A long time ago, when computers still used floppy disks, there was a need to duplicate the contents of these floppies. Amiga X-Copy was one of the most well known disk copying programs for the Commodore Amiga series of computers, with countless users all across the world.
There were also many hacked versions of X-Copy in existence, modified by members of the Amiga community. As per the copyright owner’s wishes,this site will focus only on the original releases.
X-COPY III, and later the final version, X-COPY Pro, were the most popular Amiga copy programs. They were capable of bit-by-bit copying, also called “nibbling”. Although incapable of true multitasking, the programs were capable of taking advantage of Amiga configurations with multiple floppy drives; for instance, on Amiga systems with four floppy drives, X-COPY was capable of simultaneously copying from a source drive to three others. Coupled with excellent bit-by-bit replication capabilities, these features made X-COPY the de facto standard for copying floppy disks on the Amiga.
When X-Copy copied disks, it wrote a green zero for each track that was successfully copied. However if an error occurred, a red number was written instead. Many wondered what those numbers meant.
Here is a list, taken from X-Copy 2.x
- Less or more than 11 sectors
- No sync found
- No sync after gap found
- Header checksum error
- Error in header/format long
- Data block checksum error
- Long track
- Verify error
XCOPY MANUAL:
X-Copy Professional is an advance on X-Copy II which itself was
an update on the original X-Copy program. In its Professional re-incarnation, it boasts hard disc
backup and file copying facilities. The other modes, options and functions have
all been re-written and we feel that X-Copy Professional is not only the most
essential piece of software for the Amiga, but also one of the most simple to
use. Please note that in order to make backup copies of copyrighted material,
permission must be granted by the copyright owner. Different laws apply to
different countries and in some countries parts of this program may not be
lawfully used. X-Copy Professional has been designed to make back up copies of
your own software, public domain software etc.
Included with this package should be a registration card, please fill in the
card and send it to the address on the card.
X-COPY PROFESSIONAL
On the X~Copy Professional disc you will find a handful of programs. Below is a
description of the programs and their functions.
X-COPY PROFESSIONAL is the main program on the disc. This program allows you to
make back up copies of floppy discs, format floppy discs etc.
XPHESS is a hard disc backup. It will backup your hard disc onto floppy discs.
XLENT is a file copier. It will copy files to and from Ramdisc , floppy discs as
well as hard discs.
CYCLONE allows protected discs to be copied. It requires the use of an external
disc drive and the small cartridge that came with the X-Copy Professional
package .
Other files include X-COPY- CONFIG, this allows the X-Copy Professional program
to be re-configured for a particular use. QED is a text editor whose
instructions are on the disc in the form of a text file. X-It enables discs to
be scrambled so that they can only be used by the password holder.
Also on the disc will be a folder titled ‘MANUAL’. Please read the files in this
folder as they will contain information regarding the latest release of the
software.
Turn on your Amiga and when the WORKBENCH prompt appears, insert the X-COPY
PROFESSIONAL disc. You will then be presented with a menu displaying all the
programs that are on the disc. To select a program, simply press the function
key that corresponds to it.
USING X -COP Y PROFESSIONAL
On the screen you will see various icons, numbers, boxes etc. It may look
confusing at first, but you will quickly realize how simple X-Copy professional
is to use. ”
COPY – by positioning the mouse and clicking on this button, the various copying
modes can be selected. The four modes are Doscopy, Dos copy +,Bamcopy+
and Nibble copy. Doscopy is a fast copier which will backup Amigados discs.
It does not correct any errors that may be on the source disc.
Doscopy* is similar in operation to Doscopy, however any errors that it finds on
the source disc will be corrected on the copied disc.
Bamcopy+ is extremely fast, it copies the used tracks on the disc and therefore
does not waste time copying areas of the disc that are empty. It also corrects
errors found on the source disc.
Nibble is a slow but powerful copying mode. It will backup some protected discs
as well as those from other computers, including IBM, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes
etc.
To select, simply click on the relevant mode.
