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============================================= || || || !ProCopy Version 2.05 || || || || M u l t i p l e d i s c c o p i e r || || || ============================================= Copyright D.J.Holden 1994,1995 ********************************** THIS PROGRAM REQUIRES RISC-OS 3+ ********************************** _______ ____|__ | (R) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER Contents 1.1 Licence to use 1 1:2 Registration file 1 1.3 Licence to copy 2 1.2 A.S.P. Message 2 Introduction 1:4 Use with RISC-OS 2 3 1:5 How it works 3 1:6 Formatting 4 1:7 Types of disc 4 1:8 Disc images 4 1:9 Compression 4 Using ProCopy 2:1 Getting Started 5 2:2 Read 5 2:3 Write 5 2:4 Options 5 2:5 Preset 5 2:6 Clear 5 2:7 Info 5 2:8 Quit 5 2:9 A short demonstration 6 2:10 Counting Copies 6 2:11 Repeat copies 7 2:12 Clearing an Image 7 2:13 Read and Write drives 7 2:14 Background operation 7 2:15 Pausing 8 2:16 Auto copying 8 2:17 Number of copies 9 2:18 Auto and Normal copying 9 2:19 Concurrent operation 10 2:20 Key shortcuts 10 Saving and Loading disc images 3:1 How it Works 11 3:2 Saving the Image 11 3:3 Reloading an Image 11 The Options window 4:1 Background 12 4:2 Verify 12 4:3 Format 12 4:4 Confirm 13 4:4 Preferences 13 4:5 Saving/Loading the options 14 The Preset list 5:1 The Preset List window 15 5:2 Adding images to the list 15 5:3 Saving/Loading the Preset List 15 5:4 Deleting items 15 Problems and Suggestions 6:1 Reporting errors 16 6:2 Partly filled discs 16 6:3 Formatting 16 6:4 DOS discs 17 6:5 640K ADFS discs 17 6:6 OS and Hardware compatibility 17 6:7 'D' and 'E' format discs 18 6:8 Disc errors 18 6:9 Memory usage 18 6:10 Compressing disc images 19 6:11 Problems 19 6:12 Other formats 20 6:13 Filename in the Preset List 20 Appendix Keys used with icon clicks 21 The Preset List file 22 Use with Autocopiers 22 Copy protected discs 23 Sprites 23 This program is not Public Domain, it is sssss h h aa rrrrr eeeee w w aa rrrrr eeeee s h h a a r r e w w a a r r e sssss hhhhhh a a rrrrr eeee w w w a a rrrrr eeee s h h aaaaaa r r e w w w aaaaaa r r e sssss h h a a r e eeeee ww ww a a r r eeeee Shareware is NOT 'free software'. It is copyrighted, commercial software, just like any other normal programs that you buy. Shareware is simply a try before you buy distribution method. Using a Shareware program without paying is software piracy, and carries exactly the same penalties as using any other illegally copied program. 1.1 Licence to use You are licensed to evaluate this program for a period of Thirty Days. At the end of this time you must either stop using it or send a cheque for Fifteen Pounds to me at the address overleaf. Use after this time is a breach of this licence and, as well as being morally reprehensible, is now a criminal offence. The standard registration Fee of £15 permits full commercial use on a single computer. If you intend to use !ProCopy on more than a single machine then you will need either a Site or Company Licence. Use on more than one computer without the appropriate Licence is a breach of Copyright and I reserve the right to take action against any organisation or individual who does so. ProCopy is so invaluable for user groups, clubs, in fact, any any organisation that needs to make multiple copies of discs that under some circumstances eg. non commercial use by a charity or other non profit making organisation, I may be prepared to waive or reduce the Site Licence fee or permit use on multiple machines for a single Licence fee, or even, in exceptional circumstances, reduce the basic Single User Fee. If you think your organisation or club may be entitled to such a reduction please send full details with an SAE for my reply. 1:2 Registration file When you register I will send the latest version and your personal 'PC_Reg' file which will disable the annoying start up message and put your name or company name in the 'Info' box instead of the word 'Unregistered'. You will also get a laser printed Manual. The PC_Reg file contains your encrypted name and will work with any future version of !ProCopy. This means that, provided you remove the PC_reg file first you can pass a copy of !ProCopy on to your friends, or obtain a later version from a PD library or BBS. * * * * DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER * * * * To simplify registration I have made the last page of this Manual a registration form. Please use this when you register as it helps me to keep my records in order. I am always happy to answer queries or listen to suggestions even if you haven't yet registered. Important - Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that this program operates correctly and without error no responsibility can be taken for any corruption or loss of data or any other problems consequent upon its use. 1.2 Licence to copy Any private individual may distribute copies of !ProCopy provided this is done without charge for the program or documentation. If you charge any fee for copying this program, whether in money or in kind, or if you control any media, including bulletin boards, which distributes software you are not permitted to distribute this program without prior permission of the Author. This permission will normally be granted with only minor restrictions. If you wish to distribute this program please write to the address below enclosing a SAE and a disc so I can send you the latest version. Distribution by any organisation without this permission will be treated as Breach of Copyright. You must not make any charge for the program, although you may make a charge to cover media and distribution costs. No alterations may be made to the program, ancillary files, or documentation and you must include the text file version of the full Manual. You are not permitted to distribute any printed Manuals or to distribute any version of the Manual other than as an ASCII text file on disc. Use of this program for any Commercial purpose or for the Demonstration or Promotion of any product or service without prior written permission of the Author is Absolutely Forbidden. I reserve the right to charge a Fee for granting permission. It is strictly forbidden to distribute copies of an PC_Reg file or any version of the program which does not display the 'Start Up' message. David Holden 39 Knighton Park Road Sydenham London SE26 5RN 0181 778 2659 1.3 A.S.P. Message This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the Shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442-9427, U.S.A. or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536 or FAX 616-788-2765. -=-=- Introduction -=-=- ProCopy is a program for making multiple copies of a disc. It is not intended to copy discs which are copy protected, nor as a replacement for the normal Archimedes 'Backup' to make a copy of a single disc. It is designed for clubs or other organisations where many copies of a subscription disc or circular need to be made but where the cost of an expensive bulk disc copier (normally around £2,500) is not justified. What Procopy will do is to save a great deal of time and a lot of disc swapping if you want several (or several dozen) copies. It is a much enhanced version of a program called !Copier that I wrote for Archimedes World some years ago. Since that time it has been continually developed and, although, it has much in common with the earlier program, it is not just a slightly rehashed version. This is the first official Shareware release of ProCopy although various Beta Test versions have been in regular use for a long while by various people, notably APDL, The ARM Club PD Library, and many others. Because this new release has been extensively re-written it is possible that minor 'bugs' may have crept in. There is a vast array of options and functions available and the logic involved in this is highly complex. Although the 'core' program is 100% reliable