Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/c.s.a.reviews/software/disk/Quarterback6.0

Internet Message Format | 1994-06-02 | 11.4 KB

Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Stefan G. Berg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Quarterback 6.0
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 18 Jan 1994 18:17:40 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 255
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2hh944$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Stefan G. Berg)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: hard drive, backups, commercial


PRODUCT NAME

    Quarterback version 6.0, with Schedule Pro

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  This review was updated on Jan 20, 1994.  The
    incorrect phrase "megabytes per second" was changed to "megabytes
    per minute" at the author's request.  -Dan]


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    Quarterback 6.0 is a backup and archival program for Amiga
computers, supporting backups to disk, tape (or other SCSI backup devices),
and file.  Included is a program to take some action at specified times,
such as starting a backup automatically.


COMPANY INFORMATION

    Company:    Central Coast Software
            A division of New Horizons Software, Inc.
    Address:    206 Wild Basin Road, Suite 109
            Austin, Texas 78746
            USA

    Telephone:    [phone]

    E-Mail:          [e-mail]  (James Bayless)


LIST PRICE

    Retail price:  $99.95 (US).
    Upgrade from Quarterback 5.0:  $30.00 (US).
    Upgrade from Quarterback version older than 5.0:  $40.00 (US).
    $5 ($10 outside the USA) for shipping and handling.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        At least 512 KB RAM is required.

    SOFTWARE

        AmigaDOS 1.2 or higher.
        There is no mention about compatibility with AmigaDOS 3.0
        and higher.


COPY PROTECTION

    The first time you run Quarterback, it asks for your name and serial
number.  The program refuses to start up if an incorrect entry is made.
This doesn't prevent other people from copying a correctly serialized
Quarterback program, but it tags every Quarterback program with the original
owner.  After the user enters a name and serial number, the copy protection
is invisible.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 500
    2 MB Chip RAM, 8 MB 16-Bit Fast RAM, 4 MB 32-Bit Fast RAM
    AmigaDOS 2.1 (Kickstart Version 37.175, Workbench Version 38.30)
    Progressive Peripherals 28 MHz 68040 Accelerator
    GVP Impact Series II A500-HD+ controller; attached devices:
        Quantum 525 LPS hard disk
        Tandberg TDC 3600 tape drive


INSTALLATION

    Quarterback 6.0 comes with the Commodore Installer program to
install it on your hard drive.  This process just takes a few minutes and is
very easily accomplished.  The program can be run directly from the floppy
disk if desired.


REVIEW

    The backup program can be started on the Workbench screen or on its
own screen.  After an annoying copyright notice which takes a few seconds to
disappear, a window appears listing all devices.  The window also contains
four buttons:  "Backup", "Restore", "Enter", and "Back".  Doing a backup on a
properly set up system involves choosing the device to backup and then
clicking on the "Backup" icon.  One can also move deeper into the directory
structure by using the "Enter" and "Back" icons or by double clicking on the
devices.  This permits the user to backup individual directories instead of a
whole device.

    After choosing a backup device or directory, an Options window
appears asking the user for specific backup options (this window can also be
turned off).  At this point, one can change the choice of backup medium to
one of three options:  floppy disk (up to four are supported), a SCSI
device, or an AmigaDOS file.  Quarterback automatically detected my Tandberg
tape drive and set the SCSI ID correctly.  On systems with multiple backup
devices, one can also change the SCSI ID at this point.  Except for the
"backup to file" option, all backups are stored using a Quarterback specific
format.  It is therefore not possible to read in files from a Quarterback
floppy disk under AmigaDOS.  One therefore must also use Quarterback to
restore a backup.

    The Options window also allows the user to choose between a complete
or selective backup.  By clicking the "MORE" button, one can open a second
window containing even more options.  Here it is possible to set the
compression method (none, normal software compression, or hardware
compression if supported by backup medium), use of archive flag, password
protection, verify mode, and other items.  Finally, it is possible to hide
the Options window next time a backup is done.  This is useful for users who
never change the options and don't want to be hassled by this window.  The
Options window can still be opened using a menu item.

    Once the user is finished with the Options window, the selected
device or directory is completely scanned.  While this can theoretically be a
time-consuming task, the time seemed to me to pass quickly.  After the scan,
the number of files and the total number of bytes is displayed.  If
selective backup was used, one can now individually select or unselect files
or whole directories.  Quarterback offers a large number of methods for
selecting and unselecting files.  One of them is the archive flag which is
useful for incremental backup.  I will not go into much detail here, except
to say that many selection options exist.  For a complete backup, the whole
device or directory is automatically selected.  On a backup to floppy an
indicator informs the user of the number of floppies needed for the backup
(compression is not taken into account, and a question mark after the number
warns the user of this fact).  A click on "OK" will start the backup.

