Software Carousel

Save those *.BAK files created by the Software Carousel program. They could be useful for letting you have more than one configuration (setup) for Carousel.

Some users like to have 6 or more Software Carousel sessions. I prefer keeping the number of sessions at 3 because it keeps the swap file at under 2 Mbytes and the time to boot up the machine is faster. However, there are times when I wish that I had up to six sessions; for example, when I'm working on a program using Borland's C++ or LXBatch. The extra sessions would let me edit and compile programs in one session, test them in another session and debug them in yet another session. If the program crashes I can kill that session and return to the programming session and examine the code without having to reboot the whole machine.

I used the SCCONFIG program to set up one group of three sessions along with the three startup batch files for typical use of my Palmtop. Once everything was working properly, I saved the batch files and CAROUSEL.OPT (the SC "options") file in a separate directory. Then I created an entirely new group of three SC sessions and three new batch files for doing programming on the Palmtop.

To switch from one group to another, I use a batch file to move the current CAROUSEL.OPT file and startup batch files out of the way and move the original CAROUSEL.OPT and startup files into the SC directory. Then I reboot the Palmtop to reinitialize SC.

If you're using Software Carousel on a 2MB palmtop, this technique might let you have several groups of sessions and still not exhaust all the memory on your fast C: drive.