D]3 P]00j:tlog.brush ]]P00 00 ]]P00 01 ]]P00 02 3]FILE AND DISK INTEGRITY - Marion Simpson - Houston, TX Best and quickest way to determine a file's integrity is to copy it to NIL: as in: 1. Open a CLI or Shell window and type: copy diskname:filename to nil: If you do this and nothing seems to happen, rejoice, for the file is OK. Otherwise, you'll be told if the file has bad tracks. You have copied the file to NIL -- nothing -- so there is no new copy to contend with. Best way I've found to check the integrity of an entire disk of files is to copy it wholesale to RAM: (if you have at least one meg of memory), or to another disk (if you have at least df0: and df1: drives). The command: copy mydisk: to ram: all This is a different type of copying than is employed by DISKCOPY and disk copy utilities, in that it does not copy sectors of the disk, but files, one by one. As the copying proceeds, a record of the each copied file appears in the CLI or Shell window. If a bad file is encountered, a message appears to that effect, and copying halts until you have a chance to jot down the name of the bad file and resume the process with a key press. A bad file without a good backup may be retrieved by DISKSALV, but it is not always successful. Copying in this way to a second disk (already formatted) takes quite a bit longer, but can have a marked effect on file access times when you use the new disk. The reason: As you worked on the old disk over a period of time, deleting, creating, resaving, the system eventually began saving files, not in sequence on the disk's sectors, but on any available sectors it finds in dfferent locations. This increases disk drive seeking activity that is commensurately reduced when files are saved to a new disk in a series of adjacent sectors. If you're working on a 512K system with only one drive, this disk-to-disk copying will take a very long time because of disk swaps. 3]SIFTING POSSIBILITIES - S. W. Waters, Bronx, NY I wanted to isolate lines of an ASCII file that contained the strings -- "1990" and "NY" to get a segregated list of orders received from New York State during the year 1990. My interim solution was a short AmigaBASIC program: CLS: CLEAR OPEN "ORDERFILE" FOR INPUT AS 1 OPEN "HOLDFILE" FOR OUTPUT AS 2 AGAIN: LINE INPUT #1,A$ A=INSTR(A$,"1990") B=INSTR(A$,"NY") IF A>0 AND B>0 THEN PRINT #2,A$ IF EOF(1) THEN CLOSE 1,2: END ELSE AGAIN This worked, but my son offered an easier solution using AmigaDOS from a CLI window. search > ram:hold orderfile 1990 search > ram:hold2 ram:hold NY The two search commands work as a sifter. The first sends all lines holding the string "1990" to a RAM file named HOLD. The second looks at the RAM:HOLD file and sends all lines containing the string "NY" to the RAM:HOLD2 file. 3]A USE FOR TRASHCAN - Staff The TRASHCAN directory is little used by most people. Designed as a temporary repository for unneeded files, it tends to fill a disk with material you no longer need. However, TRASHCAN has an interesting lock feature that can make it useful. It can't be deleted from Workbench (though it can be from a CLI or Shell). This lack of volatility makes it a nearly perfect hiding place for files you don't want to lose to the tinkering of small children and other users. 3]CONFIDENTIAL FILES - Mr. X I had some textfiles whose contents I wanted to keep confidential within an office situation. In turn, I loaded each file as a Basic program and saved it as binary. Later, when I needed to access the information, I again loaded the files and resaved them as ASCII. Here's how: 1. Open Basic and load the file: load "mydisk:filename" 2. Click on the right side of the screen and type the binary save command: save "mydisk:newfilename",b 3. Go through the process again to decrypt: load "mydisk:newfilename" save "mydisk:newfilename",a The "a" stands for ASCII, the "b" for binary. In binary format, the text file is unreadable. Don't use my name. I don't want anyone in the office to know my secret. 3]VICTOR'S SECRET - Victor Lund, San Diego, CA Talk about multitasking: I watch movies on the Amiga while the computer is performing long tasks that don't need too much attention. I hook a camcorder with playback capability to the NTSC port of the monitor. In the pull-open drawer at the front of the monitor, at right is a toggle switch that goes between NTSC and RGB displays. I boot the system, and the Workbench comes up as an RGB display. I start work, toggle to the NTSC screen and start the videotape. I can toggle the switch to check work in progress and toggle back to the movie without missing much. 3]INDENTED SERVANT - K. Strong, Pueblo, CO I agreed to print out an Amiga textfile comprising a friend's term paper. When she gave me the file, she revealed she indented paragraphs only a single space and hoped I could fix it by changing the indentations to three spaces. I didn't relish doing this by hand. After some thought, I wrote this Basic program: CLS: CLEAR OPEN "diskname:filename" FOR INPUT AS 1 OPEN "ram:filename" FOR OUTPUT AS 2 REPEAT: LINE INPUT #1,A$ IF LEFT$(A$,1)=" " THEN A$=" "+MID$(A$,2) PRINT #2,A$ IF EOF(1) THEN END ELSE REPEAT The effect was to create a new file in RAM with three-space indentation. Lines that did not begin with a space were unchanged. 