United Public Domain Gold 2/United Public Domain Gold 2.iso/utilities/pu102.dms/pu102.adf/PCOPY.DOC

Text File | 1990-01-25 | 13KB | 312 lines

                          Read HISTORY first !


                             PCOPY

    Pcopy was made to produce large amounts of different copies in busy
    environs.  Like:  People are talking to you and you are searching
    programs for them in databases.  Others want information how to install
    some driver.  You divert people to others you know to be an authority on
    their problems.  You are copiing PD and you have an arrears of two
    hours.  People ask whether their disks are ready yet.  What are you
    copiing at the moment?  What have you already done?  When to insert the
    next set?

    Pcopy shows the actual situation conveniently arranged, starts upon disk
    insertion, and produces reliable copies, because it can verify the
    written data.

    Pcopy does not copy copy-protected disks.  At least not that I know.
    Its working is similar to that of Trackdisk (The software that normally
    controls the drives).  If Trackdisk cannot read a disk, than Pcopy
    probably will not be able too.

    If your source disk is failing, you can let Pcopy try to produce a copy
    with the original data recovered.

    Although Pcopy displays a lot of information, I think it is a rather
    dangerous copier (on behalf of its autostart capabilities) and its
    application lies in the production area.


                              START

    Pcopy can be executed from either the CLI or the Workbench.  Two
    Trackdisk-drives must be available.  That is, ie., the internal and a
    normal external drive.  Selection is done by clicking on/off gadgets in
    a window.  Two drives must be selected or none at all, followed by
    clicking "DONE".
    It is also possible to give the drivenames on the commandline.  Pcopy
    will check for drive presence and type.  If the selected drives are
    available, DOS is asked to stay away from them.  Pcopy takes control of
    the drives (as does diskcopy) and sets up the user interface.

    It is recommended to install TrackSalve when Pcopy is used on a system
    with more than two drives.  The Trackdisk.device has a nasty bug which
    can interfere with Pcopy.  This bug is removed by TrackSalve.
    Nevertheless pcopy will deliver good copies.


                             WINDOWS

    There are two small windows (marked "Now in DFx:") which show at any
    moment the drive's contents.  An empty window means an empty drive.
    Normally the disknames appear in these windows.  If the disk cannot
    produce a name, a classification is displayed.  All text different from
    <VolumeName> is printed in another color. (black)

    In the window "Copy history" appear the names of all successfully copied
    disks.  If you want a name to disappear, double click on it.

    In the progression window the progress of the copy process is graphical
    presented.  Although the depth gadgets are invisible during the copy,
    they still exist and work.  The graph shows where pcopy has been active.
    The top side presents head 0.  This bar comes in three colors: white (1,
    text), black (2, depth) and red (3, cursor).  The cursor color is used
    to show a write action, the text a verify read and depth a verify reread
    (after a rewrite).
    The number tells where Pcopy has written last.

    Finally there is the control panel with the control gadgets in it.


                             GADGETS


    -- Verify  ON/OFF

    The destination disk is read back and compared with the write buffer.
    It can be turned on and off during the the copy process.


    -- DFx: --> DFy:

    Defines which drive is source and which is destination.
    Clicking the arrow reverses the direction.


    -- Adapt Date

    DOS can distinguish the copy from the original if the creation and last
    altered date and time are different on both disks.  If there are two
    disks present with the same volumename and date/time, DOS will crash.
    To prevent this, the standard Diskcopy changes these fields.  Also if
    the BMFLAG is -1, it changes it to +1.  Pcopy can do this too, thus
    preventing to create an exact copy.  Also if some read error could not
    be repaired, Pcopy can set this flag to zero.  This all happens with
    this gadget set to "ON".  Set to "OFF", the copy will be exact (if
    possible).


    -- Start Copy

    To be used to start the copy process manually.  The command is hold
    until it is possible to start the copy process (two disks inserted).  A
    second click before the process is started will nullify the start
    command.  This gadget changes into a "Stop Copy" gadget during copiing.
    A confirmation is required.  Disk removal, source as well as
    destination, is treated as a confirmed "Stop Copy".


    -- Auto Start Condition

    This whole area is a gadget.  Click in it to cycle the four stages.  See
    auto start for details.


    -- Triangle gadget

    In the topborder there is a gadget with a triangle.  This gadget affects
    the way Pcopy behaves to other disk users.  Its usage of the drive
    hardware it so intensive, that normally (triangle pointing up) other
    users donot get access to their drives.  You can let Pcopy be a little
    more modest by letting this gadget point down.  This costs from 3 to 70
    seconds or more copy time.


                           AUTO START

    When a disk is inserted, it is classified.  To do so, the root track is
    read and analised.  If an error is detected while reading this track,
    Pcopy tries to repair the track to make this classification safe.  Four
    different types are distinguished and its classification apears in the
    "Now in .." window:


    -- New, Unformatted

    No data is detected.


    -- Non DOS

    Some data is found. But its format is unknown by Pcopy.


    -- DOS, no root

    The track can be read, but the root sector was not found.


    -- <VolumeName>

    The root is found and the name of the disk is displayed.


    Now that Pcopy knows what kind of disk its dealing with, it can let the
    copy start depending on a user selected condition.  These are listed:


    -- Off: Manual Start

    Pcopy does not start copy until the Start gadget is clicked.


