Quarterback V4.2 Release Notes August 22, 1990 Thank you for purchasing Quarterback. We have put a lot of effort into making Quarterback as reliable as possible. We have made some changes to Quarterback since the manual was printed, and we noticed a few things which are not clearly explained in the manual. We suggest that you print these notes and keep a copy with your Quarterback manual. If you call us for support, please have your serial number and version number ready. The serial number is on the Quarterback master diskette label. The version number appears in the title bar of the Quarterback window. Be sure to send us your postage-paid warranty card. It costs you only a few seconds of your time, but we are much more receptive to your call if your name is already in our computer. Our business hours are 8:30AM to 5:00PM Mountain time. NOTE: We jumped from version 2.3 to version 4.0, skipping version 3.0, because an illegal, pirated copy of Quarterback with a version number of 3.0 has been passed around on several pirate bulletin boards. To eliminate possible confusion, we have chosen to skip version 3.0 altogether. Be aware that we did not release nor do we support any version of Quarterback with a version number between 2.3 and 4.0. ************************************************************************* SUMMARY OF V4.2 CHANGES We added support for the Applied Engineering High Density (1.52MB) floppy drive. This drives works as a regular drive if referred to as DF0-3, and as a high-capacity drive if referred to as DF4-7. Note, as usual with Quarterback, if you are using two drives for backup or restore, they must have the same storage capacity. You cannot use one high-density drive with one normal-density drive. SUMMARY OF V4.1 CHANGES We made several changes to the Restore Options in response to user requests. There are no other changes. 1. Restore Only Files Which Already Exist - This option was deleted. 2. Restore Empty Subdirectories - This option was added in place of the deleted option listed above. This new option permits you to force Quarterback to restore empty subdirectories. Note that this option can have unexpected results and should be set to NO unless you are performing a full restore. 3. Overwrite Existing Files - We added a new choice to this option: ASK. This option tells Quarterback what to do if Quarterback finds that a file which it is about to restore already exists. If you specify YES, Quarterback overwrites existing files without asking. If you specify NO, Quarterback does NOT overwrite an existing file. But if you specify ASK, Quarterback pauses to ask you whether or not you wish to overwrite the existing file and then proceeds according to your direction. 4. Restore Full Subdirectory Structure - The wording of this option was changed to "Restore Original Subdirectory Path". The function remains the same is defined under V4.0. ************************************************************************* SUMMARY OF V4.0 CHANGES Feature changes: - Available hard disk volumes displayed for easy selection - Visual progress bar (fuel gauge) added to volume status boxes - Print Catalog added to menu - Volume/device name of hard disk appended to archive/restoration report filename - "SLOW" backup mode added to Backup Options - Restore Full Subdirectory Structure option changed in function - Volume number added to archive/restoration reports - Volume number added to QB backup volume disk ID - Beeps/flashes at end of each backup volume - Included/excluded status of directory shown on catalog - Wrong volume error messages expanded for restore - Backup volume "test" mode added - Archive/restoration report uses line count, not form feed - File count display increased to 5 digits (99,999), volume count to increased 3 digits (999). - Opens its own hires screen, setting colors to old Workbench colors. - Backup Full Subdirectory Structure option deleted. - Use of "backup volume" changed to "backup disk". Bug fixes: - No longer leaves read locks on subdirectories - No longer causes Amiga crash after Quarterback exit - No longer crashes on loading second disk when alternate catalog is split across two disks ************************************************************************* The following paragraphs explain these changes and new features in greater detail. 1. Available hard disk volumes displayed for easy selection - Quarterback now displays a list of all available hard disk volumes (partitions) on your Amiga. You do not need to remember the name of your hard disk drive(s) or partitions. Quarterback no longer requires you to type the name of the volume you wish to backup or restore. Simply click on the name of the hard disk volume you wish to backup files from or restore files to. When you click on the name of the hard disk volume you wish to use, Quarterback displays that volume name inside a box near the center of the screen. You can change the contents of this box to the name of any valid AmigaDos file storage device, if you wish, in order to backup from or restore to a different device not listed by Quarterback. For example, if you wish to restore files to RAM:, you would erase the device name in the center box and enter RAM:. If you wish to backup files from or restore files to a particular subdirectory on any AmigaDOS volume, you can add the desired path to the displayed volume name. Simply click inside the gadget and type in the desired subdirectory path. Note: In building its list of available hard disk partitions (volumes), Quarterback lists only those devices having a file storage capacity greater than that of a floppy disk (800KB). If it cannot find at least two such partitions (volumes), it lists nothing. If it finds only one such device, it automatically copies that name to the center box and lists nothing. 