M E S S Y D O S F I L E S Y S T E M H A N D L E R ------------------------------------------------------- by Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert 05-Jun-1990 ******************************************************************************* MSH is (C) Copyright 1989,1990 by Olaf Seibert. All rights reserved. Freely distributable, except that it may not be distributed for profit without permission from the author. Hereby, Fred Fish explicitly gets permission to include MSH in his library of freely distributable Amiga software. ******************************************************************************* This is patch #3 to MSH release #1. Bug fixed: - device: The IBM disk format seems to have an index mark $5224/$5552 before the first sector, even though the machines I tested it with did not seem to miss it. Inconvenience removed: - MSH: no longer produces read error requestors when the bootblock of a newly inserted disk cannot be read. The disk is silently ignored. Feature added: - MSH: is now more polite to some DFx: that uses the same physical drive. Misc: - Reduced stack size of messydisk.device task (2K -> 1K) and of the filesystem itself (4K -> 3K). Xoper shows that (most of the time) no more than half of these stacks seems to be used. Reminder: If you like the program, feel free to send me some $$, or even $$$ if you feel like it. Please don't send any non-(Dutch or Euro)-cheques, since they cost a lot of money (nlg 12.50; more than US$ 7) to cash. All shareware resellers (and especially those in Germany) are reminded that they are NOT allowed to make any profit off my work. Resellers are considered to make an illegal profit if they charge more for a disk than Fred Fish does. Those resellers do NOT have a licence to use or copy MSH. Also, if you distribute MSH:, you must distribute it in its entirety: you are not allowed to leave parts out. ====05-May-1990=====About patch #2a-2c========================================= There have been many 'patch 2' versions. Therefore, I bumped the version number after I cleaned up the distribution, so that a consistent version number is possible. ====11-Mar-1990=====From patch #1============================================== This is patch #1 to MSH release #1. It consists of all binaries and documentation. There are replacement source files, and a patch file for the others. Bugs fixed: - device: I/O could be done during CloseDevice(). Trackdisk does not seem to do this, and was implemented incorrectly anyhow. - handler: Examine() of the root directory got a . afther the 8th character of the volume name Inconvenience removed: - handler: The AmigaDOS 1.3 List and Dir commands thought that all files were directories. Features added: - handler: Now uses the Reserved entry in the Mountlist. You should normally set this to 0. - MSH::F+ and MSH::F-. - messyfmt: You can now write just the bootblock. The disk must already be formatted. - device: you can now, with some care, format disks with less than 8 sectors per track. ====11-Feb-1990=====From release #1============================================ This is the first really public release of the MessyFileSystem, or MSH for short. It has circulated among a small audience, and I entered it in a programming contest held by the German 'Amiga-Magazin'. They were too dumb to let me win or offer me a contract, so here goes their opportunity to make some money. Not mine, however, since I am going to try the sh*r*ware concept. So, if you like the program, feel free to send me some $$, or even $$$ if you feel like it. What _is_ MSH ? Well, if you ever heard of CrossDos, it is about the same thing. Only better, since I wrote it :-) If you never heard of CrossDos: MSH is a (set of) programs that enable you to use IBM-PC diskettes in your Amiga, just as if they were regular Amiga disks. Something you probably thought or were told to be impossible! There exist other programs that will copy files to and/or from messy disks, but they do just that: copy. You are not able to use any other program directly with files you have stored on a messy disk. But, with MSH, this is finally possible. It seems that several people at about the same time decided that it was time to write a program like MSH. Hence there is also CrossDos. The fundamental difference between MSH and CrossDos is that you immediately get a fully functional version of MSH, and you even get the source! (And I am a non-commercial hobbyist). Of course, if you get the source, you won't get any warranty. The idea is that if it works, you send me some $$ (preferably in some stronger currency than the dollar, though); if it fails to work, you can fix it yourself. Well, enough talk. Some technical information can be found in the files msh.man and dev.man. Fanmail and money will always reach me at the following address: Olaf Seibert Beek 5 5815 CS Merselo The Netherlands Ordinary mail can also be addressed to the following address, which is guaranteed to change before September 1991: Olaf Seibert Vossendijk 149 6534 TN Nijmegen The Netherlands