3]SPEAK, O MUSE -- Alice Garcia, Miami, FL To play around with the Amiga voice, open a CLI or Shell, type mount speak: You'll probably be told speak is already mounted, but do it anyway to make sure. Then type: copy * to speak: From that point, whatever you type will be instantly spoken by the Amiga voice when you press Return. To escape this mode, simultaneously press the CTRL and \ keys. 3]WHAT'S LEFT? - Staff The gauge that appears at the left side of a disk's parent window -- the one that opens when you click on the disk icon -- gives a fair idea of how full a disk is. The higher the "thermometer," the less space left free on the disk. You can get more exact by open a CLI or Shell and typing: info You'll see something like this: Mounted disks: Unit Size Used Free Full Errs Status Name DF1: 880K 1718 40 97% 0 Read/Write MyDisk DF0: 880K 1758 0 100% 0 Read/Write WB Volumes available: RAM DISK [Mounted] MyDisk [Mounted] WB [Mounted] In this case, MyDisk: is 97 percent full. A total of 1718 sectors are used, with 40 remaining free. Figure 512 bytes per sector, so 512 bytes times 40 sectors equals 20480 bytes available for new material on the disk. There's a catch, though. Any file created on the disk takes an overhead of two sectors -- 1024 bytes. In reality, you would have room for a file of 20480 minus 1024 or 19456 bytes. There's another catch. Amy time file size exceeds a 512-byte increment, another sector is taken up, even if it's just holding one byte. A file's icon is counted as a file, so it takes up at least two sectors, and more if it's larger than 512 bytes. So a disk file containing one character and its icon made of only a one-pixel dot will occupy four sectors -- 2048 bytes on a disk. It's good practice not to crowd a disk. Disks are inexpensive. When one goes bad, why lose everything? If you must fill a disk to the brim, there are some ways to scare up space. First, from a CLI or Shell, type: dir mydisk: opt a If you have a printer, instead type: dir > prt: mydisk: opt a The result will be a list of the disk's directories with each's files listed, followed by a list of files in the parent directory. This complete list will reveal any files you might not need on the disk. Best candidates for deletion are the .info files (icons) of files that are NOT accessed by double-clicking. Deleting the icons still leaves the files themselves intact, to be loaded through programs. If a file is accessed by clicking, don't touch it. 3]AHAH DIRECTORY DROPPING - Martin Kurtz, San Diego, CA I've been working with the Amiga for five years and just learned something that makes me feel like a nitwit. In arranging iconed files within a drawer I've been first opening the drawer, clicking and dragging the icons within the directory, releasing and waiting for the transfer to be made. Now I find out it isn't necessary to open the drawer. Just click on the icon to be moved, hold, drag it OVER the drawer icon and release. Even more interesting, you can gang-move files into a drawer. Hold down either Shift key and in turn click on a series of icons you wish to copy into the drawer. While still holding down, roll the mouse so the last clicked icon -- the one with mouse pointer over it -- is directly over the icon of the drawer to which the files will be moved. Release the mouse button and they will all be copied into the drawer. When you open the drawer you will find them neatly arranged, no matter what their relative positions in the old location. Gee, sometimes I wish I'd read the manual. 3]HOT TIP - "Red" Sawyer - Detroit, MI When you park your car on a hot day, there are several items you should not leave in it for even a minute: children, pets, videotapes, film and computer disks. Most of us are aware of the life-threatening heat that can build up very quickly in an enclosed vehicle, and we're smart enough not to leave living creatures in such an environment. I was that smart, but when I saw the curled up plastic that used to be a disk with important data on it, I realized I could be a bit smarter. 3]TURN IT OFF - K. C. Linn, Atlanta, GA It's summertime. Turn off the computer and take your family swimming, on a picnic, for a drive, whatever. Just turn off the computer for a while and enjoy a real life. The computer will be waiting when you get back. 4]END OF TEXT