Tech Arsenal 1/Tech Arsenal (Arsenal Computer).ISO/tek-18/bbdrs100.zip/DRS.DOC

Text File | 1991-06-21 | 12KB | 255 lines

(C)Copyright 1991, Data Research Software, 1991 DRS

   Contents :

  1) ................................. General Information
  1A)   ................................. Why DRS?
  1B)   ................................. Where is it going?
  2) ................................. Manual Mode
  2A)   ................................. Selecting Data
  2B)   ................................. Writing saved data to file
  3) ................................. Automatic Mode
  3A)   ................................. Initial startup
  3B)   ................................. What you get
  4) ................................. Installation / General Info
  4A)   ................................. Installing and running
  4B)   ................................. General Info
  5) ................................. Updates and Changes
  5A)   ................................. Received suggestions

 1                  GENERAL INFORMATION

 1A ...... WHY DRS

 First let me say that DRS will NOT help you with binary program
 disks  YET!  It is mainly for recovering DATA from bad disks!

 The need arose early in 1991 when I got out an old data disk and
 needed some instructional text off of it.  I got the proverbial
 GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A .  Great, now what will I do?  I
 can either shoot myself, laydown and cry or get out my assortment
 of fix anything utilities.  I'll probably just injure myself if I
 go for the gun so I reach for the utilities.  Now the fun really
 starts.  The first thing I realize is that these utilities will
 not work unless they can read the disk first.  Great!  I put one
 bullet in the gun ..... then I remember a little sign I saw in a
 computer store that said,  We Recover Data .  I give them a call,
 after all, How much can it cost to recover one 360K disk?  The
 last thing my wife heard before I kicked the dog and cocked the
 pistol was,  $75! Your crazier than I am...and I do this garbage
 for a living!  Not only that but I ve been writing programs for
 years and I know the rules.  #1 .. There are no programmers who
 are in touch with reality!  They all think fixing something in
 10 minutes means 2 weeks.  I'll no exception to this rule ... I
 can clearly see in my mind how to get there!  I've just forgotten
 how many dogs I kicked the last time I took on a simple fix!  So
 you think I'll going to hand over $75 for a 10-minute fix?  Better
 load your own gun!  #2  .. Every programmer in the world thinks
 that 3:00 a.m. is almost the same as 11:00 p.m.!  After I see the
 trouble this guy s having I can see 3:00 a.m. coming up quickly.
 By this time I'm sure this guy is one of the Bytebrothers and
 I'm going to be kidnapped and made to sit through a Wichita
 River Festival with them or worse yet have to attend one of their
 parties.  By this time I'm sure he is a Bytebro and I'm backing
 for the door.  Too late!  It s $20 for looking at my disk and
 pronouncing, Tough Case, Sir!  That Sir is always worth $10.  All
 is not lost however because I left my pistol at home and can't
 pull the trigger from here.  So I says to myself,  just bypass
 the DOS and read the disk directly by absolute sector and then
 translate the data to a readable ASCII form.   Forgetting about
 rule number 2 I begin this simple project.  Two weeks later here
 it is.  Here it is! Version 1.00 with upgrades following shortly.


1B ...... Where is it going?

 Well, there should be a new release in about 60-days.  Several
 people have already asked for the ability to name their own
 files and have the ability to save different areas of their disk
 to more than one file.  One of the interesting characteristics
 of this program is that since "OS" is bypassed it will try to read
 your disk even when it is not there.  Since I don't read your FAT
 you get ZEROS on unmounted disks and error areas as well as empty
 sectors.  This also means that I am creating a different way for
 recovering binary files in the near future.  The next release will
 also include an attempt at auto-repair.  In other words if your
 disk returns the "GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A" then my program
 will try to repair it for you by creating standard routines that
 must be there to mount your disk.  I am also planning to let you
 change and write back to bad disks in the near future.

 This paragraph was added after the DRS software was completed.
 Before I even released this version friends who looked at it
 started coming up with GOOD ideas.  Examples:  Add a direct
 printer dump!  Allow a person to open their own files and more
 than one so they can stack different data parts in different files
 also forward and backwards paging through the bad disk!  These
 are good ideas and I will add these features right away.



2A ...... Manual Mode

 (HIT F2) or use your arrow keys to Highlight the "SELECT DAMAGED
 DISK" feature.  Enter the drive letter of the damaged floppy
 disk you want to read.  Usually A or B.  I read some data from
 my Hard Drive with DRS but have not done any real testing on
 hard disks.

 (HIT F3) next and select a SECTOR to view.

          HINTS: you will find that in the first few sectors of
                 of a floppy are the formating structure followed
                 by the FAT (File Allocation Table, about sector
                 5 on a 360) and then the data your looking for
                 around absolute sector 15.  If you're in manual
                 mode you may not want to recover any of the data
                 below this area since when you stack that binary
                 data in with your text it may make your file
                 unreadable by your text editor or word processor.

