
              Frequently Asked Questions about The Star Commander

  Here are some questions I was asked many times and my answers to  them.  I'd
like to mention that the Commander was not meant to be a multi-purpose utility
with lots of goodies; that the main executable file is already too big and  it
eats up a lot of memory; and that I simply  have  no  time  to  implement  all
ideas. 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.

  Before you'd read specific questions and answers, you should have a look  at
the 'Known problems and limitations' section of the documentation.

Q: I'm desperately trying to make the Commander access my Commodore drive  but
   it just displays "Drive #8 not present", "Timeout detected" or simply locks
   up. What shall I do?
A: Please, read the  'Troubleshooting'  section  in  the  documentation.  This
   should cover all common mistakes.

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. Not that this would make any real difference.

Q: Does the Commander support non-1541 drives: 1571, 1581, SFD-1001,  FD-2000,
   FD-4000 drives and CMD hard disks?
A: Currently, only the 1541 drive family, 1541 compatible drives, and both the
   1541 emulation and native mode of 1570 and 1571 drives.  Support  for  1581
   drives will be implemented in the  next  release.  I  can't  support  other
   drives because I don't have any of them.

Q: Can the Commander copy protected disks?
A: Not really. Fortunately, there's  now  a  well-documented  standard  for  a
   GCR-coded disk image format. However, reading enough data from a  Commodore
   disk is quite hard. Currently, you should use warp transfer mode because it
   can duplicate simple copy protections,  those  involving  intentional  read
   errors on the disk.

Q: Can the Commander work the other way around, that is, act  as  a  Commodore
   drive, connected to a Commodore machine?
A: No, and I'm not planning  to  implement  that.  The  Commander  acts  as  a
   Commodore machine, to make the drive think it's communicating with the real
   thing. To implement the idea above, it would have to simulate  a  Commodore
   drive which is just the opposite and a more  sophisticated  problem.  There
   exist file servers running on the PC, try those instead.

Q: How do I access the built-in drive of my C128D or SX64?
A: If you use the built-in drive of a  C128D  or  an  SX64  then  execute  the
   command 'POKE 56576, 199' on the Commodore  machine  before  accessing  its
   drive. Every time you also access the drive  from  the  Commodore  machine,
   you'll have to execute this command again afterwards.

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,  as  one  continuous
   stream, into a single file and then the necessary  parts  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: My Commodore drive makes so awful noises  when  I  format  disks  with  the
   Commander. Can I avoid this?
A: Yes, you can, but make sure that your drive is  not  misaligned.  When  you
   format a disk, the original format command 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 in turbo and warp command execution mode.
   However, you can switch this feature off in the configuration menu and  the
   disk formatter will only seek onto track 1 instead of the head rattle.  But
   don't forget, if you used a misaligned disk before formatting  another  one
   then the misalignment will spread onto the freshly formatted disk.

Q: Why does the Commander not work in OS/2, Linux, Windows,  Windows 95/98/ME,
   Windows NT/2000?
A: Some people have reported limited  success under OS/2 when they enabled the
   HW_TIMER option for the DOS shell. Under Linux dosemu,  again,  success  is
   very improbable. Under Windows 95/98/ME, make sure  to  enable  the  option
   "Force async transfer" or use a hybrid or parallel cable, it might  help  a
   lot. Under Windows NT/2000, you definitely need the tweaking package.
   In all cases, get prepared  for  timeouts  and  lockups  because  Commodore
   drives expect a tighter synchronization than the Commander can keep under a
   multi-tasking system. You get the best results  by  running  the  Commander
   under plain DOS.
   Also, if there exists a native transfer program for your favorite operating
   system then use that one instead for transferring and use the Commander for
   conversion only.

Q: Will you do an OS/2, Linux, Windows,  Windows 95/98/ME  or  Windows NT/2000
   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. Unfortunately,
   there are some more aspects - keyboard, file and screen handling  and  some
   quirks - that are related to DOS too much.
   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, even access external Commodore drives with more
   or less success.

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 95/98/ME.  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 either.
   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 those 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 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:  the  BAM  disk
   copier won't copy them; 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 the directory track will  be  fully
   copied during a BAM disk copy. Similarly,  use  "Safe clean"  for  cleaning
   disk images and not a single byte will be harmed on the directory track.

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 sector header ID's being "MD", "CD" and "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  real
   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 changes the screen mode only if it has to: the screen  is  in
   graphical mode. This is similar to how the other Commanders also work.  The
   state of the "EGA Lines" option is not even saved into 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 PC programmer ever) and that's why I make my Commander to  be  similar
   to The Volkov Commander.
   Admit it, after some hours, you got used to the new  features,  maybe,  now
   you even miss some of them from The Norton Commander...

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 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 Norton Commander and to DOS Navigator.

Q: What language is the Commander 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 viewer and the editor takes up  more  than
   1.7 Mbytes, not counting the little utilities  I  made  for  compiling  the
   online help, creating the sample Commander screens for the  external  setup
   and other purposes. There are also many assembly routines  in  the  source,
   mainly for data transfer and data conversion where speed is most important.
   By the way, the full source is available, under a GPL-style license, on the
   homepage.
