
              Frequently Asked Questions about The Star Commander

Here are some questions I was asked many times and my answers to them.  First,
I'd like to mention that the Commander was not meant  to  be  a  multi-purpose
utility with lots of goodies and that the main executable file is already  too
big and it eats up a lot of memory. And to advertize  my  favorite  Commander,
The Volkov Commander: one of the features I just love in it is that there  are
no redundant functions in it, it is as simple as possible.

Q: I found few bugs in the Commander and there are many functions in  it.  How
   is it then that the public releases are still 0.xx versions?
A: The reason is that I hate version numbers like 12.3 or 1.2.34  and  I  only
   want to call 1.0 the final version. On the other hand, many people have the
   prejudice of thinking that beta releases are buggy. Don't worry, the public
   releases of the Commander are as bugfree and complete as any other non-beta
   program. But to make you happy, starting with Version 0.73 the Commander is
   not called "beta" anymore.

Q: I'm desperately trying to make the Commander access my Commodore drive  but
   it just displays "Device not present" or simply locks up. What shall I do?
A: Please, read the section "TROUBLESHOOTING" in the documentation.

Q: Does the Commander support non-1541 drives, e.g. the 1571,  1581,  FD-2000,
   FD-4000 drives and the CMD hard disk?
A: Not yet, only the 1541 drive family, 1541 compatible drives, and  the  1541
   mode of the 1571 drive because I only have a 1541C  and  a  1541-II  drive.
   However, I currently started to implement support for 1571 and 1581  drive,
   maybe, some others will also be supported.

Q: Can the Commander copy protected disks?
A: No, and I don't think it will ever be able to. First of all,  there  should
   be a documented GCR-coded disk image format which is  rather  the  task  of
   emulator authors. Second, there are too many problems with reading data  at
   a sufficient speed from the Commodore drive to be able to  reconstruct  the
   original track data, making the protection think that it's still running on
   its original disk. And the extra data, what the Commander could easily read
   would only fool the most simple copy  protections.  I  suggest  you  get  a
   cracked version of your original programs.

Q: Does the Commander support 40 track disks and disk images?
A: Yes, it does. However, there is a restriction: since the Commander uses the
   original DOS routines to allocate blocks for the  files  during  file  copy
   from the PC to the external Commodore drive in  any  mode,  if  your  drive
   cannot handle the extra tracks or the extra BAM entries, you won't be  able
   to use all the 40 tracks. In this case you might have to fill up a 40 track
   disk image with files first and then copy the disk image onto the  external
   Commodore drive. It is also possible that the ROM of your  Commodore  drive
   is not patched to let programs seek to  the  extra  tracks,  in  this  case
   you're totally out of luck.

Q: After having accessed my Commodore drive, I noticed that the DOS  clock  is
   late. How is that possible?
A: There are two separate clocks: one is the CMOS clock, updated by  hardware,
   the other is  the  DOS  clock,  updated  by  a  software  interrupt.  While
   accessing a Commodore drive, all interrupts are disabled so that they don't
   interfere with the synchronization. In these intervals the DOS clock is not
   updated, therefore it gets late. Don't worry, if you reboot  your  machine,
   the DOS clock will be back to normal.

Q: I tried to extract LHA archives using the Commander and I saw a  file  name
   at the beginning of the uncompressed files and some  of  their  last  bytes
   were chopped off. How is this possible?
A: You are using LHA 2.13 or an older version. The Commander and Star LHA  are
   using the print command instead of the usual extract  command.  The  reason
   for this is that when specifying the name of files to extract, a file  name
   with a space inside (not unlikely in a Commodore LHA  archive)  would  make
   LHA assume it to be two separate file names. Therefore all the files in the
   archive are printed in one continuous stream into a single  file  and  then
   the necessary ones  are  picked  out.  Unfortunately,  LHA 2.13  and  older
   versions prepend the file name to each printout which is  garbage  for  the
   Commander and Star LHA. Get the official LHA 2.55 English release to  solve
   this problem.

