◊ 3.1.1 - Attempts to work around the infamous Apple Menu Options bug (thanks to a kind, knowledgeable soul…). The Make disks larger option now creates slightly “less larger” disks that cannot be corrupted by Mac OS 8.1 (see the separate document for details; thanks, François Grieu).
◊ 3.1 - Supports the Mac OS Extended format, a.k.a. HFS Plus; it even allows to set the minimum allocation block size. Supports disks larger than 4 Gigabytes. Fixed a bug that would have sometimes caused a crash (instead of an appropriate error message) when you tried to work with weird disks (such as networked disks) or in other situations. Other tweaks and fixes.
◊ 3.0.9 - When erasing a disk such as the System RAM Disk with the Eject disks when done option active, Disk Charmer attempted to erase the RAM Disk every time it was remounted, over and over again (thanks to Peppino Ventura for reporting this); also, fixed a cosmetic bug reported (once again) by Peppino. Fixed a silly bug that prevented detection of a MacOS bug fix. Other minor tweaks and fixes. Compiled with CodeWarrior 11; linked with MoreFiles 1.4.6.
◊ 3.0.8 - Disk name truncation should be handled more gracefully when a non-Roman script system is in use; Eject disks… now works with any ejectable disk, not just floppies; linked with MoreFiles 1.4.5.
◊ 3.0.7 - Disk names are properly truncated when dealing with foreign (MS-DOS, ProDOS) file systems (thanks to Peppino Ventura); now works again with Zip disks (I think they changed the driver so as to reject Status calls: Disk Charmer used Status to detect write protected disks early, and was not lenient if Status failed; it used to work with older Iomega drivers, too bad I did not test with 4.3.2!).
◊ 3.0.6 - Occasionally messed up the radio buttons in the main window when a non-Mac format was selected, and you switched from an Erase button to Read or Verify; did not gray out the non-Mac formats if you turned off PC Exchange with the On/Off radio buttons in its control panel (thanks to Peppino Ventura for spotting these two!); the intended check for an obsolete Thread Manager was never performed; should now display Macintosh (grayed out) instead of the first popup menu item in some Systems without File System Manager (thanks to Masatsugu Nagata). Other minor tweaks and fixes. Compiled with CW 10.
◊ 3.0.5 - Linked with the InternetConfig 1.3 glue. Slightly faster when it has to eject the disk. Properly assigns the name to DiskDup+ images (thanks, Rocco). Updated the documentation and the Register application.
◊ 3.0.4 - Updated the alert message regarding SpeedEmulator; there is probably a conflict between it and RAMDoubler. Fixed a couple of incorrect alerts (thanks, Masatsugu). Translucent icon should start from proper position (thanks, Rocco). Now you can start dragging only when clicking exactly on the disk image icon. Linked with MoreFiles 1.4.3.
◊ 3.0.3 - Implemented translucent dragging. Updated the alert message regarding SpeedEmulator. Now you can drag the window around during backgroundable disk accesses. Updated the Internet-related menus. Sometimes incorrectly assigned names to non-Mac disks; to avoid this the Make disks larger checkbox is now turned off if you switch to MS-DOS or ProDOS (which is even correct from a User Interface point of view). Compiled with CodeWarrior 9. Various tweaks and docs updates.
◊ 3.0.2 - Now properly restores the message text when a disk with open files or a CD is encountered. Compiled with CW 8, and linked with MoreFiles 1.4.2. Various tweaks and docs updates.
◊ 3.0.1 - Fixed dragging on a text window (would write a disk image). Other tweaks.
◊ 3.0
New features:
- Erases any disk (not just floppies).
- Support for DiskDup+ and DiskCopy disk images.
- Checks for low-level errors during read/write, and warns the user appropriately.
- Does not warn if the disk is empty and you are about to erase it.
- Asks whether you really want to read an empty disk.
- Checks whether a “System bug fix” is present, and does not show the following alert message in this case:
In order to work around a bug in the System, Disk Charmer has been forced to make a standard Macintosh disk. Use a non-defective disk or turn off the “Lock out bad sectors” option.
- Handles cmd-. and esc when erasing the disk catalog (during the long “Looking for bad sectors…” phase no harm is done to the disk, so the user is allowed to change his mind); it cannot work with some System configurations.
- added a warning: if you erase a bad disk (a disk with bad sectors previously locked out) with the “Lock out bad sectors” option turned off, you lose the existing information about bad sectors.
Bugs fixed:
- Fixed the crash that used to occur on some PowerMacs (and maybe other Macs, too) when the Can switch among applications… setting was active.
- To witness this in older versions, read one disk in memory and hit Cmd-Z repetitively; you should see Disk Charmer alternating exactly between two states - the behavior was incorrect when a non-Mac format was selected in the Format: popup.
- Gone is the annoying beachball -> arrow -> beachball cursor transition that used to occur while coming to the front.
