A detailed history of Paul Vigay's Disc Commander application
Read the manual supplied with registered copies of Disc Commander for full instructions

1.33 (24th Aug 1998) ********** EXTENSIVE MODIFICATIONS
- Changed all deletes to FSControl 27's
- Added detection for new viruses; BigFoot, MonitorDAT, Nitemare, Simple, Thunder
- Added detection for new strains of Icon, DataDQM, BBCEconet, Extend, Icon, VanDamme, Module, NetStatus, Jester
- Opened status window when a file is dragged to the icon bar icon.
- Altered a few text messages.
- Made virus scan more thorough when individual files are dragged to Disc Commander.
- Made track, head and sector icons auto-repeat in disc editor.
- Made disc editor capable of editing drives bigger than 4GB.
- Made OS version detection independent of WindowManager module.
- Improved virus logging routine.
- Amended Reset routine to detect which OS is being used.
1.32 (24th Mar 1998)
- All VZap features up to VZap v1.31
- Re-read disc sector data when you write a sector in disc editor.
- Extended range of checking in Guess filetype routine, as well as fix small bug where it sometimes gave up for no apparent reason.
- Amended Julian date conversions so they are no longer country specific.
- Extended range of known filetypes for settype menu.
1.27 (9th Jan 1997)
- Speeded up automatic file recovery slightly by block loading bytes rather than individually loading them.
- Added Iomega Parallel Port Zip drive support (IZipFS).
1.26 (14th Nov 1996)
- Added additional support for filecore in use and some severe errors to try and stop Disc Commander crashing in severe cases of disc corruption, like completely dead/non existant hard drives.
- Added support for IDEFS using 'DescribeDisc' and 'DiscOp' calls.
Thanks to Giles Taylor for providing the relevant OS call details.
1.25 (14th Aug 1996)
- Masked out PC partitions from virus scans (which saves a lot of time if you have a PC partition containing 100's of files)
- Right aligned the filename icon in the status window, so that filenames nested down multiple directories are not visibly truncated.
- Added "Text Filter" routine to filter various control codes from text files. See manual for more info.
- Amended some error messages so that the option to Quit Disc Commander is no longer given with minor errors.
- Amended some icons definitions to fit in better with Acorn's style guide.
- 'Default' log path automatically saved back to choices if not found on loading. This saves manually having to save choices.
- Fixed bug in disc editor search routine where each sector was being 'found'.
- Added 'whole disc format' option to the disc editor. This will allow you to format floppy discs from within the disc editor. At present, ADFS style maps are correctly setup, but DOS ones aren't. I'm working on this!!!
1.24 (21st May 1996)
- Moved Log file control from "Logpath" file into Choices window to make it easier to control. You can now set the file path of the log file and the auto-reset options from the Choices window. The filepath icon can be dragged to any directory window to set the full filepath.
- A couple of error messages have been changed accordingly.
- Amended code so that the choices file can be updated correctly, even if it is 'locked' or 'protected' by the user. To reset to the 'factory default', simply delete the 'Choices' file and re-load !Commander.
'Choices' will then be automatically created, containing the default options.
- Added detection for the 'All New ID' virus
- Changed inoculation code to improve !Commander's ability to remove suspect lines from !Boot files.
- Made extensive alterations to !Boot file scanning, so the virus scan is a lot more thorough, especially when !Boot files have been infected more than once.
- Logfile automatically set to the default value if it cannot be created/found on loading !Commander.
1.23 (26th Mar 1996)
- Added 'Recover' window to give more control over individual recovery of files. You can now recover files and copy them into alternative directories.
1.22 (20th Mar 1996)
- Closed logfile correctly on startup so that the occasional 'file open' error is prevented on startup.
- Amended so that files can be listed using !Zap or !Edit etc, and a command window is only opened if no editor can be found. This applies to listing !Boot files when a virus is found or files containing 'found text' after performing a Text Search. This 'should' work ok, but again it's difficult to predict every eventuality and every text editor. It works with !Edit and !Zap ok on a RISC PC 700, A5000 and A440/1.
1.21 (1st Mar 1996)
- Added inoculation for BBCEconet virus.
- Changed Breakfast virus detection slightly.
- Made scanning for internal viruses a bit more frequent.
- Added support for 'Not open for update' errors, if disc is write-protected when you try inoculating a virus.
- Error reporting is now output to log file (if on)
- Added addition command (AUTORESET) to logpath to enable Disc Commander to automatically clear the log file each time Commander is run (user optional, see logpath file for more instructions)
1.20 (19th Feb 1996)
- Fixed recursive error bug in 'Find text' routine.
