********* DFS UTILITIES DISC *********
Assembled over Christmas 1994 by
Brian Raw K6N
I had been wanting a system disc for
some time and had collected several
utilities but could not decide on it's
presentation. Then in 8BS issue 32,K2Q
submitted a menu-driven utilities
program that I was well impressed with.
This then provides the basis of this
disc.
It has two main sections; the CONTROL
MENU and the LOADER option.
For reasons that may become clear
later, before loading CONTROL I first
raised PAGE to &6000. Then once loaded
Control has various options. It was
intended that any utility requiring
you to keep the disc in drive 0 be
one of these options and that there
be room to add further options.
There is a quick help screen which
comes up if you press any key that
is not an option, pressing another
key returns you to the menu.
OPTIONS:-
1.
Goes to the LOADER section which has
its own help screen on the ? key.
The LOADER is self-contained and uses
the DFS commands, so the system disc
may be removed leaving the drive free.
Herein lies the reason for raising
PAGE in that when you copy a program,
first it loads it in to memory. This
would write over any program in low
memory so would make this program
less useful. However, a large program
or text may reach higher than address
&6000 so would write over this program
as backup does. Reboot in either case.
2.
This program which was submitted in
8BS-32 by K6Q, backs up only those
tracks on the disc that are used.
Compacting the disc first speeds it up
further.
Using this more often than not will
corrupt the control program, so when
finished with, replace the system disc
in drive 0 before entering "no" in
reply to the prompt, it then reloads
CONTROL. Notice also that PAGE is first
returned to its original value to run
backup. This is important for running
BASIC programs that normally would be
loaded here should you add to the
options.
3.
Format, although integral to CONTROL,
does actually call a stand-alone
machine code program on the disc
which can be renamed on a different
disc, say to F to reduce key presses,
then use *F <40/80> <drive>.
4.
Verify is similar, use *V <drive>.
If an error is reported, copy files to
another disc, but try a reformat
before consigning it to the dustbin.
5.
When testing out some of the catalogue
discs you will find that some separate
the programs into directories, often
to work properly they need to be in the
root directory. Copying these files to
another disc keeps them in the same
directory. Normally you would have to
rename all the files but since rename
does not allow a <filespec> this can
be quite laborious.Here then is a
stand-alone machine code program to
fulfil this. Use *CD <olddir> <newdir>
this works on the current drive.
CONTROL just gives a choice drive,
inputs dirctory letters and allows
a final check before going ahead.