    -- Dest must be New

    Pcopy starts only when a disk is classified as "New, Unformatted".  The
    formats that are known to be detected are MS-DOS, MSX, Archimedes, Atari
    and Mac.  Probably most other formats are detected too, but you must
    check it for yourself.

    -- Dest may not be DOS

    Pcopy starts only when a disk is classified as "New, Unformatted" OR
    "Non DOS".  By other systems already formatted disks are overwritten.

    -- Unconditional Start

    Starts always upon insertion.  If the disk is not write protected, it is
    simply overwritten.  This is a dangerous selection and is emphasized by
    changing the gadged's color.  If an Amiga-DOS disk is to be overwritten,
    some sound is heard and a three second delay will elapse before the copy
    process starts.  When you remove the disk within this delay or click the
    "Stop Copy" gadget, no writing has taken place.  You can look at the
    Progression window, and if no graph or number is visible, you were in
    time.  I can only say:  Donot use this selection.


                            REQUESTERS

    If an error is detected, a requester will appear.  If abort is chosen,
    then the copy process will be terminated.  The actions following upon
    retry are listed below:

           Source read error # xx
           On cylinder # yy, head z.
           <Short error description>

    Retry tries to read again.
    Salve tries to repair the faulting track by multiple reads and analysis.
    Copy continues after this action.

           Destination write error # xx
           On cylinder # yy, head z.
           <Short error description>

    Retry tries to write again.

           Verify error # xx
           On cylinder # yy, head z.

    Retry rewrites the track and checks again.

    If you do not know what the errors mean, ignore them.  Do a few retries
    and abort if no success.

    Some actions produce confirmation requesters, like Stop Copy and the
    standard stop gadget.  These are straightforward.  But perhaps the
    system has too less free memory to honor the memory requests to build
    the requester.  Then some defaults become active: "Abort" and "User was
    serious".

    The requester is not a true requester but a window with gadgets.  So if
    you use DMouse in a certain way, you have to place the mouse pointer in
    this requester to use the standard keyboard shortcuts.


                           TRACK SALVAGE

    Pcopy has capabilities to recover data from a damaged track.  The
    history window changes into a report window.  Each salved track produces
    two lines.  The line starting with 'L' reports the not recovered labels.
    The 'S' reports not recovered sectors.  Behind the 'S' and 'L' the
    tracknumber is displayed.  If the line remains empty, you are lucky.
    Otherwise the numbers of the not recovered labels or sectors will
    appear.  Normally labels are not used, and diskcopy does not copy them
    at all.  So ignore the label report.  The not recovered sectors are more
    important.  A disk that has been completely copied, but with one or more
    not recovered sectors, appears Italic in the history window.  The report
    remains visible as long as the destination disk stays in the drive.  A
    special Pcopy pattern ('Pcopy2',X,0) is written into not recovered
    sectors.  In that case if "Adapt Date" is ON, the BMFLAG is made 0.


                           PERFORMANCE

    Pcopy is fast (the fastest of all).  The best times: 100/68 seconds,
    verify ON/OFF.

    Pcopy tries to be friendly to other tasks, it leaves them a lot of time.
    But in its disk use it is truly unfriendly.  Therefore you can tell
    Pcopy to give way to other tasks which want to use the disk hardware
    (other drives than those controlled by (this) Pcopy, of course).

    Pcopy is completely written over again (Fish 151).  The copier mostly in
    assembly and the user interface in C.  The user interface became a
    separate task.  Pcopy uses ONLY code and data derived from the original
    .i and .h files.  Therefore I think it will be compatible with future
    releases of the OS.


                            HISTORY

    Pcopy 2.01:

    The audio.device is not to be accessed in the standard way, as I read
    recently in a publication of Commodore.  Pcopy used the standard way and
    sometimes the audio.device died.  Pcopy waited for an answer..  forever..

    The algorithms of the size of the requester and its gadgets used the
    default font instead of the font of the screen on which Pcopy executes.
    The requesters now are perhaps a little nicer when other fonts are used.

    The salve routine has been made a little more efficient without changing
    its functionality.  This results into a quicker login of non-Dos disks
    and a slighty shorter track salvage.  For that matter, the salve routine
    of TrackSalve is far superior.  Pcopy 3.0 (if ever released) will be
    provided with these better routines.


    Pcopy 2.02:

    A bug in the graph color setting caused a double retry indication in the
    graphic presentation.  The drawing is revised and more information is
    displayd.  It now displays the verify actions separately.  The colors
    have been changed to be more distinct in the Commodore color setup.

    Clicking "DONE" in the select drives window without selected drives
    causes a quick termination.


    Pcopy 2.1:

    The salve routines are replaced by those currently active in TrackSalve.
    These are far superior to the old ones.


                          COPYRIGHT

    Copyright 1989, 1990 by D.W.Reisig.  Pcopy is freely distributable
    (FreeWare).  All you may charge for is medium costs.  You must include
    this file (Pcopy.doc) with the program (Pcopy).  You may not change
    these files.


    Dirk Reisig
    Woudweeren 10
    1151 AV  Broek in Waterland
    Holland

    23-Aug-90