DCOPY Version 3.12 March 15, 1989
I have been using Dcopy since the first day that I found it on
one of the bbs's that I call. The few bugs in it kept nagging at
me, so I decided to take it up on myself to disassemble the
program and try to fix what I could. The following represents
most of the 'visable' changes that I have made to the program.
If you know of any more that needs to be fixed then drop me a
line.
I had hoped that Ralph Walden would get interested in the ST
world again, but I am afraid he has gone on to other things.
1. The Packing bug has been fixed! Dcopy will now pack a file
properly. Version 1.91 would only write out the first 26 bytes of
the packed file.
2. The program will not go 'crazy' if you ask it to arc a file
that is not there or an empty folder (or misspelled one).
3. The format routines have been completely rewritten and now
supports (invisibly) the Mega rom format. The Mega rom format
will only work if you have the new roms installed in your
machine.
4. The copy disk functions have been completely rewritten and now
will copy any format disk (non copy protected) without any
problems. The previous version would not do extended (10 sector
per track) sector disks. Note that Dcopy reads the information
on the source disk and will format the destination disk
accordingly. It does not do any checking to the destination disk
first to find out if it is already formatted properly.
5. The mouse should behave properly now and the standard GEM file
selector box can be used now! (Promise this time).
6. A bug in the delete folder command that caused the system to
crash if used a couple of times has been fixed.
7. The buffer routines have been made 'legal' now.
8. The Undo key has been made a quick exit.
9. A bug in the delete file within an ARC file has been fixed.
This only showed up if you were using the item selector box.
10. A bug in the buffer routines has been fixed and now any size
file can be arc'd or extracted no matter how small the 'free
memory' buffer is. This makes it very nice to run from within
programs such as ST-Talk Professional which only allocate a fixed
amount of memory to external programs from. Many thanks to Keith
Gerdes for finding and fixing that very elusive critter.
11. A new command has been added to the alternate menu. It is
the -S command and is used when you want to store a file to a new
or existing ARC file. This is the same as 'A'dd without
compaction.
12. A new feature has been added to the 'T'ype command. You are
now prompted to continue to search for a word after it has been
found within the text.
13. When using the program in the PRG mode Dcopy now remembers
the path you were last in. The prior versions (1.99c and before)
had problems with this...sorry, but I think I got it fixed this
time! Version 3.01 corrects a small bug that would only occur if
you used the cancel button the first time thru on the item
selector box. (Was setting my flag at the wrong place!).
14. When you are viewing a text file, you are now given the
option to print the file. This could only be done before if Dcopy
was ran as a TOS/TTP file because it looks for a '-' as the print
flag, which can not be typed into the file selector box.
15. You are now given the option to print either the page
(screen) or the whole text of any text file you are viewing.
16. A hidden command has been added. The Clr/Home key has been
made a toggle to go back and forth between GEM and TOS mode.
17. Corrected a bug in the 'W' (Change working directory)
command that would cause Dcopy to hang up in GEM mode sometimes.
A 'W' command will now set the default path for the file selector
box also.
18. Dcopy will now check to make sure that your printer is
online and ready when printing from within the 'T'ype command.
19. You can now pause a listing by hitting any key while it is
being written to the screen. This applies to the disk directory
command and the view filenames in an ARC command. Hitting any key
will continue the original command.
20. You can maintain the date stamp from within an ARC file by
using the new ALT X command. If you want your extracted files to
keep the same time and date as they are in the ARC'd file, then
use this command instead of the normal eXtract. This works in
version 3.08!
21. The way the verbose listing looks has been cleaned up a
little.
It is more in line with the way ARC.TTP shows the files.
22. Dcopy 3.07 is now about 2K smaller (now smaller than version
1.91!) due to a new feature in HiSoft's DevpacST. They added a
feature that does a very nice job of optimizing the assembled
program.
23. Dcopy will now ARC files that are zero bytes long.
24. The 'S'pace command will give the correct amount of
information on disks that only have 1 sector per cluster.
25. Fixed something that had bothered me for a long time. Now
if you are in the process of 'A'rcing a file and you have selected
an ARC file name within the file selector box, but decide to stop
before you choose which file to arc, you can hit either OK or
CANCEL and it will abort. Hitting the CANCEL button before would
write out a file governed by the free space left on your disk or
partition.
26. Dcopy will now give you the familiar file selector box for
the destination of eXtracts, Copies and Moves if ran in the 'PRG'
mode. If you want the destination to go into a folder, you must
modify the directory line with the appropriate drive and folder
name (B:\FOLDER\) and then have the selector update itself by
clicking on the top of the window box or what I call the grey area
of the box. This allows the particular path that you want the
destination files to go to get logged in. Please note that you
must include the last backslash for it to work properly. Dcopy
will ignore the extender and the filename if you are using the
eXtract functions. The Copy command works similar to the above,
but you can give it a different filename if you wish.
27. The HELP key will now bring up the alternate menu instead of
having to hit the ALT M keys.
28. A bug in the search directory command (J) has been fixed.
You can now have any directory search be written out to a disk
file. Whenever you use the J command, at the filespec prompt
enter something like *.* d:\drive_c.dir. There must be a space
between the * and the drive letter. A source drive would have
already been selected so that is the reason it did not appear in
the example. You can also send the listing of a drive, partition
or folder to the printer by using -p instead of the drive letter
and filename. Try it, I think you will like it.
------- NEW -------
29. Version 3.12 now supports copy to standard output with the
'Control I' command. This is a variant of the 'I' command
(extract with query), and will extract to the screen instead of to
a disk file. You should only choose files that you know are ascii
to view to the screen in this manner. You can pause the screen by
hitting any key.
30. The 'where is' command is now case independent from within
the 'T'ype command. This means you can search for a string and it
doesn't matter if what you are searching for is upper or lower
case or any combination of the two.
31. Dcopy will now eXtract to ramdisks that will not handle odd
address writes (DeskCart! for instance). The Arcing routines will
be able to write to the same ramdisk with a 50% chance of success.
The first file will always be successful though.
32. The file selector box may now be toggled on and off with the
insert key and the status of whether Dcopy is in TOS or GEM mode
and also whether the destination file selector box is wanted is
shown in the alternate menu now. The alternate menu is available
by hitting the Help key.
33. The menus have been changed a little so that the more
commonly used commands show up on the main menu now.
34. Much thanks go out to Keith Gerdes for his Dcopy Shell
program, which is being released with version 3.12. It makes
using Dcopy that much more of a pleasure. Thanks Keith!
If you would like to leave me a message or have any comments
about what I have done, I can be reached on the following
systems..
GEnie Floppy Wizard BBS
L.NOVAK (713) 827-8041