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TurboBackup.DOC
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1986-11-21
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***************************** TURBOBACKUP.DOC ***********************
DISCLAIMER
----------
Copyright 1988 by Steffen Stempel and Martin Kopp.
You may distribute this program for non-commercial purposes.
You are encouraged to make as much copies of TURBOBACKUP as
you like as long as you're not violating any of the statements
below.
- Nobody except the authors are allowed to gain any profit by
using and/or distributing this program. This includes the
duplication of commercial disks.
- Nobody is allowed to change any part of the following files:
TURBOBACKUPV1.00
TURBOBACKUP.doc
TURBOBACKUP.readme
ReadMe.First
Execute.Me
- If you are giving this program to someone else, it is your
responsibility that these files are unchanged and that the
person receiving TURBOBACKUP agrees to this disclaimer.
- To protect them from getting lost or changed we decided to
permit distribution only in one of these three forms:
- the complete directory TurboBackupV1.00
(including all files mentioned above and the
file TurboBackupV1.00.info with the icon.)
- the file TurboBackupV1.00.arc
(including the same files as the directory and
the file Execute.Me which renames the files
in the ARCchieve to their original names.)
- both the above.
- We encourage people who want to distribute TURBOBACKUP on
their commercial disks. BUT you must contact Martin Kopp at
the address below to get a special marked version that shows
that you are entitled to distribute it. You also have to
provide two versions of your program to the authors.
(Little fee for providing your customers with a reliable
backup-program and having minor trouble replacing disks!)
- The authors have tested the program very intensive. BUT we
can not give you any warranty regarding the function of the
program itself or the reliability of the copies made with
it (Sorry guy's but no commercial program can provide such
a warranty nor can we do it with our program.)
- Any questions regarding the above stated distribution
on commercial disks, any error reports (not missing
features, that would be too much to handle because we
already got a 5 pages long list of features we would like
to add !!!), any letters to encourage our work (please send
NO money or other 'payment') should be directed to:
MARTIN KOPP
FRANKENSTRASSE 34
D-6800 MANNHEIM 52
West Germany
- You as the user are responsible not to violate any
copyright or law by using TURBOBACKUP.
THE SPEED OF TURBOBACKUP
------------------------
Phenomenalistically !!! (Applause 8-} )
About 103.5 seconds for one source one destination
less than 140 seconds for two destinations
less than 175 seconds for three destinations
Anyone who claims to be much faster cannot do any verify
at all! (This is physically not possible with our hardware
like it is!)
How to start TURBOBACKUP (display modes, syntax):
-------------------------------------------------
TURBOBACKUP has two general display modes: window and screen.
In the window-mode you will get an unsizeable window with
deptharrangers on your workbench screen. It is little smaller
than a normal NTSC-WB-screen. So you can still grab the screen
titlebar and click on icons that you have positioned rightmost
on the WB.
In the screen mode you will get a two-plane workbench-color
dragable screen with deptharrangers. Then you should not have
any problems with using the Workbench.
You can select these modes on startup using:
WORKBENCH
By using the 'INFO' item of the Workbench menu and
inserting a "DISPLAYMODE=screen" into the tooltype
gadget you will get the screen mode on startup.
If not, TURBOBACKUP will start in a window.
There are no other selections possible.
CLI
You may start TURBOBACKUP from CLI using the following
syntax:
TURBOBACKUPV1.00 [DFs: to DFt:[,DFu:[DFv:]]] [-s]
where [...] means that this part is optional.
The selected source and destination drives will be
selected in the display.
If you specify -s you will get the screen mode.
If TURBOBACKUP encounters any serious problems during startup
(like insufficient memory) it will not crash but specify the
problem and then gracefully abort.
By the way, TURBOBACKUP will not start until all floppy-disk
drives are 'not busy' to prevent you from getting confusing
results.
HOW TO USE TURBOBACKUP
----------------------
After startup you see the TURBOBACKUP display with four grids,
one for each drive. Located below each of these grids is a
gadget that toggles between 'OFF' 'SOURCE' and 'DEST'.
Chose the combination you want to use by either clicking on
these gadgets, using the keys '0' to '3' to toggle them or
'F1' to 'F4' for SOURCE, 'F5' to 'F9' for DESTINATION or
shift 'F1' to 'F4' for OFF for the respective drive.
Then click on 'Start' or type 'S'.
If you want to abort a backup select 'Abort' or type 'A'.
If you want to make a retry after TURBOBACKUP detects an error,
select 'Retry' or press 'R'.
If you copy to multiple destination drives you may cancel one
of the destination copies by selecting 'Remove' or the
corresponding number on the keypad. The other copies will be
continued.