TOOLS -by clicking on this button , various tools will present themselves. These
include Optimise, Format, Qforroat, Erase, Install, Speedcheck & Kilisys.
OPTIMIZE- Re-organises the date on your discs allowing files to be loaded in
faster. This option requires at least Imb of memory to work. Do not
use this tool on original discs, use it only on back up copies.
FORMAT – Will format a disc in 36 seconds (approx).
QForraat — Formats tracks and 40 and removes the directory and name of the disc.
EKASK – Turns a formatted disc into an unformatted disc.
INSTALL – Installs a bootblock onto a disc. There are three options:- XCOPY , DOS
or Ncboot. X-Copy bootblock is a virus checking bootblock. When a disc
with this Bootblock is booted, it will automatically detect if a virus
is on the disc. Dos bootblock simply boots up AmigaDos . Noboot
installs a non-bootable bootblock.
SPREDCHK- Works out the speed of the disc drive by seeing how many bytes can be
written onto a track. Please use a blank disc when using this function
as it will corrupt the disc.
DR1VES0N- When you turn on your Amiga it will automatically detect how many disc
drives are switched on and attached to it:. If you have a drive
connected but not switched on, it will not be detected. This option
will enable your Amiga into thinking that it has 4 disc drives
connected to it. If you use this option, you will also have to
physically switch on the disc drives.
KILLSYS – Can be used to free memory that the operating system normally uses. It
is particularly useful on a 512K machine. Please note that if you use
KILLSYS you will have to exit X-Copy by resetting the computer.
When copying discs, the start and end track and side can be selected as can the
sync. In most cases, this will not be necessary.
The DEVICE, either HAM or DISC can be selected. Use RAM on a single drive system
or when making multiple copies. Copy the data from the original disc into RAM
and make multiple copies from RAM onto destination disc.
Once an option has been selected, click on the START box to initiate the option.
The REPEAT box should be clicked on when making multiple copies of a disc. To
abort an operation, click on the STOP box.
DISK INFO will display the name of the disc, the amount of free space and also
the number of free sectors on each track (0~f hexadecimal } .
DIRECTORY will display a directory of the disc.
CHECKDISK will check all the tracks on the disc for errors. For tracks not
conforming to Amigados, a red error number will be displayed. These numbers are
as follows: –
DEFAULT resets all options to their default settings.
SOURCE and TARGET drives can be selected by clicking on the light bulb icon
positioned above and below the relevant disc icon, by clicking twice on a
target drive light bulb, verification mode is selected. A red “V” appears in the
bulb to indicate that it has been selected.
TO EXIT from X-COPY PROFESSIONAL, position the pointer in the top left hand
corner of the screen and click once. This will return you to Workbench. Please
note that if KILLSYS has been selected, you will need to reset to exit from
X-COPY PROFESSIONAL.
The X-COPY-CONFIG program, loadable from workbench enables you to configure
X-COPY PROFESSIONAL to suite your own needs. Select the source and destination
discs, copy mode etc and exit from the program (cursor top left, left mouse
button). Your configuration will be saved to disc and next time you load X-COPY
PROFESSIONAL it will configure itself to your given preferences.
CYCLONE
The CYCLONE program on the X-COPY PROFESSIONAL disc will enable Amiga users with
access to an external disc drive to make back up copies of discs that the nibble
mode on X-COPY PROFESSIONAL could not copy.
The small cartridge in the X-COPY PROFESSIONAL box should be plugged into the
external disc drive port at the rear of the Amiga and your external disc drive
should then be plugged into the back of the cartridge. Please ensure that your
Amiga is not plugged in whist inserting/removing the cartridge and disc drives.
Cyclone has four copying modes, standard nibble, deep nibble, APWM (Adaptive
Pulse Width Modulation) deep nibble mode and APWM index copy- To select the
required mode, simply press the space bar on the keyboard until the mode is
selected.
STANDARD NIBBLE MODE – Is relatively speedy and will back up dos discs.
