HARD DISK SET UP  By Laurence Paine  ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## This is a little description about how I went about setting up my hard disk directory structure, which I thought some of you may be interested in. I have a GVP 105 Meg A500+ hard disk, so using the preperation disk included, I partitioned my hard disk into 3 sections, a 20 Meg for Workbench and all those utilities from the public domain I use, a 40 Meg partition for my commercial wordprocessing, graphics and desk top publishing material (this also includes the masses of clipart and other documents from the Public Domain I use) and a 40 Meg partition for programming, with Lattice and sundry Public Domain compilers and source code installed. Once I knew what I wanted each partition to hold, I could quickly and easily create the directory structure I wanted. Now, I decided that I would keep the Workbench icons available for the workbench and commercial programs partitions, but the programming partition I will be accessing from the CLI. So it was simply a matter of creating directories with icons for some of the directories, and others without. I used 3 AmigaDOS scripts to accomplish everything I required, so that my directory structure was created, with little fuss in about 40 seconds. ( It took about twenty minutes to type the scripts in though ! ) I am using Workbench 1.3, and as such did not require the use of the execute command, I rather changed the protection bits to reflect the fact they were scripts. Script 1: The SetUp Script This script simply pulled from a standard workbench disk the CLI commands required to perform the next script. This is executed initially, and then not used again. The line numbers below are for reference following this listing, and should be ignored. 1 DIR RAM: 2 C:COPY C:COPY RAM:COPY 3 RAM:COPY C:CD RAM:CD 4 RAM:CD RAM: 5 COPY SYS:EMPTY.info RAM: 6 COPY SYS:S/MAKE.script RAM: 7 COPY SYS:S/HDInstall.script RAM: 8 COPY C:MAKEDIR RAM: 9 HDInstall.script Line 1 checks that a RAM: disk is available to be used. Line 2 copies the COPY command to the RAM: disk. Line 3 copies the CD command to the RAM: disk. Line 4 makes the RAM: disk the current directory. Line 5 copies the drawer icon information to ram: disk. Line 6 copies the make script to ram: (See next section.) Line 7 copies the actual directory structure script to ram: (See third section.) Line 8 copies the makedir command to the RAM: disk. Line 9 Executes the script which will create the directory structure. Now, everything that is required to perform the operation is in the RAM: disk, which will improve the speed at which the directories will be created. Script 2: The MAKE script. This script is called the MAKE script because it will make a directory with an ICON. The script takes an argument as the directory name, and creates the directory, and assigns the drawer icon information to it. Now, one problem with this is that the same drawer information will be used for all the drawers, and thus they will have the same screen location, and when we access the directory using Workbench, the drawers will appear on top of each other. This is no problem, as we use a combination of CLEAN UP and SNAPSHOT to arrange the ICONS properly, the first time we go into the directory. The script is quite simply: 1 .K 2 MAKEDIR 3 COPY RAM:empty.info TO .info It is important that the extension .info is in lowercase letters. This will create the directory called and also copy an drawer for it. Script 3: The HDInstall Script. This is the script which does the majority of the work. I have this setup to create all the directories I require, with the names I require, and with icons if appropriate. This script will depend on your preferences of course. CD DH0: MAKEDIR C MAKEDIR S MAKEDIR L MAKEDIR T MAKEDIR LIBS MAKEDIR FONTS MAKEDIR DEVS ;These will require icons MAKE TOOLS MAKE UTILITIES MAKE PDUtilities MAKE TOOL MAKE EXTRA MAKE PREFS MAKE EMPTY MAKE EXPANSION CD DH1: MAKE WORDPRO MAKE PAINT MAKE DTP MAKE DATABASES MAKE SPREADSHEET MAKE TEXTEDITORS MAKE OTHERS CD WORDPRO MAKE EXCELLENCE! MAKE EXCELLENCE!/DOCUMENTS MAKE UniWork MAKE Letters MAKE BCAUG ; Burnie Commodore Amiga Users Group material. CD /PAINT MAKE DPAINT MAKE DIGIPAINT CD /DTP MAKE PAGESTREAM CD PAGESTREAM MAKE CLIPART MAKE BCAUG CD :DATABASES MAKE INFOFILE MAKE SUPERBASE MAKE ORGANIZE! CD /SPREADSHEET MAKE MAXIPLAN MAKE ANALYZE! CD DH2: MAKE AMIGABASIC MAKEDIR LATTICE MAKEDIR ASSEMBLY MAKEDIR AREXX MAKE CMANUALS MAKE SOURCE MAKEDIR MODULA-II MAKEDIR FORTH MAKEDIR FORTRAN MAKEDIR PASCAL MAKEDIR TOOLS CD ASSEMBLY MAKEDIR DEVPAC MAKEDIR A68K MAKEDIR SOURCE CD /SOURCE MAKEDIR CSOURCE MAKEDIR BASIC MAKEDIR PASCAL MAKEDIR MODULA-II MAKEDIR FORTH MAKEDIR FORTRAN CD RAM: This is a shortened and modified script compared to the one I used, as I created a lot of directories for my particular applications which I had written, that contain source code and other particular information which I required - I have quite a few working directories. IMPROVEMENTS : 1. I should have made the script copy the majority of the Workbench contents over at the same time, by using wildcards. This would have been easier than manually copying them. 2. Some error checking using FAILAT probably should have been used, but it worked anyway. 3. Some ECHO messages at particular points could have been useful to monitor progress. ( Isn't it amazing what you think of after the event ! ) These scripts saved me a lot of time, and I hope somebody out there can use them when it comes to creating and installing their own hard disk (believe me, a harddisk is the best thing an Amiga owner could ever buy).  ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ## 24 ##