it is possible that minor errors could have appeared in which may cause problems with certain combinations of options. If you do find something of this type please do let me know exactly what the problem is so that I can deal with it. 1:4 Use with RISC-OS 2 Earlier versions worked with both RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3. However RO2 compatibility has now been dropped and the program will operate only with RO3. Acorn have, in fact, now advised all developers to stop supporting RO2, but the main reason that I have decided not to continue to make ProCopy work with RO2 is because many of the routines need to be different with the obsolete OS, and this adds to program size and complexity and reduces speed. If you really do require a version of ProCopy to use on a RO2 machine then please let me know. Although I don't anticipate that anyone needing a program of this type will still be using RO2 I do know of ay least one developer who has a machine fitted with RO2 for compatibility testing and sometimes uses that machine for disc copying, so there may be a need and I am prepared to try to accommodate you. 1:5 How it works ProCopy works by taking a complete copy of the master disc as a 'disc image'. This can then be transferred to another disc to create a perfect copy of the original. This is actually what 'Backup' does but the advantage of Procopy is that it doesn't 'throw away' the disc image after the copy has been made. The image is kept in memory so you can make as many copies as you need without swapping discs and reloading the original each time as you would need to do with Backup. The disadvantage is that you must have enough free memory to hold the disc image. Unlike Backup Procopy can't copy a disc in two 'bites'. In practice this means you must have at least 2Mb to copy 800K discs and it is best to have 4Mb if you want to copy 1.6Mb discs. It is just possible to copy 1.6Mb discs on a 2Mb machine if you make sure no other applications are running and all unwanted modules are 'killed'. 1:6 Formatting The other advantage with Procopy is that you don't need to format discs first! Procopy can format discs before copying, and it can format them faster than the normal Acorn routine. The cycle of formatting, copying and verifying (yes, it does that too!) can take less than half the time required for each disc compared with the 'normal' method. 1:7 Types of disc Procopy will work with 640K and 800K ADFS ('E' or 'F' format) and 720K DOS discs. It will also work with 1.6 Mb ADFS and 1.44 Mb DOS if you have a machine with the required hardware, namely a hi-density drive as original equipment. It should work with 'third party' hi-density upgrades which replace ADFS drive 0. 1:8 Disc images A major feature of ProCopy is that the disc image can be saved on a hard disc as a file. This can then be reloaded into ProCopy so that further copies can be made. You do not, in fact, even need to keep the original floppy disc. Once the disc image is saved on your hard disc you can recreate the original at any time. Not only is this a very quick and convenient way of duplication but many hundreds of disc images can be kept on a single hard disc (or removable media such as a Syquest drive) which reduces the storage space required. 1:9 Compression At one time I did test a version of ProCopy which used LZW compression to reduce the size of a disc image before saving it to a hard disc. The image was then decompressed when it was reloaded. It was decided that this feature was not a good idea and so it has never appeared in a distributed version. There were several reasons why compression was abandoned and why I doubt very much if I shall reintroduce it in the future. It did, of course, involve a time delay and require extra RAM, but as compression could be disabled these were not important considerations. However, most people who distribute discs now use some form of compression such as ArcFS, SparkFS etc. Attempting to compress a disc image which is filled with files which have already been compressed results in a disc image which is larger than the uncompressed original. Users of this type of program will be familiar with this phenomena which happens when you try to compress a file which has already been compressed in some way. As this added considerably to program size and complexity it was felt that it would be better if users who wished to compress their disc images did so 'externally' using one of the P.D. or commercial compression programs or filing systems. ArcFS or SparkFS can be used for this, although both need quite a lot of free RAM which means that you really need a 4Mb machine to compress even an 800K disc image, and for a 1.6 Mb disc you really need more than 4Mb. It might be better to use Computer Concepts CFS, and although I don't normally like this program this may be one place where it is preferable to the others. -=-=- Using ProCopy -=-=- 2:1 Getting Started To load Procopy double-click on the program icon in the usual way and it will install itself on the icon bar. At this stage the icon will be a feint grey outline of a disc. You can also start ProCopy by double-clicking on a Disc Image file, but at first you won't have any of these! Click MENU (the middle mouse button) on the Procopy icon and the main menu will appear. 2:2 Read If you click SELECT on this this the 'Read Disc' window will open. At the top will be shown the name of the current disc image, or 'None' if one has not yet been loaded. Below that is shown the number of the drive from which the disc image will be loaded. This can be changed using the two 'bump' icons. Most machines will have only a single floppy drive and so you will not be able to change it. At the bottom left is a small 'status' icon. At this stage it will probably show 'All', but if you read a disc in Multi Tasking mode it will count the tracks as they are read. At the bottom right is a large button marked 'Read Disc'. This is the 'go' button and clicking on it will read the image of the disc in the selected drive. 2:3 Write At this stage this will be shaded. It will be described later. 2:4 Options Clicking on this will open the 'Options' window. This will be described fully later in its own section. This also leads to a sub-menu with toe items, 'Save' and 'Restore'. These duplicate functions in the Options window and will again be described in that section. 2:5 Preset This opens the Preset List window. Again this is rather complex and so is described in its own section. 2:6 Clear This clears a disc image from memory. As none is yet loaded clicking on it will have no effect. 2:7 Info This opens the usual 'Info' window. If you have not yet registered then the bottom icon will show 'Unregistered', otherwise it will display the name of the registered user. 2:8 Quit As you might expect, this closes down the ProCopy application. 