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Description for THE PATCHER,
written by Egon, now maintained by Harry.
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What is it?
THE PATCHER is an utility to patch your originals to work on higher
processors and/or AGA or to help to install them on your hd. 


How does it work?
Simply start it, choose your game by clicking on the selection requester 
and press Patch! . Then insert a COPY of your original (unless your
original is EXPRESSLY demanded).
Even if only one parameter is displayed you have to select it first.


Which advantages has it?
Easily addition of parameters due to the module-concept. It works like 
the soundplayers of Delitracker. If you get a new parameter without
install, just copy it to the PARAMETER/-directory of THE PATCHER.
But for most parameters should exist an installscript so you dont have
to do anything.
For programmers: Mighty interface to OS-functions. Look at the developers
description.


System requirements:
Kick1.3 or higher. Ruby_8 font. The parameters may not be crunched, 
except with an installed XPK-system.


Contents:
The package contains THE PATCHER-mainprogram, the compareprogram
MAKECOMPTAB, some examples of parameters (as binary) and this readme. 
The developers package contains additionally some more parameters (as 
source and binary), the compareprogram makecomptab as source and binary,
the patcher-sourcecode and the developers readme. 
These packages are freeware, you shouldnt change this text or the 
mainprogram and keep it completely, but feel free to add parameters.


Command line parameters:
Unless otherwise specified, source- and destinationdrive will be 
DF0: (affects only some parameters, which converts NON-DOS disks). 
DOS disks will always be converted in that drive where they are 
inserted.

Parameter	Example		Description
-s<device>	-sDF3:		Set source drive (for NDOS disks)
-d<device>	-dRAD:		Set destination drive
				The specified drive must be already present. 
-p<drive:path/parametername>    Execute The Patcher as pseudo-commandline-
				version, eg for using it in hd-install-
				scripts.


Comment to "Error in parameter execution":
This means nearly everytime a reading/saving error and may have the following
reasons:
-If it accesses the source disk rather shortly: Other game version
-If it stops after reading a lot from the source disk: Disk error on your
 original disk :(
-Not enough space on the destinationdrive
-Bad sector on the destination drive (rather seldom, also you should get a 
 system requester about such thing)


History:
V1.00	First working version. Release date 20-07-1994.
V1.01	Harry took over. Minor fixes. Commandline-option -p added. 
	(09-may-1997)
V1.02	Some things added (PTB_FSSM*PTR, inhibiting/enabling drives).
	(02-jun-1997)
V1.03	Versionstring added (requested by Bert Jahn). Possibility to
	evaluate a CRC16 implemented. (09-jun-1997)
V1.04	Errormessage added if no parameter is selected and Patch! clicked.
	I dont want to have mails about that anymore. Docs a bit revised.
	(17-jun-1997)
V1.05	Function to display information added. Bug in makecomptab for
	files exceeding 1 MB corrected. Examples reworked. (12-jan-1998)


And last but not least a bit of music is needed to entertain me while patching
(just a choice, a list of my 150 cds would be a bit long...). The list is
unordered and in no way a ranking list:
Grave Digger 		Wargames			(Heavy Metal)
Incubus			Beyond the Unknown		(Death Metal)
Heather Nova		Oyster				(Rock)
Zarah Leander		Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?	(German gramophone 
							music of ~ 1930 :)) )
Bruce Springsteen	The River			(Rock)
Paddy goes to Holyhead	Ready for Paddy?		(Irish Folk)
Philip Boa &...		Hair
Army of Lovers		Glory, Glamour and Gold		(Very nice fun-music)
Helloween		Walls of Jericho		(Heavy Metal)
Unleashed		Across the open sea		(Death metal)
Tiamat			Wildhoney			(Melodic Black Metal)
Amorphis		Tales from the 1000 lakes	(Melodic Metal)
Eloy			Dawn				(Art Rock)
Uriah Heep		Very best of (compiled by Arcade) (Rock)
Alice Cooper		Trash				(Metal)
Anne Clark		Pressure Points			(Dark Wave?)
Chris Hülsbeck		Turrican Soundtrack
Winter			Into darkness			(Gothic)
And of course a lot of computer music, eg from Beast1 (Whittaker), various
from Chris Hülsbeck, from Hybris, from Wings of Death (Hippel), Onslaught 
and Dragon Wars (Maniacs of Noise), some from Dr. Awesome and many of 
unknown authors.