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_____ _____ | __ \ / ____| | |__) | __ ___ | | ___ _ __ _ _ | ___/ '__/ _ \| | / _ \| '_ \| | | | | | | | | (_) | |___| (_) | |_) | |_| | |_| |_| \___/ \_____\___/| .__/ \__, | | | __/ | Version 2.58 |_| |___/ ======================= Multiple disc copier ======================= © David Holden, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 _______ ____|__ | (R) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER Contents 1.1 Licence to use 1:2 Registration file 1.3 Licence to copy 1.4 A.S.P. Message Introduction 1:5 Use with RISC-OS 2 1:6 How it works 1:7 Formatting 1:8 Types of disc 1:9 Disc images 1:10 Compression Using ProCopy 2:1 Getting Started 2:2 Read 2:3 Write 2:4 Format 2:5 Options 2:6 Preset 2:7 Clear 2:8 Info 2:9 Quit 2:10 A short demonstration 2:11 Counting Copies 2:12 Repeat copies 2:13 Clearing an Image 2:14 Read and Write drives 2:15 Background operation 2:16 Pausing 2:17 Auto copying 2:18 Number of copies 2:19 Auto and Normal copying 2:20 Concurrent operation 2:21 Key shortcuts Saving and Loading disc images 3:1 How it Works 3:2 Saving the Image 3:3 Reloading an Image Use with the RamDisc 4.1 Creating a RamDisc 4.2 Disc image to RamDisc 4.3 RamDisc to Disc Image 4.4 Copying files to floppy Formatting 5:1 The Format Window 5:2 Background 5:3 Verify 5:4 Warn defects 5:5 Formatting a disc 5:6 Auto formatting 5:7 Saving the Format options The Options window 6:1 Background 6:2 Verify 6:3 Format 6:4 Confirm 6:4 Preferences 6:5 Saving/Loading the options The Preset list 7:1 The Preset List window 7:2 Adding images to the list 7:3 Saving/Loading the Preset List 7:4 Deleting items Problems and Suggestions 8:1 Reporting errors 8:2 Partly filled discs 8:3 Formatting 8:4 DOS discs 8:5 640K ADFS discs 8:6 OS and Hardware compatibility 8:7 'D' and 'E' format discs 8:8 Disc errors 8:9 Memory usage 8:10 Compressing disc images 8:11 Problems 8:12 Other formats 8:13 Filename in the Preset List 8:14 Using unformatted discs Keeping Logfiles 9:1 Logfile location 9:2 Logfile format 9:3 The !CopyLog application Appendix Keys used with icon clicks The Preset List file Use with Autocopiers Copy protected discs Sprites This program is not Public Domain, it is _____ _ / ____| | | (___ | |__ __ _ _ __ _____ ____ _ _ __ ___ \___ \| '_ \ / _` | '__/ _ \ \ /\ / / _` | '__/ _ \ ____) | | | | (_| | | | __/\ V V / (_| | | | __/ |_____/|_| |_|\__,_|_| \___| \_/\_/ \__,_|_| \___| Shareware is NOT 'free software'. It is copyrighted, commercial software, just like any other normal programs that you buy. Shareware is simply a try before you buy distribution method. Using a Shareware program without paying is software piracy, and carries exactly the same penalties as using any other illegally copied program. 1.1 Licence to use You are licensed to evaluate this program for a period of Thirty Days. At the end of this time you must either stop using it or send a cheque for Fifteen Pounds to me at the address overleaf. Use after this time is a breach of this licence and, as well as being morally reprehensible, is now a criminal offence. The standard registration Fee of £15 permits full commercial use on a single computer. If you intend to use !ProCopy on more than a single machine then you will need either a Site or Company Licence. Use on more than one computer without the appropriate Licence is a breach of Copyright and I reserve the right to take action against any organisation or individual who does so. ProCopy is so invaluable for user groups, clubs, in fact, any any organisation that needs to make multiple copies of discs that under some circumstances eg. non commercial use by a charity or other non profit making organisation, I may be prepared to waive or reduce the Site Licence fee or permit use on multiple machines for a single Licence fee, or even, in exceptional circumstances, reduce the basic Single User Fee. If you think your organisation or club may be entitled to such a reduction please send full details with an SAE for my reply. 1:2 Registration file When you register I will send the latest version and your personal 'PC_Reg' file which will disable the annoying start up message and put your name or company name in the 'Info' box instead of the word 'Unregistered'. You will also get a laser printed Manual. The PC_Reg file contains your encrypted name and will work with any future version of !ProCopy. This means that, provided you remove the PC_reg file first you can pass a copy of !ProCopy on to your friends, or obtain a later version from a PD library or BBS. DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER To simplify registration I have made the last page of this Manual a registration form. Please use this when you register as it helps me to keep my records in order. I am always happy to answer queries or listen to suggestions even if you haven't yet registered. Important - Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that this program operates correctly and without error no responsibility can be taken for any corruption or loss of data or any other problems consequent upon its use. 1.3 Licence to copy Any private individual may distribute copies of !ProCopy provided this is done without charge for the program or documentation. If you charge any fee for copying this program, whether in money or in kind, or if you control any media, including bulletin boards, which distributes software you are not permitted to distribute this program without prior permission of the Author. This permission will normally be granted with only minor restrictions. If you wish to distribute ProCopy please write to the address below enclosing a SAE and a disc so I can send the latest version. Distribution by any organisation without this permission will be treated as Breach of Copyright. You must not make any charge for the program, although you may make a charge to cover media and distribution costs. No alterations may be made to the program, ancillary files, or documentation and you must include the text file version of the full Manual and the !CopyLog application. You are not permitted to distribute any printed Manuals or to distribute any version of the Manual other than as an ASCII text file on disc. Use of this program for any Commercial purpose or for the Demonstration or Promotion of any product or service without prior written permission of the Author is Absolutely Forbidden. I reserve the right to charge a Fee for granting permission. It is strictly forbidden to distribute copies of an PC_Reg file or any version of the program which does not display the 'Start Up' message. David Holden 39 Knighton Park Road Sydenham London SE26 5RN 0181 778 2659 <info@apdl.co.uk> 1.4 A.S.P. Message This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the Shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442-9427, U.S.A. or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536 or FAX 616-788-2765. Introduction ------------ ProCopy is a program for making multiple copies of a disc. It is not intended to copy discs which are copy protected, nor as a replacement for the 'Backup' to copy a single disc. It is designed for clubs or other organisations where many copies of a subscription disc or circular are required but where the cost of an expensive bulk disc copier (normally around £2,500) is not justified. What Procopy will do is to save a great deal of time and a lot of disc swapping if you want several (or several dozen) copies. It is a much enhanced version of a program called !Copier that I wrote for Archimedes World some years ago. Since that time it has been continually developed and, although, it has much in common with the earlier program, it is not just a slightly rehashed version. 1:5 Use with RISC-OS 2 Earlier versions worked with both RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3 but RO2 compatibility has now been dropped. Acorn have, in fact, now asked developers to stop supporting RO2, but the main reason that I have decided not to continue to make ProCopy work with RO2 is that many of the routines need to be different with the obsolete OS, and this adds to program size and complexity and reduces speed. Although I don't anticipate that anyone needing a program of this type will still be using RO2 I do know of ay least one developer who has a machine fitted with RO2 for compatibility testing and sometimes uses that machine for disc copying, so there may be a need and I am prepared to try to accommodate you. 1:6 How it works ProCopy works by taking a complete copy of the disc as a 'disc image' which can be transferred to another disc to create a perfect copy of the original. This is what 'Backup' does but the advantage of Procopy is that it doesn't 'throw away' the disc image after the copy has been made. The image is kept in memory so you can make as many copies as you need without swapping discs and reloading the original each time as you need to do with Backup. The disadvantage is that you must have enough free memory to hold the disc image. Unlike Backup Procopy can't copy a disc in two 'bites'. In practice this means you must have at least 2Mb to copy 800K discs and it is best to have 4Mb for 1.6Mb discs. It is just possible to copy 1.6Mb discs on a 2Mb machine if no other applications are running. 1:7 Formatting The other advantage with Procopy is that you don't need to format discs first! Procopy can format discs before copying, and it can format them faster than the normal Acorn routine. The cycle of formatting, copying and verifying (yes, it does that too!) can take less than half the time required for each disc compared with the 'normal' method. In fact ProCopy can also format discs without copying. This can have advantages over the normal desktop formatting system as will be explained later. 