2:9 A short demonstration Click MENU on the Procopy icon to display the menu and select Read and the Read Window will open. Put an 800K floppy disc with some files on it in drive :0 and click on 'Read Disc' in this window. The drive will start up, the disc name will appear in the window and the disc image will be read. When this has been done the Read Window will close and you will see that the ProCopy icon has changed to a solid blue disc with the word 'ready' beneath it. In fact when an image is loaded the icon on the icon bar will be the same as the file icon for a disc image of that size. These are identical except for the colours, which are - 640K Black 800K Blue 1.6 Mb Orange 720K DOS Red 1.44 Mb DOS Green Bring up the main menu again and click on 'Options' to open the Options Window. This consists of lots of icons to set all the various options On or Off. It is described fully later but for the present just set the following items. In the 'Format' box set 'Always' to 'On'. In the 'Background' box set all items to 'Off'. In the 'Verify' box set 'Always' to 'On'. When this is done you can close the window. Go back to the Menu and you will find 'Write' is no longer shaded. Click on 'Write' and the Write Window will appear. Put an unformatted 1Mb/800K disc in drive :0 and click on 'Write Disc' which is the large 'button' in the centre of the window. If you don't have a spare unformatted disc use any disc of the correct type, even if it has been formatted differently. You will see the word 'Waiting' at the bottom of the Write Window change to 'Formatting' and the text under the icon will change from 'Ready' to 'Format', The disc drive will start up and the disc will be formatted to 800K. During this the mouse pointer will change to an Hourglass and the word 'All' will appear in the box after 'Formatting'. This is because we have set the 'Background' options to 'Off'. More about this later. As soon as the disc has been formatted (assuming this was successful) the word 'Formatting' will change to 'Copying' in the Write Window, the text under the icon will change to 'Copy' and the disc image will be copied to the disc. Once this operation is complete there will be a further change to 'Verifying'. When this has been done the mouse pointer will return to normal, and if the disc is verified without errors the text will change back to 'Waiting' and 'Ready' to show that it is ready for the next operation. If you click on the drive icon you will see that the disc is now an exact copy of the original. 2:10 Counting Copies If you look at the Write Window after copying the disc you will see that the 'Copies' box now contains the figure '1' to tell you that you have successfully made one copy. If the disc had failed to verify then it would have been counted in the 'Faulty' box. There are two reasons for counting discs in this way. Most obviously it saves you the trouble of keeping count manually. The secondary purpose is that counting good and faulty discs separately allows you to check that you haven't accidentally put a faulty disc on to the 'good' pile when making a lot of copies, which is very easy to do. When you have made the number of copies you require it is simple to check that the number of discs in the 'bad' pile is the same as the number of faulty copies shown, if not you have mixed a bad disc in with the good ones! Most of the time this will be zero but Procopy is deliberately more fussy about the quality of discs it passes than the normal Verify routine so you may get the occasional reject. Quite often these will then reformat and verify successfully and Procopy can in fact carry out this operation automatically to minimise rejects. 2:11 Repeat copies It should now be fairly obvious that to make more copies you just insert another blank disc in drive 0 and click on 'Write Disc' in the Write Window again, repeating the operation as many times as required. If you want to close the window between making copies you can do so and then reopen it. In fact Procopy has an even simpler way to make a number of copies and this will be described later under 'Auto copying'. 2:12 Clearing an Image Procopy normally takes only 80K of RAM for itself but it needs a lot more when holding a disc image in memory. Because RAM is allocated in 32K 'chunks' on 4Mb pre Risc PC machines it will actually take 96K on one of these models. If you have finished copying a particular disc but haven't yet finished with Procopy and so don't want to Quit you can force Procopy to 'unload' a disc image and give back this RAM. Just click on 'Clear' on the Menu and Procopy will revert to its 'Waiting' state taking only 80K 2:13 Read and Write drives Most Archimedes computers probably have only a single floppy disc drive. However if you do have more than one you can select the source and destination drives for the copy operation. You will see the drive number shown in the Read and Write windows. Just click on the arrows beside this to change it. Naturally if you don't have more than one drive this won't work. Note that the Read and Write drives can be different, changing one does not alter the other. 2:14 Background operation The Reading, Writing, Formatting and Verifying operations can all be carried out as multi tasking background operations if required. This enables you to do other things on the desktop while copying discs if you wish. The disadvantage of this is that because of the need to poll the Wimp and let other programs have a chance to operate everything will take longer. In fact a complete Format/Copy/Verify operation will take nearly 50% longer compared with the time taken if the operations are not multi-tasking. Also because many of the operations take a certain amount of time, for example formatting a disc track, there will be a noticeable delay when carrying out other tasks and desktop operation may become a bit 'jerky'. However you may prefer this to losing control of the computer completely for a couple of minutes while a disc is being copied. Because of this each operation can be separately defined as multi tasking or not. This enables you to choose your own compromise between speed of operation and the amount of time you will lose control of the computer. As seen in the demonstration, when background operations are switched off the mouse pointer changes to an Hourglass while an operation is being carried out and the 'progress' box in the Read or Write window says 'All'. When you have chosen that an operation is to be carried out as a background task the mouse pointer will not change and you will see the disc tracks being counted in the 'progress' box if the appropriate window is open. You can mix background and non background operations if you wish, Procopy will switch between modes as required. You can even open the Options Window and change mode while Procopy is working, although the new method of operation will not take effect until the next time the operation is carried out. 2:15 Pausing You will see that there is a button marked 'Pause' to the left of the Write Disc button in the Write Window. If you click on this during a background operation then the operation will be temporarily halted until you click on the Pause button again, when it will continue exactly where it stopped. During this the legend under the Procopy icon will change to 'Pause' to remind you of what is happening. 2:16 Auto copying Auto copying is a way of making a predetermined number of copies without needing to repeatedly check the number completed. Above the Write Disc button you will see a writeable icon marked 'Number of Copies' in which you can enter the quantity you require. For example, if you need twenty copies click on this box to make the caret appear there and enter the number 20. As soon as you have done this and pressed RETURN copying will commence. Alternatively you can click on the 'Auto' icon instead of pressing RETURN Unlike 'normal' copying, as soon as this is done the Write Window will close (unless you have set the option to keep it open). As before operations can be carried out either as background or foreground tasks. As the Write Window remains closed progress can't be displayed so to remind you that Procopy is working the legend under the icon will change to 'Auto'. If you wish to have a visual display of progress you can, of course, simply re-open the Write Window. As soon as the disc has been copied the computer will 'beep'. What happens now depends upon whether you have selected 'Confirm Write' in the Options Window. If you have selected 'Confirm Write' as soon as a copy is completed the Write Window will reopen. To make the next copy insert another disc and click on 'Auto'. Unlike clicking on 'Write Disc' you will not be asked for confirmation, even if you have selected this in the Options Window. If you have not selected 'Confirm Write' the Write Window will not re-open. Instead the Procopy icon will change to an animation of putting a new disc into the drive. You don't need to