- The If Low Density: popup menu didn’t drop down if you clicked on its rightmost part, in spite of the fact that it had a drop-down symbol.
- Fixed the disk renaming bug.
- Explicitly checks for a locked disk before erasing (a locked DOS disk under a non-DOS aware Mac would escape preventive detection heretofore; the same for virgin disks).
- Free space is correctly reckoned for disks with allocation blocks larger than 512 bytes.
◊ 2.4.5 - Shows a nice beachball cursor while working. Specifies when an unformatted disk is being initialized. Updated the Internet-related menus.
◊ 2.4.4 - No more “double flickers” the Edit menu when selecting Undo. The alerts were updated in order to follow the guidelines in develop #24 (text in all caps, exclamation marks, etc. were removed). Many dialogs & alerts should behave more appropriately on multiple monitors: they appear on the parent window’s screen instead of the main screen. The alert that warns when you are going to restore a disk contains a more appropriate message. Fixed a serious bug occurring when you had a disk in memory, selected Undo, told Disk Charmer to restore a disk and hit Cancel in the warning alert; the first item in the File menu was incorrectly enabled: choosing it led to a major disruption in the messages displayed in the main window. No more auto-quits when Undo is enabled, so you don’t lose the disk image in memory. Other minor tweaks.
◊ 2.4.3 - Fixed the silly bug introduced in 2.4.2 that prevented the Undo feature from working when the warnings were active; thanks (once more) to Masatsugu Nagata who promptly reported the bug.
◊ 2.4.2 - The warning alert is now movable modal; minor tweaks and fixes.
◊ 2.4.1 - Fixed the bug that prevented proper behavior without the Extended Disk Initialization Manager installed.
◊ 2.4 - Supports non-Mac file systems, and InternetConfig. Accepts drag&drop from the System 7.5.x Find File window. Slightly reorganized the prefs. Other minor fixes.
◊ 2.3.1 - Moved the eject option to the main window; better handling of the Edit menu when a movable modal dialog box is visible; grays the Act on disk insertion menu item when attempting to restore a disk.
◊ 2.3 - Movable modal dialog boxes everywhere. Additional Act on disk insertion and Auto Quit options. Various code tweaks and fixes.
◊ 2.2.3 - Eject option moved to the menus; no more ejects disks on startup (I found it mostly annoying).
◊ 2.2.2 - Uses the Apple MoreFiles library. E-mail address update. Minor changes.
◊ 2.2.1 - Zoom rectangles; eject disks option more flexible; can operate via menus (Alessandro Levi Montalcini insisted a little bit on these).
◊ 2.2 - Drag Manager support. Worked around a bug in the Thread Manager 2.0.1. Fixed a subtle bug that could affect the Lock out bad sectors option. For the technically inclined, I forgot to set the ioResult field in the _Control temporary patch (I was only setting the D0 register). The bug surfaced out when installing the Apple File System Manager extension. Minor fixes; updated the docs.
◊ 2.1.4 - Ejects the disk if it does not mount when you hold down the option key (Alessandro Levi Montalcini’s suggestion); updated the docs.
◊ 2.1.3 - Little fix in the registration code.
◊ 2.1.2 - Additional disk eject option, inspired by Alessandro Levi Montalcini. Warns when the Thread Manager is installed or un-installed. Does not try to eject the disk if there are open applications/documents on it (again, thanks to Peppino). Little fix for virtual memory - I am not sure whether it was necessary, but you know: the safer, the better.
Forgot to include Luca Broglio in the credits. Luca helped with his PowerBook 160 in fixing the bug eliminated in 2.1.1.
◊ 2.1.1 - A wonderful and subtle bug lurked in the code I wrote to allow the marvelous additions in 2.1. This could cause subtle hangs while Disk Charmer was creating the disk catalog. Incredibly indeed, last night I had a nightmare in which I discovered a bug in Disk Charmer 2.1. Well, this was a premonitory dream, really.
◊ 2.1 - Lets you choose whether to lock out bad sectors or not. The first part of the bad sectors search phase can now execute concurrently with other applications, provided that you have the Thread Manager installed.
◊ 2.0.8 - Alerts if you try using a floppy disk with open applications/documents on it.
Fixed (at last!) a problem with the about box, and its incompatibility with AutoMenus II, reported by Duane W. Small and stevewho@aol.com. It was my fault, not AutoMenus’.
No more pauses between initializing and verifying (this only occurred on some Mac models and when the Thread Manager was not installed).
Slightly increased the memory partition.
The Command-period key combination is detected in the Apple-approved way; the previous method I adopted, although pretty straightforward, does not work (according to Apple) on some international keyboards.
You can abort by pressing esc or Command-period immediately after the disk is inserted.
If you insert (when trying to undo) a disk which has not the correct capacity, Disk Charmer suggests the right capacity.