- Added support for ArcFS while scanning for viruses although due to complexities giving support for so many different archivers which are available, !VZap may not work with very old versions of ArcFS.
- Added warning message on loading about archives possibly being read-only. I can't see an obvious way to detect whether a de-archiver is read or write, as there are now so many available.
- Another side-effect is that Disc Commander may well display something like "scanning 68 out of 11 files". This simply means that one or more of the files are archived and Disc Commander has detected more files inside the archives.
- Re-wrote 'Find Text' routine to make it work better with multiple selections and directories. A slight side-effect is that dragging a multiple selection does not reset the details under RISC OS 2. It (should) all work fine under RISC OS 3.1 and greater.
- When scanning long files, the hourglass temporarily changes colour to reflect the percentage scanned of the individual file.
ii)The length of each file is also now displayed.
- Changed some of the system beeps so that they are only heard when the 'Sound' option is on.
- Speeded up (and improved) the disc search routine within the sector editor. Commander now works in chunks of 8k (unless a disc error is detected, in which case it reverts to the sector size). Also amended this routine to cope better with sector overlaps and the new filecore module.
- Added facility to turn on and off the new filecore sector addressing. This allows you to examine old-style discs and filing systems installed into newer machines. Eg. old Cumana SCSI interfaces connected to RPC700 machines.
- Added new utility; SWI name/number conversion. To activate, simply click in the top icon in the status bar and enter the name or number of the SWI call you wish to convert. The result will be displayed in the icon below.
1.19 (13th Jan 1995)
- Fixed bug whereby previous mod (1.16h) messed up the disc addressing for floppy disc editing > track 51, head 1.
- Still no joy on fixing Kill Task bug in RISC OS 3.5 and greater, so added warning to 'kill task' menu.
- Amended templates file to be more conformant to the Acorn Style Guide.
- Added 'Scan memory' option to main menu, to save having to open choices menu.
- Added a load of new filetypes to the filetype menu.
- Added additional checking to ensure Disc Commander itself is not virus infected.
1.18 (3rd Jan 1995)
- Code amended to cope with the Jester virus much better, now I've had longer to examine it. Disc Commander should now work with all occurrances.
- Scanning routine amended to cope with 'locked' or 'no user access' files, rather than giving an error.
1.17 (11th Dec 1995)
- Code added to detect and eliminate "Jester" virus. Commander will now detect, eliminate and restore affected files. In addition, Commander will prevent the Jester virus from loading into the computer whilst Commander is installed.
- Moved wimpslot detection from 'stat' routine to 'message' routine so that changing wimpslots no longer obscure more important info.
1.16 (5th Dec 1995)
- Fixed bug in "Find Text" routine where multiple files containing the required text occasionally got 'out of order', resulting in the wrong files being displayed in the Find Text window.
- 'Clone' is automatically turned off as soon as you enter a new value for any of the disc settings in the Disc editor control bar.
- Corrected NexusFS_DiscOp SWI call, so weird disc names error is prevented. (bug correction)
- Tidied up 'Status OK' message a bit, in the disc editor.
- Altered display so that any disc editor checksums are displayed BEFORE an error is flagged.
- Took out call to function 'DiscType' when editing discs>3.
- Took out verify call in disc editor when NexusFS is selected, as calling FileCore with verify operation on NexusFS gives "Disc read only" error.
- Extended width of 'Track' icon in disc editor control bar - to allow for bigger hard drives, with more than 9999 tracks.
1.15a (15th Nov 1995)
- Fixed potential bug in FNgetstring routine. (very trivial, but I thought I'd amend the coding slightly to prevent potential problems in the future).
1.15 (3rd Nov 1995)
- Fixed bug where, if a virus scan is carried out whilst the disc editor window is open and you then move to a new sector in the disc editor, Disc Commander used to give a fatal error.
- Changed disc editor control bar window slightly so that the error status is now visible as soon as you open the disc editor.
- Added routine to automatically truncate icon texts to the size of the icons, so that if the 'messages' file is altered, longer icon texts no longer cause a crash.
- Took out error checking while loading a section of disc between marked sectors, so that Disc Commander will attempt to re-save corrupt portions of the disc, even though there may be a disc error in the middle of the marked section. Obviously, this is not guaranteed to work, but at least lets you have a try.
- Save data window no longer closes if you stop the drag over Disc Commanders own windows.
v1.14 (26th Oct 1995)
- Implemented all improvements in !VZap v1.12
- Fixed bug where attempting to backup onto a write protected disc gave an error and aborted the backup. You can now continue.
- Added 1.44M option to disc size menu.
- Added disc sizes to corruption map display, within Backup.
- Disc sector IDs (in Sector Structure window) are now updated when you move from head to head in the disc editor.
