CrossDOS Version 4.00a READONLY August 20th, 1990 We at CONSULTRON would like to thank you for trying CrossDOS. We believe you will find it useful as well as easy to use. ******************************************* Installing this Product I have included a simple program called "Install_MSDOSFS". It can be run from the CLI or from Workbench. It will prompt you through the installation procedure. The program is broken up into separate transfer procedures that allow you to install portions that apply to your system configuration. If you wish, you can install the product manually by placing the necessary files in the correct directories (please refer to the manual supplied with CrossDOS). The installation program will try to install the appropriate software modules into your system directories (ie C:, L:, DEVS: and SYS:CrossDOS). If these directories are located on your hard disk, it will attempt to install them there otherwise it will probably install them on your WORKBENCH boot-up disk. If you install CrossDOS, you may need to edit your "S:startup-sequence" and move the "MountMF" command, appended on the end of this file, to a position before the "LoadWB" command. For those who either do not have enough room on their system disks or do not wish to install CrossDOS, a small utility called "Attach" is included that will allow you to immediately mount and load an MS-DOS floppy device on your Amiga. For further information on the "Attach" command, refer to the manual. ******************************************* TDPatch12 and TDPatch13 The trackdisk.device code resident in Kickstart code versions 1.2 and 1.3 has a couple bugs that need fixing as well as adding a new feature found in version 2.0 of the trackdisk.device. "TDPatch12" and "TDPatch13" correct this problem for KickStart V1.2 and V1.3 respectively. The installation program will detect the version of KickStart you are running and transfer the proper patch version to your "C:" directory. You can either execute this patch manually or use the "MountMF" command to execute it. It MUST be executed before accessing any MS-DOS disk. For those users with version 1.2 or 1.3 Kickstart ROMs, you MUST execute the appropriate patch to correctly operate with the current floppy device driver (mfm.device). TDPatch will not work in conjunction with NOCLICKSTART. ******************************************* International Character Translator This version of CrossDOS allows for you to select an International (Standard or Danish) version of the file system. You can select either version in the installation program "Install_msdosFS". The standard ASCII character set of MS-DOS matches the standard ASCII character set of the Amiga one-for-one. The extended ASCII character set, which include international characters, do not match so nicely. For those who chose the International version, extended ASCII characters found in the file names are always converted to their equivalent (where ever possible) on the opposite system. Extended ASCII characters found inside ASCII text files are not automatically translated. To translate the extended characters within files, you must either specify the "International Translator" character '[' (formerly the "High Bit Filter") within the MS-DOS filename or use the global "International Translator" which operates similar to the global "TxFilter" function. Refer to the "IntlTrans" utility located in the technical reference file called "Tech_Ref". ******************************************* Improvements from previous versions of CrossDOS Faster Floppy Device Driver: We have provided a new floppy device driver called "mfm.device" that will access floppy data up to two times faster than in the previous versions of CrossDOS. Users with 68000 based Amigas will notice the two times speed improvement. Users with 68020, 68030, 68040 based Amigas may not notice any speed increase because the raw access of data from the disk is limited by the constant rotational speed of the disk (0.2 seconds for a full track) and head stepping time. All users will actually get about a two-and-a-half times inprovement of decoding/encoding the raw floppy data which significantly reduces the CPU processing time. Technical Reference Manual on Disk: This product disk also has a technical reference file on disk that covers an example mountlist, a small glossary, and device error codes supported by CrossDOS. "In Case of Difficulty" on Disk: Should you run into any problems when using CrossDOS, we have provided a file on disk that contains many of the common (and some uncommon) problems that may be encountered. The list represents most of the problems reported to our Technical Support staff and their recommended solutions. "MountMF" command: We have provided a new command to replace the cumbersome "Mount" (or "Mount_JDS") for "mounting" MS-DOS floppy devices. "MountMF" can be run from either the S:Startup-Sequence, the CLI or WORKBENCH. Executing "MountMF" will first execute "TDPatch12" or "TDPatch13" (if needed) and then will mount all the floppy devices found on your Amiga system. This command only mounts floppy devices but will replace multiple "Mount" commands as well as the "TDPatch" command in your S:Startup-Sequence. The MS-DOS floppy device names will be the default DI0:, DI1:, DI2: and DI3:. ******************************************* MS-DOS Hard Disk Partitions The MS-DOS file system is designed to read and write physical MS-DOS hard drive partitions, although it has not been tested thoroughly. Virtual MS-DOS partitions on an Amiga hard drive (such as JLink files created by the BridgeBoard) are not accessible at this time. We have a few people currently using this feature. One person is accessing a MS-DOS formatted Bernoulli disk from both his IBM and Amiga computers. Others are using MS-DOS foramtted SyQuest removable to exchange data between the two machines. Contact us at our technical support line for information on how to construct a custom mountlist entry for MS-DOS hard disk media. The installation program does not mount an MS-DOS hard drive partition so that creating a mountlist entry for it must be done manually. An example of a hard disk mountlist entry is included in the file "DEVS/mountlist.msdos" for your review. You must configure the mountlist entries so that the lowest block number points to the MS-DOS boot block of the partition you wish to access. The "device=" parameter must also be the device driver for your hard drive controller board. ******************************************* Undocumented directory (DIAG/) We have added a directory called "DIAG" that is not documented in the manual. This directory contains files that are used for obtaining diagnostic information should a problem occur. Use of these files without specific direction from us is NOT RECOMMENDED. These files may produce undesirable results if not used properly. Refrain from using these files! ******************************************* Technical Support Should you have any questions or problems, you can contact us at: CONSULTRON 11280 Parkview Plymouth, MI 48170 (313) 459-7271 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST Weekdays ******************************************* Electronic Bulletin Board Service (313) 459-7271 6:00 PM - 10:00 AM EST Weekdays all day on weekends Thank you.