2. Visual progress bar added to volume status boxes - Quarterback now provides a visual indication of its progress in filling backup diskettes. A graphical bar in each of the volume status boxes on the backup/restore status window provides a visual indication of the percentage of completion of a backup diskette (volume) during backup or restore. 3. Print Catalog added to Menu - Quarterback now allows you to print the Quarterback catalog whenever there is a catalog loaded. You no longer need to perform an actual backup or restore operation in order to obtain a list of files. This means that if you perform a backup or restore operation and fail to ask for the archive report or restoration report, you can still obtain the report by starting a restore operation, loading the catalog from the first backup volume, and then printing the catalog. You can then cancel the restore operation, if you really don't want to restore any files. This menu option prints the entire catalog, whether the files are selected for backup/restore or not. Note: this report is only printed; there is no option to send the report to disk, in this case. This a useful way to document the organization of a hard disk partition without doing the actual backup. Just start Quarterback, specify "backup", select the hard disk volume (partition), and when Quarterback has built the catalog, select "Print Catalog" from the Project Menu. After the catalog has been printed, you can cancel the backup, if all you really wanted was to document the files in that partition. 4. Volume/device name of hard disk appended to archive/restoration report filename - Some Quarterback users have complained that Quarterback used the same archive report name for each backup, even for different hard disk drives or different partitions on the same drive. When these reports were sent to disk, each new archive report overwrote the old archive report. To get around this problem, Quarterback users with multiple partitions have been forced to change the name of the report before backing up each partition to avoid overwriting the archive report of the other partition. To solve this problem, Quarterback now appends the name of the device being backed up or restored to the report name when reports are sent to disk. You can still force these reports to be stored on the device:path of your choice by entering the desired device:path (with no file name) as the report name. If you DO NOT assign your own name to the report, Quarterback now uses the standard name ARCHIVE REPORT or RESTORATION REPORT with the addition of the name of the device and path being backed up or restored. Note that the characters colon (":") and slash ("/") are NOT valid in AmigaDOS file names. Quarterback replaces these characters with "-" in appending the device and path to the report name. If you assign your own unique file name to the report, Quarterback uses that name and DOES NOT append the name of the device and path. This gives you the flexibility to call the report anything you wish without interference from Quarterback. However, you will find that archive reports for different partitions will be given the same name, creating the problem described above. 5. "SLOW" Backup option - Some Quarterback users, especially A2000 owners using certain DMA hard disk controllers and the Micron 2MB memory board, have experienced mysterious crashes related to the high DMA load which Quarterback places on the Amiga during backup. In response to this problem, we have added a "SLOW" backup mode option which limits Quarterback to a single data buffer. The effect of this option is to limit the data throughput, and to prevent simultaneous hard-disk and floppy input/output. If you experience unusual, random Quarterback crashes, you may wish to try this "SLOW" mode. 6. Restore Full Subdirectory Structure - This Restore option feature has been changed. In previous versions, this feature was used to force Quarterback to restore the entire directory tree structure (but not necessarily all files) to a hard disk. This was designed for those cases where the hard disk was freshly-formatted, but not all files contained on the backup volumes were to be restored to the hard disk. However, some Quarterback users misunderstood the intent of the option, and few users seemed to use it as it was intended. So we changed it! This revised option now allows you to restore files to a formatted hard disk (or any other AmigaDOS device, for that matter) without restoring the subdirectory path associated with the files. If you set this option to "YES", Quarterback restores the full subdirectory path originally associated with each file as it restores each file. In this case Quarterback creates all required subdirectories, if