1:8 Types of disc Procopy will work with 640K and 800K ADFS ('E' or 'F' format) and 720K DOS discs. It will also work with 1.6 Mb ADFS and 1.44 Mb DOS and 1.7Mb Microsoft Distribution discs. if you have a machine with a hi-density drive as original equipment. It should work with 'third party' hi-density upgrades which replace ADFS drive 0. 1:9 Disc images A major feature of ProCopy is that the disc image can be saved on a hard disc as a file. This can then be reloaded into ProCopy so that further copies can be made. You do not, in fact, even need to keep the original floppy disc. Once the disc image is saved on your hard disc you can recreate the original at any time. Not only is this a very quick and convenient way of duplication but many hundreds of disc images can be kept on a single hard disc (or removable media such as a Syquest drive) which reduces the storage space required. 1:10 Compression At one time I did test a version of ProCopy which used LZW compression to reduce the size of a disc image before saving it to a hard disc. The image was then decompressed when it was reloaded. It was decided that this feature was not a good idea and so it has never appeared in a distributed version. There were several reasons why compression was abandoned but the main one is that most people who distribute discs now use some form of compression such as ArcFS, SparkFS etc. Attempting to compress a disc image which is filled with files which have already been compressed often results in a disc image which is larger than the uncompressed original. Users of this type of program will be familiar with this phenomena which happens when you try to compress a file which has already been compressed in some way. As this added considerably to program size and complexity it was felt that it would be better if users who wished to compress their disc images did so 'externally' using one of the P.D. or commercial compression programs or filing systems. ArcFS or SparkFS can be used for this, although both need quite a lot of free RAM which means that you really need a 4Mb machine to compress even an 800K disc image, and for a 1.6 Mb disc you really need more than 4Mb. It might be better to use Computer Concepts CFS, and although I don't normally like this program this may be one place where it is preferable to the others. Using ProCopy ------------- 2:1 Getting Started You should find two applications on your ProCopy disc, the main !ProCopy program and another called !CopyLog. The second of these is merely used to store logfiles and will be described later. To run Procopy double-click on the !ProCopy program icon in the usual way and it will be installed on the icon bar. At first the icon will be a feint grey outline of a disc. You can also start ProCopy by double-clicking on a Disc Image file, but at first you won't have any. Click MENU (the middle mouse button) on the Procopy icon and the main menu will appear. This contains the following items. 2:2 Read If you click SELECT on this this the 'Read Disc' window will open. At the top is shown the name of the current disc image, or 'None' if one has not yet been loaded. Below that is shown the number of the drive from which the disc image will be loaded. This can be changed using the two 'bump' icons. Most machines will have only a single floppy drive and so you will not be able to change it. At the bottom left is a small 'status' icon. At this stage it will probably show 'All', but if you read a disc in Multi Tasking mode it will count the tracks as they are read. At the bottom right is a large button marked 'Read Disc'. This is the 'go' button and clicking on it will read the image of the disc in the selected drive. 2:3 Write At this stage this will be shaded. It will be described later. 2.4 Format This opens the Format window. This is used when you want to 'just' format a disc or a series of discs rather then format and then copy an image onto the disc. It is described fully in it's own section later. 2:5 Options Clicking on this opens the 'Options' window. This is extremely complex and so leave it alone for the present and it will be described later in its own section. This also leads to a sub-menu with two items, 'Save' and 'Restore'. These duplicate functions in the Options window and will again be described in that section. 2:6 Preset This opens the Preset List window which is quite complex and is explained later. 2:7 Clear This clears a disc image from memory. If one is not loaded clicking on it has no effect. 2:8 Info This opens the usual 'Info' window. If you have not yet registered then the bottom icon will show 'Unregistered', otherwise it will display the name of the registered user. 2:9 Quit As you might expect, this closes down the ProCopy application. 2:10 A short demonstration Click MENU on the Procopy icon to display the menu and select Read and the Read Window will open. Put an 800K floppy disc with some files on it in drive :0 and click on 'Read Disc' in this window. The drive will start up, the disc name will appear in the window and the disc image will be read. When this has been done the Read Window will close and you will see that the ProCopy icon has changed to a solid blue disc with the word 'ready' beneath it. In fact when an image is loaded the icon on the icon bar will be the same as the file icon for a disc image of that size. These are identical except for the colours, which are - 640K Black 800K Blue 1.6 Mb Orange 720K DOS Red 1.44 Mb DOS Bright green 1.7 Mb Microsoft Dark green Bring up the main menu again and click on 'Options' to open the Options Window. This consists of lots of icons to set all the various options On or Off. It is described fully later but for the present just set the following items. In the 'Format' box set 'Always' to 'On'. In the 'Background' box set all items to 'Off'. In the 'Verify' box set 'Always' to 'On'. When this is done you can close the window. Go back to the Menu and you will find 'Write' is no longer shaded. Click on 'Write' and the Write Window will appear. Put an unformatted 1Mb/800K disc in drive :0 and click on 'Write Disc' which is the large 'button' in the centre of the window. If you don't have a spare unformatted disc use any disc of the correct type, even if it has been formatted differently. You will see the word 'Waiting' at the bottom of the Write Window change to 'Formatting' and the text under the icon will change from 'Ready' to 'Format', The disc drive will start up and the disc will be formatted to 800K. During this the mouse pointer will change to an Hourglass and the word 'All' will appear in the box after 'Formatting'. This is because we have set the 'Background' options to 'Off'. More about this later. When the disc has been formatted the word 'Formatting' will change to 'Copying' in the Write Window, the text under the icon will change to 'Copy' and the disc image will be copied to the disc. Once this operation is complete there will be a further change to 'Verifying'. When this has been done the mouse pointer will return to normal, and if the disc is verified without errors the text will change back to 'Waiting' and 'Ready' to show that it is ready for the next operation. If you click on the drive icon you will see that the disc is now an exact copy of the original. 2:11 Counting Copies If you look at the Write Window after copying the disc you will see that the 'Copies' box now contains the figure '1' to tell you that you have successfully made one copy. If the disc had failed to verify then it would have been counted in the 'Faulty' box. There are two reasons for counting discs in this way. Most obviously it saves you the trouble of keeping count manually. The secondary purpose is that counting good and faulty discs separately lets you check that you haven't accidentally put a faulty disc on to the 'good' pile when making a lot of copies. When you have made the number of copies you require it is simple to check that the number of discs in the 'bad' pile is the same as the number of faulty copies shown, if not you have mixed a bad disc in with the good ones! Most of the time this will be zero but Procopy is deliberately more fussy about the quality of discs it passes than the normal Verify routine so you may get the occasional reject. Quite often these will then reformat and verify successfully and Procopy can in fact carry out this operation automatically to minimise rejects. 2:12 Repeat copies It should now be obvious that to make more copies you just insert another blank disc in drive 0 and click on 'Write Disc' in the Write Window again, repeating the operation as many times as required. If you want to close the window between making copies you can do so and then reopen it. In fact Procopy has an even simpler way to make a number of copies and this will be described later under 'Auto copying'. 2:13 Clearing an Image Procopy normally takes only 80K of RAM for itself but it needs a lot more when holding a disc image in memory. Because RAM is allocated in 32K 'chunks' on 4Mb pre RISC PC machines it will actually take 96K on one of these models. If you have finished copying a particular disc but haven't yet finished with Procopy and so don't want to Quit you can force Procopy to 'unload' a disc image and give back this RAM. Just click on 'Clear' on the Menu and Procopy will revert to its 'Waiting' state taking only 80K 2:14 Read and Write drives Most Archimedes computers probably have only a single floppy disc drive but if you do have more than one you can select the source and destination drives for the copy operation. You will see the drive number shown in the Read and Write windows, just click on the arrows beside this to change it. If you don't have more than one drive this won't work. Note that the Read and Write drives can be different, changing one does not alter the other. 