- Disc Backup improved slightly (but still refuses to copy 1.68M Microsoft products eg.Windows95!). These seem to be 1.68M format with 21 sectors per track, instead of 18. I'm currently working on this!
- Disc size set to ??? when you first open Backup window.
v1.13 (23rd Sep 1995)
- New title sprite designed.
- Modified to scan archives using latest !SparkFS
- New feature - Find Text - added.
- Hopefully(?) fixed bug where closing the disc sector editor window sometimes left the sector editor control window open.
- Implemented all improvements in !VZap upto v1.11 (with the exception of installing the icon on the far right of the bar and closing the status window after a virus scan.
v1.12 (8th Jun 1995)
- Implemented all improvements in !VZap upto v1.08
v1.11 (17th May 1995)
- Fixed bug whereby multiple 'dodgy' lines in !Boot files failed to be picked up (after the first one)
- Added 'friendly' message for when "VProtect" is detected.
- When dodgy lines are detected in !Boot files, the whole file is no longer deleted. The line is merely commented out by inserting a | code at the beginning.
- Fixed a couple of bugs in archive scanning routine, so that the detection for CFS and SPARKFS is a bit better.
- Fixed bug where setting RAM: correctly switches to drive 0:
- Altered icons to look a bit better on RISC PCs
- Tidied up 'Guess size' option to work with selected drive.
- Tidied up the size of the disc editor window.
v1.10 (13th Feb 1995)
- Fixed minor bug whereby large machine code !Boot files caused a fatal error #8 to occur.
- Tidied disc sector editor search so that the machine no longer (very occasionally) locks up.
- Adjusted the compiler directives slightly for improved efficiency.
v1.09 (8th Nov 1994)
- Changed default drive to current drive
- Speeded up disc sector editor search routine.
- Speeded up disc scramble routine.
- Fixed bug in disc sector editor find routine.
v1.08 (19th Oct 1994)
- Bug fix when auto-selecting drive. It now scans up to 7 and not 5 as per previously.
- Bug fix to allow you to access IDEFS discs from the disc editor.
v1.07 (22nd Sep 1994)
- Extended menu allocation block slightly to correct 'lockup' on loading caused by extending the menus to cater for Nexus.
v1.06 (1st Sep 1994)
- Modified to work with SJ Research NexusFS.
v1.04 (5th May 1994)
- Corrected bug in 'recover file' where the incorrect drive was detected from the filename. It now reads it from the error message. Hence, if no error is flagged the drive will remain unaltered.
v1.03 (28th Apr 1994)
- correct kill count updated for 'Breakfast' virus, including detection in start up routine.
- Some messages removed from 'Messages' file and put back in object code in order to improve speed.
- bug fix where drive is configured to 4 and you drag a file into the edit window in order to recover it. The disc editor will now adjust the drive and filer to that of the file being dragged.
v1.02 (23rd Apr 1994)
- New virus detection added to cope with the 'Breakfast' virus.
v1.01 (20th Apr 1994)
- Increased indirected menu memory allocation so that multiple tasks don't crash the machine any more. (ie. more than 3 'counts')
- Changed messages slightly to cater for options that only work on RISC OS 3.1 and above, rather than 3.0
- 'Disc Edit.Disc.Service' facility added - to 'service' a whole disc by verifying each sector and then re-reading and writing if it fails, thereby possibly fixing multiple disc errors. N.B. This option verifies 'retries' times.
- Slight amendment to 'Edit structure' window to generate an error is a disc re-format selection is made on versions prior to RISC OS 3.1
- Pointer to sprite area read via "Read_DynamicArea" rather than an absolute value (20*1024*1024), therefore should work on RISC PC machines.
- New demo version produced with all above features
- File recovery added. If you drag a file into the disc editor 'control' window, you are given the option to recover a dodgy file. This is performed by reading bytes from the file and then calling 'Disc Service' if an error is detected.
v1.00 (2nd April 1994)
- Fixed bug where desktop crashes if 'cancel' is clicked in registration window.
- Amended 'sprite memory claim' routine so that other applications workspace (ie. !SparkFS) shouldn't be corrupted.
v1.00 (18th Mar 1994)
- As GuardianPro version 5.11
- Removed 'rounding' bug where 1.6M discs where displayed as 2M with clone on.
- fixed bug in disc editor where pointer got drawn in the wrong place if the edit window had been moved.
- Blank map option added to disc editor 'disc' menu.
- Messages taken out and added to 'Messages' file.
- 'Scramble disc' facility added.
- Some windows and icons changed to give a more 'Acorn' consistent feel.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any
additional ideas for features.

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