BEEP NIBBLE MODE – Is an extremely powerful disc copying mode,
it will cope with all but the most heavily protected discs.
It is not lightening fast,but it will back up the vast majority of discs.
APWM DEEP NIBBLE MODE – This is more powerful than the deep nibble mode-
It works by synchronizing the two disc drives together
and keeping them locked at a constant speed.
It is slower than the other modes, but its performance makes up for its lack
of speed.
APWM INDEX MODE – Works in a similar way to APWM deep nibble mode. It uses a
different method of synchronizing the disc drives. Try it as a last resort.
SPEED CHECK – To use this mode, insert discs in both drives and you will see
displayed the RPM of both drives. The ideal speed should be 300RPM.
Press the ESC to quit this mode.
You can select the start track/side by using the up/down arrow keys on your
keyboard and the end track/side buy using the left arrow keys.
To start copying discs, simply put the source disc in DFO and the blank disc in
DF1:. Select the copying mode and then hit the ENTER key on your keyboard to
start the operation.
As the copying process is taking place, the colored lights will appear on the
grids to indicate which track is currently being copied.
The colour of thelights is not significant although most of them
will appear green.
IT IS IMPORTANT that the blank disc used for copying onto with Cyclone are
unused and unformatted discs. If a disc that you have copied fails to load, do a
repeat copy onto the same disc using Cyclone. This will leave a stronger signal
onto the disc.
We strongly recommend the use of HIGH DENSITY DISCS as opposed to
DOUBLE DENSITY DISCS for use with the Cyclone program.
If you make a copy of a disc with Cyclone, then Cyclone will be unable to make a
copy from the copied disc.
XLENT is an extremely useful file handling tool that allows you to copy,
move, delete and rename files. It is particularly handy for copying files from a
floppy disc to a hard disc or ram disc etc.
Load the program by double clicking on its icon, and once loaded you will see
the screen split essentially into two halves. Above the two windows, you
will see various boxes showing which devices are available to the system.
Devices are floppy disc drives, hard drives and the Hamdisc. On a standard
machine two boxes will appear, BAM and DFO: – SAM is the Ramdisc and DFO: is the
internal floppy disc drive. On an expanded machine, up to four floppy drives are
recognised (DFO:, DF1 : , DF2 : & DF3:) and a hard disc drive. Above the drive
selectoe boxes are the function select boxes. These are copy, move, delete,
rename, makedir, all, clear, and finally CANCEL.
The two large boxes that take up the majority of the screen represent the file
selector boxes. Functions, such as delete work on the active file box. To
activate a box, position the cursor over it and press the left mouse button. The
border of the activated box will highlight.
XLENT follows the protocol laid down by Amigados .
In order to appoint a file selector box to a device* simply position the mouse
pointer inside the file selector box and click the left mouse button. Now
position the mouse pointer onto the required device box and click again. The box
should now fill with the names of the files on the disc in the device.
Before you can copy files etc, you have to select the relevant files. To select
a file, simply position the pointer on to the filename and click. The filename
will now be highlighted. To deselected, a file, simply click on it again. In
order to prevent files from being accidentally deselected, you cannot deselect a
file immediately after you have selected it. So if you select a file and then
decide to deselect it, position the pointer outside the file selector box and
away from any other icons, now click once, return the pointer to the name of the
file to be deselected and click again. For all operations, you can select
multiple files.
COPY – Simply copies all the selected files from the active file selector
box onto the device appointed to the other file selector box.
HOVE – Performs the same function as copy, but deletes the file from the
source device.
DELETE – Erase a file from the device. You will be prompted to confirm that
you want to delete the selected files, but you will not be prompted
for each individual file.
SEKAME – Allows you to give a new filename. If multiple file names are
selected, you will only be able to rename the first file. Using this
option will also enable the files path to be altered.
PARENT – If you enter a sub-directory (by clicking on its name), you can
return to the parent directory with this option.
MAKEDIR – Enables you to create a sub -directory with a specified name.
The new sub-directory will appear on the active device.
ALL – Selects all the files in the current directory on the active device.
