THIS PROGRAM IS FREEWARE! XDIR ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Xdir - An Atari 8-bit disk image directory lister and extractor. CREDITS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Xdir is developed by Bo Schreurs - CHiPS bv CHiPS - Computer High Performance Software The latest version of Xdir is v10.05.00 - February 2nd, 1999. All previous versions of Xdir are no longer supported. HISTORY ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Nick Kennedy, the inventor of Sio2PC, we can attach an IBM compatible computer to our Atari 8-bit computer, and let the PC behave as an Atari disk drive. The Sio2PC program communicates between the PC and the Atari 8-bit computer. It let you load or save disk images. The disk images have the .ATR extender. If you want to know what is on such an .ATR disk image, you have to load it into Sio2PC, and use the directory listing facility of the Sio2PC program, or turn on your Atari 8-bit computer, boot up DOS, and get a directory listing. All of this takes up quite some time. But now there is XDir. This utility gives you "direct" disk access to the .ATR (or .XFD) disk image. .XFD disk images are used by the XFormer program (author Darek Mihocka). You can view the directory of the disk image immediately! Switching between disk images is very easily thanks to the use of a file selector box. Before showing the contents of the disk image, it has determined if it is a disk image, the kind of disk image (ATR or XFD), the type of disk image (single/enhanced/medium/double/quad/720 KB/ 1 MB/1.44 MB/16 MB), if there is a VTOC contained on it, and if so if it is a DOS, MyDos, SpartaDos or BeWeDos disk. If it is a Spartados or BeWeDos disk, it also checks if it contains (sub)directories. If there is no VTOC on the disk it assumes it is a bootdisk. DISPLAYING THE CONTENTS OF AN ATARI DISK IMAGE ----------------------------------------------------------------------- When there is a VTOC on the disk image, it shows the contents on your screen. The screen can be quite colorfull. The file are normally displayed as they are shown on a regular Atari. Because the pc can show more files per screen this "feature" is used. The files are displayed on the screen using the following color chart: CYAN : Regular file vtoc entry, behind the file it shows the size in sectors RED : Deleted file, although a filesize is shown, the file can be corrupted GREEN : Locked file MAGENTA: A comment entry in the vtoc, the programmer patched the vtoc to accomplish this. Or if it is a SpartaDos disk, it means a (sub)directory. Also note that directories and files within other directories are shifted to the right for SpartaDos disks. If you see that the file size is marked in BLUE colors, instead of WHITE, it means the File has sectors allocated to it beyond sector nr 720 (can only happen for Medium, Enhanced or Double density disks). This feature is not used for SpartaDos disks, because there it's normal to exceed the 720 sectors . Use the specified Function Key settings on the screen to navigate around. It should be quite obvious how it works. If not press the F1 key (HELP!). FILES AND/OR (SUB)DIRECTORIES EXTRACTION FROM THE ATARI DISK IMAGE ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Use the ENTER key if a disk image vtoc is displayed to EXTRACT the currently displayed Atari XL/XE files to the specified path (mentioned in the XDIR.CFG file). The XDIR.CFG file can be edited with a regular editor, however from version 8 the XDIR.CFG file can be maintained from XDIR itself as well now. Please note that when you use the Command Line Interface (CLI), the program will NOT use the specified path from the XDIR.CFG file, but will use the specified "Outdir" parameter instead! ADDED ENHANCEMENTS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- In version 7.0 the mouse is supported now as well. Place the XDIR.XFG file in the C: root directory! This configuration file specifies how XDIR should work. You can specify the default file mask it should use, the start up path, the folder where to extract files to, if it should extract deleted files, and if so, where to place them. COMMAND LINE INTERFACE SUPPORT ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Verdaasdonk (a.k.a. Sysop Fox-1) asked me if it was possible to let XDIR use a command line. This way he could use it in batch file processes. From now on this is possible. However the program does not know strong syntax checking, so it is adviced to obey the syntax carefully. The syntax of the Command Line Interface (CLI) is as follows: XDIR Indisk Outdir i.e. XDIR E:\TEST\020.ATR C:\XLDISKS\020\ or to explain it in depth: Indisk = E:\TEST\020.ATR Outdir = C:\XLDISKS\020\ Please use the exact syntax, otherwise the program will use screen I/O to have you correct the mistake. If you do not specify the correct number of parameters (being 2), the program most likely will inform you about that. If no parameters are specified, the program assumes user interaction. For SpartaDos disks and/or BeWeDos disks with (sub)directories, you will have to specify the "main" folder. In the example it is done by specifying "\020\". Please note that the "Outdir" parameter has to end with the backslash ("\"), all files and (sub)directories of an .ATR/.XFD disk will be stored in there. FAST DRIVE SWITCHING ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Marius Diepenhorst asked me to include Fast Drive Switching. By pressing the CONTROL key and a drive letter key simultaneously, he wanted to get around the F3 (select drive) key. This would speed things up a little bit. This has been incorporated in the program as well now. However, there are some restrictions. You can only select a drive which is in the drive list (See F3). If you select a drive which is not in the drive list, the program will display the available drive list to you, so you can select the correct drive. If the drive is in the list, it will act as if you pressed F3 (select drive), and selected the correponding drive letter. So, if you press the CONTROL key + the "C" key simultaneously, the program will switch to the root of drive "C" (if that drive is present in the drive list of course). QUESTION, COMMENTS, PRAISE? EMAIL! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's basically it! Thank you for using Xdir. All sources have been included in the archive again. All sources are to be treated as Freeware. You're not allowed to distribute a modified version of WSIO.ASM though. XDIR has been completely rewritten using Turbo Assembler 5.0. It now supports Windows 95 as well. Let me know what you think of it. If you've got questions, comments, praise: Email addres: stack@xs4all.nl Homepage: http://www.xs4aal.nl/~stack/atarixle.html Sincerely, Bo. ************************** Modification History ****************************** v1.00 March 14th, release of the program to the Public Domain. v2.00 Added the possibilty of Atari 8-bit files extraction to fixed directories. "Deleted" files are extracted as well. v3.00 Major bug solved. Files located after sector 200 hex on a disk image were not extracted correctly. Added Xdir.cfg file which must be located in the root of drive C: This config file let the user decide where to place extracted files, if deleted files should be extracted, and specify some default parameters. v4.00 Changed email address. v5.00 - Drives are now retrieved using a subroutine called DC_DRV. v6.00 Complete rewrite of XDIR using Turbo Assembler v5.0 - Introduction of WSIO subroutine which takes care of the screen I/O now. - More help screens have been added. - XDIR can now be run under Windows 9x too. v7.00 There was a slight bug in v6.00.00 which caused enhanced and medium XFD disks not to be recognized. Nobody reported a problem about this, so nobody is using my program or nobody uses XFD images anymore. - Mouse support has been introduced. In the volume window the user can select a drive using the mouse. In the file/library window a file or library can be selected. Using the arrow buttons in the upper right corner of the fileselector box, the user can scroll too, using the mouse. Extraction of files can not be accomplished by a mouse button (on purpose!). - Double density disks are supported too now. v07.02 Some slight bugs were solved. v8.00 - The XDIR.CFG can now be maintained from within XDIR, and saved to disk. - Drives to be scanned on startup of the program can be specified. This way one can omit the A: drive or the CDROM drive or network drives. v09.01 - Support MegaDisk disk images of 1 MB from Internet. v10.04. - SpartaDos support - Supports disks up to 16 MB - Place files and directories within C:\XIN\ as they appear on the SpartaDos disk v10.05 - Added the capability of a Command Line Interface (CLI). - Added the capability of fast switching between drives.