#Post-2.1 Questions
33 messages in this thread
Greg:
Just got the 2.1 upgrade and installed it on my A3000 w/o any problems.
(YAY!)
I like the new format for the manuals.
Installation was quick, informative, and painless.
The Locale Editor is cute. (I like the time-zone picker!)
I miss the text-to-voice stuff. :^(
A few questions:
CrossDOS – It seems to work fine, but I have as yet to have a PC0:????
icon show up on my desktop so that I can format an IBM floppy disk. (It'll
recognize either a Hi or Lo density IBM floppy that is formatted, but it
will not give me PC0:???? icon to format one from scratch). It is possible
to succesfully format an IBM disk using the CLI 'Format DRIVE PC0:'
command, but I was hoping to be able to do it from the Workbench also.
(The Workbench 2.1 manual refers to this in several places.)
ToolTypes – What is the ACTIVATE=1 ToolType in the PC0 & PC1 icon (for
CrossDOS)? The ToolType UNIT=x is described in the manual, but the other
is not referred to. (Could this be the source of my CrossDOS problems?)
(I like the STARTPRI= ToolType for WBStartup icons!)
Shell-Startup – I restored my old one from the OLD directory, but why did
you guys replace it to begin with? (I would have preferred you just append
your 2 new commands onto my old script. Seems like it forces the average
user to do extra work for the install.)
Clicking Floppies – Is it me, or do the floppies still click?
File Sizes – Will there EVER be an upgrade that checks to see if there is
enough room on the destination BEFORE copying?
Thanks,
(Still trying to get used to 'yet another' topaz font!)
Erik Flom
Eric,
Having recently installed WB2.1 myself I have had both PC0:???? and
DF0:???? icons appear when I insert an unformatted disk. Selecting either
one and then choosing Format… from the menu brings up either format
requester. One tells me it will format the disk as a 720K capacity and the
other shows the options for an Amiga formatted disk. I checked the
tooltypes in the icon Information… requester and I have both ACTIVATE=1
and ACTIVATE=3. ACTIVATE=3 is in the icon for PC3:. I don't know if it
makes a difference since I tried both pc0: and pc3: to format disks and the
icon appears for both, regardless of the activate setting (either 1 or 3).
I agree on the checking for space available before attempting to copy
files. You'd think it would have been implemented a while back. Ditto, on
the clicking drives. I just use KCommodity and let it handle the NOCLICK
bit.
Chris
Thanks for the input.
The CrossDOS SHOULD behave as you've described, and does IF the disk has
some vestige of MSDOS formatting on it.
(I put a Mac formatted floppy in the drive, and only get the DF0:????
icon, no PC0:???? icon. :^(
I double-checked the ToolTypes, and verified that there are 2 ToolTypes:
UNIT= – which corresponds to the drive unit.
ACTIVATE=1 – which is the same regardless of drive unit.
Note: I have noticed that the PCx icons are in actuality simple text files
which contain a mountlist entry for the CrossDOS handler. It seems the
UNIT= ToolType just supercedes the UNIT= setting in the Mountlist for that
icon – kinda' cool! (Couldn't find a description of ACTIVATE in the
mountlist keyword reference section of the manual either.)
What version of KickStart are you using? Do you have a HiD floppy drive?
What kind of system (1000,2000,3000,4000)?
Thanks for your help,
Erik Flom
P.S. Is KCommodity part of 2.1 or is it 3rd party?
Eric,
No HD floppy drive here. My disks DO NOT need some vestige of MSDOS
formatting on them to be recognized, and MAC formatted disks DO SHOW UP as
PPC0:???? besides DF0:???? The PC0:???? takes a few extra seconds to
appear, and before I got that I got a PC0:NDOS for a second which then
changed to the PC0:???? I tried it in both my internal and external
drives. It worked fine! This is in an A2000 rev 4.3 MB, Kickstart 2.04.
I can even put a completely unformatted disk in either drive and get both
the Amiga and MSDOS icons. Must be a HD floppy disk drive problem your
experiencing. Unless we get a report from another HD owner claiming to
have no problem either.
Yup, the icons are attached to mountlist files. That is all CrossDos
used before for its drives.
KCommodity is a 3rd party program, has mucho many features, maybe too
many, I turn off most of the stuff, but some I like and use. Look in Lib
15 AmigaUser for KCOM2.LHA, file size 160896, uploaded 08-Oct-92.
KEYWORDS: KCommodity Blanker KAI ISKE
This is version 2.0 of KCommodity. It is a multi-function 2.0+ only
program that does many things, like blank (or dim) the screen, display a
clock in the WB titlebar, add keyclick, autocenter screens, etc. there are
functions to list them all. SHAREWARE written ny Kai Iske
ETDownload = 9600: 02:54 2400: 12:11
Chris
Thanks for the valuable input.
