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Amiga Computing 67
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Release Notes 1.5
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Quarterback Tools 1.5
March 28, 1991
Thank you for purchasing Quarterback Tools. All of us at Central Coast
Software are grateful for your support. This document lists changes to the
program and other notes which didn't make it into the manual.
We have tried very hard to make Quarterback Tools as reliable and as robust
as possible. We have tested it extensively on many different Amigas and
under a wide variety of conditions, but we cannot guarantee that it will
solve every problem which can arise with your disk drives.
A Word to the Wise from Tools Tech Support
The best piece of advise we can give is this: Don't get caught without a
backup. Ever! Let's look a recent call to tech support. A customer was
in the middle of reorganizing his hard drive with Quarterback Tools, when
the power failed. Not a fault of Tools, but still a problem. Tech support
suggested that he restore his hard drive from his backup. Unfortunately,
he had not taken the time to make a backup. We hear this all too often.
Backup first, then reorganize!
Changes in V1.5
Changed the way Tools determines the type of filing system in use on a
volume to correct a problem with some types of device drivers.
Tools now checks the contents of the boot block, and corrects the boot
block in the Repair mode if the boot block has become corrupted.
Warning: If you attempt to "REPAIR" a Kickstart volume or an AMAX volume,
Tools will change the boot block of the volume to DOS0 or DOS1, thereby
making the original volume useless for its original purpose. Be careful!
Tools now attempts to display the name of a drawer entry which has a bad
checksum. Of course, the name may be garbage in this case.
Tools now displays the version of the device driver on the Volume
Statistics window.
Tools now correctly handles the case where there are no active volumes.
Changes in V1.4
Fixed a problem in COPYing files from a FFS volume to a different volume.
Added a check for the file BAD.BLOCKS during REPAIR modes so that bad
blocks already found will not be reported again, resulting in bitmap errors
and other anomalies.
Changes in V1.3e
Found and fixed a problem which affected reorganization of non-floppy
partitions which are 99% full. Also corrected a problem with long path
names and file names overwriting the window's right margin.
BlitzDisk
Disk cache programs such as BlitzDisk are known to interfere with Tools.
If you use such a cache program, you must disable it before running
Quarterback Tools. If you do not, the result may be a scrambled disk.
Attention 2090/2090A Users
We have found that some users of the 2090 or 2090A hard disk controllers
using ST506 (non-SCSI) disk drives are experiencing a high error rate when
using Tools to find map out and unreadable blocks. The problems always
shows up as an excessively high number of bad blocks at the very high end
of the highest partition on the disk drive.
The problem arises when the high cylinder parameter of the mountlist entry
for the highest partition on the drive is set too high. This causes Tools
(and AmigaDOS) to try to access cylinders beyond the useful area of the
drive. The hard disk driver then appears to lock out further access to the
drive, causing other errors. The solution is to lower the high cylinder
parameter by one or two cylinders, thereby limiting Tools (and AmigaDOS) to
valid areas of the drive. However, you should only change the high
cylinder parameter if you know what you are doing. You must reformat the
drive following such a change. This will cause all data on the drive to be
lost. Be certain you backup all files before attempting such a change!
Icons "Disappear"
Some users have reported that after reorganizing a volume, Workbench
refuses to display some of the icons known to exist on the volume. The
icon files are actually present on the volume, but Workbench refuses to
display them.
We are still studying this problem, which occurs only rarely. In the mean
time, if it happens to you, we recommend deleting the .info file on the
affected drawer. Then reboot the Amiga. Workbench will rebuild the .info
file if it cannot find one, which seems to cure the problem.
RAM: Device Usage
Quarterback Tools does not work with the RAM: device. That device is not a
standard AmigaDOS device, and is not recognized by Tools. Of course, there
is little reason to use Tools with RAM: anyway!
Hard and Soft Links
Commodore has released with AmigaDOS 2.0 which has a new filing system
feature called "links." However, this verion of Quarterback Tools was
written before Commodore had finalized the design of the new filing system,
and so it does not support this new feature. Quarterback Tools 2.0 does
support links (and many other new features). If you need support for links
or other features of AmigaDOS 2.0 and later, you must upgrade to
Quarterback Tools 2.0.
Tools Icon
Quarterback Tools comes with two different icons. The primary icon is one
which looks good with the standard Workbench 1.3 colors. The alternate
icon is designed to look good under the "new and improved" colors of
Workbench 2.0. If you run under WB2.0, you can change to the alternate
icon for a better look. Simply copy the icon named:
2.0ToolIcon.info
in the icons drawer of the Tools master disk. Be sure to rename the icon
to Tools.info.
Report Icon
The report produced by "FIND AND REPAIR" does not have an associated icon.
Non-standard File Systems
There are some "non-standard" public domain file systems that let you
simulate a floppy file system on a hard drive. These should be removed
before you try to reorganize the hard drive as the results are
unpredictable.
Restoring (Undeleting) Files
Some Tools users have asked why it takes so long to find a file to
undelete. Tools was written with the future in mind, mainly the Workbench
2.0 Fast File System. The reason that Tools scans the whole partition even
if you know the file name you wish to undelete is that under 2.0, the file
header can be stored anywhere on that partition. Under the older file
systems, the file header is always stored near the root block, so that a
scan of that area of the partition allows the file to be found quickly.
The method Tools uses works on all file systems, but may be slower than
some other utilities under Workbench 1.3 or earlier versions.
AREXX Example
Here is an AREXX script, courtesy of Charlie Fair, which can be used to run
Tools via the AREXX interface.
/* starttools.rexx - Starts up QBTools and reorgs DF0: */
/* Copyright (c) 1990 AmiSoft */
/*
To use the Arexx interface, start Quarterback Tools from CLI or from
a script.
An Arexx program can communicate with Quarterback Tools via the address
command:
ADDRESS 'QBT_AREXX'
Quarterback Tools responds to the following commands and produces the
following results:
EXIT Terminates Quarterback Tools.
VOLUME name Selects volume to process.
DRIVE name Selects drive to process.
LOAD Loads previously saved options.
SAVE Saves options.
ABOUT Returns Quarterback Tools version.
FRAGMENTATION Performs fragmentation check on selected volume and
returns count of fragmented files.
REORGANIZE Reorganizes selected volume.
MARK Finds and marks bad blocks, and returns count of bad
blocks found.
FIND Finds volume problems. Returns count and severity.
REPAIR Attempts to repair volume problems.
FORMAT Formats volume safely.
UNFORMAT Attempts to unformat volume.
SCREEN mode Sets screen mode to INTERACTIVE, INFORMATIVE, or QUIET.
MEMORY usage Sets memory usage to LOW, MEDIUM, or HIGH.
OPTIMIZE mode Sets optimization mode to WORKBENCH or CLI.
AMIGADOS mode Sets AmigaDOS mode to ENABLED or DISABLED
*/
Trace r
Address Command 'Run SYS:QBT/Tools -r'
/* Start Tools with REXX option */
Say 'QB Tools is now running REXX, screen controls are now inactive'
Do 10 While ~Show('Ports','QBT_AREXX')
End
Address QBT_AREXX 'OPTIMIZE WORKBENCH'
Address QBT_AREXX 'DRIVE DF0:'
Address QBT_AREXX 'REORGANIZE'
Say 'Quiting QBT_AREXX'
Address QBT_AREXX 'EXIT'
RX 'Address QBT_AREXX "EXIT"' /* This line will exit a run away pgm */
Central Coast Software
A division of New Horizons Software, Inc.
206 Wild Basin Rd., Suite 109
Austin, Texas 78746
USA
(512) 328-6650
Fax (512) 328-1925