Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/011a/flash1.zip/FLASHLED.DOC

Text File | 1991-12-10 | 9KB | 206 lines

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                     FLASHLED.COM - FlashLED v1.01
              "Disc Drive Activity at Your Finger Tips"

             (C)opyright 1991 - Seagate Technology, Inc.
                   The first name in disc drives.
                 written by R. Dimick and B. Rudock

               Seagate Tech Support BBS [phone]
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=====Intro==================

FlashLED is a very small TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident in memory)
utility that uses the LED's (Light Emitting Diode) found on AT
keyboards and, optionally, the system speaker to indicate disc drive
activity.

Normally, the activity lights found on the front faceplates of the
disc drive and/or the system chasis are more than adequate for
displaying activity, however, many of today's smaller drives are
mounted deep within the systems, obscuring any view of the drive's own
LED (if it even has one). Also, many computer systems are of the
"tower" type, taking them off the desk, which requires the user to
look down at the floor for activity lights. In either case, FlashLED,
can help by putting the activity light "at your finger tips."

=====Syntax=Summary========

The command line syntax of FlashLED is:

        FLASHLED [/options]

The default behavior, if no command line arguments are specified, is
to prompt the user for manual selection of the options.  This manual
mode, since it requires user input, is not really appropriate for an
AUTOEXEC.BAT. Therefore, if you would like the program to load
automatically, via the AUTOEXEC.BAT, it is recommeded that you supply
the [/options].

        | The option switches are:
        |
        |    Select ONE of the keyboard LED options (or not) :
        |       /N   Num Lock
        |       /C   Caps Lock
        |       /S   Scroll Lock (default)
        |       /K   Kill keyboard LED activity (FlashLED will not
        |             indicate activity on the keyboard, so, hopefully,
        |             you will be selecting the speaker option [/P])
        |
        |    Additionally, select ONE of the disc drive options:
        |       /F   Floppy drives only
        |       /H   Hard drives only (default)
        |       /B   Both floppy and hard disc drives
        |
        |    Optionally select one of these, if you like:
        |       /P   sPeaker "click" with drive activity (low
        |             frequency is READ, high frequency is WRITE)
        |       /?   Display all of these options to the screen,
        |             without loading the program. (overrides any
        |             other command line arguments)

Multiple command line argument switches may be specified together or
seperately. The following examples are functionally equivalent:

           FLASHLED /S /H /P
           flashled /shp  (DOS nor FlashLED is case sensitive)
       (this space ^ must be there)

=====Outline================

An brief outline of how FlashLED works is as follows:

A. FlashLED Disc Drive Activity from Keyboard LED program
   1. Display program instructions and take user input of
      configuration parameters
      a) determine the current status of the keyboard LED's and save
         that status then turn off all the LED's
      b) wait for the user's selection of which keyboard LED should
         indicate the activity (Num, Caps or Scroll Lock)
      c) If it's not an LED that was ALREADY in use before the
         program was started, then great, otherwise default to the
         Scroll Lock LED.
      d) wait for the user's selection of which drive devices (hard,
         floppy or both) should reflect activity to the LED
      e) wait for user's selection on activity "clicking" the speaker
   2. terminate and stay resident
   3. program "watches" for activity on DOS interrupt 13 (disk
      services)
      a) if "observed", then LED and/or speaker is turned on
      b) when INT 13 concludes, LED is turned off after a few DOS
         INT 1C timer ticks (18.2 ticks per second)
   4. program removed from memory by a system reset or TSR
      management utility

=====App=Notes==============


Some Application Notes:

  1. The effect of the program on the performance of the system is
negligible.

  2. When the speaker "click" sound option is activated, other
programs which beep on errors will usually get their chance but then
the beep frequency is lowered again to the level defined by FlashLED.

  3. The use of FlashLED on XT's is disallowed, since keyboard LED's
are not defined in that host environment.

  4. In Windows (tm), the keyboard LED activity is suspended but the
speaker click still works. When Windows is exited, the keyboard LED
activity returns.

  5. Since FlashLED uses INT 1C (timer tick), some TSR screen clocks
may not allow FlashLED to work properly. Try reversing the loading
order of the TSR's.

  6. When disk caching software is in use, FlashLED may indicate
activity when data is drawn from the cache (AKA a cache hit).

  7. There will be times when the keyboard activity LED doesn't seem
to keep on pace with the activity of the drive. This is due to the
fact that the bios keyboard services are given LOW priority; since the
system figures that the user is probably the slowest component in the
system, it doesn't come looking as often. As a result, FlashLED will
tend to "even out" the rapid flicker of an busy drive's activity light
and show a steady, even glow on the LED. If the speaker option [/p]
has been selected, the "click" will easily keep up with the activity.

  8. As mentioned earlier, FlashLED is a tiny TSR (less than 700
bytes). When a TSR is kept in memory, the total amount of memory space
that it takes is the sum of itself and the DOS environment active at
the time of the load.  Since many of us use a "PATH=" which is max'd
out, a "PROMPT=" which is complex and a "SET=" for everything under
the sun, our environment size gets pretty BIG!  To minimize the
environment "impact" on the TSR, try getting the TSR's loaded and
tucked in, first, then build up the environment variables.

  9. FlashLED will not see the activity of a network drive since
different interrupts are being used.

 10. Some SCSI host adapters are bundled with device drivers which do
not use INT 13, in which case the FlashLED program will not work.
This may also be true for some partitioning software.

 11. If the program is started with /shp (scroll lock, hard drives
only, speaker on), and then loaded again with /cf (caps lock, floppy
only) the LED's will switch between scroll and caps, depending on hard
or floppy drive access.

=====Rev=Hist===============

Revision History:

        10/91   v1.0   In-house release.
        12/91   v1.1   Public release. Added speaker click, command
                        line options.

=====Legal=Disclaimer=======

                          LICENSE AGREEMENT

Seagate provides the accompanying object code software ("Software")
and nonexclusively licenses its use on the following terms and
conditions. The Software is copyrighted by Seagate.  YOU ASSUME FULL
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SELECTION OF THE SOFTWARE TO ACHIEVE YOUR
INTENDED PURPOSES, FOR THE PROPER INSTALLATION AND USE.  SEAGATE DOES
NOT WARRANT THAT THE SOFTWARE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, THAT THE
SOFTWARE IS FIT FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE
SOFTWARE WILL BE ERROR FREE.  SEAGATE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL
WARRANTIES, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  IN NO EVENT WILL SEAGATE BE LIABLE TO YOU, YOUR
CUSTOMERS OR OTHER USERS FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL,
SPECIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE.

End of License agreement.

=====Other==================

Available on the Seagate Tech Support BBS [phone]:

Specifications and jumper drawings for all Seagate Disc Drives and
Controllers.

Reprints of Installation Guides.

Troubleshooting essays.

FINDTYPE - Utility which displays bios drive type table and matches a
Seagate model to the best drive type.  Also prints complete
specifications lists and much more!

FINDINIT - Utility for Seagate controllers and host adapters that have
onboard bios. Queries the system to determine bios memory address and
initiates low-level format.

DESK REFERENCE - Hypertext data system for all Seagate products,
troubleshooting, other OEM phone numbers and much, much more. A must
for dealers who do a fair amount of support for Seagate products.

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