Utilities Docs  This file includes Documentation for all files in the Utilities Drawer. They have all been combined into one to save disk space. The Docs included in this file are:  IconLab GT Crunch CD BFormat  Doc File Headers are in RED! *****************************************************************************  HERMES' ICONLAB (Version 1.0) Copyright (c) 1988 A. G. Kartsatos  *** Shareware *** TO RUN IT IMMEDIATELY: CLI: PRESS "ICONLAB" or "RUN ICONLAB". WORKBENCH: CLICK into the ICONLAB icon. TO EXIT: Click into the WINDOWCLOSE gadget or PRESS the TAB KEY or CLICK into the LONG RECTANGLE at the BOTTOM of the screen. GET RID OF THAT UGLY BLACK COLOR ON YOUR PREFERENCES (IF YOU HAVE IT). REPLACE IT BY SOMETHING LIKE A BEIGE COLOR. YOUR WORKBENCH AND YOUR ICONS WILL LOOK SO MUCH BETTER! Here is a nice program that will let you see your icons and their alternate images without having to go to the Workbench. I wrote it because I am tired of having to construct a new icon for a drawer in order to see all the icons in it from the Workbench. I also don't like to scroll a Workbench window to see the icons in it when it is full of them. The program will also allow you to change various icon parameters like ICON TYPE, HIGHLIGHTING, DEFAULT TOOL, TOOL TYPES and STACK. To SEE an ICON, choose it from the file requester table and then click into the LOAD gadget. To see its ALTERNATE image, just click into the TOGGLE gadget. You can thus toggle between the two images of an icon provided there is an alternate image. Just because an icon changes colors when you click into it, it does not necessarily mean that there is an alternate image. GADGETS: 9 DRIVES: The nine DRIVE gadgets on the left allow you to attach to anyone of those drives. If you don't have VD0:, or VDK, or any one of the other drives, it does not matter. Just cancel the requestor when it shows up. The program starts by attaching first to your RAM: volume. From then on you can attach to any of 9 drives listed by clicking into them. You can also attach to any drive/directory by entering it into the DRAWER gadget and pressing return. PARENT: This gadget allows you to attach to the parent directory, if you are not already at the top. LOAD: The LOAD gadget loads an icon into the large rectangular area on the right. If the icon is bigger than that area, it auto- matically gets loaded into its own window, whose dimensions are commensurable with those of the icon itself. Before you load an icon, you must click into its name (ending with .info) first. SAVE: You may change the following characteristics of an icon: ICON TYPE, HIGHLIGHTING, DEFAULT TOOL, TOOL TYPES, STACK You should always use the up/down arrows to change the para- meters in ICON TYPE and HIGHLIGHTING. You can thus change ANY icon type to ANY other icon type very easily. Do not change the highlighting to IMAGE if the icon does not already have an ALTERNATE image. Remember: if you change the ICON TYPE to DISK and its name is disk.info, you usually need to reboot in order to see the icon on the Workbench. The SAVE gadget saves the icon to the pathname given by the user in the DRAWER/FILE gadgets. The program does check to see if the volume/directory in the DRAWER gadget exists. Make sure that the parameters on the right are the ones that you actually want to save. Again, use the ADD and DEL gadgets in order to ADD and DELETE TOOL TYPES, respectively. Otherwise, your icons will not be saved right. TOGGLE: Toggles between the main and the alternate image of the icon that has been loaded. DELETE: Deletes the file whose pathname is in the DRAWER/FILE gadgets. ATTENTION: (1) If your icon is TOO BIG, its window will not have a TOGGLE and an EXIT gadget. Just PRESS "T" or "t" to see its alter- nate icon and "Q" or "q" to exit into the main window. (2) If you get the message: "Cannot Open The Icon Window", EXIT the program because you don't have enough memory left to open a large icon's window. @@-->>> HERMES THIS IS A SHAREWARE PROGRAM. IF YOU USE THE PROGRAM, PLEASE SEND $15.00 TO A. G. Kartsatos 8524 Caladesi Island Drive Tampa, FL 33637, USA Other programs by the author: PALETTA.ARC (Color Mixing, Modifying IFF's, Random Colors) CALCULA.ARC (An Expression Parser And A Function Evaluator. Unique!) SIMPLICA.ARC (The Simplex Method Of Linear Programming) ROST.ARC (Reports On Storage And Tasks On Their Windows. Useful!) LISTA11.ARC (Very Useful Directory Lister. Alpha, Bytes, Patterns, CLI, Refresh. Opens Its Own Window) SCRIPTA.ARC (Online!