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1991-06-21
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(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, (316) 942-3021. 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
(316) 942-4080. 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 (316) 942-1700. 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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