This is the followup to the welcome letter. In it are a few more ideas
  to help keep mistakes from being made. These ideas are primarilly based
  on experience and readings from the Forum and The Rainbow. Some OS-9ers
  may disagree with an idea or two, but they are generally valid in all
  situations. Hope it helps you out.
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  Hi again. I'm going to go ahead and point out a few more clues about OS-9
for you while I'm thinking about it. Again, these are the simpler, more or
less common sense type ideas. But, that makes them all that much easier to
overlook. If you find one or two worth knowing, then I've been able to help.

1. If you're making a new boot disk always make sure to include a CMDS 
   directory that has at least Shell and Grfdrv in it. And be certain
   that they each have the execute attributes set. Without this the 
   system won't boot.
   
2. Even though I told you how easy it is to get help here on Delphi, you
   should still try reading the books or documents first. Lots of times
   you'll find something you may have missed or misunderstood before. I
   can tell you from experience it can make you feel kinda foolish when
   you ask a question, then find out the answer was right in frount of
   you in black and white. I'm not saying not to ask, but am suggesting
   you double check the books first. Often it can save you some time.
   
3. Once you get a bootdisk you're pretty happy with, or at least one that
   works reasonably well, make a backup of it. You'll be changing your
   bootdisk after awhile, and having a backup of one that worked can save
   you lots of time if you forget something about the new bootdisk and it
   ends up being unbootable. It may seem redundant, but I recommend keeping
   a backup of your current bootdisk, and of the one before. It does 
   occassionally happen that you decide you want things the way they were, 
   and having the bootdisk ready makes the change much simpler.
   
4. Most of the utilities and applications available here or on other places
   come with document files. Although it's quicker to just throw those files
   on a disk with the intent of reading them from the screen I feel it's 
   better to take the time and print them out. If you never need to read the
   doc after the first time, fine. But often you'll want to refer to it once
   in a while and having it in a folder can come in very handy. If you start
   working heavily with a hard disk it also saves you disk space and backup
   time; two things you may eventually find yourself in short supply of.
   
  Well, that's it for this time. If time permits and I think of other ways to
help reduce the pain of the transition I'll send them along. For now, good
luck and have fun.

Bob Kemper