¢¢¢This is an article by Leslie Benson. Leslie has had trouble with a couple of PD disks and needs replacements. Can you help?¢-----------------------------------¢¢When I receive a new disk I always endeavour to make a backup copy and for this I like to use a program, originally published in ANTIC magazine, called COPYMATE. With the XE expanded to 320k, it only needs one pass to copy a whole double density disk. That is 184k bytes if the disk is full. This is a binary program which resides permanently on my main MyDOS Utility disk.¢¢Having two disk drives I placed a new Public Domain disk in drive two and with the MyDOS Utility disk in drive one, I loaded COPYMATE. From the menu I selected the correct options including format of the destination disk. Drive two reacted immediately and proceded to load from the source disk. Just as it was nearing the end of the disk I was called away and without thinking I flicked the write protect switch on drive one to OFF so that the copy could continue in my absence.¢¢I had only gone a few steps when I realised what I had done and rushed back, but too late, half of my MyDOS Utility disk had been reformatted. If only I had put a blank disk into the drive as soon as the copy program had loaded.¢¢It is my practise to keep an archive copy of all programs that come my way even though many of them may never be needed again. This is where Dean Garraghty's PD disk PD105 proves really useful. It is a WEDGE which when loaded into SpartaDOS 3.2d introduces several extra commands. Fortunately SpartaDOS can read MyDOS disks although the reverse is not possible, in fact I gather that SpartaDOS disks cannot be read by any other DOS which is a great pity.¢¢The WEDGE command in this instance is VIEW which allows you to check the contents of an ARCED or ALFED file. By this means I was very quickly able to run through the archive box and replace the missing utilities, that is all except two. How these two escaped I have no idea but I certainly miss them.¢¢There must be a lesson to be learnt from this, but whatever it is I would never remove the write protect switch and revert to those horrible notches and sticky patches. Have you found that if you run out of the sticky tabs the only ones obtainable are either to big or too small?¢¢The main object of all this is to ask if anyone can help me to replace the missing files?¢¢The first is DISKASEM.OBJ. It is essentially a sector editor working in any density. The display shows 16 bytes per line as against the more usual 8, and single density sectors use the top half only whilst true double density occupies the whole screen. Pressing Escape produces the following menu:¢¢ A > Assemble¢ C > Configure drive¢ D > Disassemble¢ E > Erase file¢ F > Files (Directory)¢ G > Go to address on disk¢ H > Hex / decimal conversion¢ L > Linkage selection¢ M > Modify buffer¢ P > Print screen¢ Q > Quit and return to DOS¢ R > Read a sector¢ S > Search for pattern¢ W > Write buffer to disk¢ X > eXtended commands¢ Z > Zero buffer¢ + > Read next sector¢ - > Read previous sector¢ SELECT - Select drive¢ OPTION - Display toggle (ATASCII/Hex)¢¢Option D will disassemble from the sector being displayed at the time and does not automatically scroll upwards as most programs do. In fact it is possible to advance one line or one screen at a time. This is much easier when trying to trace through a program.¢¢With the P option, it is possible to print out either the whole screen or any part as required.¢¢Just what the X option does I cannot say as I did not have the extended commands which were issued later in a separate file.¢¢As you can see, this is a very comprehensive program and is very easy to use.¢¢The other program is BOOTXL.OBJ which simply converts boot disks or cassettes to binary files. It only works with single loaders, but does the job very neatly. I now have PD142 which contains two similar programs but the J.Williams version seems to make a more complicated job altogether and so far I have not been able to get the other version to work. Perhaps it does not like modified disk drives. Anyway I would still like to have the original BOOTXL.¢¢Both programs are public domain but I cannot remember where I obtained them. If anyone can help me to replace them or find suitable alternatives I will be most grateful.¢¢¢If you can help, then please write to Leslie via me. I will pass on the info to Leslie, and maybe write an article about the response we had to this.¢