-PCP Script Maker. Easy Online! Script Files!) FORMULA!.ARC (Formidable 3D-Grapher In C. It graphs z = f(x,y). Choice Of Colors. 17 Functions Supported. An Artist's Tool) FINANCA.ARC (Mortgage, Compound Interest And Annuity) CONTOURA.ARC (Spectacular Contour Grapher. Definitely An Artist's Tool. CENTER, ZOOM IN, ZOOM OUT, FLOWING PALETTE...) ARCHA11.ARC (ARC-PAK-ZOO Utility. It Also Has Another 12 Utility Gadgets And 7 Drive Gadgets. Only 29K, It Can Be Used As An Efficient Directory Utility) DUHERM27.ARC (Beautiful Directory Utility. A multitude Of Functions. 72 Gadgets Out Of Which 48 Are User-configurable! One Of The Major Powerful DirUtils For The Amiga) VIEWOVER.ARC (This Is The Program View (V. 1.8) With Overscan Capability By HERMES. Very Small (About 6K) And Very Convenient) Feel free to distribute this program, with this doc intact, to any bulletin boards and other non-profit establishments in the US and abroad. You may also upload this program to major boards like Compuserve, Delphi, GEnie, PLink, etc. The inclusion of this program, or any part of it, in any form in a commercial package, or its use for any commercial purposes, requires the written permission of the author. FOR SUPPORT, CALL *HERMES BBS* IN TAMPA, FL. TELEPHONE: 813-985-7624. 70 MEG OF STORAGE, 1500 FILES ONLINE, GOOD MESSAGE BASE. ALTHOUGH IT IS A PRIVATE BOARD, YOU MAY LEAVE A MESSAGE TO THE SYSOP CONCERNING ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS YOU MIGHT HAVE ABOUT HERMES' PROGRAMS.  The GT terminal program by Greg Cunningham, Nomad Development. In July '88.  Version 1.1 กกก Experienced GT users see bottom !!! The official terminal of the UltraViolet Cafe, and I hope People Link also soon. Designed solely for the 'Power User' and definatly NOT for the novice!!! Based on the good features of all the other terms I've used, what there are, this is my rendition of a simple yet powerfull Amiga terminal program started becuase I am fed up with everthing I can find, and all those (lots'a) little pet peeves, gurus, ect. that all the others seem to have. This program is not public domain, not shareware, and not commercial. It is free to anyone, as long as the program, icon, and document are unchanged and are intact, and no money is made off it, exlcuding transfer charges. Why? becuase I don't want the responsibility for upgrades, DiskMan was enough Though bugs are another subject, and must be fixed. You can pay me by buying DiskMaster, please! The first thing you'll notice is all of the nice cryptic items across the menu bar. These may be selected by clicking the menu button while the pointer is over the item. I'll try to document them as well as possible, but I know I'm bad at writing documentation. In order from left to right, I have them labeled with letters. Also right Amiga command sequences will work with some items, as noted. Or left Amiga, hmm, seems like I got mixed up with the mouse buttons on some things also. 2400 CCF8N1 S |XC X D/L U/L| SEND CAPT SUS HU DN Phone Config TEXT | |||||| | || | | | | | | | | | | | A BCDEFG H IJ K L M N O P Q R S T U A. Baud - Clicking on this will flip it thru 19200, 9600, 4800, 2400, 1200, Amiga-B then back to 19200. It decriments because normally you have to go down one quickly at connection. (I'll have to see if it can be auto) B. Recieve CR 'C' or CR+LF 'L'. C. Transmit CR or CR+LF. D. Duplex 'F'ull or 'H'alf. E. Lenght '7' or '8'. F. Parity 'N'one, 'O'dd, 'E'ven, 'M'ark, or 'S'pace. G. Stop bits '1' or '2'. H. SplitScreen Use this for sending lines of text only at CR. Amiga-/ * Working on standard line edit features * I. X Disable Highlighted for auto x0N/x0FF, else off. Ctrl-Q/S J. CRC Highlighted CRC, else Checksum. K. Protocol 'X'Modem, 'Y'Modem, 'Z'Modem-(don't use yet), XModem 'T'ext, Amiga-X and 'W'XModem. L. DownLoad Calls up what I hope to be a good immitation TxEd Amiga-D (the standard) file requestor, like in the other terms. The arrows beside the devices will scroll showing whatever devices are currently active, including S: and C:. Enter the filename in the string on the bottom, and the directory (and PC-DOS/Amiga pattern