2:15 Background operation The Reading, Writing, Formatting and Verifying operations can all be carried out as multi tasking background operations if required. This enables you to do other things on the desktop while copying discs. The disadvantage of this is that because of the need to poll the Wimp and let other programs have a chance to operate everything will take longer. In fact a complete Format/Copy/Verify operation will take nearly 50% longer than the time taken if the operations are not multi-tasking. Also, as many of the operations take a certain amount of time, for example formatting a disc track, there will be a noticeable delay when carrying out other tasks and the desktop may become a bit 'jerky'. However you may prefer this to losing control of the computer completely for a couple of minutes while a disc is being copied. Because of this each operation can be separately defined as multi tasking or not. This lets you choose your own compromise between speed of operation and the amount of time you will lose control of the computer. As seen in the demonstration, when background operations are switched off the mouse pointer changes to an Hourglass while an operation is being carried out and the 'progress' box in the Read or Write window says 'All'. When you have chosen that an operation is to be carried out as a background task the mouse pointer will not change and you will see the disc tracks being counted in the 'progress' box if the appropriate window is open. You can mix background and non background operations if you wish, Procopy will switch between modes as required. You can even open the Options Window and change mode while Procopy is working, although the new method of operation will not take effect until the next time the operation is carried out. 2:16 Pausing You will see that there is a button marked 'Pause' to the left of the Write Disc button in the Write Window. If you click on this during a background operation then the operation will be temporarily halted until you click on the Pause button again, when it will continue exactly where it stopped. During this the legend under the Procopy icon will change to 'Pause' to remind you of what is happening. 2:17 Auto copying Auto copying is a way of making a predetermined number of copies without needing to repeatedly check the number completed. Above the Write Disc button is a writeable icon marked 'Number of Copies' in which you can enter the quantity you require. For example, if you need twenty copies click on this box to make the caret appear there and enter the number 20. As soon as you have done this and pressed RETURN copying will commence. Alternatively you can click on the 'Auto' icon instead of pressing RETURN. Unlike 'normal' copying, as soon as this is done the Write Window will close (unless you have set the option to keep it open). As before operations can be carried out either as background or foreground tasks. As soon as the disc has been copied the computer will 'beep'. What happens now depends upon whether you have selected 'Confirm Write' in the Options Window. If you have selected 'Confirm Write' as soon as a copy is completed the Write Window will reopen. To make the next copy insert another disc and click on 'Auto'. Unlike clicking on 'Write Disc' you will not be asked for confirmation, even if you have selected this in the Options Window. If you have not selected 'Confirm Write' the Write Window will not re-open. Instead the Procopy icon will change to an animation of putting a new disc into the drive. You don't need to do anything except remove the completed disc and insert a new one. Procopy will detect you have changed discs and begin making the next copy. You may not always want the program to start up straight away when you insert a new disc so if you click on the icon to open the Write Window at this point you can select 'Pause'. The main difference between using Pause at this point and any other is that to re-start you should click on 'Auto' instead of 'Pause' again. The disc change detection works with any computer using RISC-OS 3 but the system used on older models not fitted with a hi density drive is somewhat crude. If you have an older model you may prefer to set Confirm On when using auto copy. Note that the operation of 'Confirm Write' is different depending upon whether you are using normal or auto copying. With auto copying Confirm simply means that you will need to click on 'Auto' before a disc is copied, with normal copying you will have to confirm separately after you have clicked on 'Write Disc'. If a disc fails to verify correctly after copying and the Write Window is closed then an Error message will be displayed to make sure that you have realised that the disc is faulty. 2:18 Number of copies This cycle of operations will continue until you have made the number of copies previously entered in the Write Window. In fact you can change this if you wish, even after copying has begun, so if you decide you need a couple of extra's you can alter the required number. When the last copy has been made the Write Window will not appear again, just a message to tell you that the required number of copies has been made. However if you do want more you can either open it from the Menu and increase the number or simply click on 'Write Disc'. When in Auto copying mode clicking SELECT on the Procopy icon will always open the Write Window so you can watch progress if you choose. WARNING - Don't forget that when Auto copying without requiring confirmation before each copy is made Procopy will start working AS SOON AS A NEW DISC IS INSERTED. If you don't intend this to happen use Pause until you are ready to continue. 2:19 Differences between Auto and Normal copying At first it might seem that the only real difference is that with Auto copying you enter the number of copies required first and you don't need to click on anything as you insert each new disc. Although these are the most obvious differences and copies are made in the same way the two methods are intended to be used for slightly different purposes. Normal mode would probably only be used when the main task you are carrying out is copying discs. If you are not carrying out any of the operations in the background it will copy at the highest possible speed. As you are required to click on the icon to start each new cycle you can use this 'break' to carry out other tasks. There is a similar break when waiting for a new disc to be inserted in Auto mode, but repeatedly checking the drive to see if the disc has been changed does take quite a large slice of the available processing time so it is not very satisfactory unless you use 'Pause'. Auto mode is better when copying discs is a secondary task. For this reason the window is normally removed as soon as possible. You will only be prompted when you are required to change discs or if an error occurs. If you wish to carry out a task and don't want the delay caused by the background copying operations to occur you can click on the Procopy icon to open the Write Window and then use 'Pause' to halt the operation until you are ready for it to continue. Used in this way you can copy discs with the minimum of interference with your main task and the minimum of action on the part of the operator. Please Note: I have so far assumed that you have not altered any of the Options from their default settings. If you have then some things might not happen as described. ProCopy is designed to be extremely flexible in the way it operates, and this manual would become almost unintelligible if all possible alternatives were described all the time. Please see the chapter on the Options Window for a full description of these. 2:20 Concurrent operation Until now I have described proCopy operating in its normal or 'consective' mode where the operations, Formatting, Copying and Verifying, are carried out one after the other. In theory it might be possible to make the program work faster if all the operations were carried out on each track before stepping to the next. This should be faster as the drive head would only need to step once across the disc instead of up to three times with consecutive operations. Although the option is offered, so far the practice does not seem to be following the theory. Full concurrent operation, formatting, copying and verifying each track, has not proven successful and the compromise system of first formatting and then copying and verifying at the same time is slightly slower than consecutive operations. I shall continue to develop this as it will almost certainly be possible to increase the speed, although this may require slight changes to the disc format which would result in a disc which in normal use is slightly slower than the format used now. However, because I do intend to improve it and because it does function, albeit imperfectly, I have included the option. During concurrent operations the text under the icon will show either 'Copy', 'F/C', 'C/V', or 'F/C/V' depending upon which functions are to be carried out. 2:21 Key shortcuts So far I have shown all ProCopy operations being carried out by selecting from the menu or by clicking on buttons in a window. However, most of the main functions, reading from and writing to discs etc., can be carried out by simply clicking on the ProCopy icon, with or without the use of certain