PRODUCT NAME

Amiga 1200 Blizzard 1230-IV 16MB Fast RAM 1.1Gb Hard Disk 1 x DD/DS Floppy drive (DF1) 1 x HD/DS Floppy drive (DF2) Kickstart/Workbench 3.1

DEMO VERSION

There is a demo version of version 6 available from Consultron's web page. It is a read-only demo.

COPY PROTECTION

None

SOFTWARE INSTALLATION

The software comes on one floppy disk.

An 'Install' program is provided to install the software onto your Hard disk (300K) or onto floppy disk (50k). It is possible to run the software from a working copy of the CrossDos disk by double-clicking the PC0 icon.

REVIEW

Crossdos has been provided in a limited form since Workbench 2.1, that version allowed Amiga users to read/write MS-DOS disks via the PC0, PC1 etc. DosDrivers. It also provided the CrossDos commodity program which allows you to filter out extra characters from text files copied from MS-DOS disks and some Text Translation.

Since then Microsoft has released Windows 95 which extended the MS-DOS filenames from the 8.3 (11 character) format to 256 character filenames. The Amiga can read upto 30 character filenames. CrossDos 7 now allows you to read/write 30 character filenames onto MS-DOS disks (longer filenames are not recommended as some programs may not work correctly). Volume names are still limited to 11 characters long.

I had the Workbench version of CrossDos since I bought my Amiga 1200 and used it often when copying files to/from work especially from Aminet or converting Word files into RTF or Wordperfect format for use on WordWorth at home. The short fileformat wasn't much of a problem but now that long filenames are pretty common, it was getting to be a pain having to use them.

Consultron had only recently updated their web page and CrossDos 7 was advertised with Windows 95 filename support and at only $40 was a bargain! I immediately, posted a letter with my Mastercard details for it.

A coupe of weeks later it arrived in the post. Crossdos was supplied on a floppy disk with a nice blue/gold manual (46 pages). I made a copy of the disk for backup purposes and installed the software via the Install program onto the Workbench partition of my hard disk.

The software includes four DosDrivers (PC0-PC4), a CrossDos commodity program a QuickPrep program, a DiskChg program and new versions of Format, Diskcopy and Mount programs (v40) and the CrossDosFileSystem.

The new drivers have been working faultlessly since day one although MCP caused read errors with the Trackdisk option enabled (it is now disabled). I saved some files with Windows 95 onto a floppy disk and took it home and lo and behold the disk displayed the filenames at full length. It also works with the normal 8.3 files as well.

According to the manual, you should keep Windows 95 filenames under 30 characters long as that is the limit for Amiga OS. I have never used really long filenames so that really isn't an issue but will be if saving from a Win 95 machine.

I am now using it as normal and I don't have to remember to reduce it down to the awful 8.3 format anymore. Windows 3.x machines will probably just see the truncated file format. Well worth the money.

DOCUMENTATION

The manual comes with CrossDos is 46 pages long and comes in a nice blue /gold cover. There are still references to long gone products such as Wordperfect, Final Copy, ADPro etc but includes new products such as Syjet, Zip, Jaz etc. There is an example mountlist on p26 but didn't come out quite right with some characters overlapping others. I hope Consultron can fix this. There is a useful 8 page trouble shooting guide for problems with CrossDos.

SUPPORT/WARRANTY

Consultron has a Technical Support line during the day (US time) and registration is possible via Email or Snailmail. They used to have a BBS but this is replaced by their updated web page at:

http://www.cucug.org/consultron/

BUGS

No bugs have been found as yet. The latest update is available to upgrade to 7.02 on their web page.

GOOD POINTS

Easy to install and completely transparent to the user. Plenty of useful utilities to go with it. The ConfigDisk will be useful for other removable drives as Mountlists can be automatically created. QuickPrep is useful to format MS-DOS partitions.

DISLIKES

I would have like to seen a DiskSalv type utility to fix Read/Write errors. MS DOS 6 has Scandisk, although Norton Utilities on the PC is excellent on finding a fixing common disk problems and mapping out bad blocks. The disk uses horrible standard four colour icons which are awful. A combination of MWB or NewIcons would have been nice for a 90s product.

CONCLUSIONS

Worthwhile having if you use PCs and Amigas to transfer files on a regular basis esp. if you have access to Win 5 machines otherwise the normal CrossDos on WB would suffice for the rest of us.