The Organizer Developed by: Tim McNeal McNeal Audio PO Box 344 Tipton, IN 46072 What does The Organizer do? The Organizer will give you a printed directory of all the files on your disks. This index can be a great time saver in trying to find files, when you have accummulated a large number of disks. It can also help in your reorganization of your files. You can now figure out which disks you want to copy from, so that related files can finally be together. This will greatly reduce the search time involved in finding these files. There are two main programs for creating and printing this master index or directory. We recommend storing the printed directory in a three ring binder for easy access and updating. Dilegence should be given to keep the pages updated between the times these programs will be run, but even if it's not done, a periodic maintenance (running these programs) will suffice. GETTING STARTED If you are using a 48K computer, then rename the file ORGASORT.48K to ORGASORT.COM. If you are using a 64K computer, then rename the file ORGASORT.64K to ORGASORT.COM. Sorting will be faster with the 64K version. Example: A>REN ORGASORT.COM=ORGASORT.48K. Place a bootable Disk in Drive A and this disk in Drive B and load PIP.COM into the computer. From the * prompt, type the following. *A:=B:*.* . This disk in drive A will now be your working program Disk. Prepare two more disks with just BIOS.SYS on them using SYSGEN.COM. One of these will be your SortDisk and the other will be your DataDisk for ORGANIZE.DAT. ORGANIZE.COM This program creates the master file called ORGANIZE.DAT. You will need a disk in Drive A for this file to be created. Be sure to sysgen this disk so that a warm boot may take place on it. It is recommended that you use a blank or nearly blank diskette for this file. The program assumes that you will have 85K of working space on the disk (90-5 for CP/M). If this is the case, then just press when asked for the available K. Or enter the K remaining. To determine the K remaining run the STAT.COM program that came with your CP/M disk. You may want to create a SUB file, so that you don't forget each time you run the program. Copy the ORGANIZE.SUB file included onto this disk to the disk on which you will be creating ORGANIZE.DAT. And then copy STAT.COM and SUBMIT.COM from your CP/M distribution disk onto your working copy of this program disk. Place the program disk in drive B and the DataDisk in Drive A. Typing B:ORGANIZE or B:SUBMIT ORGANIZE will then execute the program. You will be prompted for the number of Drives you are using. A minimum of two drives are required for this program. One to read from and one to write to. The more drives you have available the quicker this can go. The program will tell you from which drive it is going to read. You need only supply the name of the disk. You are allowed only 25 characters for this name so you may need to abbreviate. But keep the name you enter recognizable with the disk name you are reading. Page 2 With an 85K disk, 2177 files can be entered into the file. A maximum of 64 files can be read from a disk regardless of the storage capacity. Sixty four records on a disk is rare, so you probably be able to log over 100 disks. The maximum number of records the program can handle is slightly over 32000. This would require a 1 meg disk to reach this value so you need not worry about having too many records for the program, just your disk space. Based on the K information given, the program may abort because the disk is getting too full. If you get this error then the file will close and your work will not be lost. This condition is determined from the program and not from the actual disk property. Therefore the disk really is not full, but continuing any farther would be risky. If the program aborts in the middle of a directory with a Disk is full error, then this was triggered from the actual physical property of the disk. Since there is not enough room on the disk to close the file the program will not close it. However, all of your work may not be lost. If this is the case, then the program COPYFILE.COM will need to be run to fix this error condition. ORGASORT.COM This is the program for printing the file ORGANIZE.DAT. You can have your print-out in one of four formats. They are as follows. A. Sorts by Extensions. This is very useful in identifying like files. Example: LETTERS BAK APPLE BAS BROWN BAS MBASIC COM WORDWRIT COM B. Sorts by Filename. Example: ASM COM MBASIC COM ROBOTNIM BAS TURBO COM ZSINE BAS C. Sorts by DiskName. This is according to the name you enter when creating ORGANIZE.DAT. The files will then be sorted according to B above within each Disk- Name. D. Straight Print. No sorting is done. The printout will be the same as was inputed into the file. In both C and D you will have your choice of having a separate page for each disk directory or continuous. Page 3 If you have over 1000 records (200 for 48K version) in your file, then you will need to use the SortDisk in drive A. This program requires you to use the DataDisk in Drive B. It is not necessary for the BIOS.SYS file to be on the disk at this time. If