extra keys. These keys will not be described here but are shown in table form in the Appendix where they can more easily be found for reference. Saving and Loading disc images ------------------------------ 3:1 How it Works You have seen how Procopy can make multiple copies of a disc but the 'master' has been a normal floppy disc. Sometimes you may have a disc which you often need to copy and you don't want to make the copies all at once. Procopy can save the complete disc image of the master disc as a disc file on your hard disc from where it can be reloaded very quickly when needed. Obviously you will need a hard disc to make use of this because not only is it not possible to fit an uncompressed disc image on to a disc of the same size, but there is no advantage when reloading it compared with simply reading the original disc. 3:2 Saving the Image You will notice that 'Write' on the Menu has an arrow which leads to a 'Save' window. In this window is a box containing the disc name. You can change this before saving the disc image if you wish but it will NOT change the actual name of the disc, just the name that your disc image is saved under. To save the image drag the little disc icon in this box to a directory viewer in the usual way. The disc images are continuous files and cannot be used except for reloading into Procopy and transferring back to a floppy disc. If you do lose the master disc, or not bother to keep it, and want to gain access to the contents of a disc image you will first need to use Procopy to create a floppy disc and then you will be able to access the files from this. 3:3 Reloading an Image To reload an image double-click on its icon or drag it to the ProCopy icon. It will automatically be loaded into Procopy. You can also start up Procopy with an image loaded by double-clicking on an image icon instead of the !Procopy application icon, but the Filer must have 'seen' the !ProCopy application first for this to work. Each type of disc has its own filetype and icon. The icons are similar but each type of disc is a different colour. The filetype numbers given are in the area allocated by Acorn for Public Domain applications so the possibility of a clash does exist, but so far as I am aware no PD program in general circulation uses these types. For those interested they are - 1.6 Mb ADFS &160 800K ADFS &180 640K ADFS &164 1.7Mb Microsoft &170 1.44Mb DOS &144 720K DOS &172 The logic of these should be obvious, although most users will never need to know them. Use with RamDisc ---------------- The RAMFS filer can be made to work in a way compatible with an 800K E format disc, so ProCopy can transfer an 800K disc image directly to the RamDisc where it can be examined, edited, etc. and then 'grabbed' by ProCopy as a ready-to-use disc image. You can eliminate physical discs entirely by building master discs on the RamDisc, which is much quicker than messing about with a floppy. Unfortunately this can only be done with 800K, but this is the size most commonly used for distribution discs to ensure compatibility with older machines. 5:1 Creating a RamDisc The RamDisc must be exactly 800K if you want to 'grab' it. It can be awkward to set the size exactly, especially on a RPC with a lot of RAM, so ProCopy can do this for you. The last item on the ProCopy RamDisc sub-menu is 'Make 800K'. This will re-size any existing RamDisc to 800K or, if there is no RamDisc, create one. If a RamDisc exists but has files on it you will be warned, as they will be destroyed when ProCopy uses it. If you have previously created an 800K RamDisc and want to clear the contents then the third option on this menu, 'Wipe', will do this for you. You could just delete all the files in the usual way, but this is more convenient, especially if some of the files are locked. 5:2 Disc image to RamDisc Having previously created an 800K RamDisc load an 800K disc image into ProCopy, either by reading a disc or loading it from a hard drive, and click on 'Dump' from the ProCopy RamDisc menu. If there are some files already on the RamDisc you will be warned before they are overwritten. As this operation can only be done when an 800K disc image is loaded the menu option will otherwise be 'greyed out'. If you try to Save an 800K image to the RamDisc in the usual way by dragging from the SaveAs window you will be offered the option of Saving the disc image way or dumping the contents to the RamDisc. This is not the best way to do it as will be explained later. 5:3 RamDisc to Disc Image To 'grab' the contents of a RamDisc and convert it to a disc image just select 'Grab' from the ProCopy RamDisc menu. You can only do this with an exact 800K RamDisc. A window will appear in which you can type the name you want the disc to have. This is the name given to a 'real' disc created from this image, not the name given to a Saved disc image. If you had previously dumped the disc image to the RamDisc and not loaded any other images since then, the name of the original disc is offered in this window. This only happens if you used 'Dump' from the ProCopy RamDisc menu, not if you saved to the RamDisc by dragging. Once ProCopy has grabbed the RamDisc it is treated like any other disc image. Don't forget that at this stage it hasn't been securely saved, so if you want to use it again you must save the disc image either to you hard disc or by writing it to a floppy. 5:4 Copying files to floppy Using a RamDisc can result in a considerable speed advantage even if you just want to copy one series of files to a floppy disc. As you will be aware, copying an application or other collection of files and/or directories can be very slow. Even if you just want a single copy on a floppy disc it will often be a lot quicker to copy them to a RamDisc and then grab the RamDisc with ProCopy and write the image to a disc. Formatting ---------- Although proCopy can format discs as part of the copying process there may be times when you want to format discs without copying data onto them As well as simply needing blank, formatted, discs, it may be advantageous to pre-format discs to make the copying process quicker. Of course, you could use the normal desktop formatting procedure, but this does have disadvantages. There are two main problems with the standard desktop formatting routine. First, it's very cumbersome to use. You first have to bring up the drive menu, move to the format sub-menu, and click on the format you want, and if you want a DOS format you have to go down another level. Then, when the format window opens you have to click on the 'Format' button. When the format is completed you have to click once again, and if you want more discs you have to repeat the whole procedure. There is also the problem that the formatting procedure itself is rather slow, mainly because it always multi-tasks, and if the disc has defects you have to repeatedly click with the mouse each time it finds one. If you want a faster method you could just press F12 and type the format command, or program a function key, but this would mean that you would have to leave the desktop. 5:1 The Format Window Formatting with ProCopy is much simpler (and quicker) than the normal method. When you select 'Format' from the main menu the Format Window will open. At the left are four radio buttons which are used to select the type of format you want. Only the two standard Acorn formats (800K 'E' and 1.6Mb 'F') and the two common DOS formats (720K and 1.44Mb) are supported. It would be possible to include others but it is very doubtful if anyone would need them and so they were omitted in the interest of simplicity. At the top left is the drive to be formatted. This will be '0' by default but if you have more that one floppy drive it can be changed with the 'bump' icons. In the centre are three option icons, Background, Warn defects and Verify. At the top right is a writeable icon labelled 'Max defects'. This is the maximum number of defects that will be permitted before formatting is abandoned. You can enter any number here up to a maximum of 60. The purpose of limiting the number is to avoid wasting time with a disc that will not be of any use. There is a considerable delay each time a defect is discovered and it's much quicker simply to abandon the operation and scrap the disc if it has a lot of defects as most users will not want to bother with discs with more than a small number of defects. 5:2 Background If this is selected then the formatting will take place as a background task similar to the way that the normal desktop formatting routine works. This make the operation about 20% slower, but has the advantage that you don't lose control of the computer during the process. When formatting in this way tracks are formatted and verified one by one and progress is shown at the bottom right of the window. If you have not selected Background then this icon will show 'All'. 5:3 Verify Normally this would be selected and this will verify the disc after formatting. If any defects are discovered they will me mapped out as usual and the number detected shown in the icon at the right hand side of the window. It is always advisable to verify discs after formatting as even the highest quality can have defects, but as there may be times when you do not wish to do so the option to omit verifying has been included. One example is if you are intending to use the discs with PeoCopy at a later date and are pre-formatting them to save time. The time lost possibly rejecting the occasional faulty disc when verifying then would be more than outweighed by the time saved not verifying when formatting. 