they do not already exist on the device to which the files are being restored. If you plan to restore all files to a hard disk which has been freshly-formatted, you should set this option to "YES". "YES" is the normal setting for this option. If you set this option to "NO", all restored files are stored directly into the hard disk volume and optional subdirectory path specified at the start of the restore. This means that ALL restored files are restored into the same directory, no matter what directory they came from originally. This can create file name conflicts as the files are restored, if you happen to restore files having identical names which originally came from different directories. However, this option can be especially useful if you wish to restore one or more files into a subdirectory other than the one in which they were stored when they were originally backed up. Set this option to "NO" only if you are sure about what you are doing, because you may end up with a really big mess if you use it unwisely. DO NOT SET THIS OPTION TO "NO" FOR A FULL RESTORE! 7. Volume number added to archive/restoration reports - The Quarterback backup volume on which a file STARTS has been added to the archive and restoration reports. This makes it possible to identify from the report which files are affected by a bad disk during restore. 8. Volume number added to QB backup volume disk ID - The Quarterback backup volume number has been made a part of the 4-character disk ID which appears as the first 4 bytes of the first block of each backup volume. This makes it possible to determine the volume number of any Quarterback backup volume from Workbench, since it appears on the Workbench screen whenever the volume is inserted into a disk drive. The Quarterback backup volume ID consists of "QB" followed by a 2-digit volume number. For example, the fifth volume of a backup set would appear on the Workbench screen as: QB05 9. Beeps/flashes at end of each backup volume - Quarterback has always beeped during backup when it was unable to proceed because it was waiting for a new backup volume to be loaded. However, now it beeps whenever it finishes writing a backup volume to let you know it is time to change volumes, even if there is another volume already loaded in the alternate drive. This alerts you to the need to change volumes BEFORE Quarterback comes to a complete halt waiting for your action. 10. Included/excluded status of directory shown on catalog - Quarterback now indicates on the catalog display whether or not a given subdirectory contains files or other subdirectories which are marked as included. If a subdirectory contains included files or one or more subdirectories containing included files, the name of the subdirectory is colored as "included", the same as for files. If the subdirectory contains no files or other subdirectories marked as included, the name of the subdirectory is colored as "excluded", the same as for files. With this change, the color of a subdirectory name indicates whether or not that subdirectory is to be included or excluded from the backup or restore, just as the color of a file name indicates whether or not it is included or excluded from the backup or restore. Note that a subdirectory is marked as included if ANY file or lower subdirectory is included in the backup or restore operation. 11. Wrong volume error messages expanded for restore - During a restore operation, Quarterback tells the user which backup volume to load next. If the user loads a volume which Quarterback cannot identify or which is not the volume Quarterback wants, it displays a requester in the center of the screen containing an error message to explain to the user what is wrong. Some users have been confused by these error messages. We have expanded and improved the error messages in an attempt to reduce the confusion. When the user loads a backup volume during a restore, Quarterback examines the first 14 bytes of data on the volume looking for three things: a Quarterback identification, a sequence number, and a date/time stamp. The unique Quarterback identification is a 2-byte ASCII sequence "QB". Only backup volumes produced by Quarterback have this code. AmigaDos volumes, for example, have a completely different code. The sequence number is a binary value ranging from 1 to 255 corresponding to the volume number in the backup sequence. The date/time stamp is an 8-byte binary value identifying the date and time that the backup was performe. This value uniquely identifies all volumes of a given backup set. This last test prevents volumes from different backup sets from getting intermixed during a restore (with disasterous results!). There is now a different error message associated with each of these tests. If the volume does not have the "QB" identification code, you might see: Volume in drive DF0 is not a Quarterback backup volume. Load correct volume and PROCEED, or SKIP to bypass, or CANCEL If you see this messages, you have probably loaded a volume which was not used for a backup. If you are certain that this disk WAS used for a Quarterback backup, then it is likely that a virus has corrupted the volume. In this case the volume cannot be used by Quarterback to restore files. Note: if this error appears for the