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1991-02-28
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9[..........................................................]0110
Ç MAIN SCREEN
A close box has been provided. If clicked, and no file or disk
buffers are in use, you will be returned to the desktop. If
anything IS in memory, you will be asked to confirm or cancel.
The same is achieved by pressing Alternate/Q.
SHIFT/F10 is the "emergency escape". If running Supermon
normally, it will ignore anything in memory and quit.
If, however, you have entered Supermon because of a system crash
(a bomb), Supermon will return to the desktop preserving all
possible information such as crash point, register values,
stack pointers etc. This is provided as an "out" if after
entering Supermon you have lost control, such as no menu drop
downs, no slider bar etc. This can happen, as Supermon, on
intercepting a crash will try and maintain the system as much as
possible the way it is, for greater fault finding capabilities.
ALTERNATE KEY COMBINATIONS.
Supermon has always allowed the Ascii, Hex and Disassemble
displays to be called with CONTROL key combinations, but now
allows quite a few of the more often used functions to be called
with ALTERNATE/- key presses as well. Mostly these are the first
letter of the function, for easy remembering.
These are shown beside the entry in the drop down menu, except:
Alt/5 toggles to 50 Herz screen mode (colour only)
Alt/6 " " 60 " " " " "
Alt/I inverts the screen display
NEW FEATURE: When doing a "Search" of memory (Debugger drop down
menu or the Alt/F (for Find) option), a repeat is now available.
It was a real pain, when trying to find multiple occurrences, to
have to drop down the menu again, click on Search, get the entry
box, click on O.K etc. Now, pressing RETURN will redisplay the
box, pressing RETURN again will search again. This can be
repeated as often as wanted.
PRESSING ANY OTHER KEY OR SELECTING ANY OTHER FUNCTION WILL
CANCEL THIS SEQUENCE.
When in the disassembler display, the arrow keys may now be used
to scroll up and down a line at a time, exactly like the slider
bar arrows do.
The clock display is in 12 hour mode (by popular request). If
entering a new time, this must still be in 24 hour mode.
FUNCTION INTERRUPTS.
The following functions may now be aborted by pressing the
Alternate and Left Shift keys together:
FORMATTING
BAD SECTOR MARKING
DISK SEARCH
TRACE FILE
DIRECTORY INFORMATION
VERIFYING MEMORY BLOCKS
PRINTING OUT FROM SUPERMON
As you can see, all functions which might take a long time (or
"get lost" like Directory info if links are wrong).
NOTE: If aborting formatting, the drive light may stay on. Don't
worry, the motor is OFF.
Ç
SCREEN SAVER
In the Accessory editor, there is now an option to set the screen
saver time. This may be from 1 to 99 minutes.
If no key is pressed, and no mouse movement detected for the set
time, the screen will go into "attract" mode. In monochrome, this
simply inverts the screen every few seconds. In colour, the
colours will be rotated, producing some pretty, and some
sickening, screen displays. This very effectively prevents screen
"burn in". The advantages of this type of screen saver are:
1) No extra memory required. There are "pretty" ones, with
fire works etc. but these require 32K of memory to be set aside,
and let's face it, the screen saver is only on if you're not
there, normally.
2) Does not simply turn the screen off, which may cause
damage to your monitor, or cause you to flick the switch thinking
the thing was not on. (believe me, I've done it!)
MOUSE ACCELERATOR
Another item in the editor, as well as available through the
"mouse trap" function both in Supermon and from the accessory.
NORMAL is just that. FAST is twice the normal speed and SUPER is
4 times normal. HOWEVER, Supermons accelerator is just that
touch better than anyone elses (of course). This function can be
set in any resolution, but it assumes movements in the x and y
direction are for mono screens. When running in MEDIUM resolu
tion, Supermon changes back a gear in the vertical movement, and
when in LOW res., in BOTH hor. and vertical. In other words, Fast
becomes normal and Super becomes Fast. This is so that regardless
of resolution, the same mouse travel will produce the same screen
travel, both horizontally and vertically.
If you normally work in low res, but wish faster mouse travel,
set it for Super. This will actually produce double speed in both
horizontal and vertical movements.
Supermon will accelerate the mouse ONLY if you move MORE then 1
pixel per time interval. This interval is set on power up, but
may be altered by programs). This allows for slow and accurate
work to stay that way, and makes it pseudo proportional.
HARD DISK GUARDIAN
Another pre-set option. Whenever the hard disk is not accessed
for 15 seconds, the head will be moved over the "landing zone".
This is a track set aside for parking, which contains no data at
all. THE DISK IS NOT PARKED OR "SHIPPED", simply put over that
position. If the power is switched off (or fails), it is now
automatically parked. If the disk is bumped, it is as safe as
possible. As the landing zone is usually close to the beginning
of the disk, near the directory, no time is wasted on the next
disk access, in fact there is an overall (very small) time gain.