5:4 Warn defects If this is selected then if you are checking for defects and one or more are found on the disc an error window will open when the format is complete to make sure that you are aware that the disc has defects. Obviously if Verifying is not selected then no errors will be detected. If there are defects then the number found will always be shown in the icon at the right hand side of the window but this could easily be overlooked, and will obviously not be visible if you are formatting a series of discs in 'auto' mode with the Format Window closed. 5:5 Formatting a disc Before you can format a disc you must clear any disc image currently held in memory. To do this just select 'Clear' from the min menu. Then, from the foregoing you will probably have realised that all you have to do is select the format you want and whether you want background operations and verifying and then click on the 'Format' button. You can abort the formatting at any time. If you have selected Background just click on the 'Stop' button, otherwise press the Escape key. 5:6 Auto formatting This is similar to the auto-copying system. Instead of clicking on Format to begin operations click on Auto. Formatting will proceed exactly as before, but when each disc is formatted all you need to do is remove it from the drive and put in the next blank disc and that will be formatted. This will continue until you click on the Stop button. You do not need to keep the Format Window open, but if you want to be warned of any discs with defects you should then select the 'Warn defects' option. To open the window again select 'Format' from the main menu. You can change the format type and/or options during this process if you wish, but to avoid confusion it is best to only do this while 'in between' discs. Warning: Auto formatting is as ideal way of formatting discs, especially if you have a second computer on your desk as all you have to do is reach over and change discs. However, if you are background auto formatting on you computer while using it for other tasks be very careful. You must remember that as soon as you put a disc in the drive it will be formatted, so if you make a mistake and pick up a disc that has valuable data on it this could be destroyed by the format process before you realise your error. 5:7 Saving the Format options. None of these setting are saved in the Options file. Instead there is a separate file for the format options and to save these just click on the 'Save' button at the bottom left of the window. As with the main options the position of the window is saved as well as the state of all the buttons and icons, and is automatically reloaded the next time you start ProCopy. The Options window ------------------ Because Procopy is designed to be as versatile as possible most functions are user-configurable so you can make Procopy work the way you want it to and most of these variations are controlled from the Options Window. You open this by clicking on 'Options' on the Menu. It is divided into five areas titled Background, Verify, Format, Confirm, Preferences and Logfile. 6:1 Background This defines which operations will be carried out as multi-tasking background tasks. Any item selected will operate in this way, unselected operations will take over the computer while they are in progress. The advantage of background operation is that it lets you continue to use the computer even while disc are being formatted or copied. However, because of the need to continually suspend operations and poll the Wimp, it takes more time for each task, typically 50% longer, even more if another program is actually in use. Providing a separate 'button' for each of the three main copying operations, Format, Copy and Verify, gives you greater flexibility in choosing between losing control of the computer while ProCopy operates, and the extra time taken by background operation 6:2 Verify This defines when a disc will be verified after copying. 'After reformatting' means it will only be verified after a Format operation has been carried out. This would normally only be used if you have chosen to format discs which were unformatted or formatted to the wrong type to check that they have been successfully formatted without error. 'Always' means that it will always be verified. Unless you are absolutely certain of the quality of your discs (and even the best can fail) or are prepared to tolerate the occasional disc with an error in the interests of speed, you are advised to always verify after copying. This is even more important if you are using unformatted disc, because unlike the normal formatting routines the disc is deliberately not checked for errors when formatted by ProCopy. A serious defect will cause an error during copying, but a minor defect may not show up until you try to actually use the disc. 6:3 Format This defines under which circumstances ProCopy will format a disc. All options except 'Always' will require confirmation first if 'Reformat' is chosen in the 'Confirm' section. 'Always' will always format a disc without prompting before attempting a copy operation. 'If wrong Type' will format a disc if it is formatted but to the wrong type, eg. if you are copying an 800K disc and you insert a disc formatted to 640K or 720K. Note that if you have an 800K drive then a disk formatted to 1.6 or 1.44 Mb will appear unformatted, not formatted to the wrong type. 'If unformatted' will only format a disc if it is not already formatted. 'After Error' will reformat any disc which fails to verify after copying. This will only be done once. If the disc fails to format and verify without error it will be counted as faulty. 6:4 Confirm This sets which operations ProCopy will not carry out without confirmation from the user. 'Read disc' will ask for confirmation before loading a disc image if one is already loaded. If no image is loaded then there is no need for confirmation even if this option is selected. 'Write to disc' will require confirmation before any Write operation is carried out. Note that if you are using Auto copying then this option will merely require you to click on 'Auto' before a copy is made and no separate confirmation will be required. 'Clear image' will require you to confirm before it clears a disc image from memory when you select 'Clear' from the Menu. 'Reformat disc' will require you to confirm before ProCopy reformats a disc if you have selected any of the 'Reformat' options except 'Always' 6:4 Preferences This has several items which relate to the way that ProCopy operates. These are mainly intended to help you 'customise' the program to suit the way that you wish to work. 'Close main window' will close the Write window during Auto copying. If this is not selected this window will remain open unless closed manually. 'Open window on load' if selected will automatically open the Write window when a disc image is loaded. 'Show disc name' As well as displaying the disc name in the Read and Write windows it can also be shown in a small window which appears just above the iconbar to the right of the ProCopy icon. This is particularly useful if you normally work with the Write window closed as you can see at a glance which disc image is loaded. It is deliberately made small and unobtrusive so it can be left on screen all the time without causing too much clutter. If you want to open this window at any time you cam do so by clicking SELECT on the ProCopy icon while holding down the CTRL and ALT keys. 'Beep when finished' Normally when ProCopy has finished a Read or Write operation it 'beeps' to draw your attention to this. If you don't want this to happen then set this off 'Work concurrently' This makes ProCopy Copy and verify in one operation instead of two separate steps. At present this, although operative, is not very efficient and is slightly slower (about 5%) than consecutive operations. However, you may wish to experiment and I shall try to improve performance. 'Immediate write' This makes proCopy write a disc image immediately it is loaded without further prompting or selection. It is useful when producing a series of different discs, all from disc images held on a hard disc. However, you should be careful when using it as it is very easy to double-click on an image icon and have it written to a disc already in the drive which may not be the one you intended to use, thereby destroying any data already on the disc. Use with caution. 'Write on icon click' writes a disc image if you click SELECT on the ProCopy icon. This is the way that most people operate, but it is possible to accidentally click on the ProCopy icon and destroy data on a disc already in the drive. You can therefore disable this function by setting this 'off'. In this case you can still write to the drive by clicking SELECT on the icon but you will need to hold down either ALT key at the same time. 'Read on icon click' this is similar to the previous item but will read a disc in the current drive when you click on the icon with ADJUST. If it is disabled you can still read a disc by clicking with ADJUST while holding down either ALT key. 'Copies done msg.' When you have been producing a series of discs in Auto mode this will display a message telling you when the required number of copies have been made. Although this is normally what is required it can be a bit obtrusive if you are muti-tasking and doing other things. This option therefore disables the message and ProCopy simply returns to the 'Ready' stage when all the copies have been made. 6:5 Saving and Loading the options On the main menu is an item 'Options' which leads to a sub-menu with two items. 