You can leave TURBOBACKUP by selecting 'Quit' or pressing
Shift-'Q'.
HOW TO USE MULTITASKING
-----------------------
TURBOBACKUP multitasks like a charm! But there are some points
you have to be aware of:
TURBOBACKUP allocates EVERY floppy-disk-drive in the system.
So you have to load those programs you want to use along with
TURBOBACKUP from harddisk, ramdisk, net or before you start
TURBOBACKUP. All drives will again become available when you
leave TURBOBACKUP.
It should be possible to make TURBOBACKUP resident. You may
use this as a work around for the missing directory-feature.
By the way, TURBOBACKUP only takes a small amount of the
processor time. So multitasking REALLY makes sense !
TURBOBACKUP MESSAGES
--------------------
TURBOBACKUP displays messages in the lower right box. It will
constantly display its state (running, aborted, finished etc.).
In addition the grids will display graphically the progress for
each cylinder by letters 'r' 'w' 'v' on background color for
side one and on black for side zero.
Every time TURBOBACKUP encounters an error it will automatically
retry four times. If successful it will say so in the message
window and draw an orange box around the corresponding cylinder
in the display.
If the error persists, the screen will be flashed three times
and TURBOBACKUP will release three short, high beeps. You can
determine the exact cylinder and side of the error in the
textdisplay. You may then select 'Retry', 'Abort' or 'Remove'
(if applicable).
Two cylinders before the copy would be finished, TURBOBACKUP
will flash the screen one time and release one long, deep
sound. This will make you aware that soon there will be work
for you. So you can finish your other work and loose no time.
When the copy process is finished, TURBOBACKUP will display
which copies are OK and which have been canceled.
If all drives were OK TURBOBACKUP issues a long high beep, if
not then the error beep as described above is going to annoy
you again.
ABOUT VERIFY AND RETRIES
------------------------
TURBOBACKUP will not copy without verify, because we think
that this is a senseless operation.
TURBOBACKUP will only copy standard AmigaDOS floppy-disks.
It will not copy disks with copy protection or errors on them!
If TURBOBACKUP encounters an error it will make 4 retries and
if not successful give you the chance to issue again four
retries and again and... If any of these retries is successful
TURBOBACKUP displays a message, draws an orange box around the
cylinder and continues.
These cylinders are OK! The orange box is only a reminder
that there has been a problem, so that you can locate disks
with 'weak' media. IF TURBOBACKUP encounters any errors that
can not be solved by retries, you have to 'Abort' / 'Remove'
this copy. Then use disksalv (Thanks Dave!) or copy single
files to restore the data.
TURBOBACKUP even verifies the gap between the last and first
blocks on a track. If a very small hard error on the disk
surface falls into the gap when writing to it, and the copy
program does not detects this, the chance is great that you
get an unrecoverable error when normal DOS routines try
writing to this track. With TURBOBACKUP we managed to make
this a very rare devil to occure. This also implies that
TURBOBACKUP will reject more disks than other programs. But
this is a small "drawback" compared to loosing valuable data
on your workdisk!
COMPATIBILITY
-------------
TURBOBACKUP tries to be fully compatible with DOS. That means
it will use step rates, precompensation etc. just like the DOS
does.
The copies will be identical, this means, that AmigaDOS will
visit Guru-town if you put some these disks simultaneously in
your drives! This problem will not occur at the time
TURBOBACKUP is running or by leaving it.
OTHER THINGS TO MENTION
-----------------------
TURBOBACKUP will shut down the drivemotors if an error occurs
and 10 seconds passed by.
TURBOBACKUP will display a message when you try to quit and
there are still some identically disks in the drives.
TURBOBACKUP measures the speed of the drives in use and tries
to accomodate to it as long as it is in an acceptable range.
It will NOT test the source drive on write protect in the
actual version. So YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE to make sure that no
disks get damaged. By the way it is a very good habit always
to set the write-protection on your disks to the ON position.
This also helps to tackle the problems with viruses that came
up the last months, because the chance to become infected
disks gets smaller the more disks of you are write-protected.
KNOWN BUGS AND PROBLEMS
-----------------------
At some very rare moments, mostly when using too slow drives,
TURBOBACKUP had a problem with cylinder 79. It will determine
an error and it is not possible to get past it using 'Retry'.
Then 'Abort' and 'Start' will make it work. Because this
problem was not reproducible and so rare, we could not remove
it. But there never were any bad disks as a result of such
behavior. So we think nobody should be angry about it.
The other known problem is not caused by TURBOBACKUP. When
you use TURBOBACKUP in screen-mode in conjunction with
ClickToFront the titlebar will disappear if you double-click
the screen and you cannot drag the screen anymore. As far as
we know this is a problem of intuition.