131 lines
6.6 KiB
Plaintext
131 lines
6.6 KiB
Plaintext
MiniSport Laptop Hacker (TM) - Vol #26. December 1994
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To discourage pecuniary interests, Copyright (c) 1994 Brian Mork
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>>> ADMIN
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Index issue follows! Compendiums of all issues are available from
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ftp.cs.buffalo.edu as \pub\ham-radio\mlhackXX.zip, or on SimTel archives
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(eg. oak.oakland.edu) as \SimTel\msdos\packet\mlhackXX.zip. The XX in
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the filename indicates the last issue number, and replaces the previous
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convention of using mlhacker.zip for all compendiums.
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The 1995 astronaut class has been selected. My previous aircraft
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commander made the cut. Nineteen people out of thousands. I'm
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extremely happy for him, but the announcement finalizes the fact that I
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wasn't selected this round. The next round starts (for active duty
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military) in April '95, with potential final announcement November-ish.
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Wish me the best this time around.
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I have a Linux 1.0.9 kernel up and running on my main system's boot
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drive. I used the Slackware 2.0.0 distribution from Internet. Any
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other Linux users out there? It's been a *long* time since I've messed
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around with Unix. I kind of feel like I have the bases covered:
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486DX/66MHz Unix (better than the college computer I learned on), a 1MHz
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64K RAM, CP/M computer, and Minisports in between.
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>>> MORE DISK SPACE
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I've received confirmation from the field that Stacker works great on
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the Minisport. Jim Harvey has done some extensive testing on a 2MB
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Minisport. I managed to get the whole deal onto my 1MB Minisport.
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Results on the 2MB were two RAM drives: 150K and 2.5M. On the 1MB,
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you'll get one 560K drive rather than one 349K drive. Jim's notes
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follow.
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----- cut here -----
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Adventures with Stacker.
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I bought a closeout copy of Stacker 1.12 for five bucks at a computer
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show this past weekend and thought I would share the results of my
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experiments on the Minisport ZL-2 ram disk.
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Stacker creates a big hidden file on your hard drive which contains the
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compressed data. It loads a driver in the CONFIG.SYS file which
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intercepts disk I/O and routes it to the compressed pseudo drive. The
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conventional (under 640k) memory overhead for the driver is about 40k.
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I decided to swap the D: (uncompressed) and E: (compressed) drives as
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described in the Stacker documentation. I backed up my ram disk and
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tried the standard Stacker install program. It worked, but then had
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trouble booting because of a problem in a special AUTOEXEC file it
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created. I had to delete most of the files on the ram disk anyway to
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make working room for Stacker. The compression in place (Incremental
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method) worked but was less than satisfactory, as most of my data had to
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be saved and restored anyway, the Stacker files ate up most of the space
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gained, and the standard install program only takes space in whole
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megabyte increments which left a large part of the D: drive
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uncompressed. On the Minisport, the choices are one meg or none.
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I decided to try installing the program manually to tweak the
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compression. A couple of hours of experimentation later, I arrived at
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the following procedure for a minium Stacker installation (aren't all
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Minisport owners Minimalists?)
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1. FWL the Stacker files to a Minisport floppy.
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2. Back up everything on your ram disk to floppys or via FWL to a PC.
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3. Format your D: ram drive. Reboot to flush any TSRs out of memory
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that could interfere with Stacker.
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4. Insert the Stacker floppy into the Minisport drive. Log on to the
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A: drive.
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5. Enter the command:
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SCREATE D:STACVOL.000 /S=1.2 /M
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6. When the compressed drive file has been created, copy the stacker
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drivers to your D: drive with the following commands:
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COPY A:STACKER.COM D:
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COPY A:SSWAP.COM D:
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7. Now you must create a CONFIG.SYS to install the Stacker drivers.
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The following entries will do this...
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COPY CON: D:\CONFIG.SYS
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DEVICE=D:\STACKER.COM D:\STACVOL.000
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DEVICE=D:\SSWAP.COM D: E:
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^Z
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That last line is a Control-Z character. If you previouly had
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other setup commands in a D:CONFIG.SYS file, you can add them now
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or edit them in later. These two device commands are the minimum
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to get Stacker going with the compressed drive swapped to D:
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8. Reboot. You should see Stacker installing, then the E: and D:
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drives swapping places. You will be asked if you want to set time
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and date, this is because there is no AUTOEXC.BAT file on the
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compressed drive yet. Just hit the return key for now.
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9. CHKDSK will show you a D: drive with about 2.5 megs available, and
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an E: with about 150k available. Restore all your backed up files
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including any AUTOEXEC.BAT. Reboot and all should be normal.
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There are several Stacker utilities that you may want to keep on the D:
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drive besides the two drivers. I'd recommend SCHECK at least, it gives
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compression statistics on the new pseudo drive. If you put these or
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other utilities on the E: drive, you should add E:\ to the PATH
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statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT on D:. Remember that the E: drive is the
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uncompressed one after SSWAP.COM flops the letters.
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The above is based on Stacker 1.12, not exactly the latest version, it
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dates from early DOS 5.0 days. But this should encourage other
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Minisport owners to try compression programs and report the results. My
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experiment yielded about a 1.1 meg increase in available ram disk with,
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to me at least, an acceptable overhead in loading time and low memory
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usage.
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I have obtained five copies of Stacker Version 1 as described in the
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article. I will sell these for $8.00 including shipping. Jim Harvey,
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18538 Inkster, Redford, Mich 48240
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----- cut here -----
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Jim's steps worked great for me. On the 1MB Minisport, I used /S=0.3 on
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the command line to SCREATE. That leaves just enough room for the
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STACKER.COM file, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and a CONFIG.SYS. There will be
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literally 0 bytes left, so there's no room for the SSWAP.COM. My
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AUTOEXEC.BAT file moves over to E:, and makes the path search E: and C:.
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D: is left pretty much out of the picture, because there is simply no
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room for anything. Even, for example, if you edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT
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file, you'll probably have trouble because with the old file left as
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a .BAK file, there will be no room to save the new file!
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Please provide feedback! * Direct data 1-509-244-9260
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* ARO Net KA9SNF@ka7fvv.#ewa.wa.usa
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* Internet bmork@opus-ovh.spk.wa.us
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73, Brian * 6006-B Eaker, Fairchild, WA 99011
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