AMIGA Answers June 1988
4 min read
Questions / Answers
The Questions !
Q : How can I format a disc from Workbench on a single drive system ?
Q : Why don’t some of my folder games work when i have installed extra memory ?
Q : When using Transformer, as supplied with my A500, i keep getting messages Error Reading Sector and Error Writing Sector, Why is this and how do I remedy it ?
Q : How do i go about speeding up frequently used commands while I am in CLI ?
Q : How do I dir a non-bootable disc on a single drive machine ?
Q : What are libraries and in what way are they of use to me ?
Q : How can I format a disc from Workbench on a single drive system ?
A : Boot Workbench. Insert the disc to be formatted and click once on its icon so that it turns black.
Move the pointer to the Disc drop down menu and select Initialise. You will be prompted to insert your Workbench disc so that the necessary commands can be loaded into ram.
Then after a short while you will be asked to insert the disc you wish to be formatted Unless you want to destroy your Workbench you should remove it now and replace it with the disc to be formatted. A window will appear which lets you know which track the Amiga is working on.
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Q : Why don’t some of my folder games work when i have installed extra memory ?
A : Some early games will not work with a system which has more than 512k installed. The way to overcome this problem is to select SlowMemLast and NoFastRam from the system drawer of your Workbench disc before clicking on the game icon.
If the game selfboots you will have to remove the RAM. Note that fitting a second drive uses up a tiny bit of ram, so a really big game, such as Firepower, will only work on a 512k machine if you unplug the second drive.
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Q : When using Transformer, as supplied with my A500, i keep getting messages Error Reading Sector and Error Writing Sector, Why is this and how do I remedy it ?
A : Transformer is only capable of reading and writing low capacity IBM format 360k or 720k discs. Standard Amiga 880k discs cannot be used. A second Transformer problem you should be aware of is that it is text based, so programs which need graphics, such as News-Room Pro, cannot be used.
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Q : How do i go about speeding up frequently used commands while I am in CLI ?
A : The Amiga has a ram disc. If you copy the commands you need on to the ram disc they will execute very much faster. This is easy to do:
MAKEDIR RAM:C
COPY SYS:C RAM:C
ASSIGN C: RAM:C
This will eat into your ram. so it’s worthwhile deleting the commands you don’t need, such as Diskdoctor.
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Q : How do I dir a non-boolable disc on a single drive machine ?
A : Copy the dir command to the ram drive, as above and then cd df0: before typing dir.
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Q : What are libraries and in what way are they of use to me ?
A : A library is a collection of machine code routines which can be accessed by Basic to improve the performance of a program. These routines are the basis of the Amiga Operating System and are split up into common groups called libraries.
For example, anything to do with the filing system will be found in the DOS library (low level file open). Anything to do with graphics (plotting points, printing text) will be found in the graphics library.
Most of these libraries are resident in memory, issuing the Library command in a Basic program will make Basic obtain the address where this library is. Any non ram-resident libraries are first loaded in. Basic will also have to know which routines – by name – can be found in the library, the address of the routine and what parameters the routines take. This information is obtained from the libraries associated .bmap file.
The .bmap files are created by using the ConvertFD program in the BasicDemos drawer on the Extras disc. This program takes a file in the FD1.2 drawer, reads it in, and writes it back out in a form more useful to the Basic intcrpreter.
The .bmap file for the library you wish to use must be resident in the current directory when issuing the Library, The problem with this is that the name specified could be a file or a drawer.
To get more information you could use the Examine() routine, but that would also mean allocating 260 bytes for the file’s info block. The advantage of using Examine() is that you can access and look at the comment field of the file.
With Examine – and ExNext – you could read all files in the specified path into an array and allow the user to choose a file (file selector).
Here is a sample to show how it is done :
DECLARE FUNCTION Lock&() LIBRARY
DECLARE FUNCTION UnLock() LIBRARY
ÇHDIR “Extras:BasicDemos”
LIBRARY “dos.Library”
INPUT “FileName :”,File$
File$=File$+chr$(0)
FilLock$ = Lock$($ADD(File$),-2)
if FilLock$ THEN CALL UnLock&(FilLock$)
PRINT
IF FilLock$ THEN
PRINT “File exists or Path is Legal”
ELSE
PRINT “No such file or Illegal path”
END IF
LIBRARY CLOSE
END
Source : AMIGA COMPUTING
Source of information – AMIGA Computing of June 1988 – Download of the magazine below:
