Mirage Concepts
£29.95
Another from 'Holmes & Duckworth
micronomists' which will be of interest to developers, hackers or
just the ordinary user who wants more flexibility in using disks
with the ST.
The Tool Box consists of five very
useful programs. First off, there is a File/Sector editor which
enables you to change information on any file on a disk or any sector.
Most owners will have had some experience of using a disk editor
and will know the many things that can be done from simply playing
with program titles to recovering garbled files. The editor works
with a combination of GEM and the keyboard and is very easy to use.
Following on from this there is
a Memory Editor which allows access to any area of RAM for changes
in information. Again this is easy to use but is only of interest
to the more experienced programmer.
The remaining programs are useful
to anybody and will be a blessing as your collection of programs
builds up. Fast Format and Copy does just that, it copies an unprotected
disk in just one minute forty seconds with two drives without having
to format the destination disk first. It is very convenient to use
and you will certainly not go back to using GEM to first format
and then copy a disk. Deleted File Recovery is one that you may
never use but when you do need it you will be glad to have it. Basically
it is intended to recover any file which you have unintentionally
'trashed'. One of the problems with GEM is that there is no way
out of that rubbish bin! Sometimes it is not possible to recover
the whole of a file but this utility will enable you to recover
at least 1K and in many cases the whole file. Even 1K is better
than nothing especially with data files.
To round off, there is Directory
Print. One of the biggest frustrations of GEM on the ST is that
someone forget to include a facility to print directories. Now you
can create a 'directory file' on your disk which can be printed
out from the program or loaded into a word processor for editing.
You can even use this to create a master directory of all of your
disks and so have a limited catalogue facility. I can see that I
will use this time and again.
All in all, a very useful collection
of utilities which will benefit most owners, especially those who
write their own programs.
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