Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_08/issue_01

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 5.8 KB | 122 lines

Hints and Tips
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•  Disabling capslock − It has been pointed out that the capslock key is
not used very often, and usually only causes confusion when you hit it
accidentally. (This is a polite way of saying that there had been
another emission of blue smoke from the Editor’s desk as I HAD JUST HIT
<CAPSLOCK> ACCIDENTALLY AGAIN!!! Ed.)
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To solve this problem, a short module was written to disable the
capslock key. When the module is loaded, the key will act as a Caps key,
but will not lock, i.e. it acts like a shift key but only affects
letters − the numbers and symbols are unchanged. If you need to re-
enable the capslock function, press <f12> and type *rmkill disablecaps.
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The module, which works on all Archimedes and Risc PC machines, is on
the monthly program disc.  Matthew Hunter, NCS.
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Peace has now been restored in the Editor’s office! As far as I’m
concerned, this module is the best thing since sliced bread. Thanks,
Matthew!!  Ed.
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•  Risc PC hard disc power-saving – Since the advent of RISC OS 3, there
has been an option in the IDEDiscs section of Configure for setting the
spin down delay on the hard drive − similar to the screen blanker. This
is almost always greyed out, preventing it from being used, the
exceptions being the A4 portable and some A3020s. (Some third party
interfaces also support the option, but this hint does not apply to
them.) This makes sense since, with portables, the battery life needs to
be preserved. This is less important on a desktop machine and, also,
there is some question as to the long term effects of spinning the drive
up and down more than necessary.
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It is possible, however, to control the drive in this way even if you
have a different machine, providing that the drive supports the
powersave IDE commands. On the monthly program disc is a command line
program “powersave”. Double click on “!SetDir” which will make sure you
are in the correct directory, press <f12> and type “powersave 4”
<return>. This will give you the list of options and the current spin
status for drive 4 (which will be meaningless if you are not using ADFS
to control the drive). There are three control options detailed below.
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“powersave spindown <drivenumber>” will spin down drive <drivenumber> (4
or 5) immediately. If the drive is not spinning and you try to access
it, there will be a pause while the drive is spun up before the access
takes place (occasionally you can open a directory without spinning up
the drive since it is cached in memory and the drive is never accessed).
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“powersave spinup <drivenumber>” will spin up drive <drivenumber> (4 or
5) immediately.
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“powersave delay <drivenumber> <delay>” will set the power-saving delay
for drive <drive number> to <delay> seconds − note that it is rounded
down to 5-second accuracy but the timing is not particularly accurate
anyway. This will not be configured, so if you want to use this feature,
you will need to run powersave during the boot sequence. It is worth
making the delay longer rather than shorter since continually spinning
your drive up and down could reduce your drive’s life expectancy – you
do this at your own risk.
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One area where this does have a major impact is on the Risc PC − most of
the noise comes not from the fan but from the hard drive, so if you spin
down the drive, you can hardly hear the machine at all.  Matthew Hunter,
NCS.
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•  Splitting Impression documents over several floppy discs − Over the
past six months, I have spent a lot of time working with Tony Tolver of
T-J Reproductions and one thing that always amazed me was the number of
methods used by people to split an Impression document over two or more
discs − after all, how do you get a quart (or 10Mb) into a pint pot (or
800Kb/1.6Mb)?
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The methods I have seen include: PacDir, ArcFS, CFS, Squash and breaking
down the document and moving the contents of Chapter2 onto further discs
and then compressing them all.
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All of these are relatively time-consuming, particularly the last one. I
was sure there ought to be a better way and then I found it by accident
after upgrading to Hard Disc Companion v2.50 from Risc Developments. I
read the manual and found that it was easy to back up just one file or
directory, so here is an easy way for you and for the recipient of your
file to split Impression documents.
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1  Install Hard Disc Companion on your iconbar in the usual way.
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2  Single click on the icon which opens a window.
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3  Click <menu> and choose Destination, Floppy0 and 800K or 1.6M as
appropriate.
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4  Under Preferences, you can select how you wish to make the backup,
i.e. Very Quickly but with no compression or relatively slowly but with
maximum compression. The choice is yours.
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5  Under Files, choose Backup and a window opens onto which you drag
your Impression document.
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6  Finally, click on Start on the main window and simply follow the on-
screen prompts.
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7  Send your file to the destination address.
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Upon receipt, all that needs to be done is to insert the last disc (so
it helps if you label them, 1,2. . . etc) and open the window. Two files
are seen: !Restore and Data. Double click on !Restore to install it on
the iconbar and drag Data over the icon. Click again on Restore and a
new window opens. Simply drag the icon to a new directory or the root
and follow the on-screen prompts. The document will be fully rebuilt on
the recipient’s computer.
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It may interest you to know that I created a dummy Impression document
to test this. It was 20Mb long and I used Hard Disc Companion v2.50 to
split onto six 800Kb floppies at maximum compression − it worked
faultlessly.
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Hard Disc Companion v2.50 costs £45 +p&p +VAT from Risc Developments or
£52 from NCS.  Keith Parker, Southall.  A
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With Risc Developments going into liquidation, we aren’t sure about the
availability of Hard Disc Companion but, presumably, Beebug Ltd will be
taking it over.  Ed.
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