                 A good way to start out is to tell my program
                 that you do not want to save anything and just
                 look around on your disk for awhile.


2B ...... Manual Mode (Writing out your data)

 (HIT F5) The next thing to do is look at what you have selected
 by hitting F5.  After you browse the sector you will be asked if
 you want to save it.  If you answer YES the data will be neatly
 stacked into a sequential file called RECOV1.TXT.  If you answer
 NO then that sector will simply be discarded.  Your data will
 be stacked in the file in the order in which you selected it.
 When you exit my program several housekeeping steps are performed.
 For this reason do not exit the program in the middle.  If you
 do feel the need for a boot in the middle of something, it will
 not harm anything but you may have to start your recovery
 process again.  One last note, when you exit DRS be sure to rename
 or copy RECOV1.TXT and RECOV2.TXT to new names.  This is because
 when start DRS again it will overwrite these names and you will
 lose what was in them.  This will be my very first change in
 version 1.01 a couple of weeks from now.  You will be able to set
 your own file names and open more than two.  Also I forgot to
 include MONO or COLOR selection so I will get this in the works
 also.  Right now everything is in color.  You should be able to
 stumble around in MONO mode.



3A ...... Automatic Mode

 I added this mode as an after thought.  I figured someone out there
 would want to just dump the whole disk to a file and then sort
 through it with an editor.  Well, F7 is your key!  Be patient with
 the automatic mode.  It has to go get each sector one at a time
 then write it to the file RECOV2.TXT.  A 1.4M floppy takes about
 15 minutes to recover in this manner.

 When you first select F7 you will be asked which drive the bad
 floppy is in.  It does not matter if you say "A", "a" or "a:".
 I have sorted through the various ways you might enter the drive
 and turned it into what the program is looking for.

 Next you will be asked to enter drive type: 360, 720, 1.2, 1.4 or
 2.8.  This information tells the program how many sectors to read
 from your bad disk.  It you tell it the wrong type, it will not
 harm anything, it simply returns zeros for empty areas.  This
 brings up another point.  If you read an empty drive, you will not
 get error messages because there is nothing there to give you
 one.  You simply get zeros for data.  If you run off the end
 of the disk you will not get error messages either.  You will
 simply see the last sector repeat itself.  Remember while your
 in this program, DOS does not count any more!  Your FAT means
 nothing and formatting means NOTHING here!  You will be able to
 look at anything on the disk regardless of what has been done
 to the data.



3B ...... What You Get From Automatic Mode

 After you run the auto recovery sequence against your disk,
 you will have a sequential file named RECOV2.TXT sitting
 on the default drive you started DRS from.  Yes, I know you
 want to declare your own storage paths!  I will put that
 in the next release also.

 Your entire disk will be stored in this file except for FAT,
 formatting info and blank space behind your FAT.  I did this
 to protect you from the binary and control characters that
 might ruin your otherwise good file.  This brings up another
 point, you can go ahead and run the manual and auto routines
 at the same time.  This way you can save the whole and pick
 out selected areas from the FAT to add to it.



4A ...... Installation

 The best way to utilize DRS would be to make a DRS subdirectory
 and copy the DRS.DOC, READ.ME and DRS.EXE files into it.  This
 way you would have plenty of storage for your recovered files.


 You should be able to run from a 2-floppy system. However by
 keeping the DRS program disk in one drive (this drive will
 have to have enough storage to hold the other disk unless
 you do not use auto mode) and putting the bad disk in the other.



4B ...... General

 Please bear with me as I do not normally write software for end
 users and will need a little practice.  I generally write things
 to convert something, manipulate, translate or perform some task
 without having the necessary front end for the end user.
 If you have a need to recover data from something special, give
 me a shout via SHARELINK BBS, [phone].  I have a number
 of these kinds of things to extract data from tapes and even CD
 roms.  I should mention that you can always find the latest
 versions of this and other software at SHARELINK or
 DEN-OF-ENIQUITY BBS.  The DEN is home of the Bytebrothers and
 is online 24-hours at 1200/2400/4800/9600/14.4 via
 [phone].  SHARELINK is also 24 hours, 7-days and has
 the same baud rates.  SHARELINK carries 400 download directories
 so you should know that DRS software is in #117 there.


 As always with Bytebrother Software, you can always talk voice
 with either Jimmy Pearson or Bob Hogan at [phone].  The
 Den of Iniquity BBS is the "Home of the Damn Bytebrothers".

5A ...... Received Suggestions


 FROM: Bob Clemmens          DATE: 6-19-91
    COMMENT: Make the software available mail order.  I am a little
             nervous about BBS software.


 FROM: Kent Michael          DATE: 6-19-91
    COMMENT: Add AUTO BROWSE and PgUp and PgDwn.


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