Sassi

The Sight and Sound Simple Interface

You're busy, so here's the bottom line: Sassi lets you instantly adjust
sound volume and screen brightness on your PC, at any time, via hot-keys.

Enter "Sassi" at the DOS prompt (before Windows loads)

* To increase volume hold down LShift and then press RShift
* To decrease volume hold down RShift and then press LShift
* To increase brightness press Ctrl-RShift
* To decrease brightness press Ctrl-LShift
* To reset brightness press Ctrl-LShift-RShift.

Sassi has a variety of other options including assigning her functions to
buttons on your joystick. For a list of available command line options
enter "Sassi ?" at the DOS prompt. The following instructions expound on
each option as well as providing other important information.

Sassi adjusts volume on any Sound Blaster compatible card and adjusts
brightness for any VGA or SVGA mode supporting 256 colors or less.

Sassi is shareware. Registration is $15, plus $1 shipping. An unregistered
evaluation version is available in the US and Canada for $1 to cover
postage and handling. For information please contact:

Sassi
RSE Inc
1157 57th Drive SE
Auburn, WA 98092
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sassi

The Sight And Sound Simple Interface
Version 1.0 July 15, 1995
Copyrighted 1995 by RSE Inc.

Get Sassi!

Have you ever been in a program and wanted to adjust the sound volume?
First you try the volume control on the speakers but they're already maxed
out, so then you stop what you're doing and look to see if the program
you're using has a volume adjustment. Often they don't so you have to get
out and use another program to adjust the volume, or just live with it.
Irritating.

My monitor is also gettin on. It's about 5 years old and it's been
gradually getting darker to the point where the brightness and contrast
controls can't make the image bright enough to enjoy Dino-3D, Flight
Simulator, games, videos, pictures, etc.. It looked as tho I was going to
have to spend $400+ on a new monitor.

Well, no more. Sassi lets me adjust sound volume and screen brightness from
my keyboard. It couldn't be easier. Just hold down the left shift key and
then press the right shift key to increase sound volume. Hold down the
right shift key and press the left shift key to decrease volume. To
increase brightness hold down Ctrl and then press the right shin key.
Likewise to decrease brightness hold down Ctrl and press the left shift
key. And if you're not happy with the adjustments you make then just press
Ctrl and both shift keys at the same time and in most cases the brightness
will be reset to its original settings. Piece of cake.

How Much?

Sassi is shareware. As such you have 30 days to evaluate her. If after the
30 day evaluation period you decide to keep using her then you're legally
obligated to register. As a registered user you'll get the following
benefits:

* The latest version of Sassi plus full function evaluation copies
  of our other software including "Remind Me!" and "Hide-It".
* The capability to assign any Sassi function to any of your joystick
  buttons.
* No more messages asking you to register.
* A sincere "Thank you! " for supporting our efforts.

Sassi's registration is just $15, plus $1 shipping and handling in the US
and Canada, $5 shipping and handling elsewhere. To register send your
check or money order made out to RSE for $16 ($20 outside the US and
Canada) in US funds drawn on a US or Canadian bank to:

Gettin Sassi
1157 57th Drive SE
Auburn, WA 98092-8720

Visa or Mastercard orders may call or fax (206) 939-4105 or register via
e-mail by sending your name, address, credit card number and expiration
date to rse@aol.com.

System Requirements

Sound volume adjustment works only on Sound Blaster compatible sound cards.
Brightness adjustment works on VGA and SVGA modes utilizing 256 colors or
less. Whether or not SASSI works on SVGA direct color modes utilizing more
than 256 colors depends in part on the type of card you have and whether
it is VESA compliant.

Installing Sassi

You'll probably want to put Sassi in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that she
loads automatically every time your computer boots up. Just use any text
editor to add a line to the "c:autoexec.bat" file that says "Sassi" plus
any command line options you wish to use. If your memory manager is set up
lo do so you can load Sassi high by entering "lh Sassi" plus any command
line options.

If you want to use Sassi within Windows then it must be loaded before
Windows is run. In the case of Win95 that means you'll have to put Sassi
in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

Note to users of our Hide-It! program

The hot key in Hide-It! which allows you to enter your password and
instantly have access to all your hidden files contains one of Sassi's hot
keys as a subset. You must load Sassi after Hide-It! or Hide-It! won't
recognize it's hot key. In other words, make sure the line that loads
Sassi in your AUTOEXEC.BAT follows the line that loads Hide-It!.

Command Line Options

Sassi has a variety of command line options. You can get a brief listing of
all of them by entering "Sassi ?" at the DOS prompt. Each is explained
below.

/U -- Uninstall Sassi

Sassi is a TSR which means she remains in memory until you need her. She
takes up less than 3K of memory (VERY little). If you want to remove her
from memory then you enter "Sassi /u" at the DOS prompt. If for technical
reasons she can't be removed from memory then she will be disabled
instead.

