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Running the Antique Map Price Record Program from the Hard Disk
or from a Memory Stick (Flash Drive)
Setting up to read data from the hard disk
Under
normal circumstances you must have the AMPR CD-ROM inserted in the CD-ROM drive
in order to run the Antique Map Price Record program. This is because the
AMPR’s database resides on the CD-ROM and is not copied to the hard disk as
part of the installation procedure. The following instructions, however, will
allow you to copy the database to your hard disk and to run the program without
having the CD-ROM inserted in the drive.
These steps require you to know the installation directory of the AMPR
program. In most cases the installation directory is C:\Program Files\AMPR.
(When you installed the program, you were given the option of selecting some
other location. In the following steps the installation directory is referred
to as <INSTALL_DIRECTORY>. Please identify the installation directory on
your computer, and then use that directory name wherever the following steps
specify <INSTALL_DIRECTORY>.)
Also, the following steps will result in about 90MB being copied to the
hard disk that contains the <INSTALL_DIRECTORY>. Be sure that you have adequate free disk
space to accommodate this.
1)
Make
sure that you are not currently running the AMPR program. If necessary, exit
from the AMPR program before proceeding.
2)
If
you haven’t already done so, insert the AMPR CD-ROM into your computer’s CD-ROM
drive.
3)
Copy
the “data” folder from the top-level directory of the CD-ROM to the
<INSTALL_DIRECTORY> on your hard disk. Be sure that you copy the “data”
folder itself, and not just the files within the “data” folder. One way to do
this copy is to open the Windows Explorer (right-click on the Start menu at the
lower-left of your screen and pick “Explore”); then drag the “data” folder from
the CD to the <INSTALL_DIRECTORY> on your hard disk. When the copy is completed, there will be a
new folder on your hard disk: <INSTALL_DIRECTORY>\data. If you use the
normal location for the installation directory, this new folder will be
C:\Program Files\AMPR\data. (This data directory will contain about 90MB
of data in nearly 500 files and sub-directories).
You
are now done. Be sure to remove the
CD-ROM from your computer before starting the program. All data will now be accessed from the hard
disk.
In
the future, when you upgrade to the next edition of the AMPR CD-ROM, you will
need to re-copy the “data” directory from the new CD-ROM to your hard disk, so
that the hard-disk copy of the data files matches the files needed by the
latest version of the program.
Setting up to run the program from a memory stick (flash drive)
To
run the AMPR program from a memory stick, you will need to copy several folders
and files from the CD-ROM to your memory stick. You will then need to create (using notepad, wordpad or some
other simple text editor) two very small batch files at the top level of your
memory stick’s directory hierarchy. One
reason to run the AMPR program from a memory stick is because your computer does
not have a CD-ROM drive. However, to
initially set up the memory stick you will need to access a computer with a
CD-ROM drive, because you need to copy files from the AMPR CD-ROM onto the
memory stick. Once the memory stick has been set up, it can be moved to any
other computer (with or without CD-ROM drives) and the entire program can be
run just from the memory stick.
Here
are the set-up steps:
1)
Plug
the memory stick into the computer and also make sure that the AMPR CD is in
the computer’s CD-ROM drive.
2)
Using
the Windows Explorer, find the \program files\AMPR folder on the CD-ROM
drive. Copy this entire folder to the
top level of the memory stick’s directory hierarchy. (If, for example, your memory stick is drive F:, then there will
be an F:\AMPR folder after you have performed the copy operation, and if you
look inside this AMPR folder, you will find a sub-folder named Home and six
other files.)
3)
Using
the Windows Explorer, find the \data folder on the CD-ROM drive. Copy this entire folder to the \AMPR folder
that you just created on the memory stick in the prior step. After the copy is completed, the \AMPR
folder on the memory stick will now contain two folders (\data and \Home) as
well as six other files.
4)
Open
notepad (or wordpad or any other simple text editor). Enter the following
single line:
.\SubAMPR.bat
Choose Save
from the File menu, and save the file as AntiqueMapPriceRecord.bat at the top level of the
memory stick directory hierarchy. Exit
from the text editor.
5)
Open
notepad (or wordpad or any other simple text editor). Enter the following three
lines:
echo AMPR_BASEDIR :
"%~d0\AMPR\data" >>%~d0/AMPR/Home/prefs.cgl
start %~d0/AMPR/cgpp.exe -nz -pd%~d0/AMPR/Home
AMPRlookup.dll
exit
(Note: Rather than trying to correctly type this rather abstruse set of
commands, you might do better to copy the lines from this web page and paste
them into your text editor.) Once you
have these three lines entered, chose Save from the File menu, and save the
file as SubAMPR.bat at the
top level of the memory stick directory hierachy. Exit from the text editor.
The
following shows what the memory stick’s directory hierarchy should look like in
the Windows Explorer after you have completed these steps. In this example, the
flash drive happens to be drive F:. It
may be a different letter on your system; the particular drive letter doesn’t
matter. (The OtherStuff folder
is not part of what was copied. It is
shown just to let you know that there is no reason that you can’t have other
files and folders on the memory stick, in addition to the AMPR folder and the
two .bat files. As long as there is
room on the memory stick, you can have whatever else you want on the flash
drive.)
At
this point the CD-ROM can be removed from the CD-ROM drive and you can test out
the AMPR program. To run the AMPR
program, double-click the AntiqueMapPriceRecord.bat icon in the Windows
Explorer window. The program should
start up and run normally. You should
be able to take your memory stick to any other computer, and the AMPR program should
run there in the same way.
If
you have any problems or questions with these instructions, please contact:
Jeremy
Pool
MapRecord
Publications
617-661-3718
Fax:
617-868-1229