first disk of the backup set, you may be able to use the LAST disk of the backup set instead. See the Quarterback User's Guide for more information. If the volume has a valid Quarterback ID, but does not have the sequence number requested by Quarterback, you might see: Volume 2 in drive DF0 is not the volume needed next. Please remove it and PROCEED, or SKIP to bypass, or CANCEL If you see this message and you are sure that the volume you loaded was the correct volume (based on the handwritten label on the volume) then it is possible that the volumes were mixed up during the backup. The volume number displayed in the error message is the actual sequence number of that volume as read from the volume by Quarterback. You may wish to relabel the volume with this number. Then try one or more different volumes from the backup set to see if Quarterback can find the right volume. If not, it will display the volume number so you can verify that the label matches the content. Note that you can quickly find the volume number of any Quarterback volume from the Workbench screen, as described in item 7 above. If the volume has a valid Quarterback ID and has the correct sequence number, but its date/time stamp DOES NOT match the date/time stamp of the first volume of the backup set, you might see: Backup volume in drive DF0 has a different backup date/time stamp. It does not belong to the backup set you are restoring. This indicates that you have probably intermixed two or more sets of backup volumes. Quarterback will not restore files from a volume having a date/time stamp which does not match the first volume. 12. Backup volume "test" mode added - A new "test" mode has been added to the Restore Options window which allows you to test Quarterback backup volumes for errors without actually restoring any files. We highly recommend that you use this test mode to verify your backup diskettes BEFORE you do something drastic to your hard disk, such as reformat it! To use this feature, select RESTORE mode, and follow the steps for a FULL restore (do not exclude any files). When you reach the Restore Options window, set the option "Read Backup Volumes, Don't Restore Files" to "YES". This forces Quarterback to go through the steps of restoring your files without actually writing anything to your hard disk. Quarterback asks you to load each backup volume, in sequence. Quarterback then attempts to read the data from each backup volume, but DOES NOT restore the data to your hard disk. The effect of this is to test the readability of each backup volume, thereby providing some measure of confidence that the backup volumes will be usable if you need to restore files from them in the future. Warning - if this option is set to "YES" no files are restored to your hard disk! If you really want your files to be restored, this option MUST be set to "NO". 13. Archive/restoration report uses line count, not form feed - Quarterback now uses the page size parameter from Preferences to count blank lines at the end of a report page. In previous versions, Quarterback used the form feed character to advance the printer to the end of the current page. Unfortunately, the form feed character did not always produce the expected results, especially if the printer page size was set to a value different from the Preferences page size. 14. File count display increased to 5 digits (99,999), volume count to increased 3 digits (999) - Quarterback has always been able to count more than 9,999 files and/or 99 backup volumes. However, the actual file and volume counts displayed on the screen have been limited to 4 digits and 3 digits, respectively. Some Quarterback users now have very large hard disk partitions where such arbitrary restrictions are noticeable. So we have increased the file count display to 5 digits (99,999 files) and the volume count to 3 digits (999 volumes). 15. To provide better functionality under Workbench 2.0, Quarterback now opens its own high-resolution screen, setting the screen colors to the old Workbench colors. New Workbench colors caused some data displayed by Quarterback to be unreadable. 16. The backup option "Backup Full Subdirectory Structure" has been eliminated. It became unnecessary with the change in functionality of "Restore Full Subdirectory Structure". See item 6 above. 17. References to "Backup volume" have been changed to "backup disk", to reduce confusion between the hard disk volume being backed up or restored and the "floppy disk volumes" to which the files are copied. ************************************************************************* NON-ENGLISH VERSIONS NOW AVAILABLE DTM Werbung und EDV GmbH is the official distributor of the German language version of Quarterback. For further information, contact: Andreas Hoffmann DTM Werbung und EDV GmbH Poststrabe 25 6200 Wiesbaden-Bierstadt Federal Republic of Germany Karlberg & Karlberg AB is the official distributor of the Swedish language version of Quarterback. For further information, contact: Claes Nilsson Karlberg & Karlberg Flädie Kyrkväg 237 00 Bjärred Sweden GOOD LUCK! Here's hoping that you never need to use Quarterback to restore your hard disk. And thank's for your support! George and Betty Chamberlain Central Coast Software (303) 526-1030 (303) 526-0520 FAX