Q: When copying a really old disk in warp mode onto my PC, the transfer  stops
   sometimes: the disk keeps spinning but apparently no data is  read.  I  can
   stop this only if I open the drive door and wait for the error message. Why
   does this happen and what can I do to avoid it?
A: This is due to the nature of one of the tricks in the  warp  routines.  The
   1541 receives a map for the current  track,  indicating  which  sectors  to
   transfer to the PC. The drive constantly reads the track, searching  for  a
   sector header. When it encounters one, it GCR-decodes the track and  sector
   numbers and decides whether  the  sector  is  to  be  transferred  or  not.
   However, if the sector header is damaged then an invalid sector  number  is
   decoded and the drive will reject the sector instead  of  transferring  it.
   All you can do is to switch back to turbo mode, where no  such  tricks  are
   used to speed up the transfer.

Q: My Commodore drive makes so awful noises  when  I  format  disks  with  the
   Commander. Can I avoid this?
A: No, you can't. When you format a disk, the drive bangs the head against the
   bump, to make sure that it's the outermost  track  being  named  "track #1"
   during the actual format. To be  compatible  with  the  original  way,  the
   Commander also does that. The noises are not the Commander's fault but that
   of the DOS in the drive. If you have a better way to format  disks,  be  it
   with another machine or with another program, then use that one instead.

Q: Why does the Commander not work under my OS/2, Linux, Windows, Windows '95
   or Windows NT?
A: Because it's technically impossible to achieve correct timing  under  these
   multi-tasking environments: the kernel, the control program of the  system,
   steals time from the Commander for monitoring the system  and  giving  time
   slices for the other processes, messing up the synchronization between  the
   PC and the external Commodore drive. However, if you use the XH1541  hybrid
   cable or the XP1541 parallel cable then you'll possibly be able  to  access
   your Commodore drive even under these  multi-tasking  systems  because  the
   data transfer via these interfaces is asynchronous.

Q: Will you do an OS/2, Linux, Windows, Windows '95 or Windows NT  version  of
   the Commander?
A: No, I won't. Although the routines of the Borland Pascal  run-time  library
   rely on being run under DOS, I did take my time with  extending  them  with
   the capability of handling Windows '95-style long file names. Since I don't
   have any of the  other  operating  systems  installed,  I  can't  implement
   support for them. And I'm not willing to create a  native  version  of  the
   Commander for these platforms, especially not one  with  a  graphical  user
   interface. You can use all features of the Commander under the DOS emulator
   or DOS shell of these operating systems, perhaps, except for the access  to
   external Commodore drives.

Q: I would like an OS/2 version of the Commander for another  reason:  running
   on HPFS, it could use the original long Commodore file names  and  I  could
   forget the 8.3 file name limitation of DOS. What do you think?
A: Such a capability has already been implemented  for  Windows '95  although,
   during the conversion of Commodore file names, many PETSCII characters  are
   lost because they have no equivalent in ASCII or are not allowed in  a  DOS
   file name. There is no plan to do the same for OS/2 since I don't  have  it
   installed and have no docs about accessing OS/2 long file names  under  its
   DOS emulator. However, there is some kind  of  solution:  if  you  want  to
   upload Commodore files onto your Unix account from an OS/2 machine and keep
   the long file names then you can copy the files  into  TAR  archives,  then
   upload and extract the archives under Unix.

Q: I've edited the directory of a disk and then copied it onto my PC with  the
   option "BAM disk copy" checked. The end of the directory was lost. Why?
Q: I've edited the directory of a disk image and  then  cleaned  it  with  the
   "Clean" option in the user menu of disk image panels. Why did  I  lose  the
   end of the directory?
A: There's a serious problem with the early versions  of  Dir Master  (by  Wim
   Taymans), which is the best and most wide-spread directory  editor  around.
   When you insert some phantom files into the directory (e.g.  deleted  files
   whose names make up the logo of your group) then the size of the  directory
   grows. When you save it back onto your disk or disk  image  then  some  new
   sectors are filled up with the new data. However, the  program  forgets  to
   allocate these new sectors therefore the BAM disk copier won't  copy  these
   blocks and the disk image cleaner will destroy all data in  them.  Validate
   your BAM with the "Validate" option in the user menu  or  manually  in  the
   disk editor before copying or cleaning. Alternatively, you  can  switch  to
   "Safe BAM disk copy" mode and track #18 will be fully  copied  even  during
   BAM disk copy. Similarly, use "Safe clean" for cleaning disk images and  it
   won't harm a single byte on track #18.

