TERRAPIN Version 1.30 January, 1989 A large file copy utility by: George R. Woodside 5219 San Feliciano Drive Woodland Hills, Ca. 91364 USA TERRAPIN is a file copy utility designed to provide support for saving and restoring files which exceed the size of a floppy disk. It accomplishes this task by splitting the large file into segments and writing the segments onto multiple floppy disks. The segments are not altered or compressed in any manner. They may be accessed as normal data on the floppy, although they would only be a portion of the original file. Each segment is as large as the floppy disk will allow. A secondary file is posted with each segment to provide information used in restoring the file. The secondary file always bears the name "PART.###" where "###" is a sequence number, beginning with 001. TERRAPIN executes from the GEM Desktop, with a standard menu. Under the Desk menu title is the standard "ABOUT" item, which will provide a dialog box noting the version of the program. There are four items under the File title: Save a File, Restore a File, File Selector, and Quit. "Save a File" is the entry used to begin the copying of a file to floppy disks. It will offer a file selector box to identify the file to be saved. Once that selection is made, a dialog box will be presented for selection of a floppy disk drive. Select either drive A or drive B to start copying a file, or Quit to return to the main menu. This process is repeated until either the file has been fully copied, or Quit is selected. "Restore a File" is the companion procedure. It will offer a file selector, initially from floppy disk A. Select the file to be restored (you should be selecting it from the floppy disk containing part one of the file). Select the file name which corresponds to the name under which it was saved, do not select the file named "PART.001". A second file selector will be presented to select the drive, and file name, for the output file. The default for the output is the same file name as the input. Once the name has been selected, file restoring will begin. As each disk is read, and the file restored, a dialog box will be displayed to indicate which drive to read for the next segment of the file being restored. When the file has been completely restored, the file's date and time stamp will be set to the same value as the original copy of the file. "File Selector" is an option available to defeat the built in file selector. Since the standard GEM File Selector is somewhat limited, TERRAPIN contains a more sophisticated one. It offers buttons to select drives, posts a title line to indicate exactly what file is being selected, remembers exactly where it was when it is called next time, and positions itself at that point. If you have a replacement file selector built into your system, you may prefer to use that one. Doing so, however, will cause the loss of the features in TERRAPIN's file selector, particularly the title line. ERRORS Most anything can go wrong, and probably will, says Murphy. He is quite right. TERRAPIN is prepared for most errors. When writing disks, it may find that the disk inserted for writing is not empty, not formatted, or already contains a partial file which will conflict with the one being copied. Available options for recovery include changing to a different disk, erasing the offending disk, reformatting it, changing to the other disk drive, using whatever space is available on the disk, or quitting the file copy altogether. These situations occur when a disk is first being accessed. You may change disks in the selected drive, and select this option, if you want to continue the file copy on a different disk. You may have the disk erased (it takes about two seconds) and have the file written to it. Erasing a disk is total: every file, every folder, and the disk label are all erased, and the output file will be the only thing on the disk. You may have the output disk formatted, it it is unformatted, or you wish to change the format of the disk. Options offerred include 9 or 10 sectors per track, and 80, 81, or 82 tracks. While both 9 and 10 sector formats are reliable, 9 sectors is the ST standard. Use of 81 or 82 tracks is not recommended, but may work on some disk drives. It is important to note that disks formatted with anything other than 9 sectors, and 80 tracks, can not be copied in disk-to-disk mode from the ST Desktop. The next option is to use the disk anyway, exactly as it is. This may be desirable if the portion of the file remaining to be copied is small enough to fit on a partially filled disk. TERRAPIN will copy the portion of the file which will fit on the disk, and continue if there is more to be done. The only exception to this situation is if the segment number of the file being copied is the same as the number of the segment of some other file on the same disk. This would result in the destruction of the segment information of the previous file, and will not be done. The last option presented is to change disk drives. Click on the button bearing the name of the other disk drive. The more complex error situation is when a write failure occurrs during the copying process. TERRAPIN recovers from this situation by acting as if the disk with the write error never existed. Change to a different disk, and TERRAPIN will resume the file copy, starting at the same place it was when the defective disk was first inserted. Discard the disk with the error. Errors reading the file from the floppy disk during the restore function are not recoverable. TERRAPIN is copyrighted, but released for public distribution. TERRAPIN is not to be sold except for nominal charges for media, reproduction, and/or connect charges while downloading. If TERRAPIN gives you any trouble, or you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact: George R. Woodside Compuserve 76537,1342 5219 San Feliciano Dr. GEnie G.WOODSIDE Woodland Hills, Ca. 91364 USENET: ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside or woodside@ttidca