a sound card capable of
producing digital sounds, ignore this option, or choose the the last
selection, NO DIGITAL SOUND EFFECTS. Sometimes I do this even though
my sound card works fine. Sometimes I prefer making my own sound
effects with my mouth.

SELECT MUSICAL SOUND CARD
Here you to choose your musical sound card. Often this will be the same
card that you selected for the digital sound, but some musical sound
cards do not provide the ability to play digitized sounds. Many people
have two sound cards: one for music and one for digital samples. We at
Tom Bombadil's Software Emporium and House of Curiosities give you the
option of choosing up to two (but no more) sound cards that you want to
use with our game. The game itself is primarily geared toward General
MIDI music. So if it's important to you to imitate what the composer
heard, General MIDI is the way to go. But if you like surprises and
experimental things, I suggest trying a setting that has nothing to do
with your computer's configuration. Should this cause your hard drive
to re-format, please call Microsoft's customer support line and
complain to them. They'd be happy to hear all about it.

TEST DIGITAL SOUND
Okay, you think you have chosen the correct digital sound card and its
settings but you're not entirely certain that it'll work (you've done
the same on other games). But isn't it a pain to have to run the game
only to find out your settings don't work? Look no further than this
menu selection. Choose TEST DIGITAL SOUND, and if you've selected a
digital sound card this program will attempt to play a digital sound
effect through the selected device. You'll know instantly if it was IRQ
3 or IRQ 7. Have fun! Show your friends! Impress dates! Doesn't this
make you want to send your check in right now? But seriously, you can
hang your machine very easily by selecting a sound card with settings
that don't exist or conflict with other things on your computer. You
won't hurt anything by doing the ol' <ctrl><alt><del> three-fingered-
salute if something goes wrong here.

TEST MUSIC SOUND
Here you test your musical card. Even if your digital and musical sound
device is the same card, you should test both. Many dual-purpose cards
(like Sound Blasters) have entirely different circuitry for digital and
musical sounds. So you may have it set up properly to play digitized
sounds but improperly for music, or vice versa. So go ahead and test.
It'll be fun. You know you want to do it. Of course the same warnings
apply here as well. Conflicts with other devices or incorrect settings
can cause almost anything to happen. But rebooting (sometimes you might
even need to power off) should set everything back to normal.

HELP
This is what you're reading. If you need help reading, please consult
your local literacy program. These very helpful people can assist you
in what is quickly becoming the biggest fad of the modern world. We call
it literacy. Don't get caught behind, learn to read today!

EXIT
This takes you out of the program. Settings are automatically saved.
Whatever is displayed in the settings box in the top right are the
settings that you end up with. Although I entreat you to stay and enjoy
the wonders of this trivial program, I understand that all good things
must come to an end. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

EPILOGUE
Unfortunately, sound on DOS-based personal computers is one of the
trickiest aspects of any computing project because of the wide variety
of different sound devices available for PCs. We at Tom Bombadil's
Software Emporium and House of Curiosities have strived to be as
compatible as possible with all the many sound cards on the market. But
we must acknowledge the inevitable. There are probably some sound
devices out there that the programmers have never heard of. We hope you
can figure out some configuration that does work. If not, let us
know and we'll try to correct the problem in future releases. Good luck
and I hope you enjoy the game.