do anything except remove the completed disc and insert a new one. Procopy will detect you have changed discs and begin making the next copy. You may not always want the program to start up straight away when you insert a new disc so if you click on the icon to open the Write Window at this point you can select 'Pause'. The main difference between using Pause at this point and any other is that to re-start you should click on 'Auto' instead of 'Pause' again. The disc change detection works with any computer using RISC-OS 3 but the system used on older models not fitted with a hi density drive is somewhat crude. If you have an older model you may prefer to set Confirm On when using auto copy. Note that the operation of 'Confirm Write' is different depending upon whether you are using normal or auto copying. With auto copying Confirm simply means that you will need to click on 'Auto' before a disc is copied, with normal copying you will have to confirm separately after you have clicked on 'Write Disc'. If a disc fails to verify correctly after copying and the Write Window is closed then an Error message will be displayed to make sure that you have realised that the disc is faulty. 2:17 Number of copies This cycle of operations will continue until you have made the number of copies previously entered in the Write Window. In fact you can change this if you wish, even after copying has begun, so if you decide you need a couple of extra's you can alter the required number. When the last copy has been made the Write Window will not appear again, just a message to tell you that the required number of copies has been made. However if you do want more you can either open it from the Menu and increase the number or simply click on 'Write Disc'. When in Auto copying mode clicking SELECT on the Procopy icon will always open the Write Window so you can watch progress if you choose. WARNING - Don't forget that when Auto copying without requiring confirmation before each copy is made Procopy will start working AS SOON AS A NEW DISC IS INSERTED. If you don't intend this to happen use Pause until you are ready to continue. 2:18 Differences between Auto and Normal copying At first it might seem that the only real difference is that with Auto copying you enter the number of copies required first you don't need to click on anything as you insert each new disc. Although these are the most obvious differences and copies are made in the same way the two methods are intended to be used for slightly different purposes. Normal mode would probably only be used when the main task you are carrying out is copying discs. If you are not carrying out any of the operations in the background it will copy at the highest possible speed. As you are required to click on the icon to start each new cycle you can use this 'break' to carry out other tasks. There is a similar 'break' when waiting for a new disc to be inserted in Auto mode, but repeatedly checking the drive to see if the disc has been changed does take quite a large slice of the available processing time so it is not very satisfactory unless you use 'Pause'. Auto mode is better when copying discs is the secondary task. For this reason the window is normally removed as soon as possible. You will only be prompted when you are required to change discs or if an error occurs. If you wish to carry out a task and don't want the delay caused by the background copying operations to occur you can click on the Procopy icon to open the Write Window and then use 'Pause' to halt the operation until you are ready for it to continue. Used in this way you can copy discs with the minimum of interference with your main task and the minimum of action on the part of the operator. Please Note: I have so far assumed that you have not altered any of the Options from their default settings. If you have then some things might not happen as described. ProCopy is designed to be extremely flexible in the way it operates, and this manual would become almost unintelligible if all possible alternatives were described all the time. Plesae see the chapter on the Options Window for a full description of these. 2:19 Concurrent operation Until now I have described proCopy operating in its normal or 'consective' mode where the operations, Formatting, Copying and Verifying, are carried out one after the other. In theory it might be possible to make the program work faster if all the operations were carried out on each track before stepping to the next. This should be faster as the drive head would only need to step once across the disc instead of up to three times with consecutive operations. Although the option is offered, so far the practice does not seem to be following the theory. Full concurrent operation, formatting, copying and verifying each track, has not proven successful and the compromise system of first formatting and then copying and verifying at the same time is slightly slower than consecutive operations. I shall continue to develop this as it will almost certainly be possible to increase the speed, although this may require slight changes to the disc format which would result in a disc which in normal use is slightly slower than the format used now. However, because I do intend to improve it and because it does function, albeit imperfectly, I have included the option. During concurrent operations the text under the icon will show either 'Copy', 'F/C', 'C/V', or 'F/C/V' depending upon which functions are to be carried out. 2:20 Key shortcuts So far I have shown all ProCopy operations being carried out by selecting from the menu or by clicking on buttons in a window. However, most of the main functions, reading from and writing to discs etc., can be carried out by simply clicking on the ProCopy icon, with or without the use of certain extra keys. These keys will not be described here but are shown in table form in the Appendix where they can more easily be found for reference. -=-=- Saving and Loading disc images -=-=- 3:1 How it Works You have seen how Procopy can make multiple copies of a disc but the 'master' has been a normal floppy disc. Sometimes you may have a disc which you often need to copy, but you don't want to make the copies all at once. Procopy can save the complete disc image of the master disc as a disc file on your hard disc from where it can be reloaded very quickly when needed. Obviously you will need a hard disc to make use of this because not only is it not possible to fit an uncompressed disc image on to a disc of the same size, but there is no advantage when reloading it compared with simply reading the original disc. 3:2 Saving the Image You will notice that 'Write' on the Menu has an arrow which leads to a 'Save' window. In this window is a box containing the disc name. You can change this before saving the disc image if you wish but it will NOT change the actual name of the disc, just the name that your disc image is saved under. To save the image drag the little disc icon in this box to a directory viewer in the usual way. The disc images are continuous files and cannot be used except for reloading into Procopy and transferring back to a floppy disc. If you do lose the master disc, or not bother to keep it, and want to gain access to the contents of a disc image you will first need to use Procopy to create a floppy disc and then you will be able to access the files from this. 3:3 Reloading an Image To reload an image double-click on its icon or drag it to the ProCopy icon. It will automatically be loaded into Procopy. You can also start up Procopy with an image loaded by double-clicking on an image icon instead of the !Procopy application icon, but the Filer must have 'seen' the !ProCopy application first for this to work. Each type of disc has its own filetype and icon. The icons are similar but each type of disc is a different colour and has its size shown upon it. The filetype numbers given are in the area allocated by Acorn for Public Domain applications so the possibility of a clash does exist, but so far as I am aware no PD program in general circulation uses these types. For those interested they are - 1.6 Mb ADFS &160 800K ADFS &180 640K ADFS &164 1.44 Mb DOS &144 720K DOS &172 The logic of these numbers should be obvious, although most users will never need to know them. -=-=- The Options window -=-=- Because Procopy had been designed to be as versatile as possible most of its functions are user-configurable. You can therefore make Procopy work the way you want it to. You gain access to this window by clicking on 'Options' on the Menu. The window is divided into five areas titled Confirm, Format, Verify, Background and Options. 