DISK-2-DISK V1.0 TYPED IN BY ???. EDITED BY PARASITE. April, 1987 Thank you for purchasing Disk-2-Disk. Or if this is an unauthorized copy, may your stack overflow, may your heap rot, may your files turn to garbage, and may the Guru visit you long and often (and probably will). Your Disk-2-Disk package should have included a postage-paid registration form. If you didn't get one when you purchased Disk-2-Disk, please send us a note with your name, address, and the serial number of your disk (it is on the diskette label). There are good reasons for sending the card to us, and it doesn't cost you anything. You won't be notified of any bug fixes or updates (free or otherwise) unless we hear from you. These are some things we have learned about Disk-2-Disk or thought of since the manual was printed. Please take a few minutes to read these notes before you call us. You may save us both a lot of trouble. Disk-2-Disk cannot read or write CP/M disks. It handles disks in Commodore 1541/1571 format only. Disk-2-Disk can read/write 1541 "flippies", but the disk manufacturers don't recommend that you do it. We have tested Disk-2-Disk with several flippies, and they seem to work okay. We have found that some diskettes work better than others with Disk-2-Disk. If you have difficulty with a particular brand, you might try a different brand. Some Disk-2-Disk functions are very slow. We made it as fast as we could, but forcing the Amiga 5.25-inch disk drive to read/write the bizarre data format used by the Commodore disks was very difficult. Reading the Commodore format is much easier than writing it, and tracks 18 to 35 are much easier to process than tracks 1 through 17. Writing on tracks 1 to 17 is especially difficult. Disk-2-Disk allocates disk blocks from the high tracks to the low tracks, in order to minimize the chance of problems. We highly recommend that you transfer only a few files at a time to a Commodore disk, and don't EVER write onto a Commodore disk which you can't afford to lose. Format a new disk and transfer the files onto it. Please note: this comment applies only to WRITING to the Commodore disks. Reading from Commodore disks poses no such problems! Because of the problems described above, we restricted the Disk-2-Disk FORMAT function to tracks 18-35 (and 53-70). This gives a formatted capacity of either 156K (1571) or 78K (1541). If this capacity is not sufficient, you can always format a disk on the Commodore machine and bring it to your Amiga. Even restricted to tracks 18 and up, FORMAT is very slow. So is the READ CHECK function. Disk-2-Disk reads Commodore REL files, but treats them just like SEQ and USR files. When you transfer a REL file to or from a Commodore disk, Disk-2-Disk ignores any "side-sector" blocks. The BASDIF (BASIC Differences) function applies to Commodore BASIC files in ASCII SEQ form after they they have been transferred to the Amiga. BASDIF cannot process PRG files or any file which is not pure ASCII text. Don't expect BASDIF to perform miracles. It does NOT translate Commodore BASIC programs to Amiga BASIC. It does look for and flag differences, and cleans up keyword spacing a bit. The input file MUST be in ASCII SEQ form. See the manual for a step-by-step explanation of storing a Commodore BASIC file in ASCII SEQ form. C64 BASIC means BASIC 2.0, and C128 BASIC means BASIC 7.0. The Disk-2-Disk manual states that you must terminate pathnames with a slash (/). This is not true. Disk-2-Disk examines the path, and if it finds it to be a valid path, opens the directory automatically. Disk-2-Disk supports the # and ? wildcard characters for both Amiga and Commodore file names. These characters can be used in many combinations, but only as wild cards. Disk-2-Disk locks out interrupts for long periods of time. You may observe erratic motion of the mouse pointer during file operations to the Commodore disk. This is normal for Disk-2-Disk. We know of no multitasking problems using Disk-2-Disk, but some other programs may not perform properly with interrupts locked out for long periods (sometimes several seconds). Disk-2-Disk estimates Commodore file sizes and free disk space in units of 254 bytes per block. The actual file size is not available in the directory, and would require a lengthy file search to measure the exact size. Therefore, the size of a file on the Amiga side usually does not match the size of that same file on the Commodore side. However, be assured that Disk-2-Disk always transfers exactly the correct number of bytes, and not more or less. Disk-2-Disk provides three forms of transfer: straight binary (no conversion), upper case/graphics ASCII and upper case/lower case ASCII. You may have to experiment to determine which conversion is best for the file you wish to transfer. You can use the DISPLAY TEXT function to quickly see what the conversion would produce, even before you transfer the file. First select the desired file. Then select the desired conversion in the ASCII box before click- ing the DISPLAY TEXT box. Note: when examining the text on the screen, you can press any key to proceed. However, certain keys, such as the cursor arrow keys, produce multiple input characters, which can cause several pages of text to whiz by without stopping. This is not a bug, folks! Just press a different key! When you are ready to transfer a file, always select the source file first. Move the mouse pointer to the selected name and press the left mouse button. Or move to the filename box and enter the name of the file you wish to transfer. If you wish to give the file a different name on the destination disk, move to the destination filename box and enter the desired name. Otherwise Disk-2-Disk uses the source file name for the destination name. If you wish to transfer more than one file, use the appro- priate wildcard characters in the filename. To transfer all files on a disk, use this form: #? as the file name. In this case, the source file name is always used for the destination file. When you run Disk-2-Disk under AmigaDOS V1.2 with your 5.25-inch disk drive "mounted", Disk-2-Disk tries to stop the trackdisk driver task for the drive. However, if the drive has not been used, the driver task will not be found. If you access that drive as an AmigaDOS device via Disk-2-Disk (or through some other program) the driver task may come active and interfere with Disk-2-Disk. To prevent this, you can avoid mounting the 5.25-inch device, or just don't enter that drive in an Amiga pathname. Disk-2-Disk expects Topaz 80 as the font. If you are running with Topaz 60 (or some other unusual font), the Disk-2-Disk screens will definitely look strange. Change to 80 column mode using Preferences to solve this problem. Betty and George Chamberlain Central Coast Software