/K -- Decrease contrast as brightness increases

By default Sassi brightens all colors by the same amount. You can elect to
have her brighten the darker colors more than the lighter ones. This has
the effect of decreasing contrast when brightness increases.

/SL -- Use Scroll Lock to restore previous Brightness selling
/CL -- Use Caps Lock to restore previous Brightness setting

Sassi doesn't adjust brightness in the same way the brightness control on
your monitor does. Instead of adjusting the hardware, Sassi actually
adjusts the color definitions in software. Programs also do this. You may
have the brightness adjusted the way you want and suddenly things are dark
again. If you elect to use these command line options then you can simply
press CapsLock or ScrollLock and the colors will be set to what they were
after your last Sassi adjustment.

To illustrate, let's say you're in Flight Simulator. You use Sassi to
adjust the brightness to what you want. You're flying an ILS approach.
Suddenly Flight Simulator decides its dusk and changes the color
definitions. Everything is dark again and now you can barely see your
instruments. Impending death? No problem, just press Scroll or Caps Lock
(or a joystick button, see below) and instantly the brightness is back to
the way you want it.

/P???? sets sound port to ????.

The first time you use Sassi she automatically tries to determine what port
your sound card uses. She is good, and usually detects it without problem.
She stores the data in a file called "c:sassi.cfg" so that she knows next
time that the port has already been found. Don't delete the "c:sassi.cfg"
file.

Occasionally tho, Sassi may not be able to determine the port you're using
and in some very rare instances the program may halt, requiring you to
reboot. In these cases you'll want to set the sound port manually. You do
so by specifying the sound port in the command line prefacing it with a
"P". For example, if your sound card use port 0230 then you would run
Sassi by entering "sassi /p0230" at the DOS prompt. Sassi trusts you
implicitly and therefore doesn't test the value you input to make sure
it's valid. In addition, the value is not stored in the SASSI.CFG file so
you need to enter it every time you run Sassi.

Use "Sassi /P0" to completely disable Sassi's sound volume adjustment.

/BS -- Assign standard settings to joystick buttons

Registered users can assign any Sassi function to any joystick button. This
/BS option assigns button one to increasing volume, button 2 to decreasing
volume, button 3 to increasing brightness, and button 4 to decreasing
brightness. The following command line options let you assign the
functions individually to the button(s) of your choice. You can assign any
Sassi function to any joystick button.

/B?L -- Tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to make the sound Louder

/B?S -- Tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to make the sound Softer

/B?B -- Tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to make the screen Brighter

/B?D -- Tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to make the screen Darker

/B?P -- Restore brightness to Previous setting

This tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to perform the "Restore to Previous
Setting" feature discussed earlier. (See /CL and /SL above)

/B?R -- Reset brightness to original setting

This tells Sassi to use button ? (1-4) to reset the brightness back to its
original setting. This does the same thing as pressing
Ctrl-LShift-RShift.

In some programs Sassi won't always restore the colors to their original
values but they'll be bright enough so you can perform a function that
makes the program re-draw its screen.

Common Questions

"When I use Ctrl-LShift to decrease the brightness after first increasing
it using Ctrl-RShift the screen doesn't always end up as it started."

You're right. To illustrate why let's say the max brightness value for any
color is 200 and you have two colors, one with a value of 195 and the
other with a value of 183. You increase brightness and Sassi adds ten to
each value. The first value maxes out at 200 and the second becomes 193.
You then decrease the brightness and Sassi subtracts 10 from each value
with the end result being 190 and 183. While color #2 ended up the same,
color #1 started as 195 and ended up as 190.

"While Sassi works great in some programs, in other programs she just
doesn't seem to do anything."

That's the nature of the beast. Some programs bypass TSR's completely while
others just take over the keyboard so Sassi is never recognized.

If you can adjust volume but not brightness then you might want to check to
see what video mode the application is using to display its images. If
it's in one of the SVGA modes that displays more than 256 colors at one
time then Sassi might not work depending in part on what type of video
card you have and whether it is VESA compliant. Basically if it works it
works, if it doesn't there isn't anything Sassi can do.

If you can adjust brightness but not sound volume then it's possible the
program you're using sets the sound volume every time a sound plays,
thereby negating Sassi's adjustment. Microsoft Flight Simulator does
this.

"When I try to adjust the sound volume the computer halts requiring that I
re-boot."

The port Sassi thinks your sound card is on is not right. Enter the correct
port value on the command line prefaced by a "P" (see /P???? command line
option discussed earlier). To completely disable volume adjustment use
"sassi /p0" (slash p zero).

Thanks!

We hope you enjoy Sassi and decide to keep her. But if for any reason you
decide not to register we'd like to know why. Please send your comments
and suggestions via e-mail to rse@aol.com.

Thank you for giving Sassi a try.
 
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