S.E.R.V.O. Beta 1

What's new? Download S.E.R.V.O. Beta 1 ! (this is the old release and recommended for WinME users. Get the current version here.)

            --What's S.E.R.V.O and what does it sand for? S.E.R.V.O. is a program designed to be burned onto a CD along side you MST3K videos so that when you pop in your disk, all you have to do is hit enter, or click on Mike to automatically launch your video. The acronym stands for "Standard Executable Running Various Objects" which sounds like mildly technical terminology that just happens to spell "Servo", but its just a bunch of random words that happen to sound technical that I came up with while in the process of trying to spell "Servo".

            --WindowsXP already launches my videos for me. Why should I want S.E.R.V.O.? This program is way spiffier than anything Microsoft has ground out of it's bowels. Plus, you don't have to burn it right away to test it out. Just correctly change the data in "servo.ini" and run the program inside any directory that you keep your MST3K videos.

            --Ok, maybe I'll give it a once over. But why are there 3 files in servo.zip? The first, autorun.inf, is a properly configured autorun file that the Windows operating system looks at to know what application to launch when the CD is inserted into you CD rom drive. If you are just trying the program out, you can ignore this file for the time being. The servo.ini file contains first, the name of the file to launch, and second, What title you would like S.E.R.V.O. to display when it runs. Anything can be typed on this second line, but for the program to work properly, servo.ini needs THE FILE NAME TO BE TYPED EXACTLY AS IT IS! So you must be careful not to make simple mistakes before burning. Such as an extra space at the end of the file name. I suggest that you copy and paste the the text into "servo.ini".

            --Ok, I tried it out and I think I might be sold. But is this all the program does? Yes and no. The program does more, but it's nothing to get excited about. Double clicking the chairs left of Tom will open "servo.ini" for a quick way to edit the file. Double clicking the chairs to the right of Crow T. Robot will open up a blank notepad document (in case notepad isn't your default editor for *.ini files and you still want to use it). The other features are pretty basic. hit [esc] to exit and [Enter] to launch the video.

            --You're right. That's not exactly what one could call a "killer app". Any plans for the S.E.R.V.O. of the future? If there is a large enough interest in it, features such as, better images, a changeable background, options to launch other programs (i.e. you burned the DivX installer and you want to be able to load that too...). Ideally, it will eventually have a media player built into it and the option of choosing between several "playlists" burned onto the same disk (which would mean being able to eliminate servo.ini). When the utility moves out of the beta stage, it will be renamed "Allen Steel's S.E.R.V.O." (see MST3K episode 410 Hercules Against The Moon Men)

Started on 4-5-2002