4:1 Background This defines which operations will be carried out as multi-tasking background tasks. Any item selected will operate in this way, unselected operations will take over the computer while they are in progress. The advantage of background operation is that it does allow you to continue to use the computer even while disc are being formatted or copied. However, because of the need to continually suspend operations and poll the Wimp it does mean that it takes more time for each task, typically 50% longer, even more if another program is actually in use. Providing a separate 'button' for each of the three main copying operations, Format, Copy and Verify, enables you to have greater flexibility in choosing between losing control of the computer while ProCopy operates, and the extra time taken by background operation 4:2 Verify This defines when a disc will be verified after copying. 'After reformatting' means that it will only be verified after a Format operation has been carried out. This would normally only be used if you have chosen to format discs which were unformatted or formatted to the wrong type to check that they have been successfully formatted without error. 'Always' means that it will always be verified. Unless you are absolutely certain of the quality of your discs (and even the very best can sometimes fail) or you are prepared to tolerate the occasional disc with an error in the interests of speed you are advised to always verify after copying. This is even more important if you are using unformatted disc, because unlike the normal formatting routines the disc is deliberately not checked for errors when formatted by ProCopy. A serious defect will cause an error during copying, but a minor defect may not show up until you try to actually use the disc. 4:3 Format This defines under which circumstances ProCopy will format a disc. All options except 'Always' will require confirmation first if 'Reformat' is chosen in the 'Confirm' section. 'Always' will always format a disc without prompting before attempting a copy operation. 'If wrong Type' will format a disc if it is formatted but to the wrong type, eg. if you are copying an 800K disc and you insert a disc formatted to 640K or 720K. Note that if you have an 800K drive then a disk formatted to 1.6 or 1.44 Mb will appear unformatted, not formatted to the wrong type. 'If unformatted' will only format a disc if it is not already formatted. 'After Error' will reformat any disc which fails to verify after copying. This will only be done once. If the disc fails to format and verify without error it will be counted as faulty. 4:4 Confirm This sets which operations ProCopy will not carry out without confirmation from the user. 'Read disc' will ask for confirmation before loading a disc image if one is already loaded. If no image is loaded there is no need for confirmation so it will not be done even if this option is selected. 'Write to disc' will require confirmation before any Write operation is carried out. Note that if you are using Auto copying then this option will merely require you to click on 'Auto' before a copy is made and no separate confirmation will be required. 'Clear image' will require you to confirm before it clears a disc image from memory when you select 'Clear' from the Menu. 'Reformat disc' will require you to confirm before Copier reformats a disc if you have selected any of the 'Reformat' options except 'Always' 4:4 Preferences This has several items which relate to the way that ProCopy operates. These are mainly intended to help you 'customise' the program to suit the way that you wish to work. 'Close main window' will close the Write window during Auto copying. If this is not selected this window will remain open unless closed manually. 'Open window on load' if selected will automatically open the Write window when a disc image is loaded. 'Show disc name' As well as displaying the disc name in the Read and Write windows it can also be shown in a small window which can appear just above the iconbar to the right of the ProCopy icon. This is particularly useful if you normally work with the Write window closed as it enables you to see at a glance which disc image is loaded. It is deliberately made small and unobtrusive so that it can be left on screen all the time without causing too much clutter. If you want to open this window at any time you cam do so by clicking SELECT on the ProCopy icon while holding down the CTRL and ALT keys. 'Beep when finished' Normally when ProCopy has finished a Read or Write operation it 'beeps' to draw your attention to this. If you don't want this to happen then set this off 'Work concurrently' This makes ProCopy Copy and verify in one operation instead of two separate steps. At present this, although operative, is not very efficient and is slightly slower (about 5%) than consecutive operations. However, you may wish to experiment and I shall try to improve performance. 'Immediate write' This makes proCopy write a disc image immediately it is loaded without further prompting or selection. It is useful when producing a series of different discs, all from disc images held on a hard disc. However, you should be careful when using it as it is very easy to double-click on an image icon and have it written to a disc already in the drive which may not be the one you intended to use, thereby destroying any data already on the disc. Use with caution. 'Write on icon click' writes a disc image if you click SELECT on the ProCopy icon. This is the way that most people operate, but it is possible to accidentally click on the ProCopy icon and destroy data on a disc already in the drive. You can therefore disable this function by setting this 'off'. In this case you can still write to the drive by clicking SELECT on the icon but you will need to hold down either ALT key at the same time. 'Read on icon click' this is similar to the previous item but will read a disc in the current drive when you click on the icon with ADJUST. If it is disabled you can still read a disc by clicking with ADJUST while holding down either ALT key. 