Originally Posted by romanojg

CKcrowl was good in explaining this. You first save the designs to your computer or straight to the floppies. I'd say save them to the pc first with orginal name and in a folder with the company's name so that if you ever need to download them again you know where you got them from and their orginal name. When the popup message comes up with what you want to do save or open do a save as and then it'll allow you to pick the path where the folder is and save it in that folder. The external drive will show up under My Computer as an external drive


and you can click on the file, right click and do either a send to and pick the external drive or a save as again and then chose a name that identifies the design, like dog, Christmas, etc and it should go to your disk.
Question, do you have either 3D or 4D organizer that normally comes with Vikings, its up to 5D now, that's what I have. The organizer is a great tool and you can store and view your designs in it. The only time a dongle is required is when you upgrade to a higher version. Mine came with 5D but I bought 5D Pro so I need a dongle to show what parts of it I have access to. If you need more info on this let me know. You can also get infor on the 4D organizer at mrpatience.com.
For the manual; go to Vikings website and if you don't see a place to download the manual at the bottom of the page there is a link for support for hardware and software. Email them both and let them know that you need a manual for your machine. Plus if you look on the links under designs you can see where each month you can download a free design and project. They also have some tutorials so it's worth checking out Vikings site.
Also for your machine there is a site that has infor on your machine. I also have the Viking #1 and I ordered the CD for it and got lots of good info. It doesn't appear that it's updated anymore (I think to deaths in the family) but it does have your machine and you can email them to see if the CD's are still available. The link is sewmuch4retirement.com.

I hope at least some of this helps. Yes, there are tons of free designs out there. I have some really good sites that offer them. Good luck and let me know if I can help in anyother way.