Next dumb question

I read the notes that came with MorphOS 1.4.5 which is installed on my new Peggy. They seem to suggest that a CD can be formatted with the inbuilt Format command. However when I try it on a CD-R or CD-R/W nothing really happens. Does this actually work or do I need to download another utility? My drive is a DVD R/RW (DVD+R DL). Please advise.

TrevorDick

For cd's & dvd's try FryingPan:
http://www.tbs-software.com/fp/download.phtml
For cd's try BlankCD in the CDPlayer archive.

OK reconfigured BlankCD (ide.device and unit number=1) and put a shiny new CD-R in the drive. Dobuble-clicked on BlankCD -- nothing happened?

Downloaded FryingPan. Unpacked and clicked on FyingPan icon got the following error: Error in skin section: Unable to open skin descriptor; Program exited.

An optical drive debug icon popped up on the workbench and informed me that the program had:-

got libs:
All OK
All OK
Control process initialised
Contol Ready


I copied the files to a µA1-C I have () and tried FryingPan with the same installation - worked OK and I was able to burn files to a CD-R. I would like to get this working on my Peggy and will definitely pay for registration when it's up and running because on first glance it's an excellent program! Anyone got any ideas why it's failing to work under MorphOs?

TrevorDick

BlankCD is not a formatting utility. It just erases CDRWs so you can reuse them in MakeCD or FryingPan. And it might be it doesnt work for everyone (my utility btw)... you can do same by choosing Erase from MakeCD menus.

FryingPan *should* run, I remember I tried some betas here. Never burned anything though since I have expensive MakeCD license already.

Oh and btw... you cant use CDRWs like diskettes on MorphOS. It just isnt supported.

I'm a registered FryingPan user.

It works without problems on my PegasosII G4 and is reliable. I've burned two dozens of DVD's and never had errors or failures.

Before deleting the original data from my hard disk, I always compare them, byte by byte, with those written on DVD. So, when I say no errors I mean literally that neither one bit is faulty on 4.5 Gb!

[ Edited by DoctorMorbius_FP on 2005/12/20 9:08 ]

@ DoctorMorbius_FP

Please, can you tell me how to you do the comparison byte by byte, this is interessting! Do you use a software for this?

Regards

Christoph

@ rms

There are two ways.

The fast way is not a real byte by byte comparison, but it is faster. Simply calculate the md5 sums of all your original files and those of the copies on the DVD or CD. For this you can use the shell utility CRCtoy V1.4 by Ray (http://amigos.amiga.hu/ray/).

The real way requires the use of a compare utility. There are many such shell utilities on Aminet, but usually they are limited to the comparison of two specified files. In this case we want to compare hundreds or thousands files and directories, so it is necessary to search for the most advanced utilities. IMHO the best of them all is Cmp, written by Alex Kazik (Aminet: util/cli/ALeXcompare.lha), whose debugging was done by ALeX with my collaboration and suggestions, too. With this utility you must simply type in a shell:

cmp <first_directory> <second_directory> all checkd

and this will generate a complete report on all equal, different, and possibly missing, files and directories.

Of course the directory tree names and filenames in the <first_directory> must be equal to those in the <second_directory>, as it is the case when you compare a source directory and its copy on CD or DVD.

Please note that a byte by byte comparison is hungry in terms of processing power and usually takes much time if you are comparing gigabytes of data. And if there are more than ten thousands files that should be compared, the CD/DVD drive caches become highly fragmented and comparison speed slows down further...

Many "strange" options of Cmp are there for making possible to manage externally the command. This is done by my ARexx utility EqFiles.rexx (Aminet: util/rexx/EqFiles.lha) that can find all the equal files in <first_directory> and <second_directory> even if the directory trees and the filenames are completely different. This can be useful if you have huge collections of pictures, music files, etc. and want to find (and also automatically delete) all the duplicates. EqFiles.rexx was necessary for my own use because all the few commands present on Aminet and able to do the same operations were/are bugged and no more developed...

I have created an improved MorphOS version of this utility, but never had time to finish and distribute it. If some people is interested I can try to distribute the package in the next future.

Quote:
I downloaded FryingPan again to my Pegasos directly this time together with the unlzx archive utilty. I unarced FP to the ram disk: Frying Pan still reports that it is unable to open skin descriptor file, although the file is there and is not corrupted. I can double click on it and read the contents? Note: I had to copy optical.drive to the libs directory.



TrevorDick

Use SnoopDOS or Snoopium and try to see if there is something wrong in the interaction between FryingPan and your system files and hardware.

Sometimes my brain dosen't work!

I had already confirmed with SnoopDos that the program was hanging when trying to access the default skins file. However I was trying to run FryingPan by double clicking on it's icon (made visible by show all). Which works fine in OS4.0. When i ran FryingPan from a shell window it worked fine. Duh!

Thanks for the advice anyway.

TrevorDick

[ Edited by TrevorDick on 2005/12/20 22:28 ]

@ DoctorMorbius_FP

thanks for you input about this, very interessting. I will try this compare utility and see how it works.

You MorphOS version would also be interessting if you can release it.

Regards

Christoph

@ all

I'm also an registered FP user and it works fine! The only problem I have is that I have directories as well as file names which have a "comment" and FP seems to ripp them but I realy need to have them burned.

Does this work for someone? or does someone know if this can be solved somehow?

Regards

Christoph

i had the same problem with starting up the FP, but it was enough to change the icon from PROJECT to TOOL (or sth), then it worked fine, this is probably one of differencies between OS4 and MOS... now it starts flawlessly directly from it's icon.

bye, MarK.

@ rms

> The only problem I have is that I have directories as
> well as file names which have a "comment" and FP seems
> to ripp them but I realy need to have them burned.
>
> Does this work for someone? or does someone know if
> this can be solved somehow?

Amiga file comments are not supported by usual standards. They can be written on CDs burned on an Amiga (with MakeCD, for instance) since Angela Schmidt introduced the "ISO 9660 Amiga" standard for this purpose. Of course the additions introduced by this standard are recognized only if in the read phase these CDs are read by CD filesystems that are aware of their existence.

As far as I know, FryingPan does not implement this standard for data DVDs, so file comments are lost. Also the Amiga protection bits ("hspa", those besides the usual "rwed") are lost. And also original datestamps of directories and files are lost. I had this problem when I started using FryingPan for data storage. IMHO it is essential that the above-mentioned information is preserved if a backup must be 100% useful. So I wrote an ARexx utility that reads all the data that would be lost and collects them in a special text file that I store on the DVD. This allows recovery of these data.

There are two solutions.

1) If you are interested, I can send you this utility and the extra shell commands it uses for its operations.

2) You may write an e-mail to FryingPan's author asking for support of these features. (I was too lazy and never signalled the problem until now).

Well, both paths can be run at the same time...

Regards

[ Edited by DoctorMorbius_FP on 2005/12/23 21:05 ]

@ DoctorMorbius_FP

thanks for your answer, I sent an e-mail to FP author and wait what he says.

Merry xmas to all.

Christoph

Quote:

Thanks Mark, I am away from my Peggy at the moment. I'll try your suggestion when I return home.

Merry Xmas