you received the Disk is full error and need to run COPYFILE.COM, then you could copy to a freshly formatted Disk. However, BIOS.SYS must be on the disk if you are creating ORGANIZE.DAT. A SortDisk can be prepared by you. It is a disk containing only BIOS.SYS which you can create with the CP/M program SYSGEN.COM. READFILE (ORGAUTIL.COM) This file simply displays the contents of ORGANIZE.DAT on the console. ORGANIZE.DAT must be in Drive A. Use Ctrl-S to start and stop the screen. The display will stop every 22 records with the prompt -- MORE --. If you want to view the next page, then press any key except Ctrl-C or Ctrl-B. Ctrl-C will cause the program to stop. Ctrl-B will display the previous screen. Should one of the above errors mentioned occur, then this program can be used to determine if the data was saved to the disk. It also can show you your first and last entries if a session was interrupted. If ORGANIZE.COM finds ORGANIZE.DAT on the Disk, then it will just add to the existing file. SEARCH.BAS This program requires MBASIC.COM to run. This was my original program for finding a program when I knew the name and not the location. The print- outs are easier and quicker to use than this program. I have not been able to give this one up because I find that many of the programs I'm looking for have been written since my last session with The Organizer. And I wasn't diligent to keep up the changes in the notebook (as you were exhorted to do above). Since the source code is included, you may edit this program to fit your needs. It assumes a three drive system and that disks are in all three drives. Enter Ctr-C to stop the program. At the start of the program you are prompted for the file you are looking for. You must enter this correctly. If the file is not on the disk then you will receive the message Not on this Disk. If the file is on a disk it will display the filename. Recently, I was looking for a program I had written a few months earlier. As I was looking through my notebook, I realized that this program had been written since my last update, and I hadn't entered it in the note- book. Since I had an employee waiting to use this program and I was paying her to let ME look for it I had her run this program. (By the way, I found this one in my notebook, so I know which disk it is on.) But there was one other problem. I couldn't remember the name of the program. However, I did remember that I had written it in Pascal. Now, I have over 200 Pascal files of programs, procedures etc. But looking through these is easier then reading through a directory of every disk. I have approximately 1700 files at this writing. So I had her enter *.PAS for the filename to search. We found the file in about 15 minutes and then we were off and running. Had this been in the notebook, I probably could have located it in less than a minute. Without Search and without the notebook, I probably would have given up after a couple of hours. (I say that from experience by the way). Page 4 My current directory is printed on 32 pages, which is less than a dollars worth of paper. The time wasted in trying to find files would pay for several directories. Therefore, it is worth it to me to have current directories in more than one of the above formats available from ORGASORT.COM. I would recommend you use A, B, and C. With C you can have a separate page for each disk, then when you add a file, or delete a file, you could write it on this sheet, or draw a line through a deleted file. This will keep your notebook current until your next session with The Organizer. I suggest that you experiment with 3 or 4 disks, and the above programs before doing a complete directory on your disks. You wouldn't want to lose hours of work because you didn't know how to run the programs. Play close attention to the instructions in each program. Disks must be in the proper places to avoid aborting the programs. The programs really are simple to run, so let's get Organized! DECEMBER 1986 -- additions to version 2.01 COPYFILE.COM, READFILE.COM, and DST.COM have been combined into the program ORGAUTIL.COM (ORGAnizer UTILities). In "The Organizer" file creation program the following editing features were added. ^S moves the cursor left. ^D moves the cursor right. ^Y deletes from the cursor to the end of the line. ^A Homes the cursor. ^F sends the cursor to the end of the line. Backspaces deletes to left of cursor. "Delete" key and ^G delete at the cursor. Typing any character from ascii 32 to ascii 127 inserts in the text at the cursor. The name of the last disk entered is displayed on the screen. Beginning with the last disk updated in the file "ORGANIZE.DAT". Several "bugs" were fixed. It is now easier to "back out" of the programs. The program now computes the available disk space and is no longer limited to 90K diskettes. Although 64 entries per disk is still the limit. VIEW is in the ORGAUTIL program. This program will allow you to view a text file or erase it from the disk. Should a BDOS error occur, then execute GO.COM. If GO.COM is not on your disk enter the following at the A>SAVE 0 GO.COM A>GO This will get you back in the program.