if needed) in the string at the top. Hitting return or Okay will start the process. Still working on that sort! M. UpLoad see L. Amiga-U N. Text Send Opens that requestor for a name (see L.). Amiga-S The SEND item will dehighlight when done. To stop the send prematurely, select this item again. SUS will toggle suspending it. O. Text Capture Amiga-C Opens that requestor for a name (see L.). If you use the default 'Capture' it will open a file named 'Capture.1'. For my own reasons if the file exists and is not 0 bytes, it will open a new file with a number higher than what exists (i.e. Capture.2,3,4,5,6,ect.) I like lots of capture files all over the place. The CAPT item will dehighlight when done. To stop the capture prematurely, select this item again. P. Suspend Selecting SUS will toggle suspending Text capture/send. Q. Hang Up sends (config) Hangup string. Amiga-H R. Dial Next This can be used like the standard 'redial' feature. Amiga-N It will dial the first selected name in the phonebook. If the line was busy, selecting it will dial the same number again. Note: If a connection was made, the name is deselected, and the next time DN is selected, it will dial the next selected name. S. PhoneBook This will bring up the phonebook.(compatible with AMIC phonelibs) Amiga-P this should be placed in the current 'S:' directory. Dial Selecting 'Dial' will dial the top selected name and set it's Amiga-N parameters (see A. thru G.) accordingly. Script There is also an optional script set, placed after the setup. These work in pairs, and must be enclosed in brackets '[]', and must have a '=' dividing them. The first of a pair is the prompt, the BBS that sends this prompt must send a space or ']' after it to be detected. And must be one word, such as for 'Your name: ' you would use 'name:' as the prompt. Also this is case sensitive. The second is the string to send. Exaple: [Name:=Greg\r] BBS says: Name: GT says: Greg\r Since brackets and the equal are special here, they are filtered from the script input word stream, so something like this will work. (Here's one I use for BBS-PC) [RETURN=\r^PMy Name\rPassword\r] BBS says: Press [RETURN] GT says: return, control-P, name, password. These will only work once while online. To make one work multiple times, replace the leading bracket '[' with a brace '{' (hit ESC if it gets out of hand) * Limits 400 names per phone lib. 200 chars per name (line). 20 pairs per name (line). Selecting names should be easy, just think of it like DPaint Editing names. When selecting 'Edit' the top selected name will appear in the edit line, hitting return will enter it in. To Add to the list, select Edit with no files selected. When return is hit the name will appear at the bottom of the list. For sorting, AmigaDOS 'Sort' works well (for now). Queue Dials all selected numbers in the phone book untill all are deselected or ESC is pressed while dialing. (Hope it works OK) :-) Load to load another phonebook in. Save to save the current phonebook. AUTO Toggles ON/OFF. This hopefully makes the phonebook open before you can say GT. (when a connection is not made, at logoff, and other nifty times) Quit Select the close gadget, or hit Amiga-P again to exit the phonebook. T. Config This is kinda like the phonebook. Amiga-M Palette Open the color palette. Cancel restores, close gadget keeps new colors. LACE Toggles interlace. Currently, you must save config, quit and reload GT, for it become active. Planes Flips planes between 1 (2 color), 2 (4 color) and 3 (8 color). 16 colors? color sequences can't go over 10 colors. save config & reload. 127C or 255C 127/255 character mask, 7 bits for 8. Save Config Saves all config strings, color, lace, planes, mask, auto, and current baud to 'S:GT.Config' only Edit works like the phone edit (200 chars max). For editing macros and config strings. Slide the bar down to get to the config strings: Phone : Path & phonebook file to load first. Macro : Path & key macro file to load first. Data : Initial path for file requestor to use for Capture, send, U/L, and D/L. Init : String to send modem when run. Exit : String to send modem when quiting GT. Dial : Prifix dial sequence. Hangup: String to send modem for Amiga-H & for Queue. Font : font [space] size. Like 'Opal 9' Load Keys to load another set of macros in. Save