'Save' and 'Restore'. As you might expect, Save will save all the current choices to a file in the ProCopy Resources directory. This will then be loaded automatically the next time you start ProCopy so your options will be set exactly as you wish. This does not save any of the content of the Format window. As has previously been described these are saved separately from within that window. As well as saving the contents of the Options window the currently selected Read and Write drives are saved. If you have changed these from your normal settings don't forget this when you save the Options. Many window positions are also saved (see the following section) Restore will reload these choices. This is provided because you may have changed some of the options for a particular purpose and wish to restore then to your default settings. Clicking on Restore will do this without the need to reset them all manually. 6:6 Window positions When you save an Options file as well as all the previously described items the positions and scroll offsets and sizes (where applicable) of the Write, Read, Preset List and Options windows are also saved. This enables you to have them open exactly where and how you want them. There are two important points to be remembered about this. Most obvious is the fact that when you save the Options you are also saving window positions, so if you have moved one of them to a position that you would not normally place it you must put it in its 'normal' position first. A second problem could arise if you have saved the options in a much larger screen mode than you normally use. If one or more of the windows was positioned either at the top or at the right hand side of the screen then, if you change to a smaller mode, they could open 'off screen' where you would be unable to reach them. To avoid this, if you hold down either ALT key when you save the Options the window positions will not be saved, so the next time you start up ProCopy the default window positions will be restored. Similarly if you hold down either ALT key when you start up ProCopy or select 'Reload' then the window positions will not be changed. This means that if you do accidentally save unsuitable window positions you can re-start ProCopy with the default window positions. The Preset list --------------- This is an extremely useful feature as it lets you have a selection of the most frequently used images that you have stored on your hard disc instantly available without the need to open directory viewers. 7:1 The Preset List window If you select 'Preset' from the menu a small window will open showing the list of disc images ready to be loaded. When you first use ProCopy this will not contain any preset icons, just 'Reload' and 'Save' icons at the top. Before you can make use of the Preset List you need some disc images, so create a few of these on your hard disc, as described in the section 'A short demonstration'. If you don't have a hard disc then the Preset List will not be of any use to you, so you can skip this section. 7:2 Adding images to the list Open the Preset List window and drag one of the disc image files you have created to it. A new icon will be created which will be the same colour as the disc image icon (blue for 800K, orange for 1.6 Mb, etc.) and showing the filename of the disc image. You can drag some more image files to the window and each one will have an icon created. Now, if you click SELECT on one of these icons the disc image it relates to will be loaded by ProCopy, just as if you had loaded it directly from disc. 7:3 Saving and Reloading the Preset List As with the Options the contents of the Preset window can be saved and reloaded. Click on 'Save' and a file called 'Preset' will be saved in the !ProCopy application directory. Clicking on 'Reload' will reset the Preset List to the last saved state. This is useful if you have temporarily added a lot of disc images to the window and want to return the window to its default state. Once you have saved a Preset List in this way the names shown will automatically be reloaded the next time you start ProCopy so you can have your most frequently needed files always available. 7:4 Deleting items You can remove an item from the Preset List by clicking on it with ADJUST instead of SELECT. In case you actually wanted to load a disc image and have accidentally pressed the ADJUST button instead of SELECT you will be asked to confirm that you want it removed before this is done. You can bypass the 'confirm' message by holding down either ALT key when you click on an item with ADJUST. Problems and Suggestions ------------------------ This section, as the title sugests, is devoted to some of the problems you can encounter when using ProCopy and suggestions for making it more efficient and easy to use. It is suggested that you should read this after you have become familiar with the main functions of ProCopy as it may help you to understand it better and to use it more efficiently. 8:1 Reporting errors The program on which ProCopy is based, !Copier, is used regularly by many people, including several quite large and well known suppliers of Acorn software. The program was written for my own purposes, and it was sold to Archimedes World because I though it might be useful to others. This proved correct, because I am often told how invaluable it is. The 'core' program is therefore thoroughly tried and tested and it is very unlikely that it will cause any problems. However, many new functions were added for the first release of ProCopy and the user interface, displays, and windows completely redesigned. There are so many permutations and options available that, although I use the program every day myself, it is quite possible that some combination that I have never used could generate an error. If this does happen to you please try to give me a proper error report. I will need to know at exactly what stage the error occurred, and, equally important, what Options you had selected. Proper, detailed, error reports are invaluable for removing bugs in ProCopy. I welcome them whether or not you have registered. as I also welcome suggestions for additions and improvements. 8:2 Partly filled discs Procopy always copies the entire disc. Backup will only copy that part of the disc which is occupied by data. This means that if a disc is less than about one third filled Backup might be faster. In practice this situation is not likely to arise because discs that are distributed in bulk would normally be full, or nearly so, and even a half filled disc would probably be copied faster with Procopy than using Backup. ProCopy will certainly be much faster than backup, even with a partially filled disc, if more than a single copy is required. 8:3 Formatting The formatting method used by Procopy when copying (not the 'stand alone' formatting) does not write any 'structure' to the disc, it merely lays out tracks and sectors. This saves time and it is unnecessary because all the required information is contained in the disc image which will be copied onto the disc. If a disc has been formatted by Procopy but for some reason no disc image was subsequently copied onto it it will not be recognised by the Archimedes filing system and will return a 'disc not formatted' error. Discs are not verified as they are formatted. Once again this would be a waste of time because it is better to verify discs after the data has been copied onto them to ensure that the finished product is error free. If discs were verified during formatting they would still need to be tested again after copying to be certain there were no errors. 8:4 DOS discs The format used for DOS discs is slightly different from the usual method used by the Acorn. A wider sector gap is used with no sector interleave and a different track to track sector skew has been introduced. It was found that discs formatted in this way operate faster than the standard Acorn format. There is a noticeable speed increase both on real PC's and an Archimedes using a PC emulator. Most modern PC's fitted with high density drives also format discs this way. It is possible that older XT type PC's fitted with 720K disc drives might operate more slowly with this type of format, but it is felt that the speed advantage gained for the majority of users more than outweighs this. Whatever drive or controller the computer is fitted with the modified format does not introduce any compatibility problems. All models will have no difficulty in reading the disc. DOS disc names can be longer than is allowed on Acorn machines and some characters are permitted which are not legal in Acorn filenames. In order to avoid confusion, with one exception, no changes are made to the disc name when it is loaded, so the name in the 'Save' window may not be a valid Acorn filename and might need to be changed before you can save the image. The exception is a space, which is often used in DOS disc names. This is not, of course, permitted in Acorn filenames, so a hard space, ascii 160, is always substituted. The main reason for doing this is because the Filer regards a space as a terminating character, so it might cause difficulties if it were not altered. For example, you could read the images of a series of DOS discs named DISK 1, DISK 2, DISK 3, etc., the names would be truncated by the Acorn Filer and saved as just DISK. The second and subsequent files would therefore overwrite the first. By substituting a hard space, which is acceptable to the Filer, they will all be saved with the correct names. 