I have an A3000 w/after-market HD Floppy (I ordered one from a dealer and
installed it myself [as you may have read about :^) ]). Not sure what rev
board, tho' it was purchased through CATS 4 months after introduction.
I tried both Hi & Lo density floppies in both df0: & df1: (and waited
at least 10 seconds), but got no PCx:???? at any time. It seems to
work fine if I put in a disk already formatted as an IBM disk though!
(Guess I'll just have to format them using my AMAXII+ Mac! :^) Oh
well. So, do you know what this 'ACTIVATE=1' ToolType is?
Erik,
No idea what ACTIVATE=1 ToolType does. I also have ACTIVATE=3 being
used in my PC3: icon. Still no idea what it does. Maybe we should ask Greg
Givler of CBM Product Assurance?
Chris
Yeah, my original message was intended for him, but I mis=spelled his last
name 'Givler' so he probably never saw my message.
Oh well.
Thanks,
Erik Flom
From what I can determine, here is how the Activate tooltype works.
If ACTIVATE=1 is the tooltype then the DOSDriver is mounted on boot.
If ACTIVATE=0 then the DOSDriver is mounted when needed. See the
PIPE Icon.
Greg
Greg Givler – CBMSER Sysop
Commodore Product Assurance
Thanks, I thought that's how it operated, but couldn't find it in the
docs.
(I'll check the PIPE entry, too.)
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
It seems to have been omitted from the Docs. I will mention this to the
documentation folks, so that hopefully in the future there will be
reference to the tool types
Greg
Greg Givler – CBMSER Sysop
Commodore Product Assurance
Instead of using the Workbench "Format Disk" menu item, you can
open up the 'System' drawer on the WB, and double-click on the
'Format' program icon. That will allow you to format the CrossDOS
disk without having to resort to going to the CLI. Hope this
helps….
– BobR
Unfortunately, it doesn't. (I DO like the improvement to Format
though! I hadn't actually clicked on the format icon yet under 2.1)
When I do, I get an option showing either 880K (or 1.76MB if I put in
a HD floppy). However, there is still no option for formatting the
disk with a MSDOS format. :^( (Do I have to hold a Shift or Amiga key
or something?) Oh well, the mystery continues.
I just brought double clicked on the format icon and was
presented with a list of available devices – one of which is PC0:
(720K). This is, of course, the CrossDOS device, which will format
to the MS-DOS format. Are you sure you had the device mounted when
you tried to run format? My PC0: is in the Devs:DOSdrivers drawer,
which causes it to be mounted during system startup. Note that when
I did my little test just now, my system had just cold-booted, and no
diskette has been present (either AmigaDOS or MS-DOS format) in the
drive yet, but that _should_ not make a difference. Good luck
tracking this down….
Bonehead alert!!!!! I tracked the problem down. A classic case of
user-error. (oops!) I had thrown the icons into WBStartup, not the
DEVS:DOSDrivers directory where it should have been! :^o (Guess I
should read the documentation, not just skim it. :^) Rebooted, and
everything worked just fine. Thanks for the help!
Erik!
I knew I should have asked you where the crossdos icons were put! But
who am I to criticize, I've done 'em too! I believe the auto-install
WB program put the icons in the DEVS:Drivers for me. Wonder what
happened to yours? You say you put them in WBStartup? Hmmm….then
they were in the right place to begin with, eh? Well, don't beat
yourself on the head too hard, you might hurt your
hand! Hehehe!
Chris
Erik,
Don't be too hard on yourself. It's difficult to stay on top of
procedures when they keep changing, even if they are getting much easier.
I've made more than my share of mistakes and oversights myself – it's
frequently the only way to learn!
Glad you got things working.
– BobR
Thanks for the condolences.
I do feel kinda' stupid tho'. The manual clearly states how to do it, I
just assumed otherwise.
And yes, I guess I have verified that the PCx file doesn't work when
installed into the WBStartup folder (it does, sort of, but not really…)
Oh Well,
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Chris,
-> checking for space available before attempting to copy
My last magazine had an article on a PC program called MCOPY. It would
get a list of all the files in a directory, figure out how to group
them efficiently on successive floppies and prompt you to insert
disks till the whole directory had been copied.
