Introduction to Molecular Modeling
A Tutorial for RasMol (Revised May 29, 1997)
Gale Rhodes Department of Chemistry University of Southern Maine Portland, Maine, USA 04103
Please send comments, corrections, and suggestions to rhodes@usm.maine.edu.
Instructions
for All USM Students
Special
Instructions for USM Computer Lab
The tutorial for RasMol and the assignment at the end are required of all students in Biochemistry class (CHY 361) and lab (CHY 362). Students in lab will also carry out an advanced project that begins where this tutorial ends.
All necessary programs and files needed for this tutorial are available on USM Power Macintosh computers. These instructions provide the information you need to find the items you need and to prepare for the tutorial.
If you try to carry out this tutorial on your own computer, or on a USM PC, you will need to obtain RasMol and associated files from the World Wide Web, following instructions in the Tutorial. You are ultimately responsible for installing the programs and getting them to work on your computer. I provide you all the means to carry out this work on Power Macintosh computers at USM, and I cannot grant you extra time if you have problems with your own computer or with a non- Macintosh USM computer.
If you are carrying out this tutorial using you own computer at home, or using a USM PC, you can now begin the Tutorial.
1) In order to use USM Macintosh computers for this exercise, you must have a student computer account. If you do not have an account, go to Academic Computing Services (ACS) in Luther Bonney Hall and ask to set up an account.
2) If you do not know the meaning of such terms as select, drag, double click, dialog box, and save as, then you need to complete all the exercises in the program MACINTOSH BASICS. Ask me or someone at ACS to help you find this program (location 10/06/97: MACAPPS/Course Materials/Chy 105/Macintosh Basics/Macintosh Basics v.4.7.1). Then simply place the mouse pointer on the MACINTOSH BASICS symbol and click the mouse button twice in quick succession. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen. In preparing the tutorial, I have assumed that you are familiar with all the operations discussed in MACINTOSH BASICS.
3) All necessary materials for this tutorial are provided on the USM Macintosh computer network (location 10/06/97: MACAPPS/Course Materials/BIOCHEM/RasMol v2.6b2a/RasMac v2.6).
4) Use a USM Power Macintosh computer that has at least 32 megabytes of random-access memory (RAM). The Power Macintosh 7200 or a newer model is best. Look "under the hood" of your Mac by choosing About This Computer under the Apple menu. Total Memory should be at least 32,000K -- if not, use a different computer or ask someone to help you turn on virtual memory to achieve at least 32 Mbytes.
Begin the Tutorial.