8:5 640K ADFS discs As it is unlikely that anyone is using this format on an actual Archimedes the factors chosen were selected for optimum speed on a BBC computer. Tests were carried out on a Model 'B' fitted with TEAC T55-F drives and Solidisc ADFS, and a Master with Acorn ADFS and Mitsubishi drives. There are many other possible combinations which could be encountered but these are fairly typical. 8:6 Software and Hardware compatibility There are two main operating systems in circulation on Archimedes computers, RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3+. There are also two different families of disc controller in use, the one fitted to the A300, A400, A3000 and A540 models which can only read discs up to 800K capacity and the one fitted to later models, the RISC PC series, A4000, A5000, A3010 and A3020, which can read up to 1.6Mb discs. There are also third party hi density disc controllers which can be fitted to older models to enable them to use hi density discs. In theory any of these which replace the original drive and emulate an ADFS drive should work with ProCopy. Those which work alongside ADFS and operate under another filing system (eg. the Arxe Systems board) will not work with ProCopy. If you have a system that doesn't seem to work then ProCopy probably can be made to operate with it, I will just need to know which SWI's to use. In theory any computer running RISC-OS 2 should have the earlier type of disc controller and so will not be able to handle high density discs. A computer running RISC-OS 3 could be fitted with either type of controller because it could be a newer model or an older model which has been upgraded. There are therefore three combinations that could be encountered - RISC-OS 2 with 800K drive RISC-OS 3+ with 800K drive RISC-OS 3+ with 1.6Mb drive As has already been explained, at present no attempt has been made to make ProCopy operate with RISC-OS 2, so only the second two need to be considered. Only the machines fitted with hi density drives have proper 'disc changed' notification. Earlier machines need to keep checking the disc ID to see if it has been changed. This means that the process takes more time per test (so there is less time for other tasks) and it is also rather noisy as the drive constantly reads the disc. 8:7 'D' and 'E' format discs There is no structural difference between the two different 800K formats used on the Archimedes. The only difference is in the way that the catalogue and map are managed. For this reason if your master disc is 'D' format then any discs reproduced will be 'D' format, even if you have pre-formatted them to 'E' format, and visa versa. Procopy therefore makes no distinction between the two 800K formats. The same situation prevails using Backup. If you backup an 'E' format disc to a 'D' format you find that the copy has become 'E' format. 8:8 Disc errors Because ProCopy writes an entire disc image to a disc's surface the target disc must be 100% error free. Unlike normal copying operations it is not possible to skip over any bad sectors. If a disc fails to verify and is rejected by Procopy you will probably be able to format it and use it for other purposes. Defects are not 'mapped out' during formatting. If a single defect is discovered the operation is aborted. For the same reason the source disc should be error free. This is not essential but if it has defects then Procopy may be unable to load it. Even if it is successfully loaded the 'defect list' will be copied to the new disc so that it too will appear to have defects until it is reformatted. This won't stop it functioning normally because the defect will be mapped out as it was on the original. 8:9 Memory usage As already stated Procopy needs enough spare memory to load an entire disc image. It should therefore be obvious that you won't be able to copy a 1.6Mb disc in a 1Mb A3010. If you have just 1Mb you will only be able to copy 720K discs, even 800K discs take too much memory. To copy even 720K discs you will need to use a very frugal screen mode, so I suggest you switch to Mode 0 and quit ALL other tasks. The desktop won't look very pretty in Mode 0 but it will let the program operate. I anticipate that most people who wish to use this program will have at least 2Mb. You will then be able to copy 1.6Mb discs but only if no other tasks are running. Once again you may need to switch to a less greedy screen mode, although you will probably not need to go to the extreme of Mode 0. 800k or 720K discs should not present any problems. You will not be able to copy 1.6 Mb discs on a 2Mb machine which is used with a VGA monitor because it will not then be possible to use a low resolution screen mode. 8:10 Compressing disc images As I have already explained, ProCopy does not have any built in compression system for disc images. This avoids all sorts of potential problems and lets you use your own favourite compression system if required. Remember that if the contents of the original disc have been compressed in some way (and don't forget that files like GIF, JPEG, Acorn Replay etc. are already compressed) then they will probably grow if you try to compress them further. Discs containing other material might be worth compressing. ArcFS or SparkFS are ideal for this because of their simplicity and speed, but either need quite a lot of spare RAM as workspace, more than the size of the file being compressed. You will therefore need a 4Mb machine to compress even an 800K disc image. CFS does not need so much RAM, and this may be a possible solution. You will find that because CFS compresses individual files and is not an archive filing system like ArcFS or SparkFS a compressed disc image using CFS will take up considerably less space on your hard disc than compressing the contents of the disc. If the disc is not completely full and you intend to compress the image you are strongly advised to copy its contents to a newly formatted blank disc before you read and compress it. The reason for this is that any compression system works best if the material to be compressed comtains lots of consecutive bytes which are the same. A used disc may have lots of old, random. data on apparently unused sections, a newly formatted disc will have a uniform byte on all unused sectors. This will compress very efficiently, so drastically reducing the size of the compressed image file. Do please bear this in mind if you alter or update any discs that you normally keep as images. Obviously this is only relevant if you intend to compress the disc image. 8:11 Problems There is only one problem that I have encountered using ProCopy and RISC-OS 3. After a disc has been copied if you click on the icon for the drive containing the new copy you may very occasionally get an error message from the filer 'Disc not understood - has it been formatted?'. Don't worry, everything is OK, it's just that the filer is remembering what the disc was when it was first put in the drive. If you click on 'Dismount' on the menu for that drive to make the filer 'forget' the disc and then click on the drive icon again you will find the disc has been correctly copied. A difficulty can arise if you wish to copy a DOS disc which has been obtained from a source which uses a certain type of bulk copier. This is because these discs are sometimes only formatted with enough tracks to hold the required data. As ProCopy will try to load the entire disc it will fail when it reaches the unformatted tracks. The solution is to copy the contents of the disc to a normally formatted disc first. 8:12 Other formats Although Procopy has been designed to handle only 'native' Acorn and 3.5 inch DOS discs there is no reason why it could not be modified to work with others. The Archimedes operating system can readily be adapted to read and write to any type of disc which the hardware is capable of addressing. It would probably be simple to modify it to copy Amiga, Atari, DOS 360K or BBC DFS discs (given suitable drives) if required. Anyone who is forced to use an Amiga or Atari ST computer to copy discs will appreciate how much faster the operation could be carried out on an Archimedes! 8:13 Filename in the Preset List You should not forget that although all you see in the Preset window is a simple filename ProCopy will try to load the image using the full path/filename that was passed to it when the name was added to the list. Obviously this must be present and unchanged or it will not be able to find the file! If you do get errors make sure that you haven't renamed or removed the drive the file was on. The most likely cause of problems is if the disc image is on a Syquest cartridge or some other removable media. If you are using a Syquest drive with a ICS IDE interface you will just get a 'Please insert disc.....' message, but some other filing systems which were not really designed to work with removable media (and this applies to most SCSI systems) can give weird error messages or hang completely. 8:14 Using unformatted discs ProCopy can use either unformatted disc or discs which are already formatted. As it will detect if a disc is unformatted and format it automatically you might think that there is no need to set 'Format Always' when using unformatted discs. However, if this is off there is a delay while ProCopy checks the disc, and it can take a few seconds to decide that the disc is not formatted. If you are using unformatted discs you are therefore advised to set 'Format Always' on to avoid this delay. Keeping Logfiles ---------------- ProCopy can keep a Logfile of all discs copied. This can be either Daily or Monthly. Whether a log is kept and which type is set by three icons in the Options Window. Use of these should be self-evident. 