I thought it was way cool and wondered if there were such a program
for Ami. (I can't believe how long I've encountered this problem
without ever thinking that a program could be written to fix it.
Probably part of the reason I'm not a programmer. <g>) Perhaps some
enterprising soul will see this message and become inspired.
-> checking for space available before attempting to copy
That is one feature of the Macintosh OS I like. Before it allows any files
to be copied to a disk or a directory on a hard drive it checks for space
available and refuses to attempt the copy if there is not enough room.
Chris,
I didn't know the Mac OS did that. That IS a thoughtful feature. Macs keep
looking better to me; but I still never get my hands on them.
Malcolm
Yup, it does check for room. No MSDOS OS does that either does it? Another
feature I like of that fruit OS is you drag copy an entire disk onto your
hard drive and it will tell you, "…can't diskcopy, two disks different
sizes contents of DiskX will be copied into a Drawer named DiskX…" or
somesuch phrase. Sure makes it easy to make drawers and move files from
floppies to hard drive.
I can't see it being that big a deal to implement a similar procedure
with our Copy and Diskcopy commands. Do you think that Apple would scream
"stealing our look and feel" or something like that and try and get
nasty?
That is one thing that AMAX (and for some of us, using a real Mac too)
has done for a lot of us Amiga AMAX users, opened our eyes to a different
OS, which in turn gets us thinking and asking for like added features to
our Workbench.
Chris
I'll have to use one sometime! I become more convinced that the Mac OS is
user-kind, to coin a phrase.
Malcolm
"…User-kind…"
Well don't be too hasty, just try formatting a floppy disk on a Quadra
or any of the lower Macintosh models. You got yourself one heck of an
expensive disk formatter there! Can't do anything else if you need a bunch
of floppys formatted or diskcopied! Just sit there and have a coffee or
doodle on a pad of paper, anything but use your computer!
I'll say this, the MAC OS has a few nice built-in features, but there
is enough in it to cajole about.
Chris
Chris,
Yup, same deal with Windows. That's why _I'm_ an Amiga user!
Malcolm
Malcolm,
Another thing about the mac OS, if you want to diskcopy, it won't do a
format on the fly as it diskcopies, it first has to be a formatted disk.
So you wait for the format to finish THEN you get to WAIT while it
diskcopies. You would think that by the seventh (number not actual)
revision of the OS they would figure out how to get the two integrated as
one step.
Chris
Chris,
No kidding. That's probably the only example I know of where Mac is
annoying. I wasn't aware of it though.
Malcolm
Chris,
With 2.0 you can drag a disk icon into a window and drop it. It will
make a drawer named after the disk and copy all the files into it if you
have the space.
DAJ
Dirk A. Jones
Dirk,
I had heard you could do that but I only tried to drop the disk icon
onto the hard drive's icon. Of course it told me the two disks were
different and couldn't diskcopy one to the other, at that point it could
have just switched to copy disk X in a Root Level Drawer called DrawerX,
and informed you of what it wants to do, but that is maybe too close to
the Mac's OS. I hadn't tried opening the hard drive and dropping the icon
in there. Thanks for info, I tried it and it works fine! Another piece of
the puzzle finds its place. Now all we need is copy to check for disk
space before it begins. That shouldn't be too hard.
Chris
Wait a minute. I seem to recall being able to move a floppy disk icon onto
a hard disk window and having a HD drawer with the floppy's name created
automatically. I have WB 2.1, but it might have been in 2.0, as well. Or
am I hallucinating?
Ron,
No your not hallucinating. You can drop the icon into the window of your
hard drive and the OS will copy the disk's contents into a drawer with the
name of the disk. I had heard of that being done, and another member has
pointed it out in an earlier reply. It is nice to know. I'll be using that
a bit more often now.
Chris
EF: Just got the 2.1 upgrade and installed it on my A3000 w/o any
EF: problems.(YAY!)
I just got 2.1 myself. But I running on an A500 with ECS Agnus & Denise.
The manuals are much better. As for Speach, I'm using Speak: from my
old 2.04.
EF: Shell-Startup […] why didyou guys replace it to begin with? (I
EF: would have preferred you just appendyour 2 new commands onto my old
EF: script.
Of course they also had no way of knowing how much you may have changed
the Shell-script. Most of us prefer NOT to have installers "play" with
our scripts. Keeping the old script availible, while installing the
new seems like a good compromise.
EF: Clicking Floppies – Is it me, or do the floppies still click?
Ya, I noticed too.
Ron.
– ap'ing with AP. (Eagles may fly, but weasles aren't sucked
into jet engines.)