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1993-04-11
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RAMLIGHT 1.0 DOCUMENTATION
==========================
James W. Birdsall
04/11/93
0. CONTENTS
-----------
0. CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Requirements
1.2 Quick Reference
1.3 Copyright, License, and Warranty Disclaimer
2. USAGE
2.1 Monitoring drives
2.1.1 Unmonitorable drives
2.2 Options
2.2.1 -u Uninstall
2.2.2 -t Text mode
2.2.3 -? Help
3. SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
3.1 Installing
3.2 Uninstalling
3.3 Hercules graphics, text pages
3.4 RAMLIGHT and UMBs
3.5 AMIS
3.6 Text mode list
4. THE END
1. INTRODUCTION
---------------
RAMLIGHT is a TSR which provides an activity indicator for ramdisks
in the form of a blinking rectangle in the upper right corner of the
screen. Whenever any access is made to a drive that is being monitored,
whatever is currently in that position is replaced with a bright white
rectangle; approximately one-tenth of a second later, the previous
contents are restored. Each access resets the timer, so if additional
accesses are made while the white rectangle is on the screen, it will
not be removed until approximately one-tenth of a second after the last
access.
Be sure to read section 3, SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS, so that you know
how to use RAMLIGHT safely.
1.1 Requirements
----------------
RAMLIGHT requires DOS version 2.0 or better.
RAMLIGHT requires 848 bytes of conventional memory when monitoring
one drive, and an additional 48 bytes for each additional drive
monitored. RAMLIGHT does not use EMS or any sort of extended memory. It
requires about 11K of conventional memory while installing itself.
1.2 Quick Reference
-------------------
This is a quick summary of the usage and options of RAMLIGHT.
Invoking RAMLIGHT with the option "-?" will produce a similar summary.
Complete explanations may be found in section 2.
usage: ramlight [options] drive: [drive: ...]
drive Drive letter of a disk to be monitored, followed by
a colon. At least one drive letter must be
specified, except when the -u option is used.
-u UNINSTALL: If RAMLIGHT is installed, uninstall if
possible, disable otherwise.
-tmm[,cc[,s]]
The activity indicator can only be provided in text
modes. This option allows the user to specify
nonstandard text modes. 'mm' is the mode number, in
decimal. 'cc' is the number of columns; if not
present, it defaults to 80. 's' is a letter
indicating where the video memory is located for
that mode:
C = color text (B800)
M = monochrome text (B000)
G = graphics (A000)
If not present, it defaults to C. Note that this
option is not necessary for the common 80x43 and
80x50 modes; settings for various popular cards are
listed in section 3.6 below. Note that if RAMLIGHT
is installed when the display is in a nonstandard
mode, it will do nothing until the mode is changed
to one that RAMLIGHT recognizes, unless an
appropriate -t option has been given.
-? Prints this usage message.
Options are case-insensitive, and may not be combined.
1.3 Copyright, License, and Warranty Disclaimer
-----------------------------------------------
RAMLIGHT is not in the public domain. All the files are copyright
1993 by James W. Birdsall, all rights reserved.
Permission is granted to do the following:
You may freely redistribute this archive, so long as it contains
all the files listed in the file MANIFEST, intact and
unmodified.
You may use the programs contained in this archive freely. You
are encouraged to notify the author that you are using RAMLIGHT
so that you may receive update notices and bug reports, but no
registration fee is required.
Source code is available for a $5 fee. Users may modify the source
code for their own private use, but may not distribute modified copies
or other software incorporating RAMLIGHT code without permission of the
author.
The contents of the distribution archive, and all other related
files, information, and services are provided "as is" and without
warranty. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the author
disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited
to, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose. While effort has been made to ensure that the files,
information, and services are accurate and correct, the author shall not
be liable for damages arising out of the use of or inability to use this
product, including but not limited to, loss of profit, data, or use of
this software, or special, incidental, or consequential damages or other
similar claims, even if the author has been specifically advised of the
possibility of such damages. Some states do not allow the exclusion of
incidental or consequential damages, so the foregoing limitation may not
apply to you.
Information on contacting the author is provided at the end of this
file.
2. USAGE
--------
RAMLIGHT must be called with at least one monitorable drive specified
on the command line. If there are no monitorable drives specified on the
command line, RAMLIGHT will print a message to that effect and exit. See
sections 2.1 and 2.1.1 below for information on what drives are or are
not monitorable.
Note that RAMLIGHT can detect a resident copy of itself and will not
install itself more than once unless the resident copy has been
disabled.
2.1 Monitoring drives
---------------------
RAMLIGHT is actually not restricted to monitoring only ramdrives. It
can be used to monitor many sorts of drives; the exceptions are listed
in section 2.1.1 below. Monitoring a drive is simple -- just place the
drive letter followed by a colon on the command line. For example, to
monitor drive E:, all that is needed is:
RAMLIGHT E:
Note that because of the way RAMLIGHT works, sometimes other drives
will be monitored as well. This is because RAMLIGHT monitors by
intercepting calls to device drivers, and some drives share a device
driver. RAMLIGHT detects this condition and prints messages listing
drives which do not appear on the command line which will be monitored.
2.1.1 Unmonitorable drives
--------------------------
As stated above, RAMLIGHT monitors drives by intercepting calls to
the device driver. Hence, a drive must operate via a normal block-type
device driver for RAMLIGHT to monitor it. Network drives in particular
frequently do not do so, although the same technique may be used for any
type of drive. RAMLIGHT will not monitor any drive which was identified
to DOS as a network drive, and will not monitor any other drive for
which it cannot find a valid block-type device driver.
2.2 Options
-----------
RAMLIGHT has a variety of options to modify its function. Options are
case-insensitive ("-u" is the same as "-U") and may not be combined.
2.2.1 -u Uninstall
------------------
RAMLIGHT can usually uninstall itself. Unless something has been
badly corrupted and it cannot talk to the resident copy, it can always
disable itself, which allows another copy to be installed if necessary.
RAMLIGHT will be unable to uninstall itself if it is not the last TSR
to hook the 10h and 1Ch interrupts, or if the 2Dh AMIS interrupt chain
has been corrupted (see section 3.5). In these cases, it will unhook as
many interrupts as it can and disable itself. Otherwise it unhooks all
the interrupts, disables itself, and remove