Q: I know that a diskpacked ZipCode archive contains all the data found  on  a
   35 track disk. How is it possible then that there are certain archives that
   don't work if I unzip them on my PC and then transfer  the  resulting  disk
   image onto my disk?
A: There is one difference between unzipping the archive on your PC  and  your
   Commodore machine. The second two bytes of the first ZipCode  archive  hold
   the ID in all the sector headers of the original disk (not the one  in  the
   BAM). When you extract the archive on a  Commodore  machine,  the  ZipCoder
   reformats the disk on the fly with that ID so that e.g. the disk identifier
   routine of "Test Drive 2" recognizes the master, car and scenario disks  on
   basis of the ID of sector headers being "MD", "CD" or "SD". All you can  do
   is look into the first ZipCode archive and reformat  the  destination  disk
   with those two bytes as an ID before transferring the disk image.  However,
   if the ZipCode archive was created on a PC, not on a Commodore machine, you
   will possibly find an invalid ID there, e.g. "64". In this  case  you  will
   have to find out the correct ID yourself.

Q: I switched to 'EGA Lines' in the Commander and saved the setup. How  is  it
   then that the next time I launched the Commander  it  didn't  automatically
   change to 'EGA Lines' upon startup?
A: The Commander never changes the screen mode, only if it has  to,  e.g.  the
   screen is in graphical or 40 column mode. This is how the other  Commanders
   also work. The state of the 'EGA Lines' option is not  even  saved  in  the
   setup file.

Q: Why can't I copy all the files on the disk of my favorite demo?
A: Probably some files on that disk are phantom files (directory entries  with
   no real file data) or have non-standard characters in their name (graphical
   characters or characters that are not allowed in file  names,  like  comma,
   colon, asterisk, question mark etc.). The Commander uses the original  1541
   DOS to open files so it doesn't support such  files  either.  Rename  those
   files using the disk editor or copy the whole disk instead.

Q: Why is it, that  although  I  have  defined  several  standard  viewers  in
   SCVIEW.EXT, the Commander still can't use them like The Norton Commander?
A: Perhaps, you are using the viewers of The Norton Commander 5.0, which  need
   the file NCVIEW.MSG to be able to run. However, these viewers  support  the
   parameter passing convention differently than the ones that  came  with  an
   earlier version (3.0, 4.0 or 4.5)  of  The Norton Commander,  so  don't  be
   alarmed when they e.g. launch in color mode although the Commander has been
   set to black & white.

Q: There are some minor but annoying differences between  your  Commander  and
   The Norton Commander. Why?
A: A personal opinion: when I started using The Volkov Commander, I  began  to
   hate The Norton Commander. Consider that  The Volkov Commander  is  written
   fully in assembly, not a high-level language. It's a lot smaller, still  it
   can do most of what The Norton Commander can, sometimes even more. It's not
   the overgrown fatware like The Norton Commander has become (not to  mention
   that now it has nothing to do with Peter Norton - who is  said  to  be  the
   best programmer ever)  so  I  make  my  Commander  to  be  similar  to  the
   The Volkov Commander. Admit it that after some hours you got  used  to  the
   new features, maybe, now you even like them...

Q: I hate the colors the Commander uses. Can I change them?
A: Yes, you can. There is a full color  configuration  menu  in  the  external
   setup for all screen modes (black & white, color, laptop  and  monochrome).
   You can also try the prepared palette files that make  the  Commander  look
   similar  to  the  "Color 2"  scheme  of  the  The Norton Commander  and  to
   DOS Navigator.

Q: May I know what language the Commander is written in?
A: I started coding it in Turbo Pascal 7.0 with Turbo Vision 2.0  but  changed
   to Borland Pascal 7.0 a bit later since it had  a  better  IDE  and  online
   help. When I got the sources of the Borland Pascal run-time  libraries,  at
   once I began to rewrite the user interface so that it looks absolutely like
   that of The Norton Commander. Many of the original  Turbo  Vision  routines
   were deleted or changed during this process. The source of  the  Commander,
   the external setup and the internal viewer and editor is now at about  1410
   KBytes - not counting the little utilities I made for compiling the  online
   help, creating the sample Commander screens in the external setup and other
   purposes. There are also many assembly routines in the source,  mainly  for
   data transfer and conversion where speed is most important.
