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Panorama - Disk 19D (1987-07-22)(Pacific North-West Amigas Club)[WB].zip
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PMBBUC1.0
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pmbbuc.doc
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1987-07-16
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141 lines
NAME
pmbbuc -- recovers system time after warm boots
VERSION
1.0 released 7/14/87.
Copyright (C) 1987 by Kenneth Chiu. Permission is hereby granted to
use this program in any way you see fit, as long as the copyright
notice is not removed.
SYNOPSIS
pmbbuc [-v] [-r] [-s <seconds>] [-p <priority>] [-h <handler>]
DESCRIPTION
Pmbbuc attempts to recover the system time by searching for a tag in
memory. This tag will only be found if pmbbuc has been run
previously, and the Amiga has not been cold-started since then.
To use pmbbuc, execute it from your Startup-Sequence. It is not
critical where in your Startup-Sequence pmbbuc is run, but for best
results, you should execute it first. This is because it took some
amount of time to reboot, and pmbbuc adds an increment to the time it
finds in RAM to account for it. The more consistent your boot time,
the better the accuracy, and placing it first usually works best.
When pmbbuc is run, it searches for a tag in RAM. If it finds it, it
assumes this is the time since the reboot, and it will set the system
time to this plus an increment. If it doesn't find a tag, it returns
WARN, so you can use an If command to detect this.
After the search, a new tag is allocated, and a small daemon is
loaded to keep this tag current.
The options are:
-v Be verbose.
-r Clear the memory of any old tags laying around. This
is necessary if you run pmbbuc, then reboot without
running pmbbuc, and then decide you want to use
pmbbuc. -r will remove any old tags that may be left
from previous sessions.
-s (seconds> Add <seconds> to the time found in RAM. <seconds>
will be about how long it takes from the time the
reboot starts to the moment pmbbuc is executed. This
will depend on a number of factors, such as file
fragmentation. This value should be determined
empirically. 17 seems to work well for me, and is
the default. The valid range is from 0 to 60.
-p <priority> Link the handler into the input handler chain at
priority <priority>. Intuition is at 50. A priority
of 100 seems to work fine, and is the default.
<priority> must be from -128 to 127 inclusive.
-h <handler> Specify a path for the handler. The default is
l:pmbbuc-handler. Avoid a filename and directory
combination that may allow you to execute it
accidentally, like c:hand. This would most likely
crash the system.
INSTALLATION
Place pmbbuc in some directory along your search path. Place
pmbbuc-handler in l: (usually sys:l or df0:l, etc.), unless the
-h option is used. Execute pmbbuc somewhere in your startup-script
(preferrably first). Adjust the values to work well on your system.
EXAMPLES
pmbbuc -s 30 -p 0
Your system takes a long time to boot, so add 30 seconds instead of
18. Also, you are very paranoid about my daemon having too much
power, so put it at priority 0.
pmbbuc -v -h c:cd
You like seeing a bunch of meaningless data printed to your screen.
This makes you feel like you know what is going on in your life.
Also, you like to play stupid jokes on your friends, because every
time they use your computer and type cd, the pmbbuc handler is run
instead, and your system crashes.
pmbbuc
You're just like me. Exactly. A clone.
Well, actually, maybe you just filezapped all my defaults.
TECHNICAL NOTES
The accuracy of this program depends on the input device sending out
timer events up to the moment of reboot. Once the reboot starts, the
same sequence of events should happen every time. Thus if you have a
disk in both drives during one boot, but only one drive during
another reboot, you may get some error. Also, there may be some
conditions where the input device has stopped, but the reboot
sequence has not started yet. This could cause more significant
errors.
For this program to work, a region of memory must be found that is
not written to during reboot. High memory seems to work best, and
pmbbuc starts at the highest memory address it finds. People with
various system configurations may find that this doesn't work well.
But these people can probably afford battery-backed clocks anyway.
Pmbbuc is very fat, but the handler and tag only use 136 bytes.
FILES
pmbbuc the tag finder and handler loader
pmbbuc-handler the input device handler
pmbbuc.doc this file
BUGS
If the loading process fails, not all the memory is returned.
Robustness may be lacking for people with expansion memory, and/or
expansion devices.
AUTHOR
Kenneth Chiu
2921 Bagley Drive
Kokomo, IN 46902