Keys to save the current macros. Quit Select the close gadget or hit Amiga-M again to exit the macro screen U. Flip to Time Time shows current time, and connect time. CT will initialize at DCD, and show how long you've been online. CT will keep the time online after losing carrier. While online, it may be reset by clicking somwhere in the area. Also a helpfull input line display that updates ever so often for use with the script stuff, to see if it caught the last word. Quick Key Reference Amiga-B Flip Baud rate. Amiga-C Start/End capture. Amiga-D D/L Amiga-H Send hangup string. Amiga-K 'Kill' or deselect last number dialed. Amiga-L Dial by List, dials in manual Queue mode. Amiga-M Toggle Config/Macro screen. Amiga-N Dial Next, names are deselected automaticaly on DCD. Redials if busy, ect. Amiga-P Toggle phone screen. Amiga-Q quits GT. (if no DCD) Close Gadget works always. Amiga-S Start/End ASCII send. Amiga-U U/L Amiga-X flip thru protocol. Ctrl-W reset color/alt chars & clear screen. ESC Turns off script when online. Turns off Queue when offline. ----- NEW ------ Review Buffer Hit any of the cursor keys to open the review window. Cursor up goes up one page. Cursor down goes down one page. Cursor left or right closes the window. Ctrl-W reset color/alt chars, and now clears screen too. Amiga-K 'Kill' or deselect last number dialed. Amiga-L Dial next in List, dials in manual Queue mode. Does'nt seem to work the first time, but anyway it's usefull if you don't want to deselect numbers just because they're above others you want to call now. (huh?) Just try it. Fonts Check the last entry in the config menu. Enter font name & size. Transfer Window On the WorkBench screen! Ctrl-Q/S Fixed to work with PLink. WXModem Fixed! And, I hope faster than the others (grin) Still to come: Send TxEd Clip, ZModem, YModem G, YModem Batch, Kermit, and much more. If it goes out of San Antonio, the area code for the phone numbers is (512) All modem I/O & timing routines were designed using the Anchor 2400E. If you gotta contact me, I'm on all the boards in the example phonebook, and this my address: Greg Cunningham Nomad Development. 2014 Encino White San Antonio, TX 78259 Other options: Phone (512) 490-0055 BIX: gcunningham Enjoy, Greg Cunningham  Crunch  July 31, 1988 WARNING: I did not write this program, just this doc file, which is based on 3 hours of experimentation with Crunch. Since it is based on just the 3 hours I've used it, everything I say might be wrong :-). I found it on GEnie, normally an at least semi-reputable network, with no docs at all, nothing in the arc file but the program, and a short one paragraph description of it before downloading. This program was obviously (to me it appears obvious) written by one of the many European pirate groups. The name "The New Masters", the lack of docs, and the rainbow graphics are a dead giveaway. However, it appears to be a potentially very useful utility, particularly for those of us whose Workbench disk is stuffed full of utilities and can't find room for any more. Experiment with Crunch; test it thoroughly before you use it on anything valuable to you. It works great for me, but given the ancestry of it I can't guarantee it will not cause you problems or loss of data or programs you really didn't want to lose. Use it ONLY on backup copies. Crunch is a utility that compresses single programs only, unlike ARC, ZOO, or PAK, which can compress several files into one archive. The big difference is, after compression with Crunch, the program is still an executable file and does NOT have to be "unarc'd" or uncompressed before being run. Like a PAK'd file, you do not need the original compression program to uncompress a file. With PAK though, you must first unPAK the file, and then run the program. With Crunch, the file uncompresses itself on the fly and runs exactly like any other executable program, yet takes up much less space on your disk. The added time it takes to uncompress itself varies, but is usually not significant. Run Crunch from the CLI. After a second of "rainbow graphics", it brings up its own screen with just three menu items: Open, Write, and Quit. When first started, the Write option is not available until you Open something and "crunch" it. Then it can be written back to disk. Select Open from the