    I have done backups to floppy and was fairly satisfied with the
performance.  On a two floppy drive system, disk writes and hard disk reads
are done asynchronously (at the same time).  With a fast CPU, compression
will speed up the backup to floppy.  On my brother's stock Amiga 2000,
compression considerably slowed down the backup.  Backups to a tape drive
can be done synchronously (tape drive accesses and hard drive accesses occur
one after another) or asynchronously.  I was experiencing problems doing the
backup asynchronously to my tape drive, since the quality of my SCSI cable
is very poor.  As a side note, I was also experiencing problems with two
hard drives attached to my system (not only in Quarterback), so I hope this
problem is unique to my setup.  It is very difficult on an Amiga 500 to keep
the SCSI cables short and noise-free.  Backup speed to my tape drive is
about 2.5 MB per minute without compression.  When compression is enabled,
that rate drops down to 1 MB per minute, despite my very fast CPU.  I was
somewhat disappointed by this fact.  On already compressed data, the
compression algorithm may in fact expand the data during a backup (similar
to what happens when sending compressed data with MNP5-compressing modems).

    Quarterback can optionally display the compression ratio and backup
speed at the end of a backup.  At all times, it is possible to stop or pause
the backup.  Also it is possible to set various options using the menus.
One important option for tape drive users will be the buffer options, in
which one can increase the buffer size from the default 32 KB to something
higher.  In order to get reasonable performance out of my tape drive, I used
a 1 MB buffer, which actually used 2 MB RAM (due to double buffering).

    Restoring a backup is similar to backing up.  A catalog listing is
kept with every backup (for safety reasons, one catalog at the front of the
backup, and another at the end).  Therefore, one will get a complete file
listing when restoring from a backup.  One can restore the whole backup or
select certain files only.  One nice feature is seen when restoring from
floppy disks:  only the needed disks have to be inserted.  I know of some
backup programs which require the user to go through all disks sequentially,
even those that do not contain any of the desired files to restore.

    There are many other items in Quarterback which I will not describe
in detail here, but mention only briefly.  Through the use of Quarterback
macros and the ARexx interface, it is possible for the more experienced user
to make backups to tape automatically.  CCS even wrote a small scheduling
program,, Schedule Pro, which makes it very easy to start certain programs
(like backups) at regular times.

    The tape drive support includes rewinding and erasing tapes as well
as storing multiple backups (sessions) on a single tape.  All of these
points worked fine with my Tandberg drive.  Quarterback can also backup onto
multiple tapes if a single tape cannot hold the full contents of the
backup.  I have not tested this option.


DOCUMENTATION

    The upgrade package from Quarterback 5.0 includes a 20-page
supplement to the original Quarterback 5.0 manual.  All additions are
clearly described in there.  As an expert user, I found all my questions
answered in the manual.  Still, I believe that the essential parts are
written clearly enough to be understood by a less knowledgeable user.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

    I like the user interface.  Everything is easily accessible, and yet
the screen is not cluttered up with unnecessary options.  I had little
trouble getting used to the interface.

    The compression ratio does not justify such long compression times.
An implementation of the XPK compression package would be a good addition to
Quarterback.  That way, users can decide between a fast and less efficient
algorithm, or a slow but more efficient algorithm.  Despite my fast
processor, the backup speed dropped from 2.5 MB per minute to 1 MB per
minute when 16-bit compression was enabled.  On my boot partition, the
compression ratio was only 30%.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    An alternative to Quarterback is Ami-Back.  I have never worked with
Ami-Back, but I have heard only good things about it from other people.
There are also some public domain backup programs available.  I have not
looked at any of them.


BUGS

    In the few days in which I have worked with Quarterback 6.0, I have
not found any bugs.  This was a pleasant surprise, as Quarterback 5.0.4 was
full of bugs and didn't even work reliably with my accelerator.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    Except for ordering upgrades, I have not contacted the vendor.

    Central Coast Service seems to upload patches for their programs to
the biz/patch directory on the Aminet ftp sites.  At least they did so for
Quarterback 5.0.


WARRANTY

    There is no warranty on the product as far as I can see.


CONCLUSIONS

    I would have ranked Quarterback 5.0 as an unusable product due to
its bugs.  Fortunately, those are gone from Quarterback 6.0 and I can only
recommend it as a good backup solution.  The user interface is well
written.  I give it 4 stars out of 5.  Speed is the main reason why I
wouldn't give the product 5 stars.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    This review is freely distributable.  You can reach me, the author
of this review, via email at [e-mail] (Stefan G.
Berg).
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