Date   : Sun, 03 Sep 2006 14:35:07 +0100
From   : Francis Devereux <francis@...>
Subject: Re: *INFO

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 03:28:04PM +0100, Francis Devereux wrote:
> 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.

I've found it and put it up at http://www.devrx.org/software/bbc/MakePrt.zip
It actually partitions the disc, so you have to choose how much space you
want to allocate for each partition when you set up a disc.  Is that how the
Viglen utility works, or does it automatically allocate disc space between
the catalogues?

Francis