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- THE NO-FRILLS ST SECTOR EDITOR v1.01
-
- 30 November 1985
- James M. Eli
- 74176,2137
-
- No-Frills Documentation:
- The author takes no responsiblity as to the quality or performance of
- this software. Use this at your own risk... preferably on backup copies.
- You can easily render programs, or entire disks useless, believe me I
- know!
- To Run: First set your screen resolution to MEDIUM, then simply double
- click on the program name. The title screen will prompt to insert your working
- disk and press RETURN (remember: use backups). The program will now
- initialize and read sector '0' of drive 'A'. From here on the program will
- accept input in both upper and lower case. Use only the commands which are
- displayed, as there is limited error checking. Here is a breif description of
- the commands available:
-
- O Toggles between the lower and upper halves of the 512 byte sector.
- Each time it displays 256 bytes (1-256/257-512) in both
- hexadecimal and ASCII format.
- N New sector number to read or write. Be careful not to outstep the
- bounds of single (0-719) or double (0-1439) density drives. The
- noise this makes is enough to keep you from trying this more
- than once. If a sector less than 0 is requested, on the next
- read operation sector 0 is substituted.
- R Read current sector.
- W Write to current sector. You are given one chance to bail-out
- before you make a permanent change. Before going through with
- this operation check the drive & sector #'s, and be sure this
- is what you want.
- +/- Respectively inrements or decrements the sector number, and
- then reads this sector. Should (!?) not step out-of-bounds.
- M Modify data. Enter the location (1-512, making sure you are
- displaying the correct half), followed by the new byte. If a
- new location is not specified, consectutive bytes are accessed.
- Just hit RETURN when finished. Be careful now!
- D Drive swap. Toggle between drive A and B.
- P Prints the current sector in the buffer in both hex & ASCII. Dumps
- the data out the parallel port.
- B Changes the background color (Did I say no frills?).
- Q Quit and exit back to the Desktop.
-
- The Read and Write status returned will be '0' for successful
- operations. Occasionally '-1' will pop up (which means: 'Anti-Success'),
- just check to make sure you requested a legal sector, your media is not write
- protected, etc. and try again. If everything checks out you probably found a
- bad or missing sector (intentional or otherwise). If you have used any of the
- sector editors for the 8-bit line you'll have no trouble here.
- This program started out in Haba HIPPO-C, but was finished in the
- Alcyon C supplied with the developer's kit. HIPPO-C has a good programming
- environment which makes going from the editor to compiler to linker easy.
- Unfortunately HIPPO-C lacks the support in their library to make extended
- BIOS calls, this was the main reason to change C's. If there is enough
- interest in this out there, I'll consider enhancements (add drop-down menus
- and all that good GEM stuff), and possible future 'No-Frills' programs...
- how does a 'No-Frills ST Custom Formatter' sound?
- If you have found this program of value, or you have a soft spot
- for poor programmers who have struggled endlessly to develop PD software
- feel free to send a $10.00 donation to:
- James Eli
- 613 Paddy Run Rd.
- Clarksville, TN 37042
- It will be greatly appreciated. Hope you can use this.
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