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MiniSport Laptop Hacker (TM) - Vol #26. December 1994
To discourage pecuniary interests, Copyright (c) 1994 Brian Mork
>>> ADMIN
Index issue follows! Compendiums of all issues are available from
ftp.cs.buffalo.edu as \pub\ham-radio\mlhackXX.zip, or on SimTel archives
(eg. oak.oakland.edu) as \SimTel\msdos\packet\mlhackXX.zip. The XX in
the filename indicates the last issue number, and replaces the previous
convention of using mlhacker.zip for all compendiums.
The 1995 astronaut class has been selected. My previous aircraft
commander made the cut. Nineteen people out of thousands. I'm
extremely happy for him, but the announcement finalizes the fact that I
wasn't selected this round. The next round starts (for active duty
military) in April '95, with potential final announcement November-ish.
Wish me the best this time around.
I have a Linux 1.0.9 kernel up and running on my main system's boot
drive. I used the Slackware 2.0.0 distribution from Internet. Any
other Linux users out there? It's been a *long* time since I've messed
around with Unix. I kind of feel like I have the bases covered:
486DX/66MHz Unix (better than the college computer I learned on), a 1MHz
64K RAM, CP/M computer, and Minisports in between.
>>> MORE DISK SPACE
I've received confirmation from the field that Stacker works great on
the Minisport. Jim Harvey has done some extensive testing on a 2MB
Minisport. I managed to get the whole deal onto my 1MB Minisport.
Results on the 2MB were two RAM drives: 150K and 2.5M. On the 1MB,
you'll get one 560K drive rather than one 349K drive. Jim's notes
follow.
----- cut here -----
Adventures with Stacker.
I bought a closeout copy of Stacker 1.12 for five bucks at a computer
show this past weekend and thought I would share the results of my
experiments on the Minisport ZL-2 ram disk.
Stacker creates a big hidden file on your hard drive which contains the
compressed data. It loads a driver in the CONFIG.SYS file which
intercepts disk I/O and routes it to the compressed pseudo drive. The
conventional (under 640k) memory overhead for the driver is about 40k.
I decided to swap the D: (uncompressed) and E: (compressed) drives as
described in the Stacker documentation. I backed up my ram disk and
tried the standard Stacker install program. It worked, but then had
trouble booting because of a problem in a special AUTOEXEC file it
created. I had to delete most of the files on the ram disk anyway to
make working room for Stacker. The compression in place (Incremental
method) worked but was less than satisfactory, as most of my data had to
be saved and restored anyway, the Stacker files ate up most of the space
gained, and the standard install program only takes space in whole
megabyte increments which left a large part of the D: drive
uncompressed. On the Minisport, the choices are one meg or none.
I decided to try installing the program manually to tweak the
compression. A couple of hours of experimentation later, I arrived at
the following procedure for a minium Stacker installation (aren't all
Minisport owners Minimalists?)
1. FWL the Stacker files to a Minisport floppy.
2. Back up everything on your ram disk to floppys or via FWL to a PC.
3. Format your D: ram drive. Reboot to flush any TSRs out of memory
that could interfere with Stacker.
4. Insert the Stacker floppy into the Minisport drive. Log on to the
A: drive.
5. Enter the command:
SCREATE D:STACVOL.000 /S=1.2 /M
6. When the compressed drive file has been created, copy the stacker
drivers to your D: drive with the following commands:
COPY A:STACKER.COM D:
COPY A:SSWAP.COM D:
7. Now you must create a CONFIG.SYS to install the Stacker drivers.
The following entries will do this...
COPY CON: D:\CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=D:\STACKER.COM D:\STACVOL.000
DEVICE=D:\SSWAP.COM D: E:
^Z
That last line is a Control-Z character. If you previouly had
other setup commands in a D:CONFIG.SYS file, you can add them now
or edit them in later. These two device commands are the minimum
to get Stacker going with the compressed drive swapped to D:
8. Reboot. You should see Stacker installing, then the E: and D:
drives swapping places. You will be asked if you want to set time
and date, this is because there is no AUTOEXC.BAT file on the
compressed drive yet. Just hit the return key for now.
9. CHKDSK will show you a D: drive with about 2.5 megs available, and
an E: with about 150k available. Restore all your backed up files
including any AUTOEXEC.BAT. Reboot and all should be normal.
There are several Stacker utilities that you may want to keep on the D:
drive besides the two drivers. I'd recommend SCHECK at least, it gives
compression statistics on the new pseudo drive. If you put these or
other utilities on the E: drive, you should add E:\ to the PATH
statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT on D:. Remember that the E: drive is the
uncompressed one after SSWAP.COM flops the letters.
The above is based on Stacker 1.12, not exactly the latest version, it
dates from early DOS 5.0 days. But this should encourage other
Minisport owners to try compression programs and report the results. My
experiment yielded about a 1.1 meg increase in available ram disk with,
to me at least, an acceptable overhead in loading time and low memory
usage.
I have obtained five copies of Stacker Version 1 as described in the
article. I will sell these for $8.00 including shipping. Jim Harvey,
18538 Inkster, Redford, Mich 48240
----- cut here -----
Jim's steps worked great for me. On the 1MB Minisport, I used /S=0.3 on
the command line to SCREATE. That leaves just enough room for the
STACKER.COM file, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and a CONFIG.SYS. There will be
literally 0 bytes left, so there's no room for the SSWAP.COM. My
AUTOEXEC.BAT file moves over to E:, and makes the path search E: and C:.
D: is left pretty much out of the picture, because there is simply no
room for anything. Even, for example, if you edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file, you'll probably have trouble because with the old file left as
a .BAK file, there will be no room to save the new file!
Please provide feedback! * Direct data 1-509-244-9260
* ARO Net KA9SNF@ka7fvv.#ewa.wa.usa
* Internet bmork@opus-ovh.spk.wa.us
73, Brian * 6006-B Eaker, Fairchild, WA 99011