Documentation for Cheetah
(C) 1989 by Jay Jones
This program is being distributed as Shareware. This means that you may
give this program out to your friends or post it on Bulletin Boards freely
as long as the program remains unchanged and this text file is included.
All I ask is that if you like this program and use it, please send a
donation ($20 Suggested?) to the address listed below. The only way that I
can continue to develop and support this program is if I receive some
compensation for the MONTHS I have devoted to its development. Your
registration also insures that you will be informed of any upgrades made
available. Enough said.
Cheetah is designed as a high speed file copying utility. Hard Drive
users will find it the most useful, however it does fully support floppy
drives also. Effective transfer rates vary depending on the hardware and
the data being copied. Hard drive users can expect to see transfer rates
ranging from 6 to 14 Mb/Min, averaging about 9 Mb/Min.
Selecting Paths: There are two ways to select your source/destination
paths. One is to highlight the drive letter and click in the "Select Path"
boxes, the other is to double click the drive letter. When double clicking,
first the source then the destination will be selected. After that, you can
use normal double clicks to select source or hold down the right button when
double clicking to change destination. To go into a folder, either double
click it or highlight it and click in the "Select Path" box.
Selecting Files: Once both source and destination paths are selected, files
can be selected by clicking on them, or by holding down and dragging.
"Select all" will toggle all files on/off. Also see "Auto Select" in the
"Extras" menu below.
Extras Menu: From this menu you can see buffer and mem free sizes, change
the file sort order, chose whether or not to display the performance window
after the copy, or go to either of the 3 submenus (Auto Select, Free Space
or Zero Drive).
Auto Select Menu: This routine will go through the source path top to
bottom (as displayed) and select as many files as can fit into the
destination free space. All previously selected files are ignored. The
other items are for setting filtering of which files to select. The "File
Mask" and the two date fields are ignored if left blank.
Archive bit Sensitivity (In the Auto Select Menu): To enable archive bit
sensitivity, highlight the "Archive bit sensitive" box. If this box is
selected, the select routine will take into account archive bit status
relative to the "Select when" option. If archive bit sensitivity is
enabled, the directories in the main menu will display archive bit status
by showing a ":" if the bit is on, and a "." if it is off. Any time the
archive bit sensitivity is enabled and a copy is performed, the bit status
of the copied files is changed in memory (ie: "Select when" set ON, all
copied files are set to OFF). If "WriteSrc Dir" is ON, the modified archive
bit status will be saved to disk,otherwise it is changed IN MEMORY ONLY
and is lost when source paths are changed or you exit the program.
Quick Keys: From the main menu, there are several "Hot Keys" to get the
sub-functions quickly.
^A Auto Select Menu
^F Free Space
^Z Zero Drive
^S Sort Order Menu
^B Toggle Folder Buffering On/Off
Aborting: Copies can be aborted by pressing the UNDO key, the program will
then prompt you to verify the abort. This can be done during all but the
final stage of the copy.
Folder Buffering: If folder buffering is enabled the program will try to
load all copied folders into the main buffer. If you are having problems
with buffer size or errors try turning the buffering off to save memory.
DO NOT exceed 200 folders in a copy with buffering on!
Note: If you are using less than TOS 1.4 you may notice that the double
click is a bit SLOW!! This is due to slow return times from the AES. It
may be easier with old TOS to make selections by using the path select
boxes at the tops of the file windows.
Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure that this program is
safe to use and error free.... HOWEVER,
I accept no responsibility for any damage or data loss that may occur
from the use of this program.
*********************** Warning ***********************
Cheetah does not use standard calls to its copying/deleting! This can
cause problems when you exit the program with GEM not being updated
properly as to the changes that have been made. Normally this is only a
problem if you are running some sort of caching program. This can
usually be resolved by hitting ESC on the affected drives at the
desktop. If you are unsure as to whether GEM has been updated properly,
play it safe, REBOOT!
**********************************************************************
* Changes for ver 1.1 11/15/89 *
**********************************************************************
CACHING PROGRAMS:
Routines have been added when exiting Cheetah to force GEM to re-read
the disks even when caching programs are resident! These routines have
been tested with Atari's CACHExxx.PRG, Beckmeyer's HDACCEL.PRG, and ICD's
v4.x.x booter, and all seem to work fine. The ONLY thing that we have
found that can still cause a problem is if you have a window open into a
folder, then delete that folder from within Cheetah. If you have any
problems, please let me know.
Found and fixed a bug when creating a folder on the source drive.
File Size,Date,Time Display
A new item has been added to the main menu. By clicking on the arrows
you can shift the display left or right through File Name, Size, Date
and Time. This can also be acomplished through pressing the left/right
cursor keys.
Many thanks to Don and Mark for all the help in resolving the caching
problem, and through out the development of the program.
Note: I have just heard of a problem when running Cheetah on partitions
larger than the 16 Meg standard. I will be looking into this bug as soon I
can get the hardware to test it with.
Donations, Comments, Questions or Suggestions: Please write.
Jay Jones
9862 S 262nd Pl
Kent, WA 98031