aneCDote 3

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∩╗┐Compact Disc drive utilities 1.0 . . . . . . . Playtime 2.0 . . . . . . . Playtrak 3.0 . . . . . . . TOC 4.0 . . . . . . . Timecode 5.0 . . . . . . . Stop 6.0 . . . . . . . Reset 7.0 . . . . . . . Eject 8.0 . . . . . . . Lock 9.0 . . . . . . . Unlock 10.0 . . . . . . . CDump 11.0 . . . . . . . Status 12.0 . . . . . . . Devices Compact Disc drive tests 13.0 . . . . . . . Readtest 14.0 . . . . . . . Skiptest 15.0 . . . . . . . Scan Integrated utilities 16.0 . . . . . . . CDread 17.0 . . . . . . . Look ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇ Contained on your copy of the aneCDote CD-ROM disc is a powerful collection of CD-ROM drive control utilities. You can find these programs in the sub-directory \UTILS. The operation of each program is described below along with the command line arguments that are needed in order to operate them successfully. Arguments which are enclosed in brackets are optional and will posses a default value if left undefined. If you have more than one CD-ROM drive attached to your computer you will need to supply the DEVICE argument to these programs to select the correct drive. If this argument is not defined then the programs will locate the first CD-ROM drive available. All of these programs can be run directly from the CD-ROM but we would recommend that you install them onto your hard disc. Installation will allow faster loading of the routines and in some cases make their operation more sensible. All of the programs can be executed with the argument [?] and will return on-line help messages about their function and their respective arguments. 1.0 PLAYTIME SM SS [SB] EM ES [EB] [CHANNEL] [DEVICE] This routine will play a specified portion of CD audio through your CD-ROM drive. The portion is defined by the disc time; minutes, seconds and blocks ( there being 75 blocks within one second ) at the start point and the end point You may listen to this audio through a pair of headphones or an amplifier. SM - start time in minutes SS - start time in seconds SB - start time in blocks (default = 0) EM - end time minutes ES - end time in seconds EB - end time in blocks (default = 0) Channel - determines which output channels are active S = stereo:- (default) L = left channel R = right channel M = mute Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 2.0 PLAYTRAK [START] [END] [CHANNEL] [DEVICE] This routine will play an audio CD as defined by the tracks. A compact disc can hold up to 99 tracks but the program will only allow you to define up to the number of tracks on the disc. Start - First track to commence playing audio ( default = 1 ) End - last track to play ( default = start track ) Channel - determines which output channels are active S = stereo ( default ) L = left channel R = right channel M = mute Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 3.0 TOC [DEVICE] Every compact disc, whether it be audio or CD-ROM, has a table of contents held before the start of the first track. This program will interrogate this area of the disc and return information about the disc structure. You will see data returned displaying the track numbers, their start times and the disc length. All timecodes are stored to block-accuracy, allowing this routine to identify a particular disc by its structure quite reliably. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 4.0 TIMECODE [DEVICE] When a compact disc is in the drive the disc will be rotating and the head will be positioned on the disc. Encoded within the compact disc is a continuous time code which is individual to each block. This program will interrogate the head for its position and return continuously updating information. Track number, disc time and track time are displayed. However, it is worth noting that if the disc is not being played the time code will remain static except for the spinning disc. If you execute this program from the CD-ROM itself you will be returned the time code location for the position of the program that was just loaded. Far more sensible operation is obtained by installing this program onto your hard disk. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 5.0 STOP [DEVICE] This program simply terminates audio playing of the compact disc. The head position is left at the location of the last played block. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 6.0 RESET [DEVICE] Executing this program will completely reset the drive. All current functions are stopped (including a drive hang-up), the disc will be accepted (if it is out), all drive buffers will be cleared, the table of contents is reloaded and the head set at the reset position. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 7.0 EJECT [DEVICE] Executing this program has the same effect as pressing the Eject button on the CD-ROM drive. The disc is spun down, the head and drive is reset and the disc is ejected. The reset command (see above) can be used to accept the disc into the drive. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 8.0 LOCK [DEVICE] Run this program to disable the Eject button on your CD-ROM drive and lock the disc in the drive. This command is cancelled using the UNLOCK program or the RESET program. Using this program in your application can be useful in that it prevents the user removing the disc during the operation of your program. The program EJECT can still be used effectively. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 9.0 UNLOCK [DEVICE] This routine will cancel the LOCK command and allow manual ejection of the disc using the EJECT button on the CD-ROM drive. