Floppy Disc Library Utility
by Colin Solloway

FdiscLib (Floppy disc Library) is an application which provides a unique and simple way to catalogue floppy discs and their contents. It achieves this by taking an 'image' of any source disc in ADFS drive 0 and placing it in a target directory. This allows the user to quickly examine the contents of all floppy discs together, either from the Desktop or command line, as if viewing the actual discs. Among the many advantages of this (especially to hard disc owners) is that a 'Find File' utility can be used to search all directories, including those on floppy discs, in one pass.

Any !Sprites files contained within the catalogued disc images will not contain any sprites. Consequently, when the user opens a directory viewer on a disc image which contains an application directory, the System's 'application' sprite will usually be seen and not the original sprite.


USING THIS APPLICATION
Before running FdiscLib, the user must SET and create the target path and directory where the disc images are to be stored. To do this double click on the FdiscLib icon in the directory viewer while holding down the Shift key. Then drag the !Run file into Edit. The first line currently SETs FdiscLib$Dir to RAM::0, the root directory of the RAM disc. The user can change this to any valid pathname that does not include ADFS::0.

For example...
   ADFS::1.DATA.MYdiscS
or SCSI::4.Images
or RAM::0.discS

The filing system and drive number must be included in the pathname. ADFS::0 cannot be used because this is where the disc images are read from. Users with a single floppy drive must configure a RAM disc and SET this to be the target directory. When a session is completed the images can be copied from the RAM disc to a floppy disc.

The target directory SET by the user will hold, disc space permitting, up to 5929 floppy disc images, in groups of 77, in sub-directories labelled from 0001_0077 to 5852_5929. Creation of these sub-directories is automatic and the user is advised not to add or delete objects from inside them.
                                   
Double click on the FdiscLib icon to install it on the Icon Bar. To add a disc image to the target directory place the disc in drive 0 and click on the FdiscLib icon on the left hand side of the icon bar. Repeat this for all floppy discs to be catalogued. The name of the disc image in the target directory will be the same as the name of the disc in the source drive. When a disc has been successfully catalogued, a long, high 'beep' will be heard.

If the content of a disc subsequently changes, place the disc in drive 0 again and click on FdiscLib. The image of that disc will then be updated to reflect the changes.
