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Using your PC Card

5.6 Moving files between RISC OS and DOS

Transferring supplied drivers

A number of optional software items are supplied with the !PC software. The exact drivers supplied are likely to change with future releases, but currently consist of: 
  • Mouse driver.
  • CD-ROM driver and DOS extensions.
  • Sound utilities.
  • Windows driver. 
These drivers are described in the relevant sections of this manual, but there are some general principles associated with the transfer from the RISC OS !PC floppy to the DOS environment which we explain here. 

Drivers are found in the Drivers directory on the PC card software disc (which is actually a Spark archive, as this preserves the complete DOS filenames). Within this archive are subdirectories for each driver set. 

These files need to be transferred to your DOS partition. This is usually most easily done on the RISCOS desktop if you have RISCOS 3, (or using !MultiFS or similar if you have RISCOS 2). Note that if your partition is bigger than 32MB then you must install the new DOSFS module supplied in order to access it (see Installing DOSFS on page 10). 
 

  1. Double-click on your DOS partition icon. 
  2. This will open it up just like any other directory. 
  3. Double-click on the Drivers archive/directory. This will open it up .
  4. Drag files from the relevant directory inside Drivers to your DOS partition. 
  5. You are now using DOSFS to read from and write to your DOS partition file. This is completely independent of the PC Card. 
  6. The Windows drivers are installed by Windows and are put in the Windows/System directory automatically. 
  7. Most other drivers can be placed where you want to put them. 
  8. The mouse driver (AMOUSE.COM) and CDROM driver (A1CD.SYS) are best put into your DOS directory, or the root directory, so that they are easily found by DOS.

    9. Utility files like SNDTST.EXE can go wherever you like

General file transfer

 
It is convenient to be able to transfer files from RISCOS to DOS and back on the Desktop. However, there are some restrictions to what you can do. It is always safe to read files (drag files out) from DOS, but you must never write into (drag files into) the DOS partition whilst !PC is running. You will corrupt your disc. 

To read files from DOS you must: 

  1. Close the !PC window (or choose Freeze from the !PC icon bar menu) before opening the DOS partition. 
  2. Copy files in the usual way. 

    3. Note that you must copy a file, not move it, as this involves writing to the DOS drive (when the moved file is deleted).

To write files to the DOS partition you must: 
  1. Close your PC applications
  2. Quit !PC, before opening the DOS partition. 
  3. Move, copy, or delete files in the usual way.
Note that these restrictions do not apply to floppy discs, which can be freely written to, both from the desktop and from DOS, although the directories in DOS and RISC OS may not stay in sync. 
  • When using floppies, take care to dismount DOS format floppies by choosing Dismount from the floppy drive icon bar menu. If you do not dismount the disc in this way it is likely that some data will not be written to it as expected. 

Aleph One Ltd. 34-36

 
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