What's New in CopyQM 3.05 December, 1992 Sydex, Inc. P.O. Box 5700 Eugene, OR 97405 (503) 683-6033 In CopyQM 3.05 we handled a situation with some BIOS sets that prevented CopyQM from recognizing an inserted blank diskette when file PLAYBACK is being used. CopyQM 3.04 Changes There are bugs in the Phoenix BIOS chips for the NEC Powermate SX Plus (BIOS date: 8/8/89) and the DEC 316SX (BIOS date 12/18/89, made by Tandy). The bugs affect the operation of the diskette verify (INT 13, function 04) BIOS function. CopyQM 3.04 contains a workaround to these bugs by using the BIOS Read Sectors function (02) in place of Verify Sectors (04). However, owners of these machines should be advised that the BIOS verify can report good data when a "sector not found" status should be reported. It's entirely possible that diskette operations with DOS VERIFY=ON may not report errors that have actually occurred. Further, DOS FORMAT may not produce reliable diskettes with these systems. CopyQM 3.03 Changes CopyQM 3.03 implements the following change from Version 3.02: Conversion of an absolutely full 720K DOS diskette to 1.2M under 3.02 left out the last sector on the last track. Version 3.03 corrects this problem. CopyQM 3.02 Changes 1. The menu interface (CQMENU) has been simplified. Users should find it much simpler to use. 2. Due to popular request, command-line syntax help is available for COPYQM.COM by specifying any of the following command line arguments: HELP /HELP /H ? or /? 3. A small bug regarding conversion of FULL 360K diskettes to other formats has been repaired. Although all data was copied, the last two bytes of the File Allocation Table were not. 4. Systems with DR DOS or STACKER do not implement the entire set of device driver functions for hard disks. This would cause CopyQM to fail while reading the master diskette. This could be worked around by specifying a hard disk path with the CQTEMP environment variable. Version 3.02 now makes this unncessary as an alternate method of locating a free hard disk is now used. 5. If the command-line switch VSN is used on CopyQM, a unique Volume Serial Number will be placed in the boot record of each diskette copy. The original master diskette must have been formatted with DOS 4.0 or later. If a boot sector is detected that does not support the DOS VSN feature, this option will have no effect. CopyQM 3.01 Changes 1. Some Phoenix 386 BIOS have a bug wherein interrupts are left disabled after a Reset Disk is performed. This causes CopyQM to hang up on INSERT MASTER DISKETTE if no diskette has been inserted before CopyQM starts. 2. Yet another Phoenix bug in some 386 BIOS sets prevented CopyQM from writing high-density 1.2M diskettes. The symptoms of this bug are (a) It is impossible to write a 1.2M diskette, and (b) A 1.2M diskette cannot be formatted after CopyQM has completed. Our suspicions are that Phoenix put in a kludge to their standard 286 BIOS to support 1.44M diskette drives and really messed things up. At any rate, CopyQM now checks for a Phoenix BIOS (the word "Phoenix" at F000:E038) and resets the diskette drive status at 0040:008F. 3. If less than 1.4M of XMS is available, CopyQM would skip allo- cating what WAS available and move on to allocating hard disk. This normally does not present a problem, except for systems where no hard disk is present. 4. On occasion, when making a playback file from a 1.44M diskette, the file was incompletely recorded, usually skipping the last track. Fixed. 5. Serial number files longer than about 64 bytes were being appended to incorrectly. Now fixed. We've added a bit of color to the "Thermometer Bar" at the bottom of the screen. Red indicates that data is being accessed from base memory, Cyan indicates EMS, Yellow indicates XMS and Magenta shows that a disk file is being used. Green indicates that the diskette area does not contain active data. We may change this color scheme in the release version to make the distinction more visible to monochrome display users. Users of the serial-numbering feature can limit the number of times CopyQM will substitute a serial number for the pattern given by SNPATTERN=. Use the keyword SNCOUNT=number to specify the maximum number of times that the substitution is carried out. Those users using Micro Solutions' CompatiCard IV as a SECONDARY controller should consult the file CCARD.DOC for inoformation on setting up a configuration file.