Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection/BS1 part 60.zip/BS1 part 60/QBtools 1.5.adf/Release-Notes

Text File | 1991-04-06 | 10KB | 265 lines

                          SKID ROW

                          presents

                   Quarterback Tools V1.5


            March 28, 1991

Thanks for purchasing Quarterback Tools!  All of us at Central Coast
Software are grateful for your support.  This document lists changes to the
program and other notes which didn't make it into the manual.

We tried very hard to make Quarterback Tools as reliable and as robust as
possible.  We have tested it extensively on many different Amigas and under
a wide variety of conditions.  But we cannot guarantee that it will solve
every problem which can arise with your disk drives.  Quarterback Tools has
evolved over a period of time, and its features and capabilities are
growing all the time.  We welcome your comments and suggestions for
improving the product.

If you experience problems with Quarterback Tools, please contact us about
the situation.  We need to know your exact hardware configuration and as
much information about the problem as you can provide.

            TROUBLE REPORT FORM

We have included on the Tools master disk a copy of our Tools Trouble Report
Form. The information requested is needed by Tech Support to understand the
problem you are reporting.  You can send the form to us by mail or FAX (303)
526-0520, or can send it to our BBS at [phone].  If you call us to
report a problem, at [phone], you can expedite the process by
answering the questions before placing the call.

****************************************************************************

        A WORD TO THE WISE FROM TOOLS TECH SUPPORT

The best piece of advise I can give is this: Don't get caught without a
backup.  NEVER!!  Let's look a recent call to tech support.  A customer
was in the middle of reorganizing his hard drive with QUARTERBACK TOOLS,
when the power failed.  Not a fault of Tools, but still a problem.  Tech
support suggested that he restore his hard drive from his backup.  Unfor-
tunately, he had not taken the time to make a backup.  We hear this all too
often.  BACKUP FIRST, THEN REORGANIZE!!!

****************************************************************************

            Changes in V1.5

We changed the way Tools determines the type of filing system in use on a
volume to correct a problem with some types of device drivers.

Tools now checks the contents of the boot block, and corrects the boot
block in the Repair mode if the boot block has become corrupted.

WARNING - If you attempt to "REPAIR" a Kickstart volume or an AMAX volume,
Tools will change the boot block of the volume to DOS0 or DOS1, thereby
making the original volume useless for its original purpose.  Beware!

Tools now attempts to display the name of a drawer entry which has a bad
checksum.  Of course, the name may be garbage in this case.

Tools now displays the version of the device driver on the Volume
Statistics window.

Tools now correctly handles the case where there are no active volumes.


            Changes in V1.4

We found and fixed a problem in COPYing files from a FFS volume to a
different volume.

We added a check for the file BAD.BLOCKS during REPAIR modes so that bad
blocks already found will not be reported again, resulting in bitmap errors
and other anomalies.

            Changes in V1.3e

We found and fixed a problem which affected reorganization of non-floppy
partitions which are 99% full.  We also corrected a problem with long
path names and file names overwriting the window's right margin.


               BLITZDISK

Disk cache programs such as BLITZDISK are known to interfere with Tools.  If
you use such a cache program, you MUST disable it before running Quarterback
Tools.  If you do NOT, the result may be a scrambled disk.


            ATTENTION 2090/2090A USERS

We have found that some users of the 2090 or 2090A hard disk controllers
using ST506 (non-SCSI) disk drives are experiencing a high error rate when
using Tools to find map out and unreadable blocks.  The problems always
shows up as an excessively high number of bad blocks at the very high end of
the highest partition on the disk drive.

The problem arises when the high cylinder parameter of the mountlist entry
for the highest partition on the drive is set too high.  This causes Tools
(and AmigaDOS) to try to access cylinders beyond the useful area of the
drive.  The hard disk driver then appears to lock out further access to the
drive, causing other errors.  The solution is to lower the high cylinder
parameter by one or two cylinders, thereby limiting Tools (and AmigaDOS) to
valid areas of the drive.  However, you should only change the high cylinder
parameter if you know what you are doing.  YOU MUST REFORMAT THE DRIVE
FOLLOWING SUCH A CHANGE.  THIS WILL CAUSE ALL DATA ON THE DRIVE TO BE LOST.
BE CERTAIN YOU BACKUP ALL FILES BEFORE ATTEMPTING SUCH A CHANGE!!!

             ICONS "DISAPPEAR"

Some users have reported that after reorganizing a volume, Workbench refuses
to display some of the icons known to exist on the volume.  The icon files
are actually present on the volume, but Workbench refuses to display them.

We are still studying this problem, which occurs only rarely.  In the mean
time, if it happens to you, we recommend deleting the .info file on the
affected drawer.  Then reboot the Amiga.  Workbench will rebuild the .info
file if it cannot find one, which seems to cure the problem.


