

                             The Disk Doctor


                             The Disk Doctor
                   copyright 1985, 1986 Daniel Matejka

                      from Antic; the Atari Resource

         The Disk Doctor is provided on an unprotected disk because
    the author and Antic both believe that the buyer should be able to
    make backup copies for his or her use ONLY. Because it is
    unprotected, we expect you to respect the copyright and NOT give,
    sell or even lend copies of this program to anyone else. Nor
    should you accept a copy from anyone; it's the same thing as
    giving one away.


         The author spent many hours designing, developing, testing
    and writing this program. His income depends on its sales - an
    individual just like you who must work for a living. Pirate copies
    hurt him and make it less than worthwhile to continue to write
    quality products for this market if they are going to be stolen
    from him. Many other people worked to make this package what it
    is; the testers, marketing people, shippers, documentation writer:
    pirate copies make everyone's efforts less valuable and discourage
    quality efforts in the future.


         The term piracy makes it sound like copying programs
    illegally is exciting, outlaw-ish and brave. It isn't. Piracy is
    theft. It's as illegal as shoplifting or burglary in the eyes of
    the law. Please help to discourage it so that we may continue to
    provide you with unprotected software as good as this.


         No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
    retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means
    electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
    without prior written permission of the publisher. Antic and the
    author take no responsibility for any damage resulting from use or
    misuse of this program, nor do we have any liability for any
    losses, financial or otherwise incurred from the results of using
    this program. This is a powerful program and its potential for
    damage and error is significant in the hands of a novice. Make
    sure you know how to use it properly before attempting to work
    with valuable data or files.


    Antic is a trademark of Antic Publishing Inc.

    Documentation by Dan Matejka and Ian Chadwick










                           Introduction: Page 1




                             The Disk Doctor



    Overview of the Disk Doctor

         The Disk Doctor works on an Atari ST with one or two floppy
    disk drives and/or a hard disk drive. It works in monochrome or
    medium-resolution but not low-resolution. Before you use it, we
    recommend you back up the disk and all the files and store the
    original in a safe place.


         Before the Disk Doctor can do anything useful, you must open
    either a file or disk with which to work. All "opening" does is
    fix the program's attention on one file or disk in particular. To
    look at something else, first close whatever is open and then open
    that new item.


         Opening a disk allows you to access the boot sector and
    directory information, as well as the files on the disk. An ST
    disk is divided into 80 concentric circles called tracks, numbered
    from zero on the outside edge to 79 on the inside. Tracks are
    further subdivided into nine wedges called sectors. A sector - the
    smallest addressable amount of data on a disk - is 512 bytes long.
    There are 720 sectors on a disk, for a total of 360K.


         The disk is a holding place for files. Since it can hold more
    than one file, it must in addition to the files themselves contain
    a directory listing these files and where on the disk they are. A
    disk also generally contains a "boot sector," which tells the
    computer either (a) how to start up when turned on, or (b) that it
    doesn't know how to tell the computer that and please look
    elsewhere. On the Atari 520ST, the boot sector is the first sector
    on the disk (#0). The next several sectors are the directory
    mentioned earlier and the remainder of the space on the disk is
    for files.


         Space for files is allocated in clusters, explained further
    in the section on the File Allocation Table (FAT). A cluster is
    two sectors.


         When your intention is to look at a file, it is much easier
    to open the file directly because files are often not stored
    contiguously on the disk. Although files reside on disks, opening
    a disk is a different operation from opening a file.


         The Disk Doctor allows you to look directly at the data on a
    disk or in a file. You can change that data and write it back out
    to the disk. The Disk Doctor is also knowledgeable about the
    directory structure on the disk and can locate files, trace
    sectors links, patch up damaged disks or files and recover deleted
    files.



                           Introduction: Page 2




                             The Disk Doctor



         Closing does any cleaning up that needs to be done on a
    changed file and tells the Disk Doctor to unfix its attention in
    preparation for fixing it on something new. "Cleaning up" is
    something the operating system insists is done and is all
    automatic. The Disk Doctor never leaves an unclean disk around
    unless the computer is turned off, or you remove the disks without
    first closing.


         Quit stops the program and returns to the desktop. You can
    quit either through the menu or by holding the control key down
    and hitting the "Q" key. Several other commands are activated by
    control keys as shown on the menus.


         It's recommended that you read the help files through first
    before you attempt to use this program in order to get a better
    understanding of how it works and how a disk is constructed. For a
    permanent record, print them out and study them at length. When
    printing or displaying, the space bar pauses and the Return key
    stops.




































                           Introduction: Page 3


