Date   : Sat, 02 Sep 2006 15:28:04 +0100
From   : Francis Devereux <francis@...>
Subject: Re: *INFO

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 03:12:24PM +0100, Ian Wolstenholme wrote:
> Thanks for that, this has reminded me of my first Beeb back in
> 1991.  It was a US BBC B complete with Faraday cage and came with
> a Viglen drive and Viglen Utilities Disc.  This had a dual catalogue
> facility activated with the *SWAP command which then accessed
> a dummy file called "!.!!!!!!!" which presumably wrote the second
> catalogue to the beginning of the disc and saved the other catalogue
> in the file.
> 
> The good thing about it was that it would work with ordinary Acorn
> DFS and you could copy the SWAP utility onto the disc instead of
> reaching for the Viglen disc every time.
> 
> Has anyone else used this or even got a copy of it?

I haven't used the Viglen software but I did use a similar DFS
catalogue-swapping utility from the Micro User cover disk.  I used it on a
Master (with Acorn's DFS).  I can't remember how many catalogues it supported
but it was certainly more than 2.  I think you chose how many catalogues to
reserve space for when you installed it on a disc.  Let me know if you'd like
me to dig out a copy.

Francis.

> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> 
> 
> Ian