jwhitman@st-louis-emh2.army.mil (Jerry Whitman) (05/07/89)
Fred Fish Disk 158 contains a utility set called MSDOS. This is two programs designed to read MSDOS format disks. The first is a list utility and the second is a copy program. I have been trying them out lately with mixed results (see below). They were submitted by Frank W|bbeling <thats how it is spelled on the disk docs>. Does anyone know how I can reach him? I do not recall seeing his name pass by on this net. Fred, did he give you any net address you can divulge? Observations on MSDOS.. IBMtype is the list program. It seems capable of reading any data on a 3.5" MSDOS disk and listing it to the screen. I have tried it with small and large (190K) ASCII files with no problem. It also will trudge dutifly through binaries with no apparent problem, happily spraying the screen with all the nonsense you expect when you try listing executibles. simpleIBMcopy is the copy program. This is where I reach for the Rolaids! It does copy files, well it sorta copies files, but not like I would expect. When I tried to copy the 190K ACSII file It only got the first 50+K. When I copied a 14K zoo archive it worked fine. Copying a 55K executible netted about 29K. This seem to fall a little short of what I think a copy utility should do (or am I being too picky ????). I could not find a pattern of where it would break. Perhaps it is influenced by the data being copied since it appears to be so random. I have had no failures for files under 15K, but I have not tried files between 15K and 50K, so I do not know where it starts to fail. Assuming you can get it to successfully copy the file for you we come to my next concern. It copies files to a FIXED data set name of RAM:MS DOS.file. Yup,that is a space in the file name, so you have to qoute the file name to reference it. If you have multiple files to copy you must immediately move or rename each file as it is copied or the next copy will overwrite it. This can be a little wearying after a while. Sure seems the program could have used the original file name as a qualifier. Ready for more? When you are done with MSDOS and ready to move on to new horizons you find another surprise. You can no longer read AMIGA-DOS disks in the drive you used for MSDOS. It seems MSDOS has tricked AMI's drive into thinking it is an IBM-PC compatible drive, and walked off leaving her in an altered state of mind. The only way out I could find was to re-boot. BAD NEWS,especially if you have more than one task going on. It is not nice to fool mother AMI, she'll get you for that!! Interestingly enough this package is ShareWare. I was quite surprised to see that. The author also mentions a "production" or heavy duty version which can be purchased. Sad to say this sample did not whet my appetite for the heavy duty model. Has anyone else tried using the package? Did you get similar results, or am I just doing something super-stupid? I think the author did a good job on the list program and with only a little effort could make the copy program a real winner with just a little tweaking to do these... 1. Please let me have ALL of my file 2. Let me specify the receiving device (RAM: default is ok) 3. Let me specify the copy filename (default to source filename) 4. When you exit - GIMME BACK MY DRIVE!!!! Hope this was helpful to someone. If the author sees this please drop me a note. Regards, Jerry Whitman