Added a nifty registration form.
◊ 2.0.7 - Erasing a disk with the Rename already formatted disks option unchecked led to a bus or address error (found by Peppino the everpresent); stripped down a bit of code.
◊ 2.0.6 - Bug fix introducing a new bug: ever heard of this? It happens that the Disk Driver needs 2 instead of 0 in csParam only for 800K disks; HD disks need 0.
◊ 2.0.5 - Will not bore when you insert a High Sierra, ISO 9660 or Audio CD-ROM telling you that the disk is locked: the CD now mounts on the desktop (if the CD-ROM driver is installed, obviously); the message informing that a bad disk was ejected did not state that the disk was actually repaired (reported by Alan Harris); when the Erase disk option is active and you insert a disk formatted with a smaller than the maximum capacity, the capacity is now correctly set to the maximum (reported by Fabrizio Grandoni and Martin Josso) (for techies: set the csParam in the _Control call to 2 instead of 0, a nice but undocumented feature of the Disk Driver); keeps the undo buffer correctly instead of discarding it in one particular event; slightly increased the memory partition.
◊ 2.0.4 - Tremendous error: start up Disk Charmer 2.0.3 with System 6 and get the following: there is not enough memory…! Now the message is correct (reported by Roberto Leonardi of MacDisk Magazine).
◊ 2.0.3 - In unusual circumstances the icon in the Disk Charmer window would not gray out (tech note: it seems that you cannot mask out osEvents); alerts if the user types a disk name longer than 27 characters; minor improvements; better dialog design for disk naming, suggested by Alessandro.
◊ 2.0.2 - The icon in the Disk Charmer window appears grayed when DC is in the background; warns you if the disk is “not a Macintosh” one, such as a WC-DOS disk; interface oddities removed: gone are the useless icons in the main window; fixed an obscure bug, occurring because I did not set correctly a couple of resource attributes (I am particularly ashamed for this); now it is faster when operating in background with the Thread Manager installed and other applications tying up the processor; did not update and activate correctly the main window when the preferences dialog was open (Peppino strikes back); did not clear the disk name in the main window when a blank disk was inserted (Return of the PeppinJedi); minor internal improvements.
◊ 2.0.1 - The disk names are properly truncated: you cannot give a name longer than 27 characters to a disk (Peppino reminded me of this). The Macintosh Clipboard is copied (in memory) across every opened application. If the clipboard is large, Disk Charmer 2.0 sometimes tells you that there is not enough memory to run. This was fixed (reported by Alessandro).
◊ 2.0 - Released!
◊ 2.0b6 - Balloon help tells that verifying is non-destructive, and indicates precise Kbyte gains when you make larger disks; minor code changes; icon placement modified & changes in the application small icons suggested by Alberto Ricci.
◊ 2.0b5 - Now the user can disable the use of the Thread Manager in the preferences; it tells you whether it will read the next disk or not if the previous disk was bad (bug found by Peppino).
◊ 2.0b4 - Uses the Thread Manager if present, so that background formatting is possible; sets the cursor to a watch when necessary.
◊ 2.0b3 - Redraws the text drawn after erasure one time only.
◊ 2.0b2 - Fixed a quirk in the dialog handling code; clicking on the disk icon iconizes and de-iconizes the window (implemented because most people do not seem to notice the zoom box); redraws the text drawn after verification one time only; leaves the disk name shown after ejection; gives a verbose error if you cleverly insert a locked, unreadable disk.
◊ 2.0b1 - Redraws the text one time only if you press esc or Command-period repeatedly while reading (thanks, Paolo!) and beeps when the key is hit for feedback; instead of the generic “waiting…” message, it tells you whether it will read the next disk or not (suggested by Peppino); filtered characters, so that only numbers are accepted, in the preferences dialog.
◊ 2.0a10 - Lowered memory requirements.
◊ 2.0a9 - Stripped out a bit of code; handled async reads & writes with completion routines.
◊ 2.0a8 - Added asynchronous disk ejection; it does not seem to be different from the synchronous one.
◊ 2.0a7 - Added accent on António (Costa), remarked by Federico Cavaglià; changed the About… picture; added a couple of balloons; the disk name did not appear when verifying only (thanks, Peppino!).
◊ 2.0a6 - Checks if there is enough memory to run; split preferences, with more naming features; improved Balloon Help; improved (but it is still ugly) the “larger disks” signal.
◊ 2.0a5 - Set resource attributes better; added “larger disks” signal in the main window.
◊ 2.0a4 - One alert was not sufficiently tall to accommodate for the text.
◊ 2.0a3 - Cool about box… not for everybody! Added verbose explanations for the most common errors and better handling of uncommon disk formats.
◊ 2.0a2 - Added support for esc & Command-period in alert boxes. Various minor corrections and bug fixes.
◊ 2.0a1 - I have not recorded the nine development versions, so I start here.