menu, and choose the program you want to crunch from the file requester that comes up. The size in bytes of the file will be displayed as the Source in the list on the left. The two large blocks labeled 'Time Control' and 'Speed Control' will graphically show you what's happening while the file is being crunched. When finished, the size of the file after crunching will be displayed as Destination in the list on the left. This size, plus the small 680 byte header that is added, equals the total size which is displayed as All in the list. Now you can select Write from the menu. When the file requester comes up it should still have the program's name in the string gadget, so you can just click OK and the newly-crunched, smaller file will be written to disk and replace the old larger file. The new, crunched file can still be run either from the CLI or via Workbench, just like the old one. When run, it will display its typical rainbow graphics while uncrunching. If in the future you want to permanently uncrunch a file that you have used Crunch on (i.e., return it to its normal size and state), just select Open from the menu and then choose the file just as you would one that you wanted to crunch. Crunch will detect that the file is already crunched, and will uncrunch it, displaying some graphics while doing so in the large block labeled 'Recruncher Control'. Its size before and after will also be displayed as Source and Destination on the left. Then select Write from the menu and write it back to disk in place of the crunched file. I ran into several problems with Crunch. After crunching and saving to a disk, the icon for that disk would not go away without rebooting. I got several gurus in a row when I tried to save the crunched file to a device other than the one it came from. You may or may not have these problems too. When I booted up with a standard unaltered Workbench disk, Crunch seemed to be less finicky. There also appear to be some programs that Crunch will not compress. Three that I tried that it refused to do were DeluxePaintII, Sculpt3D, and PhotonPaint. A message in the 'Status Line' said something like "bad hunk struc." and the left mouse button had to be pressed to halt everything. Here are some examples from my experiments: Digi-Paint: 102448 bytes before crunching, 13 seconds to load & run 65438 bytes after crunching, 15 seconds to load & run Preferences: 58868 bytes before crunching, 8 seconds to load & run 35124 bytes after crunching, 8 seconds to load & run PixMate: 109600 bytes before crunching, 17 seconds to load & run 81836 bytes after crunching, 26 seconds to load & run Crunch seemed to also work fine on the few AmigaDOS commands that I tried it on (Run, NewCli, FastMemFirst), although the rainbow graphics are a bit annoying every time you use a crunched command. I highly recommend that you do your own experimenting on some backup copies, until you're satisfied that Crunch will work for you. -Joel Salazar PeopleLink: WALRUS GEnie: WALRUS CompuServe: 73557,2347 QuantumLink: SKYRAT  New CD Copyright ฉ 1987 by Bryan Ford A Freely-Redistributable Program  NewCD is a program I wrote to replace the CD that comes with AmigaDOS. It operates exactly like CD, except it puts the current path in the title bar of the CLI window. For a programmer who's interested on how I changed the title bar of a CLI window, here it is. Deep in the heart of the AmigaDOS Technical Reference Manual, in the section on Packet Types, under DiskInfo, it says that you can send this kind of packet to the console handler for the window, and the Volume field of the InfoData structure will be filled in with a pointer to the Intuition Window structure. You have to create and send your own DiskInfo packet to the ConsoleTask in your Process structure. This program is being distributed as Shareware. If you find it handy, please send a $5 donation to the address below. In any case, you are encouraged to copy and share this program. Bryan Ford 1790 East 1400 North Logan, UT 84321  BFORMAT  Documentation for Bformat ---------------------------------------------------------- Purpose ------- Normally, AmigaDos only allows the formatting of 'perfect' diskettes. If you have a formatting error anywhere on the diskette (it may only be a single track that appears to be bad) AmigaDos will