'Copies done msg.' When you have been producing a series of discs in Auto mode this will display a message telling you when the required number of copies have been made. Although this is normally what is required it can be a bit obtrusive if you are muti-tasking and doing other things. This option therefore disables the message and ProCopy simply returns to the 'Ready' stage when all the copies have been made. 4:5 Saving and Loading the options Right at the bottom of the Options window are two buttons 'Restore' and 'Save'. As you might expect, Save will save all the current choices to a file in the ProCopy application directory. This will then be loaded automatically the next time you start ProCopy so your options will be set exactly as you wish. As well as saving the contents of the Options window the currently selected Read and Write drives are also saved. If you have changed these from your normal settings don't forget this when you save the Options. Restore will reload these choices. This is provided because you may have changed some of the options for a particular purpose and wish to restore then to your default settings. Clicking on Restore will do this without the need to reset them all manually. The Acorn Style Guide suggests that this type of window should be in the form of a window with these buttons at the bottom and all the options in a scrolling Pane window. I have not done this because I hate Pane windows when used in this way. I much prefer the flexibility of a conventional scrolling window which can be resized to suit the user's preferences. However, this does mean that the Save and Restore can be a bit awkward to reach right at the bottom of this (rather large) window. They are therefore duplicated by the Options Sub-menu. the two items on this duplicate the actions of the buttons in the Options window. -=-=- The Preset list -=-=- This is an extremely useful feature as it enables you to have a selection of the most frequently used images that you have stored on your hard disc instantly available without the need to open directory viewers etc. 5:1 The Preset List window If you select 'Preset' from the menu a small window will open showing the list of disc images ready to be loaded. When you first use ProCopy this will not contain any preset icons, just 'Reload' and 'Save' icons at the top. Before you can make use of the Preset List you need some disc images, so create a few of these on your hard disc, as described in the section 'A short demonstration'. If you don't have a hard disc then the Preset List will not be of any use to you, so you can skip this section. 5:2 Adding images to the list Open the Preset List window and drag one of the disc image files you have created to it. A new icon will be created which will be the same colour as the disc image icon (blue for 800K, orange for 1.6 Mb, etc.) and showing the filename of the disc image. You can drag some more image files to the window and each one will have an icon created. Now, if you click SELECT on one of these icons the disc image it relates to will be loaded by ProCopy, just as if you had loaded it directly from disc. 5:3 Saving and Reloading the Preset List As with the Options the contents of the Preset window can be saved and reloaded. Click on 'Save' and a file called 'Preset' will be saved in the !ProCopy application directory. Clicking on 'Reload' will reset the Preset List to the last saved state. This is useful if you have temporarily added a lot of disc images to the window and want to return the window to its default state. Once you have saved a Preset List in this way the names shown will automatically be reloaded the next time you start ProCopy so you can have your most frequently needed files always available. 5:4 Deleting items You can remove an item from the Preset List by clicking on it with ADJUST instead of SELECT. In case you actually wanted to load a disc image and have accidentally pressed the ADJUST button instead of SELECT you will be asked to confirm that you want it removed before this is done. You can bypass the 'confirm' message by holding down either ALT key when you click on an item with ADJUST. -=-=- Problems and Suggestions -=-=- This section, as the title sugests, is devoted to some of the problems you can encounter when using ProCopy and suggestions for making it more efficient and easy to use. It is suggested that you should read this section after you have become familiar with the main functions of ProCopy as it may help you to understand it better and to use it more efficiently. 6:1 Reporting errors The program on which ProCopy is based, !Copier, is used regularly by thousands of people. The program was written for my own purposes, and it was sold to Archimedes World because I though it might be useful to others. This proved correct, because I am often told how invaluable it is. The 'core' program is therefore thoroughly tried and tested and it is very unlikely that it will cause any problems. However, many new functions have been added for the first release of ProCopy and the user interface, displays, and windows have been completely redesigned. There are so many permutations and options available that, although I use the program every day myself, it is quite possible that some combination that I have never used could generate an error. If this does happen to you please try to give me a proper error report. I will need to know at exactly what stage the error occurred, and, equally important, what Options you had selected. Proper, detailed, error reports are invaluable to me for removing any bugs in ProCopy. I welcome them whether or not you have registered. I also welcome suggestions for additions and improvements. 6:2 Partly filled discs Procopy always copies the entire disc. Backup will only copy that part of the disc which is occupied by data. This means that if a disc is less than about one third filled Backup might be faster. In practice this situation is not likely to arise because discs that are distributed in bulk would normally be full, or nearly so, and even a half filled disc would probably be copied faster with Procopy than using Backup. ProCopy will certainly be much faster than backup, even with a partially filled disc, if more than a single copy is required. 6:3 Formatting The formatting method used by Procopy does not write any 'structure' to the disc, it merely lays out tracks and sectors. This saves time and it is unnecessary because all the required information is contained in the disc image which will be copied onto the disc. If a disc has been formatted by Procopy but for some reason no disc image was subsequently copied onto it it will not be recognised by the Archimedes filing system and will return a 'disc not formatted' error. Discs are not verified as they are formatted. Once again this would be a waste of time because it is better to verify discs after the data has been copied onto them to ensure that the finished product is error free. If discs were verified during formatting they would still need to be tested again after copying to be certain there were no errors. 6:4 DOS discs The format used for DOS discs is slightly different from the usual method used by the Acorn. A wider sector gap is used with no sector interleave and a different track to track sector skew has been introduced. It was found that discs formatted in this way operate faster than the standard Acorn format. There is a noticeable speed increase both on real PC's and an Archimedes using a PC emulator. Most modern PC's fitted with high density drives also format discs this way. It is possible that older XT type PC's fitted with 720K disc drives might operate more slowly with this type of format, but it is felt that the speed advantage gained for the majority of users more than outweighs this. Whatever drive or controller the computer is fitted with the modified format does not introduce any compatibility problems. All models will have no difficulty in reading the disc. DOS disc names can be longer than that permitted on Acorn machines and some characters are permitted which are not allowed in Acorn filenames. In order to avoid confusion, with one exception no changes are made to the disc name when it is loaded, so the name in the 'Save' window may not be a valid Acorn filename and might need to be changed before you can save the image. The exception is a space, which is often used in DOS disc names. This is not, of course, permitted in Acorn filenames, so a hard space, ascii 160, is always substituted. The main reason for doing this is because the Filer regards a space as a terminating character, so it might cause difficulties if it were not altered. For example, you could read the images of a series of DOS discs named DISK 1, DISK 2, DISK 3, etc. the names would be truncated by Filecore and saved as just DISK. The second and subsequent files would therefore overwrite the first. By substituting a hard space, which is acceptable to the Filer, they will all be saved with the correct names. 