              RAM: DEVICE USAGE

Quarterback Tools does NOT work with the RAM: device.  That device is not a
standard AmigaDOS device, and is not recognized by Tools.  Of course, there
is little reason to use Tools with RAM: anyway!


             HARD AND SOFT LINKS

Commodore has promised a new filing system feature called "links", to be a
part of Workbench 2.0.  Unfortunately, this new feature is poorly
documented, and, as of today, is still not fully implemented.  As a result,
we chose not to support links, since we would be shooting at a moving
target.  Tools will support links in a future release, after Commodore
completes and releases Workbench 2.0.


             TOOLS ICONS

Quarterback Tools comes with two different icons.  The primary icon is one
which looks good with the standard Workbench 1.3 colors.  The alternate
icon is designed to look good under the "new and improved" colors of
Workbench 2.0.  If you run under WB2.0, you can change to the alternate
icon for a better look.  Simply copy the icon named:

    2.0ToolIcon.info

in the icons drawer of the Tools master disk.  Be sure to rename the icon
to Tools.info.

             REPORT ICON

The report produced by "FIND AND REPAIR" does not have an associated icon.


            NON-STANDARD FILE SYSTEMS

There are some "non-standard" public domain file systems that let you
simulate a floppy file system on a hard drive.  These should be removed
BEFORE you try to reorganize the hard drive as the  results are
unpredictable.

          RESTORING (UNDELETING) FILES

Some Tools users have asked why it takes so long to find a file to undelete.
Tools was written with the future in mind, mainly the Workbench 2.0
FastFileSystem.  The reason that Tools scans the whole partition even if you
know the file name you wish to undelete is that under 2.0, the file header
can be stored ANYWHERE on that partition.  Under the older filesystems, the
file header is always stored near the root block, so that a scan of that
area of the partition allows the file to be found quickly.  The method Tools
uses works on all filesystems, but may be slower than some other utilities
under Workbench 1.3.2 or earlier versions.

            AREXX EXAMPLE

Here is an AREXX script, courtesy of Charlie Fair, which can be used to
run Tools via the Arexx interface.

 /* starttools.rexx  -  Starts up Qbtools and reorgs DF0: */
 /* Copyright (c) 1990 AmiSoft */
 /*     To use the Arexx interface, start Quarterback Tools
     from CLI or from a script.  An Arexx program can
     communicate with Quarterback Tools via the address
     command:
                ADDRESS 'QBT_AREXX'
     Quarterback Tools responds to the following commands
     and produces the following results:

     EXIT          Terminates Quarterback Tools.
     VOLUME name   Selects volume to process.
     DRIVE name    Selects drive to process.
     LOAD          Loads previously saved options.
     SAVE          Saves options.
     ABOUT         Returns Quarterback Tools version.
     FRAGMENTATION Performs fragmentation check on selected
                   volume and returns count of fragmented files.
     REORGANIZE    Reorganizes selected volume.
     MARK          Finds and marks bad blocks, and returns
                   count of bad blocks found.
     FIND          Finds volume problems.  Returns count
                   and severity.
     REPAIR        Attempts to repair volume problems.
     FORMAT        Formats volume safely.
     UNFORMAT      Attempts to unformat volume.
     SCREEN mode   Sets screen mode to INTERACTIVE, INFORMATIVE,
                   or QUIET.
     MEMORY usage  Sets memory usage to LOW, MEDIUM, or HIGH.
     OPTIMIZE mode Sets optimization mode to WORKBENCH or CLI.
     AMIGADOS mode Sets AmigaDOS mode to ENABLED or DISABLED
*************************************************************************

*/
trace r

ADDRESS COMMAND 'run sys:qbt/tools -r' /* Start Tools with rexx option */

say 'QB Tools is now running Rexx, screen controls are now inactive'

do 10 while ~show('Ports','QBT_AREXX')
end

address 'QBT_AREXX' 'OPTIMIZE WORKBENCH'
address 'QBT_AREXX' 'DRIVE DF0:'
address 'QBT_AREXX' 'REORGANIZE'

say 'quiting QBT_AREXX'
address 'QBT_AREXX' 'exit'

rx 'ADDRESS qbt_arexx "exit"' */ /*this line will exit a run away
pgm*/


            TESTED SYSTEMS

We have tested Tools on the following Amiga systems, among others:

    Commodore 3000/030
    Commodore 2000 Hurricane 030/882, Kronos controller
    Commodore 1000
    Commodore 500
    Commodore 2091
    Commodore 2090a
    Commodore RAD:
    C Ltd. ScsiDos 3.0
    C Ltd. Kronos
    Supra series II v 1.10d


***************************************************************************

Don't forget to return your product registration card to us if you want to
hear about upgrades to this product or possibly free bug fixes.  If we
don't hear from you, you won't hear from us!

Thanks for your support.

George Chamberlain
Central Coast Software