kindly inform you that the disk is totally un-useable. I never felt comfortable with that limitation. I had hoped that Dos 1.2 would address this problem (well..maybe 1.3,1.4,1.5?). In any case, I became tired of waiting. I drew upon some experience that I had about a year ago when I wrote a custom hard-disk driver for my A1000, and came up with Bformat. Bformat allows for the formatting of otherwise un-useable 3.5" diskettes. Limitations ----------- Bformat does require the ability to sucessfully format tracks 0 and 80. Disks with formatting errors on tracks other than 0 and 80 should pose no problems. Bformat only works on drive DF0:. This self imposed limitation insures that Bformat cannot be used to screw up hard-disks and the like. At this time Bformat is only executable from the CLI environment. How it Works (overview) ------------ Bformat uses the standard 'trackdisk.device' calls for disk formatting. After a diskette is formatted 3 important blocks are written to the disk. The first block written is what I will call the 'ID' block (block 0). In order for AmigaDos to recognize the disk as useable for file storage, the first three bytes must contain the ascii codes for 'DOS'. The second block required by Dos is the 'root' block (block 880). This block contains information on the disk file structure, as defined in the AmigaDos Manual. The third block required is the 'Block Allocation Map' (bam). The physical block number for this map can vary and is obtained as a pointer from the 'root block'. The bam is a bit-mapped structure which defines all of the available blocks on the disk. When files are created by AmigaDos, it adjusts the content of this map to reflect which blocks are used by the file system. (More info on the bitmap is present in the source code). Bformat works by dynamically creating this bitmap structure. When Bformat comes accross a block that cannot be correctly formatted, it marks this block as 'in use'. Since the blocks marked by Bformat are not attached to any AmigaDos file, the AmigaDos file system will not attempt to use these 'bad' blocks. Bformat effectively hides any bad blocks from AmigaDos. Usage ------ Bformat will only work on 3.5" floppy disks located in drive df0:. Bformat accepts two command options. This can take two possible forms: 1) bformat volname volname = the volume name for your disk. (required) Format & verify diskette, marking any bad blocks as 'in use'. 2) bformat volname -c -c option will erase all files on the disk and verify disk integrity. Any bad blocks found will be marked as 'in use'. The disk will not be re-formatted when using this option. You can abort the program at any time via ctrl-c or ctrl-d. Concerns -------- Wouldn't recommend the use of AmigaDos 'diskcopy' command in association with a disk formatted by Bformat. Use standard 'copy' instead. On occasion you may find a diskette that will format correctly, but, after a period of time, fails. This type of latent problem cannot be detected by Bformat (or the AmigDos format, for that matter) and is an area of concern. The only reliable approach to this problem is to use the Bformat '-c' option after you have copied any recoverable files from the disk that has developed this type of error. Status ------ I originally planned to release this as ShareWare but decided to leave it as public domain. I would actually like Bformat to be somewhere in between. Shall I call it pd-shareware?? In other words, I'll leave the status up to you.. If you find Bformat to be a useful addition to your amiga, I have no objection to monetary contributions mailed to the following address: Bob Bush 1015 Hayfield Rochester Hills Mich. 48064 Enough of that.. Any comments/questions accepted via Compuserve Email (73105,1332). NOTE: 4 July 1988 I recently hacked together a 880K 5.25" IBM diskdrive as my Amiga df2. I had quite a number of disks that would not format and I remembered this Bformat. So I added to and changed the program and a bit to allow formatting of drives other than df0! I don't have a Compuserve account so I would appreciate it if some kind soul would send Bob a copy of this hacked version. Tony Solomon PLink ID: Tony*S P.S. I can also be reached on Magnolia/CAUG/BBS JC/Amiga Advocate and many other BBS's if you would care to comment! ***** end of file *****