9:1 Logfile location The logfile will be kept in the directory defined by the OS Variable ProCopyLog$Dir. If this does not exists then they will be kept in the sub-directory 'Logs' of the PropCopy application directory. The !CopyLog application will normally set this variable to point to its internal directory and this is where the logfiles would normally be kept. 9:2 Logfile format A logfile is a simple textfile with the name of each disc copied, one per line. No time/date records are kept, but if anyone does want this information it could easily be included, so please let me know. The logfile is automatically created, and is in the form Log_<date>, where <date> is either two or four digits, YYMM for monthly logs, YYMMDD for daily. The 'backwards' date format was chosen because it will show the logfiles in sequence when viewed in a directory. 9:3 The !CopyLog application This serves two purposes. Firstly as a repositary for logfiles. Its !Boot file defines the logfile directory as its sub-directory 'Logs', so as long as the filer has 'seen' !CopyLog before !ProCopy is run the logs will be kept within !CopyLog. Secondly it has tools for manipulating logfiles and putting them into formats more suitable for analysis. At present there is only one (crude but functional) application. This takes all the logfiles and sorts the disc names, showing the number of copies of each disc made. This is probably what most people will want as it, in effect, creates a 'report' of each month/days activity and lets you see quickly which discs were most often copied. Please let me know if there are any other functions you would like. This list can be sorted in two ways - in alphabeticat order, or in descending order of the number of copies made. To run the program just double-click on the !CopyLog application. This is not a multi-tasking Wimp program, it just runs in a Task Window. Select the way you want the files to be sorted , either alphabetically or in order of the number of copies made, and the sort operation will be carried out on all the logfiles in the Logs directory inside the CopyLog application. You can repeat this on a logfile if you add more discs to the same file, the program can operate with either 'raw' logfiles or ones already processed, or mixed files which have been processed and then had more data added. You can also re-sort files in the alternative way. As the logfiles are just textfiles they can be joined together in a text editor for creating reports over larger time periods. Eventually, especially if you are using daily logs, the log directory will become full. The easiest way to deal with this is to create further directories inside the !CopyLog application, moving the 'old' contents of the Logs directory into these. Sort operations will only be carried out on the files in the original Logs directory. Appendix -------- Keys used with icon clicks Clicking on the icon with the MENU button always just displays the menu, exactly as you would expect. Using SELECT will perform some type of Write function, depending on which Options are set and whether any keys are held, similarly using ADJUST will perform some type of Read operation. Using the ALT key will normally force an operation to be carried out which would otherwise require confirmation. Here is a table of all the various operations which can be carried out by clicking on the icon. Button/Key(s) Function MENU Always displays the menu. SELECT If no image loaded opens the 'Read' window. If an image is loaded and 'Write on icon click' is 'on' the disc image is written, if this is 'off' the 'Write' window is opened. If Auto copying is in progress the Write window is opened. SELECT/CTRL Opens the 'Write' window if an image is loaded, otherwise opens the 'Read' window SELECT/ALT Writes the current disc image even if 'Write on icon click' is 'off'. If no image is loaded, opens the 'Read' window SELECT/SHIFT Opens the list of preset images. SELECT/ALT/CTRL Opens the small 'discs name' window ADJUST If 'Read on icon click' is 'on' the disc image is read, if this is 'off' the 'Read' window is opened. ADJUST/CTRL Opens the 'Read' window ADJUST/ALT Always read the disc in the current drive, even if 'Read on icon click' is 'off'. ADJUST/SHIFT Clears any currently loaded image after prompting if this is selected ADJUST/ALT/CTRL Clears currect image without prompt, even if this is normally selected The Preset List file -------------------- This is actually a plain text file. If you Save the preset list you will find that this file, called 'Preset', will appear in the !ProCopy application directory. You can load this into a text editor like !Edit, !Zap etc. and examine or change it if you wish. In fact, it is deliberately designed so that you can change it. Each line of the file contains three parameters. these are the name which will actually appear on the icon, the background colour of the icon, and the full path/filename of the image file. Obviously the last of these should not be changed (unless you rename a drive, in which case it might be quicker to edit the Preset file than completely reload all the images).However, the first two can be changed if you wish. By default the name which is shown on the icon in the Preset window is the filename given to the disc image. You may wish to change this to make it more descriptive of what the disc actually is. A file cannot have more than ten characters in its name, and some characters, for example '#', '$' and '@', are not permitted. Any of these can be used on the icons, and you can have up to 16 characters, but unless you are using a RISC PC with anti-aliased fonts on the icons you will probably only have room for the normal ten. There must NOT be any spaces or control characters in the name. If you do want a space character then use a 'hard' space (ascii 160). You can type this by holding down the ALT key as you press the spacebar. After the name comes the background colour of the icon. By default his will be the same colour as is used for the disc image icons so you can tell what size image each name refers to. however, as with the name, you can change it if you wish. This may be useful if you want a particular file to stand out from the rest. Only the standard Wimp colours 0-15 can be used. Light colours will have black text and dark colours will have white text, and this is handled automatically by ProCopy when the icons are created. A single space is all that is necessary to act as a delimiter between the three fields, but when the Preset file is Saved from ProCopy several spaces are used to put the parameters in neat columns to make it easier for you to edit. You can have comments in the Preset file. Any line beginning with a '#' character will be treated as a comment and ignored. The '#' must be the very first character on the line. ProCopy is not very tolerant of errors in the Preset file. If it does find an error you should get an error message telling you in what line it found it. Use with Autocopiers -------------------- ProCopy can easily be adapted to work with low cost autocopiers that use the computers built in disc controller and receive load/eject commands via the serial or printer port. The commands to load and eject discs replace the normal 'change disc' animation. I have used a modified version of ProCopy with a homemade machine with considerable success. The only problem with this approach is that the drive will appear to the computer as a normal extra drive. This is not a problem with the A5000 or the A400 series (although you may need an external buffer) but early RISC PC 600 series machines cannot easily have a second floppy drive fitted. Copy protected discs -------------------- ProCopy is not intended for copying copy protected discs but it can do so with many of the copy protection methods used. Because it ignores the defect list and always copied the entire disc it can often be used to reproduce some of the more commonly found types of disc. This should not be taken as an encouragement to use it for making illegal copies. However it can be used to produce distribution discs for software houses even though the disc may mot be easily duplicated by normal means. If you do have a requirement for small(ish) quantities, not enough to justify an expensive machine, then ProCopy may be sufficient for your needs. Sprites ------- The icon sprite used by ProCopy when an image is loaded is the same as the file sprite for that disc image. At present these are not terribly elegant and only a 2D low resolution version is provided. Experience has shown that some users are particularly conscious of file and application icons. as soon as I have time I intend to produce some better high resolution icons, but this is much lower priority that ensuring that the program functions properly. If you don't want to wait there is no reason why you cannot create your own. in any event you may prefer different colours from the various image icons that the ones I have used, and it will take only a few minutes to change these using !Paint if you wish. In the event of any problems, or if you have any suggestions, please contact - David Holden 39 Knighton Park Road Sydenham London SE26 5RN 0181 778 2659 <info@apdl.co.uk> Single User Registration Form for ProCopy Please send this form with a cheque for Fifteen Pounds to: David Holden, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN __________________________________________________________________ Name and Address: __________________________________________________________________ Where did you obtain the program: __________________________________________________________________ Have you had any problems: __________________________________________________________________ What additional features would you like: