Writing a conditional check for existance of CrossDOS disk.

Kiernan Holland

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Aug 18, 1994, 11:13:38 PM8/18/94

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Here is the problem.. I have a library of 500+ floppy disks (yikes)
and each is either a amigados or a msdos disk.. I am using CrossDOS
which mounts an msdos filesystem in addition to the existing amigados
filesystem. Any of those who use CrossDOS know exactly what I am talking about.
When one puts in a MSDOS disk to the floppy drive, the mounted device
"DI0:" shows up in "info" as an existing disk, while "DF0:"
shows up as unreadable.. And the opposite is true when and AMigados
disk is placed in the drive. Now, what I want to do is
write a little routine that checks for the existence of non-existence
of a disk in each filesystem for the floppy drive, so that
I can use the proper device name when performing directory
and archival commands.. For instance,
if I wanted to copy all the files that ended in ".gif" to the ram
drive.. Rather than having to type

COPY df0:#?.gif TO ram:

for a Amigados disk or type

COPY di0:#?.gif TO ram:

for msdos.

I'd only have to type

NOCARE COPY disk:#?.gif to ram:

where NOCARE is my program that invokes the command COPY for whichever
disk is currently in the disk drive.. Actually I want to
make a simple directory utility for cataloging my
collection. It would be easier, if I could only figure out
which libraries to use, and what to look for in the include files..

Usually I have to listen to the gronking noises in order to tell if a
disk is MSDOS or Amigados.

So, do you guys have any clues? Help would be appreciated..

Thanks much..

Kiernan
khol...@polaris.unm.edu
WWW: http://polaris.unm.edu:8080/ (come up and visit sometime)

Ben Kennedy

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Aug 19, 1994, 12:39:04 AM8/19/94

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In a previous article, khol...@unm.edu (Kiernan Holland) says:

>Here is the problem.. I have a library of 500+ floppy disks (yikes)
>and each is either a amigados or a msdos disk.. I am using CrossDOS
>which mounts an msdos filesystem in addition to the existing amigados
>filesystem. Any of those who use CrossDOS know exactly what I am talking about.
>When one puts in a MSDOS disk to the floppy drive, the mounted device
>"DI0:" shows up in "info" as an existing disk, while "DF0:"
>shows up as unreadable.. And the opposite is true when and AMigados
>disk is placed in the drive. Now, what I want to do is
>write a little routine that checks for the existence of non-existence
>of a disk in each filesystem for the floppy drive, so that
>I can use the proper device name when performing directory

I hate to be so general, but I've forgotten the name of the archive, BUT:
sometime in the last month or two, a device driver or handler or something
was uploaded to aminet that serves exactly this purpose (one dev name
for both PC0: and DF0:).

Can anybody be more specific?

Kniivil{ Jarkko

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Aug 19, 1994, 3:06:49 PM8/19/94

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In <CurM9...@freenet.carleton.ca> aw...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Ben Kennedy) writes:

>I hate to be so general, but I've forgotten the name of the archive, BUT:
>sometime in the last month or two, a device driver or handler or something
>was uploaded to aminet that serves exactly this purpose (one dev name
>for both PC0: and DF0:).

>Can anybody be more specific?

Of course. It's called MultiFileSystem and is available at AMINET:
disk/misc/mfs.lha. Works charmingly! It's a good solution to the problem which
was first presented at OS 1.3 times when using FFS on floppies.
This was then circumvented by including FFS internally in OS 2.0 and up.
But only now there's a general solution for those who use custom filesystems
and .devices on their floppies. MFS comes also with commodity which can be used
to make only one filesystem active and inhibit other. This is very useful if
you know for example that you're using only MSDOS floppies for a while because
it make the recognition faster (no thrashing).

--
E-Mail: k15...@cc.tut.fi | S-Mail: Jarkko Kniivil\"a % (TEX-format)
[ This space unintentionally | Opiskelijankatu 4 F 315
left blank! ] | FIN-33720 TAMPERE

Arno Eigenwillig

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Aug 22, 1994, 5:00:03 PM8/22/94

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Hi!