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 10.0 CDUMP [SS] [NS] [FILENAME] [DEVICE] CDUMP will allow you to create a file which contains an image of the CD-ROM data. The area that you wish to be dumped is defined by its start sector address and the number of sectors you wish to read. CD-ROM data areas start at sector zero. High Sierra and ISO 9660 images commence at sector number sixteen. The complete size of a CD-ROM image can be calculated using the table of contents information; one block is considered a sector, one second is 75 sectors and one minute is 4,500 sectors. Each sector is 2048 bytes in size. This data is dumped to a file but be careful, it is easy to create files which are very large if you define a large number of sectors to read. SS - the first sector of the data dump NS - the number of sectors for the data dump Filename - name of file to write sector data (default filename is IMAGE.CD) Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 11.0 STATUS [DEVICE] This program interrogates the internal ROM of the CD-ROM drive and displays the capabilities of the drive. Information about the data-read modes available are returned such as the ability to read video, interleaved data, audio, unencoded CD-ROM blocks and High Sierra addressing. Device - CDROM device name (default first drive) or CDROM drive letter 12.0 DEVICES This is a very useful program if you have more than one CD-ROM drive attached to your computer and have a poor memory. The program will scan the operating system environment for installed CD-ROM devices and return a list of available CD-ROM devices. CD-ROM Drive Tests ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇ Three CD-ROM drive test programs are included on this disc. Each one is designed to give you a basic graph of the drive performance under certain conditions. Feel free to change your set up configuration between running tests so that you may see how performance can be affected by buffers (see your CD-ROM drive installation manual for further details). These tests have to be run from your hard disc. 13.0 READTEST [DEVICE] [SAMPLES] [SS] [RS] [RE] [-B] [-H] READTEST is designed to give you the time needed to load an amount of data into the computer. With the default settings a graph will be plotted showing the time taken to read 2K,4K,6K,8K ... and demonstrates how data streaming is dependent on size and buffering. The arguments necessary for this program are listed below. DEVICE - the device name of the CD-ROM drive default first drive SAMPLES - the number of samples to take at any test point (default = 15) SS - start sector for test to begin at (default = 0) RS - range start is the size of the first data (in 2K blocks) stream to read (default = 1 block) RE - range end is the size of the last data stream (in 2K blocks) to read (default = 20 blocks) (max = available memory) -B - performs brief version of test -H - displays help screen Example default READTEST D: 15 0 1 20 Read 1 block starting at 0 then read 2 blocks starting at 0 then | read 20 blocks starting at 0. 14.0 SKIPTEST [DEVICE] [SAMPLES] [READS] [RS] [RE] [SS] [-H] SKIPTEST plots how long it takes to read a group of blocks (defined by READS), then skip a number of blocks (defined by RS and RE). Negative numbers are allowed in order to see the effect of head movement backwards and forwards. SS will automatically be adjusted if the result would mean the head leaving valid disc area. This test will give you a gauge of head access speed. DEVICE - the device name of the CD-ROM drive default first drive SAMPLES - the number of samples to take at any test point (default = 1) READS - the number of CD-ROM blocks to read at any test point (default = 8) RS - range start is the first number of blocks to skip between reads (default = 0 blocks) RE - range end is the last number of blocks to skip between reads (default = 30) SS - start sector for test to begin at (default = 0) Example default SKIPTEST D 1 8 0 30 0 Read 8 blocks, skip 0 blocks, read 8 blocks starting at 0 then read 8 blocks, skip 1 block, read 8 blocks starting at 0 then | | | read 8 blocks, skip 30 blocks, read 8 blocks starting at 0. 15.0 SCAN [Device] SCAN is a simple program that will monitor the time taken to scan an entire CD-ROM directory structure. The time taken to scan depends on the CD-ROM drive, the interface card, on-drive buffering, system driver and device driver buffering and of course the complexity of the CD-ROM structure. It is therefore a good yardstick for overall system performance of a CD-ROM machine. Try changing the buffering that MSCDEX uses by altering the /M variable in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. You will even find that cleaningthe disc might have an effect on overall speed. DEVICE - the device name of the CD-ROM drive default first drive Integrated Utilities ΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇΓöÇ 16.0 CDread Use this fully integrated version of a CD block viewer. At any time, the available functions are prompted by buttons at the bottom of the screen. You will find that this version has the print button disabled. 17.0 Look A simple but sometimes very useful utility that scans a chosen file for the characters contained. Useful if you want to verify that a file contains non-english characters, maths symbols or line draw characters. Also useful if you want to know the carriage return/line feed character sequence used in a file. After running LOOK, chose a file from the F2 FILES option by hitting return on the highlighted name. Press F9 SCAN to start the scanning, F9 STOP to halt the analysis. A scrollable list of the 'ASCII' character set with the number of found occurrences is displayed. AneCDote Volume 1 Number 3 - Demonstrations ECLIPSE Rebuild a masked-out text by guessing the words DOUBLE Rebuild a jumbled text, two words at a time MARKUP Replace missing punctuation SEQUITUR Find the best continuation SORTSET Assign words or ideas to the right category DROPIN Restore a sentence by arranging letters on a grid RUNNING Running man animation from Screen Artists