hamilton@intersil.uucp (11/18/90)
In article <183946b2.ARN2515@starsoft.UUCP>, david@starsoft.UUCP (Dave Lowrey) writes: > In article <1990Nov16.195248.7046@ariel.unm.edu>, Stinger writes: > >> >> But BEWARE! You must make sure you order the LATEST version >> of QB Tools. The very first release often locked up in the middle of >> reorganizing drives with the A2091, 2091 and Trumpcards. Needless to >> say the drives were completely unusable after that. The new version >> is corrected and should provide no problems. It seems to function >> quite well. > > Can you tell us how to distinguish between the "First" version and the > "current" version? > > I would kind-of like to know. :-) I just picked up QuarterBack Tools. The version is 1.2a, dated October 27, 1990. I've been using it on my 3000 under 2.0. Some initial impressions: 1) Yes, you have the choice of WB or CLI optimization (menu item). 2) You set the amount of RAM you want to use in a menu. The choices are "Low" (uses minimum RAM), "Medium" (uses about 5megabytes out of the 7meg fast ram available on my machine), and "All", which uses almost every byte of fast ram available. None of the options seemed to use any chip ram, but I assume QB tools would use chip ram if no fast ram was available. The more ram QB tools has, the faster the re-organization goes and THE LESS THRASHING. Thrashing is my main complaint with BAD-it really gives my hardisk a workout. 3) It has a bare minimum graphical display of the disk being optimized, so at least you have something to look at. 4) The overall "look" of the program is pathetic, about as bad as QuarterBack itself. The program opens a borderless window taking up the entire WB screen. So if you have an interlaced WB it fills up the entire screen, even though the only useful parts are in the top half. Between that and the fact that it's borderless, you end up with a rather dull, not particularly friendly interface. 5) The gadgets are boring, static, and have no feedback. There is a 1-2 second delay on some gadgets between when you click on it and when the system responds in any way. The version I have works well with floppys, FFS harddisk partitions, and RAD: drives. I haven't compared it to see if it organizes better or worse than BAD, but it certainly is easier on the harddisk. I haven't used any other features of it yet, but the ability to fix validation and key checksum errors "in place" will be worth the price of the thing (if it works when I need it...). The last time my 3000 crashed while it was writing to the hard disk I had to backup and reformat the whole partition! -- Fred Hamilton Any views, comments, or ideas expressed here Harris Semiconductor are entirely my own. Even good ones. Santa Clara, CA