6:5 640K ADFS discs As it is unlikely that anyone is using this format on an actual Archimedes the factors chosen were selected for optimum speed on a BBC computer. Tests were carried out on a Model 'B' fitted with TEAC T55-F drives and Solidisc ADFS, and a Master with Acorn ADFS and Mitsubishi drives. There are many other possible combinations which could be encountered but these are fairly typical. 6:6 Software and Hardware compatibility There are two main operating systems in circulation on Archimedes computers, RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3+. There are also two different families of disc controller in use, the one fitted to the A300, A400, A3000 and A540 models which can only read discs up to 800K capacity and the one fitted to later models, the Risc PC series, A4000, A5000, A3010 and A3020, which can read up to 1.6Mb discs. There are also third party hi density disc controllers which can be fitted to older models to enable them to use hi density discs. In theory any of these which replace the original drive and emulate an ADFS drive should work with ProCopy. Those which work alongside ADFS and operate under another filing system (eg. the Arxe Systems board) will not work with ProCopy. If you have a system that doesn't seem to work then ProCopy probably can be made to operate with it, I will just need to know which SWI's to use. In theory any computer running RiscOs 2 should have the earlier type of disc controller and so should not be able to handle high density discs. A computer running RISC-OS 3 could be fitted with either type of controller because it could be a newer model or an older model which has been upgraded. There are therefore three combinations that could be encountered - RISC-OS 2 with 800K drive RISC-OS 3+ with 800K drive RISC-OS 3+ with 1.6Mb drive As has already been explained, at present no attempt has been made to make ProCopy operate with RIS-OS 2, so only the second two need to be considered. Only the machines fitted with hi density drives have proper 'disc changed' notification. Earlier machines need to keep checking the disc ID to see if it has been changed. This means that the process takes more time per test (so there is less time for other tasks) and it is also rather noisy as the drive constantly reads the disc. 6:7 'D' and 'E' format discs There is no structural difference between the two different 800K formats used on the Archimedes. The only difference is in the way that the catalogue and map are managed. For this reason if your master disc is 'D' format then any discs reproduced will be 'D' format, even if you have pre-formatted them to 'E' format, and visa versa. Procopy therefore makes no distinction between the two 800K formats. The same situation prevails using Backup. If you backup an 'E' format disc to a 'D' format you find that the copy has become 'E' format. 6:8 Disc errors Because ProCopy writes an entire disc image to a disc's surface the target disc must be 100% error free. Unlike normal copying operations it is not possible to skip over any bad sectors. If a disc fails to verify and is rejected by Procopy you will probably be able to format it and use it for other purposes. Defects are not 'mapped out' during formatting. If a single defect is discovered the operation is aborted. For the same reason the source disc should be error free. This is not essential but if it has defects then Procopy may refuse to load it. Even if it is successfully loaded the 'defect list' will be copied to the new disc so that it too will appear to have defects until it is reformatted. This won't stop it functioning normally because the defect will be mapped out as it was on the original. 6:9 Memory usage As I have already stated Procopy needs enough spare memory to load an entire disc image. It should therefore be obvious that you won't be able to copy a 1.6Mb disc in a 1Mb A3010. If you have just 1Mb you will only be able to copy 720K discs, even 800K discs take too much memory. To copy even 720K discs you will need to use a very frugal screen mode, so I suggest you switch to Mode 0 and quit ALL other tasks. The desktop won't look very pretty in Mode 0 but it will let the program operate. I expect that most people who wish to use this program will have at least 2Mb. You will then be able to copy 1.6Mb discs but only if no other tasks are running. Once again you may need to switch to a less greedy screen mode, although you will probably not need to go to the extreme of Mode 0. 800k or 720K discs should not present any problems. You will not be able to copy 1.6 Mb discs on a 2Mb machine which is used with a VGA monitor because it will not then be possible to use a low resolution screen mode. 6:10 Compressing disc images As I have already explained, ProCopy does not have any built in compression system for disc images. This avoids all sorts of potential problems and lets you use your own favourite compression system if required. Remember that if the contents of the original disc have been compressed in some way (and don't forget that files like GIF, JPEG, Acorn Replay etc. are already compressed) then they will probably grow if you try to compress them further. Discs containing other material might be worth compressing. ArcFS or SparkFS are ideal for this because of their simplicity and speed, but either need quite a lot of spare RAM as workspace, more than the size of the file being compressed. You will therefore need a 4Mb machine to compress even an 800K disc image. CFS does not need so much RAM, and this may be a possible solution. You will find that because CFS compresses individual files and is not an archive filing system like ArcFS or SparkFS a compressed disc image using CFS will take up considerably less space on your hard disc than compressing the contents of the disc. If the disc is not completely full and you intend to compress the image you are strongly advised to copy its contents to a newly formatted blank disc before you read and compress it. The reason for this is that any compression system works best if the material to be compressed comtains lots of consecutive bytes which are the same. A used disc may have lots of old, random. data on apparently unused sections, a newly formatted disc will have a uniform byte on all unused sectors. This will compress very efficiently, so drastically reducing the size of the compressed image file. Do please bear this in mind if you alter or update any discs that you normally keep as images. Obviously this is only relevant if you intend to compress the disc image. 6:11 Problems There is only one problem that I have encountered using Procopy and RISC-OS 3. After a disc has been copied if you click on the icon for the drive containing the new copy you may very occasionally get an error message from the filer 'Disc not understood - has it been formatted?'. Don't worry, everything is OK, it's just that the filer is remembering what the disc was when it was first put in the drive. If you click on 'Dismount' on the menu for that drive to make the filer 'forget' the disc and then click on the drive icon again you will find the disc has been correctly copied. A difficulty can arise if you wish to copy a DOS disc which has been obtained from a source which uses a certain type of bulk copier. This is because these discs are sometimes only formatted with enough tracks to hold the required data. As ProCopy will try to load the entire disc it will fail when it reaches the unformatted tracks. The solution is to copy the contents of the disc to a normally formatted disc first. 6:12 Other formats Although Procopy has been designed to handle only 'native' Acorn and 3.5 inch DOS discs there is no reason why it could not be modified to work with others. The Archimedes operating system can readily be adapted to read and write to any type of disc which the hardware is capable of addressing. It would probably be simple to modify it to copy Amiga, Atari, DOS 360K or BBC DFS discs (given suitable drives) if required. Anyone who is forced to use an Amiga or Atari ST computer to copy discs will appreciate how much faster the operation could be carried out on an Archimedes! 