PARTITION INFORMATION AND PARKING
When in Supermon, call the 'Read sector' function, and simply
enter root or ROOT. Regardless of the drive actually selected,
Supermon will now read the so called root sector, containing the
partition information for the entire hard disk, which is NOT
sector zero. If you type PARK or park instead, the hard drive
will be parked, and for most, will have to be switched off then
on again before further access. This saves having to return to
the desktop and running a parking program.
Ç
VIRUS CHECK 1
Still remains the checking of the boot sector on power up.
VIRUS CHECK 2
This little feature (available only as a preset option) will
monitor the disk access vectors at regular intervals. Should it
detect a change in these vectors, (other than Supermon
originated) it will invert the screen and rapidly ring the bell
for several seconds. This means "hey you, check it out". It will
then REMOVE itself, having fulfilled its task. If you were, for
example, opening a non Supermon ramdisk at the time (why would
you?), you can simply continue, as this is a legitimate use of
the vectors. If not, BEWARE!!!! Find out what may be messing
around with disk access, as it may be something quite nasty.
VIRUS CHECK 3
This may be called from the Accessory or from under the Odds 'n
ends menu. It will prompt you to insert a disk in drive A. The
virus checker will ALWAYS default to drive A, as will
innoculating the disk. It will check this disk for bootsector
status, and report one of 8 possible conditions.
1) Disk is innoculated
2) Legitimate boot sector
3) Could be IBM format
4) Disk is safe, but not innoculated
5) ACTIVE bootsector, but seems safe
6) NON-ACTIVE, but seems suspect
7) ACTIVE boot sector, seems highly suspect
8) VIRUS FOUND!!!!!
The first 3 possibilities can be left alone, and numbers 4 and 6
may be safely immunised.
Numbers 5 and 7 could easily be legitimate bootsectors, and if
destroyed, could make the disk unusable. HOWEVER, I would
recommend that you check these out (see the manual).
Number 8 offers the option to keep the virus intact for study, or
to destroy it. If Supermon displays number 8, don't send it to
me, as it is obviously already catalogued. However, should
Supermon report a suspect disk, and IT DOES TURN OUT to be a
virus, please send it to me!
VIRUS CHECK 4
When booting with a disk formatted or quick wiped with Supermon,
you will see the message "This disk is 'Supermon' safe" displayed
on the screen. This is your guarantee that no virus has taken
over this disk. Other virus killers may report this as not
innoculated, BUT IT IS!
SYMBOLIC DEBUGGER
A symbolic debugger option has now been added. For full details
of this, refer to the section in the file "CHANGES" relating to
pages 39-42.
Ç
EXTENDED FUNCTIONS
This is an option in the accessory, and is automatically called
if the accessory is selected from within Supermon. It gives the
following options:
DRIVE: When selected, time display (if on) is switched off and
any future disk accesses will be displayed instead as:
Drive:| Read/Write| start sector| number of sectors
Particularly handy when trying to fix a "bad" disk
MOUSE X/Y: Will display the mouse hot spot X and Y position on
the screen. Very useful in drawing programs etc.
NONE: Cancels whatever option was previously on, and, if it was
on, will redisplay the time.
Note: selecting Time Display either from accessory or Supermon
Options menu will automatically cancel these options and start
the time display.
DRIVE B STEP RATE
This may be set in the editor, simply by clicking on it. On
powering up, the stepping time for drive B will be extended to 6
Milliseconds. This is for slower drives and works in all TOS
versions correctly.
MARK BAD SECTORS
A new option under Odds 'n Ends. This will read the entire disk
and mark off any unreadable sectors in the FATs (File allocation
table). This means that GemDOS will ignore these sectors,
allowing you to use the rest of the disk normally.
THIS FUNCTION ONLY APPLIES TO DRIVE "A". Even if drive B is the
currently active drive, bad sector marking will occur
automatically in drive A only!
BUT......... when formatting drive B, IF any bad sectors are
present, these WILL be marked off.
Please note that in the version of TOS 1.4 release date 22-2-89
TOS does not do this correctly!!! TOS 1.0 and 1.2 do not have
this at all. When formatting with Supermon, if one or more bad
sectors are detected, Supermon will automatically finish by going
through the bad sector marking routine, so you do not have to
call this seperately at formatting time.
VOLUME LABELS
Please check in the CHANGES document under formatter for details
on this.
That about sums up the totally new features, in the file marked
CHANGES will be additional information which I suggest you
read/print, as some of the changes to existing options are rather
drastic.
Will Visser