In article <331812$b...@polaris.unm.edu>, Kiernan Holland writes:

> Rather than having to type
> COPY df0:#?.gif TO ram:
> for a Amigados disk or type
> COPY di0:#?.gif TO ram:
> for msdos.
> I'd only have to type
> NOCARE COPY disk:#?.gif to ram:
> where NOCARE is my program that invokes the command COPY for whichever
> disk is currently in the disk drive..

Implementing a handler which resides on top of AmigsFS and CrossDOS
filesystems and dispatches packets to them is probably the cleanest
solution for your wish.

-- __
__/// Arno Eigenwillig <ar...@yaps.dinoco.de> \\ Stamp out patents
\XX/ MIME & any PGP V2 supported * V:+49-2225-5870 \\ for algorithms!

Some people only believe what they have seen.
Since they have TV, they believe anything. [Dieter Hildebrandt]

Peter Kittel Germany

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Aug 23, 1994, 2:47:05 AM8/23/94

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In article <331812$b...@polaris.unm.edu>, khol...@unm.edu (Kiernan Holland) writes:
>Here is the problem.. I have a library of 500+ floppy disks (yikes)
>and each is either a amigados or a msdos disk.. I am using CrossDOS
>which mounts an msdos filesystem in addition to the existing amigados
>filesystem. Any of those who use CrossDOS know exactly what I am talking about.
>When one puts in a MSDOS disk to the floppy drive, the mounted device
>"DI0:" shows up in "info" as an existing disk, while "DF0:"
>shows up as unreadable.. And the opposite is true when and AMigados
>disk is placed in the drive. Now, what I want to do is
>write a little routine that checks for the existence of non-existence
>of a disk in each filesystem for the floppy drive, so that
>I can use the proper device name when performing directory
>and archival commands..

You can do it with an AmigaDOS script. To get it fast, you can make
all used commands resident (or put them into the RAM: disk and invoke
them for there). The trick is to do an Info for both devices, redirect
the output into a temporary file, and investigate this file with the
Search command. E.g.:

info >ram:temp df0:
search ram:temp "No disk present"
if warn
; There is a disk!
assign mydrive: df0:
endif
info >ram:temp di0: ; (Why di0: ? My CrossDos drive is named PC0: )
search ram:temp "No disk present"
if warn
; There is a disk!
assign mydrive: di0:
endif
delete ram:temp quiet ; clean up nicely
; here we need another check whether both drives are not available
copy mydrive:#?.gif ram:

Hope this helps. If you put this all into a script file with the
right arguments and parameters, you can easily build your:

>NOCARE COPY disk:#?.gif to ram:

--
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions...
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ (pet...@cbmger.de.so.commodore.com)
peterk%cbmger.de.so....@cbmnl.cbm.nl
peterk%cbmger.de.so....@cbmvie.co.at

Olaf Strozyk

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Aug 25, 1994, 3:22:03 AM8/25/94

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In article <z3ejv*q...@yaps.dinoco.de> ar...@yaps.dinoco.de (Arno Eigenwillig) writes:
> Hi!
>
> In article <331812$b...@polaris.unm.edu>, Kiernan Holland writes:
>
> > Rather than having to type
> > COPY df0:#?.gif TO ram:
> > for a Amigados disk or type
> > COPY di0:#?.gif TO ram:
> > for msdos.
> > I'd only have to type
> > NOCARE COPY disk:#?.gif to ram:
> > where NOCARE is my program that invokes the command COPY for whichever
> > disk is currently in the disk drive..
>
> Implementing a handler which resides on top of AmigsFS and CrossDOS
> filesystems and dispatches packets to them is probably the cleanest
> solution for your wish.

On aminet:
mfs.lha disk/misc 11K+Merges DF0: and PC0: in a single device

BTW: mfs of course stands for MultiFileSystem, not for the
former GDR "Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit" :-)

Olaf

--

Olaf Strozyk ol...@chaos.ping.de Tel: ((++49|0)234|)9210222