CLEAR – Deselects all currently selected files.
CANCEL – Stops the current operation.
Beside the above functions, there are six pull down menus that allow other
features to be accessed.
The XLENT menu has two options :
QUIT – Exits from the XLENT program.
SLEEP – Exits from XLENT, however it leaves XLENT resident on the workbench
screen. It can then be activated by simply clicking on its gadget.
The OPTIONS menu contains the following options :-
UNPROTECT – Enables you to over copy protected files without double checking.
OVERWRITE If an object already exists in the target directory, overwrite enables you to replace it with the selected file without double checking,
SKIPPING – When copying files, if a file exists on the destination device with
the same name, date, flags then the file will not be copied.
This is in order to speed up the copying operation.
NOCHEGK – When copying files, XLENT checks to see that there is sufficient
room on the destination disc. When copying files to the Ramdisc,
it is important to have this option selected otherwise XLENT will think that
the Ramdisc is full.
DEFAULTHEX- Displays non ASCII files in a hex dump format.
DOUBLEVIEW- Checks to see if a viewer is implemented and uses it if available.
On the FILES menu the following functions appear:
SELECT – allows you to enter a string of text and any file in the active box
with a similar name will be selected. Wildcards are denoted
by the use of the ‘?’ and ‘*’ characters.
i.e. ‘MAN‘ will select •MANCHESTER, ‘MANTIS’ etc.
DESELECT – This works in the same way as select above, however files are
deselected instead of selected-
BYTES – Counts and displays the total number of bytes used by the selected files.
SEARCH – Searches through the selected files to see if a given file is
currently selected.
COMMENT – Allows you to view the comment attached to the file and alter it if
it exists or create a new one if it does not exist.
INFO – This will display the name of the disc and how much empty space is
left on ther disc.
PRINT DIR – Enables you to printout a hardcopy of the currently selected files.
On the DISK menu the following options appear: –
INFO – Displays the name and space allocation of the selected device.
RELABEL – Displays the discs label which can then be altered.
MEMORY – Displays the total amount of free memory.
On the DISPLAY menu the following options appear:-
DATE – Displays the file creation date next to the file.
FLAGS – Displays the various system flags attached to the file.
NONE – Turns off the above two options.
REVERSE – Selected entries filenames are shown in reverse colours if this
option is selected otherwise they just have a different colour.
READ &SORT- Puts the files in alphabetical order when reading a directory.
On the CONFIG menu the following options appear:-
SET CUSTOM GADGET:- There are 14 custom gadgets at the bottom of the screen
that can be configured for your own use I To use this option, click on the
set custom gadget option followed by the gadget to be configured. A
window will open allowing you to enter the name that will appear
on the gadget followed by the gadgets command. For example: –
Enter ‘XCOpy for the name and ‘DFOrXCOPYPRO 1 for the command.
‘XCOPY* will appear dn the gadget and clicking on it will load the
X-COPY Professional program from DFO :
SAVE CONFIG-Will save a config file which contains any custom gadgets
that have been set.
XPRESS is a hard disc back-up utility that enables you to copy your hard disc
onto floppy disc for archival and security purposes.
Load the program by double clicking on its icon. When you load XPRESS for the
first time, a window will appear announcing that there is no configuration file
available. When this appears simply click on ‘YES WHY HOT*.
The two main options are back up and restore.
Backup – Allows you to backup your hard disc onto floppy disc.
Restore- Allows you to restore your backup onto hard disc.
The backup options page allows you to set various options etc.
PATH TO BACKUP – Allows you to select the hard disc backup. Usually DHO:
FIRST BACKUP DEVICE – Select the first floppy disc that the hard disc will
be backed up onto.
SECOND BACKUP DEVICE – Selects the second floppy disc that the hard disc will be backed up onto.
BEEP AND FLASH – If an error occurs, the window will flash and give an
audible warning.
BACKUP PROTOCOL – Gives you the option to save a backup protocol at the end of
the backup. If this is selected you will be able to enter the path for
the protocol.
