I am currently working on a commercial version of FastCopy. It will have many more features and it will be menu operated. For example, you will be able to serialize your copies sequentially in up to 4 separate locations using 4 separate numbers. The numbers chosen can be written either as strings or as actual numbers. FastCopy Plus will turn the PC into a disk duplicating system! We are shooting for a release date in mid March. You will be notified and will be given credit for your shareware donation off the purchase price.
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This program was inspired by Jack McClure of the HAL-PC
users group of Houston, Texas. Alan Vanchura of Arlington,
Texas contributed with technical support.
FastCopy was written as an alternative to the DOS diskcopy
and format commands. It has the capability to make multiple
copies of the same source diskette, or make copies of
different source diskettes or format diskettes and accomplish
it much quicker than DOS. FastCopy requires an IBM or close
compatible with 640K of memory.
It works on machines with either 1 or 2 drives and with
double sided, 9 sectors per track, 40 TPI only.
The program is started by typing fastcopy at the DOS prompt
and supplying six command line arguments. If you leave one
out the program will abort and give a description of the
usage. The command line options are listed below:
Source Drive [A or B]
Destination Drive [A or B]
Set Force Format ON/OFF
Set Format Only ON/OFF
Set Verify ON/OFF
Set Fast Drives ON/OFF
The command line arguments can be in either upper or lower
case and separated by spaces only. You must designate a
Source and a Destination drive even if you are only using one
drive. For example if you are using only drive B (the 360k
floppy on an AT) you would list B as the source drive and B
as the destination drive. You would do the same if using
only A drive. (If you use the 1.2 meg floppies you will have
unpredictable results when trying to read the disks with
other machines.)
If the source and the destination are different the program
will alternate drives. If they are the same it will use the
same drive and pause and ask you to change diskettes before
each copy. You may type Esc at any time and Fastcopy will
finish the current copy and present you with a menu of three
choices at the bottom left of the screen. You will also get
the menu if an error occurs during a copy. These choices
are: (Q)uit, (C)ontinue and (L)oad a new source diskette.
FastCopy Page 2
Copyright (c) 1986
Jim Nech All Rights Reserved
The Force Format option if it is set to ON will force
FastCopy to unconditionally format all destination diskettes.
If it is set to OFF FastCopy will check the destination
diskette and if it is already formatted this step will be
eliminated.
To perform a Format Only: Set format on by typing ON on the
command line in the proper sequence. You start the process
with a formatted disk. This disk must be freshly formatted
with the DOS format program. Be sure that it is a perfect
format, and DOS has not locked out any sectors because if it
has, these same sectors will be locked out on any disks you
format using it as the source.
The program will format very quickly by copying the first
track only. It is not necessary to copy all 40 tracks. We
will format the destination diskette and need to copy the
first track which contains the file allocation table.
The Verify option when set to on will perform the verify
service on all tracks on th diskette. The diskette drives are
usually very reliable and even DOS does not use verify unless
you request it.
You have the choice to speed the disk drives up or not as
speeding the disk drives up may cause problems with some
compatibles. (It could slow down the process. You will just
have to try it on your particular machine.) If it works on
your machine then use it to speed things up even more.
EXAMPLE: To copy from A: to B: with FORCE FORMAT off, FORMAT
ONLY off, VERIFY on and FAST DRIVES on, you type at the DOS
prompt:
fastcopy A B OFF OFF ON ON
NOTE: You should not exit this program with CTL/ALT/DEL or
CTRL/BREAK. The proper way to exit is with the ESC key.
If you use this method you will have to wait for the
current copy process to end, but the benefit is that
FastCopy will restore any parameters that might have
been changed to their default values.
DISCLAIMER: We have taken reasonable precautions and tested
this program and it should not harm your hardware or data.
However, if it does Jim Nech will not
accept any responsibility . Use it at your own risk!
REGISTRATION FORM
Please check any of the following options you wish to
exercise:
Register this copy of FastCopy ($20.00)...............______
Texas residents must add 6 1/8 % sales tax.
Check or MO must accompany all orders.
Ship to: Name:______________________________________________
