From: K5B (David J.MacGraw)
Subject: 512 and DOS+ (Part 6)
The maintenance of adequate backups is
probably the one task which most often
gets over-looked, pointedly borne out
recently when my FATs were overwritten
by a rogue program, requiring salvation
of files, re-installation of DOS+ and a
much more organised backing-up method!
Having decided on a 10Meg DOS partition
and to preserve all 8+Megs of BBC files
in the first half of my 20Meg hard disc
the files DOSBOOT and DOS.DRIVE`C were
deleted and the disk compacted. Placing
DOS at the disk-end prevents ADFS from
eventually having to jump over it! This
is achieved by *CREATE'ing a file equal
in length to the difference between the
space remaining (*FREE or *MAP) and the
DOS partition + &E00 (for DOSBOOT which
is stored last), prior to booting DOS+
from floppy and running HDISK. The disk
then has zero free space when returning
to ADFS before deleting the dummy file.
TIP: Setting the LWR attributes for the
DOSBOOT and DRIVE`C files will prevent
accidental erasure and also much grief!
The HDISK 'make disc bootable' routine
does not set the S system attribute nor
the original date/time for 6502.SYS and
DOSPLUS.SYS. Also, COMMAND.COM appears
to 'grow' by 120 bytes (all = CtrlZ's).
Once booted from hard disk these can be
re-copied manually using COPY, with /S
for the two system files. It is a good
idea to make these 3 files read-only by
issuing FSET C:*.* [RO from the floppy.
Considered organisation of directories
and their files can make backing-up and
restoration, when needed, easier. So my
revised approach uses one PKZIP'd file
per directory, and a RESTORE batch file
per floppy to re-create the directories
and UNZIP the files into them. Backing-
up is now done by PKZIP'ing a complete
directory whilst on the hard drive and
COPY'ing the ZIP'd files onto floppies.
TIP: Use PKUNZJR.COM (available only on
the registered version) on the back-ups
as it's under 3K bytes long! NOTE: This
does not copy (nor does PKUNZIP v2.04g)
S system attributes on the 512. Include
FSET.CMD in the batch files (and on the
floppy!) if attributes need setting and
use wildcards to speedup the operation.
TIP: Keep directories to less than 30
entries where possible especially those
cited in your PATH, including the ROOT,
and nest to one level, again especially
if in the PATH. Explanations next time!
TIP: Put any utilities executed by your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the ROOT directory
to speed bootup; set their S attributes
so as to 'hide' them from normal DIR's.
Remember to include "C:½" in your PATH.
My main backup disk can now restore all
of DOS and my system using these files:
RESTORE.BAT: unzips all ROOT directory
files, sets up attributes as necessary,
creates all first-level sub-directories
and unzips the DOS, 512 and MISC files
into their respective directories.
FSET.CMD: used by RESTORE.BAT file.
PKUNZJR.COM: used by RESTORE.BAT file.
ROOT.ZIP: 6502.SYS, DOSPLUS.SYS and
COMMAND.COM plus 8 ROOT directory files
used by (including first) AUTOEXEC.BAT.
DOS.ZIP: 27 filing system utilities.
512.ZIP: 28 machine-state utilities.
MISC.ZIP: 17 various other utilities.
Subsequent backup discs use a similar
technique for each sub-directory used,
one per application, creating second-
level sub-directories as required etc.
Once re-booted from hard disc, if all
is well, the AUTOEXEC.BAT file sets up
the DOS prompt, installs ES's RAMDISC,
copies COMMAND.COM into it, assigning
COMSPEC accordingly, sets the PATH and
then installs ES's SUPRSTAR, INTERCOM
and MEMOPAD plus David Harper's MOUSE.
Next time, more revelations as a result
of my hard disc crash, including the 30
entry limitation for sub-directories.