6:13 Filename in the Preset List You should not forget that although all you see in the Preset window is a simple filename ProCopy will try to load the image using the full path/filename that was passed to it when the name was added to the list. Obviously this must be present and unchanged or it will not be able to find the file! If you do get errors make sure that you haven't renamed or removed the drive the file was on. The most likely cause of problems is if the disc image is on a Syquest cartridge or some other removable media. If you are using a Syquest drive with a ICS IDE interface you will just get a 'Please insert disc.....' message, but some other filing systems which were not really designed to work with removable media (and this applies to most SCSI systems) can give weird error messages or hang completely. -=-=- Appendix -=-=- Keys used with icon clicks Clicking on the icon with the MENU button always just displays the menu, exactly as you would expect. Using SELECT will perform some type of Write function, depending on which Options are set and whether any keys are held, similarly using ADJUST will perform some type of Read operation. Using the ALT key will normally force an operation to be carried out which would otherwise require confirmation. Here is a table of all the various operations which can be carried out by clicking on the icon. Button/Key(s) Function MENU Always displays the menu. SELECT If no image loaded opens the 'Read' window. If an image is loaded and 'Write on icon click' is 'on' the disc image is written, if this is 'off' the 'Write' window is opened. If Auto copying is in progress the Write window is opened. SELECT/CTRL Opens the 'Write' window if an image is loaded, otherwise opens the 'Read' window SELECT/ALT Writes the current disc image even if 'Write on icon click' is 'off'. If no image is loaded, opens the 'Read' window SELECT/SHIFT Opens the list of preset images. SELECT/ALT/CTRL Opens the small 'discs name' window ADJUST If 'Read on icon click' is 'on' the disc image is read, if this is 'off' the 'Read' window is opened. ADJUST/CTRL Opens the 'Read' window ADJUST/ALT Always read the disc in the current drive, even if 'Read on icon click' is 'off'. ADJUST/SHIFT Clears any currently loaded image after prompting if this is selected ADJUST/ALT/CTRL Clears currect image without prompt, even if this is normally selected The Preset List file This is actually a plain text file. If you Save the preset list you will find that this file, called 'Preset', will appear in the !ProCopy application directory. You can load this into !Edit, !Zap etc. and examine or change it if you wish. In fact, it is deliberately designed so that you can change it. Each line of the file contains three parameters. these are the name which will actually appear on the icon, the background colour of the icon, and the full path/filename of the image file. Obviously the last of these should not be changed (unless you rename a drive, in which case it might be quicker to edit the Preset file than completely reload all the images).However, the first two can be changed if you wish. By default the name which is shown on the icon in the Preset window is the filename given to the disc image. You may wish to change this to make it more descriptive of what the disc actually is. A file cannot have more than ten characters in its name, and some characters, for example '#', '$' and '@', are not permitted. Any of these can be used on the icons, and you can have up to 16 characters, but unless you are using a Risc PC with anti-aliased fonts on the icons you will probably only have room for the normal ten. There must NOT be any spaces or control characters in the name. If you do want a space character then use a 'hard' space (ascii 160). You can type this by holding down the ALT key as you press the spacebar. After the name comes the background colour of the icon. By default his will be the same colour as is used for the disc image icons so you can tell what size image each name refers to. however, as with the name, you can change it if you wish. This may be useful if you want a particular file to stand out from the rest. Only the standard Wimp colours 0-15 can be used. Light colours will have black text and dark colours will have white text, and this is handled automatically by ProCopy when the icons are created. A single space is all that is necessary to act as a delimiter between the three fields, but when the Preset file is Saved from ProCopy several spaces are used to put the parameters in neat columns to make it easier for you to edit. You can have comments in the Preset file. Any line beginning with a '#' character will be treated as a comment and ignored. The '#' must be the very first character on the line. Pro|Copy is not very tolerant of errors in the Preset file. If it does find an error you should get an error message telling you in what line it found it. Use with Autocopiers ProCopy can easily be adapted to work with low cost autocopiers that use the computers built in disc controller and receive load/eject commands via the serial or printer port. The commands to load and eject discs replace the normal 'change disc' animation. I have used a modified version of ProCopy with a homemade machine with considerable success. The only problem with this approach is that the drive will appear to the computer as a normal extra drive. This is not a problem with the A5000 or the A400 series (although you may need an external buffer) but most Risc PC 600 series machines cannot easily have a second floppy drive fitted. Copy protected discs ProCopy is not intended for copying copy protected discs but it can do so with many of the copy protection methods used. Because it ignores the defect list and always copied the entire disc it can often be used to reproduce may of the more commonly found types of disc. This should not be taken as an encouragement to use it for making illegal copies. However it can be used to produce distribution discs for software houses even though the disc may mot be easily duplicated by normal means. If you do have a requirement for small(ish) quantities, not enough to justify an expensive machine, then ProCopy may be sufficient for your needs. Sprites The icon sprite used by ProCopy when an image is loaded is the same as the file sprite for that disc image. At present these are not terribly elegant and only a 2D low resolution version is provided. Experience has shown that some users are particularly conscious of file and application icons. as soon as I have time I intend to produce some better high resolution icons, but this is much lower priority that ensuring that the program functions properly. If you don't want to wait there is no reason why you cannot create your own. in any event you may prefer different colours fro the various image icons that the ones I have used, and it will take only a few minutes to change these using !Paint if you wish. In the event of any problems, or if you have any suggestions, please contact - David Holden 39 Knighton Park Road Sydenham London SE26 5RN 0181 778 2659 Single User Registration Form for ProCopy Please send this form with a cheque for Fifteen Pounds to: David Holden, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN __________________________________________________________________ Name and Address: __________________________________________________________________ Where did you obtain the program: __________________________________________________________________ Have you had any problems: __________________________________________________________________ What additional features would you like: