DP Tool Club 8/CDASC08.ISO/VRAC/TAPECV12.ZIP/TAPECV.DOC

Text File | 1993-09-02 | 6KB | 147 lines

                      User's Guide to TAPECV12.EXE
                            Revised 09/02/93
                              By Bob Lange

OVERVIEW:

A few months ago, I leaped at the chance to get a Colorado Trakker 250
for my system at home.  I thought, "Gee, now I can stop playing the
floppy shuffle!"  But then, after I had successfully converted several
hundred diskettes to tape, an ugly daemon raised it's head.

In the past, I had struggled to keep track of my files on disk, and had
eventually settled on using a shareware program that satisfied most of
my needs.  The problem was, this program read file directories directly
from diskette, and had no import capabilities.  Nor did it (or any other
shareware file indexing software for that matter) read directories on
tape.

The tape drive, on the other hand, had a rudimentary print routine, but
it was cluttered with directory information, a la the DOS TREE program,
and defied any simple, one-step process to convert the file information
to a more usable format.

The few utilities that I had seen on bulletin boards that purported to
do tape-specific file indexing were pitiful indeed.  One even trashed
the directory on one of my tapes.  Beware of amateur programmer's
attempts to read the Jumbo tape header; I lost dozens of megabytes by
trusting someone else's claims trying this.

Colorado's BBS had little to offer in the way of hard-core information
about how to access the tape header itself, so I turned to my own
meager programming skills to solve the problem.  Hence TAPECV.


PURPOSE:

This program reads the ASCII printed output from the Colorado Memory
System's TAPE.EXE program from disk and generates a comma-separated file
suitable for import into just about anybody's general database software.

Umm, might not be as clear as it should be.  Let me restate that.

You have to print a list of the files that are on a volume with Colorado
Memory Systems' TAPE.EXE program for this program to process.  No other
file can yield any results.

LEGALESE:

                                 TAPECV  V1.20

                        Copyright (c) 1993  by Bob Lange

                              All Rights Reserved


                                   DISCLAIMER

            The  program author, Robert A. Lange, hereby  disclaims  all
       warranties relating to this product, whether express or  implied,
       including   without   limitation  any   implied   warranties   or
       merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.  The  author
       cannot  and  will  not be liable  for  any  special,  incidental,
       consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or
       any  other  reason, even if the author has been  advised  of  the
       possibility of such damages.  In no event shall the liability for
       any  damages  ever exceed the price paid for the license  to  use
       software, regardless of the form and/or extent of the claim.  The
       user  of  this  program  bears all risk as  to  the  quality  and
       performance of the software.

There!  Now that's out of the way.  Sheesh.


PRICING:

None.  Nada.  Zilch.  I don't need money that bad, despite the fact that
I'm an out-of-work programmer.  If you want to send me money, well,
contact me and we'll work something out.  But this isn't freeware.  I
reserve all rights, and will probably do so forever.


INSTALLATION:

Stick the executable in your utilities or tools directory or anywhere on
the path. Alternatively, you could stick it in the same directory that
your Jumbo software is in.  No other files are necessary.

USING IT:

First, put a tape in the drive, then run the software that came with
your Colorado Memory Systems tape drive (TAPE.EXE).  For you Windows
users this is the tape menu icon.

To generate a listing for TAPECV to process, select "View" from the top
line, then select "Tape Directory." (Whirr, whirr, whirr ...) The
volumes recorded on the tape will appear in a scrolling window.  Select
whichever volume you want to create a listing from with the mouse or
cursor arrows.  Then select "View Dir."

The drive will position the tape to the volume's file directory. (Whirr,
whirr, whirr ...) Now, select "Print Dir" and you will get an input
screen that asks for a filename to be written to, and a redirection
option.  Make sure that "Print to file" is 'X'ed and then select "OK" to
begin printing.  It's very fast; don't blink, or you may miss it!

A cautionary note here:  Colorado's print routine does not check for the
prior existance of a file, and does not append, so if you use the same
name over and over (likely if you accept the default) only the last
fileset printed will be printed on disk.

Now, execute TAPECV with the file to be processed on the command line in
the following fashion:

        TAPECV12 [tape_dir.prn]

You will be prompted for a file to process if you neglect to enter it on
the command line. A rotating progress indicator is displayed, indicating
every valid filename found. If successful, a new file containing the
comma-separated list of the files that were in that volume will be on
your hard disk.

The program uses the source filename with an extension of ASC for the
destination filename, so don't use ASC as an extension when naming the
source file. There should be no problem with any filename that DOS
considers legal, so be warned.

For your convenience, I have included the field names as the first
record. The records generated by this program are: Filename, Extension,
Date, Time, Size, Tape, Volume Number, and Volume Name.

I've also include a similar utility to convert PCBoard-style listings,
called PCBCV10, to ASCII comma-delimited files.  All of the instructions
given above for TAPECV12 hold true for this program also.  The records
generated from this program are: Filename, Extension, Size, Date, and
Comment.


COMMUNICATE WITH ME:

This program has been tested with the printed output from Colorado
Memory Systems TAPE.EXE (Trakker) version 3.06, and no other versions.
Bug reports should be directed to me at one of the following resources:

        GEnie, where I am R.LANGE7
        Aquila BBS [phone] 14.4, where I am Bob Lange