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University of Vaasa, Finland, Sun IPX SPARCstation garbo.uwasa.fi
has a large collection of PD and shareware PC programs available by
anonymous ftp or mail server. The file /pc/ts/0news-ts contains news
about the TS-programs in the /pc/ts directory (in reverse order).
This text, which you now have, is an extract from the 0news-ts file.
..................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives 128.214.87.1
Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa
Internet: ts@uwasa.fi Bitnet: salmi@finfun ; SF-65101, Finland
..................................................................
Mon 12-Apr-93: I have updated
"PESTIKID.EXE Keep your computer to yourself, lock keyboard"
This program locks the keyboard and turns off alt-ctrl-del until you
give your selected ascii code. As Iain Sillars sillarsi@logica.co.uk
kindly noted, the ascii code 000 locks the system so that "the
computer would not release without being switched off". In
accordance to Iain's suggestion I have narrowed the range of
acceptable asciis to 1-255. PESTIKID.EXE is in the upgraded
garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle22.zip package. Please note that as my
other recent updates it has been packed with PKZIP version 2.04G.
Sun 6-Dec-92: I found a bug in my TDEL.EXE "Timo's safe recursive
delete files and remove directories" version 1.2.
The previous version sometimes detected non-existing directories.
I think I pinpointed the elusive error in my code and hopefully have
this bug corrected.
While I was at it I also included a more detailed message why a
directory cannot be removed. Example: "Directory not empty: Contains
2 subdirectories and 1 files".
TDEL.EXE skips read-only files, but reports them. The updated
version also reports hidden and system files (but does not allow
deleting them).
For Unix users I would describe TDEL.EXE as an MsDos counterpart
rather than a direct port of the rm command. For MsDos users one
could call TDEL.EXE a combined file deletion and directory-tree
pruning utility.
TDEL.EXE is a part of my consequently updated fifth utility
collection from garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle21.zip.
Thu 26-Nov-92: I have updated my TDEL.EXE "Timo's safe recursive
delete". Besides being able to delete files, this program includes
the option of removing directories recursively. The new version does
the removing from bottom up, which makes using the utility very
convenient. Of course you'll first have to make the directories
empty by deleting the files from them, if any, but that is easy by
first applying TDEL recursively on the files. A small practice set
for ramdisk is included, because even with safe deleting and
removing one has to know exactly what one is doing!
The old method of removing from top to bottom has been preserved
for compatibility. It has a special switch /f (force Forward).
TDEL.EXE is a part of the consequently updated fifth utility
collection from me garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle20.zip.
Tue 6-Oct-92: I have updated my fifth utility collection to be
garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle19.zip.
CMOS.EXE "Display of the CMOS information" is a program that
reads your battery backupped system information. The program now
takes an optional switch /BW to run on an LDC laptop so that only
two colors (LightGray / Black) are used. CMOS can take ? as a
parameter. It then gives the usage information.
CLOBBER.EXE "Delete files beyond undelete" is a new program in
the collection. As you know there are several programs that can
undelete deleted files, most notably the external undelete.exe
program that comes with MsDos 5.0. CLOBBER works by rewriting your
destination file full with ? and then deleting the file. Thus if one
undeletes the file the original contents is no longer there. Be
realistic if you wish a water-tight security. But beware. Although
this can foil a "simple" undelete, there are programs that can read
the sectors of the disk directly. If you update a sensitive file
that often leaves old, unattached clusters of the file on the disk,
and those can be read by a skillful snoop. On the other hand use
CLOBBER judiciously because as a general rule you will lose the file
for good (which is the exact purpose of CLOBBER). I have not been
able to evaluate how well CLOBBER performs on a badly fragmented
file. - All in all, there is a lesson to be learned here for those
who trust encryption programs to protect their sensitive files. You
should never encrypt them anywhere else than on a ram disk. If you
use harddisk for even a temporary decryption, it may leave readable
portions on the hard disk. It is not easy to access them, but it is
not overly difficult. For example I have the tools and knowhow to do
it. (No I will not disclose which and how, so please do not ask.) -
I have tried to make CLOBBER fast. It uses its own 64Kb internal
buffer, a kind of a programmed "disk cache".
The programs are mostly self-documenting, but I added the
documentations to the TSUTLE.INF information file so that they also
are in one place.
Sat 6-Jun-92: I have updated to garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle18.zip
as follows. I have written a new SETVIDEO.EXE program for setting
the CRT video mode. This program in fact originates from my own need
to set the 132x43 text mode for (MsKermit) terminal emulation in
order to read wide screens when connected to main frames like the
Vaasa University garbo.uwasa.fi and chyde.uwasa.fi.
It is easy to set the 40x25 in Turbo Pascal by applying
TextMode(C40). Likewise it is fairly trivial to set the 80x43/50
text mode by applying TextMode (C80 + font8x8). But I initially had
difficulties in finding out how to set the 132 text modes until
David R. Conrad (David_Conrad@mts.cc.wayne.edu) kindly informed me
that the interrupt 10hex function 00hex can be used for this purpose
too. The way it goes is that the standard defines video modes from
00hex to 13hex, but in fact there are many more modes which depend
on the particular video adapter card. This information can be found
in Ralf Brown's list of interrupts INTERRUP.A in inter30a.zip
(located in the /pc/programming directory at garbo.uwasa.fi).
The problem is that the different video adapter cards have
different defaults for the beyond 13hex video modes. I have used the
following solution. You give the video mode as a hex parameter to
SETVIDEO.EXE rather than choose from a menu of preset video modes.
The values to give for the different video adapter cards can be
found in the said INTERRUP.A information file if you look at INT
10h, function 00h. There is a very long list in there. For my own
386s the text modes are
$00 = 40x25 $01 = 40x25 $02 = 80x25 $03 = 80x25
$50 = 80x30 $51 = 80x43 $52 = 132x25 $53 = 132x25
$54 = 132x30 $55 = 132x43 $56 = 132x60
Sat 21-Mar-92: I have updated my CMOS.EXE program which displays
information from your battery backupped CMOS memory.
- Made the CMOS clock display continuous.
- Omitted the weekday information because it has turned out to be
volatile.
- Added the display of whether a math coprocessor is installed
according to the CMOS configuration information.
I have consequently released an updated version of my fifth utility
collection. It is now garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutle17.zip.
Mon 2-Mar-92: The modern PCs have a battery backupped CMOS memory
which includes the backed-up clock to store the date and the time,
and configuration information. This battery usually lasts for
several years, but eventually it will lose power. The current
(pardon the pun) state of the battery can be checked by programming
since as long as the battery is giving power is a certain bit in
CMOS memory is on, and if the battery looses power the bit will be
off. I have written a program CMOSALAR.EXE to read this bit. If the
battery bit is off, an alarm will be sounded. One option is to put
it in your autoexec.bat where it will act as a sentinel for you.