BFErattlecopy v2.2DFA


after the release of the infamous
rattlecopy v1.0 the author,peter van
kampen,tries it again with version 2.
and it's a good try. remember rattlecopy
which didn't run on kickstart 1.3 and
didn't work correctly on kickstart 1.2 ?
that problem has bee solved now,because
rattlecopy 2.2 works on both 1.2 and 1.3
without any problems!! for the people
who don't know the advantage of
rattlecopy above xcopy,i will explain.

rattlecopy,unlike xcopy,reads the disc
sorts out the unused tracks. unused
tracks are not necessary to copy,since
they are unused!!
rattlecopy first searches for a
rattlemap on the disc (when you have
copied a disc before with rattlecopy,
it will automatically recognise those
disc by the means of a rattlemap).
if there is such a rattlemap,rattlecopy
automatically skips all unused tracks.
if there isn't a rattlemap,rattlecopy
needs to check first where the unused
tracks are. in both ways this means a
lot of gain in time,since a disc with
only a few files on it can be copied in
for example 10 seconds.

new functions in rattlecopy:

nibble^mode. time^function (which is
more sophistictaed than the xcopy
clock,since it does not only show the
time you are already copying,but also
the time you are already in the program!

when you insert a disc,rattlecopy will
automatically read the bootblock and
will tell you if the bootblocks is
looking suspicious or not, to examine
the bootblock a little further,there's
the bootblock examiner.

the computer gives detailed information
about the bootblock. on the disc on
which rattlecopy comes,is a list of all
the bootblocks rattlecopoy knows,which
will ofcourse be expanded in later
versions. like in (all) viruskiller
programs,you can read the bootblock of
a disc into the buffer and then copy it
to another disc. it's also possible to
install a normal bootblock.

to examine the rest of the blocks on a
disc there's the bitmap editor,which
shows you how full a disc is etc.

ratllecopy 2 goes up to 85 tracks,which
is enough (nobody ever used the 89
tracks function in xcopy v2.2)

a small bug now: when you've copied from
                 internal to external
drive once,so when the external drive is
recognised and mounted,it's impossible
to copy from internal to internal.
that's a problem when you only have one
3.5 and one 5.25 drive,since you can no
longer copy from 3.5 to 3.5
ok,i agree with all readers that a drive
should have a turn^off switch,but a lot
of drives still don't have it.

rattlecopy is as fast as xcopyv2.2 when
copying a normal,full disc.
the nibblemode of rattlecopy is much
faster,however. when using the bam^copy
mode,rattlecopy goes real fast,but as
fast as xcopy v3.1
problem in xcopyv3.1: it can't bamcopy
                      a trackloader.
problem in rattlecopy:it has to check
                      all disx without a
                      rattlemap first.

so which one to choose??

well,when i wrote this review (before
the first issue of raf magazine was
released),xcopyv3.1 had not yet been
released,so it seemed quite obvious then
that rattlecopy was the best of the two.
but now xcopyv3.1 is released,it's quite
difficult to say. they're both good at
their own fields,xcopy being a copy^
program and rattlecopy being more of a
utility with more functions and more
userfriendly. the fact still is that
everybody copies with xcopy and that
rattlecopy has a real bad image,but that
is a shame!!!

dr.legal/raf