VERIFY – Switches verify on or off. We recommend that you leave verify
on at all times .
SET ARCHIVE FLAG- if you set the archive flag, the next time you backup your
hard disc, you can choose to backup only the files that have changed
since your last backup.
GO BACK takes you to the previous page, whilst GO ON takes you to the next part
of the program.
Once all the files have been selected, note how many discs you will need and
mark them 1 to X (X being the last disc) and an extra disc marked ‘TREE’
When you have selected all your options, click on the GO ON box and XPRESS
will begin to read the structure of the path on your hard disc. The file
selection box will appear in the centre of the page with the files and
directories in it. Use the scroll bars to find further files.
Choose the files to be copied by using the mouse and left button to
select/deselect files. If a directory contains sub-directories and files, they
also be displayed. If a directory is empty, you cannot select it.
The HOOT box selects the top directory of your chosen backup path as the active
directory. PARENT goes back to the parent directory of the current directory.
Under the CONDITION menu, the following functions are available.
UNSELECT – Unselect all files.
SELECT – Selects all files.
ARCHIVE – Selects all files that have been changed since the last backup if the
archive flag was set.
FILTER – Filters files by the criteria ARCHIVE, DATA and PATTERN. The status
of a file is changed only when all activated criteria are met.
DATE – Filters files according to the selected date-
PATTERR – Filters files by the filename pattern. Uses •** as a wildcard.
i.e. ‘MAN** will filter ‘MANCHESTER’, ‘MANLY’ , ‘MANDARIN’ ETC.
INCLUDE – Includes files which have been selected to filter.
EXCLUDE – Excludes files which have been selected to filter.
DONE – Stops filter.
XPHESS wil display how many bytes the backup contains and how many discs you wil
need for your backup. When you have finished your selection, press the done
option.
Once everything is selected, you are ready for the backing up to begin. All you
have to do is to change discs when prompted to. Discs do not need to be
pre-formatted. You can stop the back-up process by clicking on the ABORT box.
When the backup has been completed, you will be asked for a tree disc. On this
disc XPHESS will save the tree (directory) of the backup. This disc is
important and is needed when you restore the backup.
RESTORE
This operation takes the backed up date on the floppy discs and puts it onto the
hard disc. Naturally it is the opposite of the backup operation.
The parameter page of restore is very similar to the parameter page on the
backup section. The differences are:
OVERWRITE FILES ~ Selects if files on the backup discs should overwrite files
on the hard disc if they have the same filename.
CLEAR ARCHIVE – Selects if the archive flags of the files which are to be
restored should be reset or not. If they are reset it means
that they are recognised as new files-
When XPRESS asks you to insert the tree disc of the backup, please do so and
select ‘DONE’. if you do not enter a tree disc or select ‘ABORT’ the restore
process is aborted.
The file selection box is exactly the same as the one in the backup process,
however it will not display how many disc are needed.
If you forget which is your tree disc or you do not know the number of a back
up disc, you can find out by loading up workbench and inserting you discs. An
icon should appear for the disc. The name for the icon will either be TREE
(for the tree disc), or a number in the form of Xnnn. i.e. X023 means back up
disc 23.
X-COPY PROFESSIONAL is copyright Siren Software.
This manual has been written by Simon Cobb. Copyright Siren Software 1992.
Produced by Siren Software.
This document or the software described in it may not, in whole or in part be
copied, printed, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium
or machine readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Siren Software,
This software and hardware (c)Siren Software 1992. All rights reserved.
This product is intended for the use of the original purchaser only.
Transfer of licence is only by written permission of Cachet.
Duplication for the purpose of a back up is allowed,
but duplication for the purpose of selling or
otherwise distribution of this product without written
permission from Cachet is a violation of the law.
Siren Software are the exclusive U.K. distributors of this product.
Siren Software. Wilton House. Bury Rd. Radcliffe. Manchester.
M26 9UR .
England. Tel. 061 724 7572 Fax 061 724 4893.
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