68K USER'S MANUAL
Assuming that your terminal supports the BELL character (ASCII $07), the BEEP command will sound the bell (or beep) at each SK*DOS: prompt from then on. This is a useful function if you like to walk away from your computer while it is doing a lengthy task.
Once the BEEP command is given, the bell will sound until the computer is rebooted, or until the NOBEEP command is used to cancel BEEP. .
SK*DOS (R) 68K USER'S MANUAL
BUILD
BUILD is used to generate a text file on the disk. BUILD is not intended to replace a more general purpose editor;
instead, BUILD might be used for testing or generating simple ftIes.
The BUILD command line must include the name of the ftIe to be generated. This is usually done by including a file specification after the word BUILD, as in this example:
BUILD TEXT
The ftIe specification defaults to a .TXT extension unless specified otherwise, and also assumes the current working drive.
While entering text with the BUILD command, you may correct any line by backspacing and retyping a character. Or, while still in the middle of a line, you may erase the entire line and start it over by hitting the control-X key. Once the line is entered by hitting the carriage return key, however, it is stored and cannot be changed. In other words, BUILD is not an editor.
The BUILD program ignores control characters, and is limited to a maximum line length of 127 characters.
To end entering text, type a # character at the beginning of a new line.
SK*DOS (R) 68K USER'S MANUAL
CACHE
The CACHE command is used to set up a disk cache; that is, a memory area which stores data read from or written to a floppy disk. When SK*DOS tries to subsequently read that data again, it reads it from the cache memory rather than reading it from the physical disk itself. This significantly speeds up disk operations.
There are three ways of calling the CACHE command:
SK*DOS : CACHE NEW <memory size in K>
sets up a new cache memory of the specified size. For example, the command CACHE NEW 320K would set up a 320K cache memory area. The specified cache memory can range from 32K to 1024K (actually 1 megabyte) in size.
Another way of calling CACHE is with SK*DOS : CACHE <drive number>
which erases (,flushes') all data from the cache which corresponds to the specified logical drive number.
Finally, the command
SK*DOS: CACHE STATUS
displays a status report of the cache memory, including the memory size, the number of sectors it can store, the number of sectors currently empty, and the actual number of sectors currently stored for each floppy drive.
Note that CACHE only saves data for floppy disks; it does not store data for the
RAM
disk (since that would just duplicate data already in RAM) or a hard disk (since hard disks are generally almost as fast as the cache memory).Hence the memory assigned to CACHE is used only for floppy disk data.
The CACHE program can be used in addition to RAMDISK, but if both are used together, then the RAMdisk must be set up first. The reason for this requirement is that this allows the RAMdisk memory to be above the cache memory. If SK*DOS is subsequently rebooted, there is a greater chance of the RAMdisk data being preserved since it is in higher memory. The cache memory, on the other hand, is always erased when rebooting. (This also serves to explain why the cache memory size can be changed while RAMdisk memory size cannot.)
Although CACHE can use anywhere from 32K to 1024K (i.e., one megabyte) of memory, the actual size chosen depends on the application. If you merely intend to use a floppy disk for a few files, then 32K or 64K might be sufficient. If, on the other hand, you intend to do extensive processing with one disk, then the size should be about 20% larger than the size of the floppy disk (since CACHE needs some extra memory for its data storage and for 'elbow room'.) If you have several floppy drives, then the cache memory should be large enough to accommodate all of the expected floppy disk operations on all drives.
SK*DOS (R) 68K USER'S MANUAL
When you intend to use a single floppy for extensive operations, you can greatly speed up processing by reading the entire floppy into the cache at the beginning (assuming that the cache memory is large enough to hold the disk's contents.) This is easily done by doing a CHECKSUM on the disk, which reads the entire disk and (coincidentally) stores it in the cache memory. Once this is done, SK*DOS will no longer need to read that disk at all; it will only access the disk for writing.
Note that CACHE only stores floppy data; in fact, it goes by the physical drive number rather than the logical drive number. Hence if you use the DRIVE command to reassign a drive's logical drive number (but don't swap diskettes in the drive) CACHE will 'follow' the diskette to its new logical drive number.
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<j::SK*DOS 4i) 68K USER'S MANUAL