★ APPLICATIONS ★ DISQUE ★ ROMDOS XL|Amstrad Action) ★ |
| ROMDOS XL | Applications Disque |
ROMDOS XL is a development of the most well-known second drive operating system, ROMDOS, with a whole host of extra utilities glued onto the ROM. A file copier, a directory editor... too good to miss? Two things made the original ROMDOS so popular: the ability to deal with disks as one large 800K disk, rather than two 400K sides (which ROMDOS XL still does admirably) and the fact that it automatically detected formats. Here lies a problem. It doesn't do that any more. Or rather, it does... partially. It can differentiate between Dl, DIO, D2 and D20 formats (which are variants on the 700-800K disk theme), but place a normal format disk in and it complains loudly. This is a real shame, because you're only likely to use one of the four ROMDOS XL formats (two ROMDOS formats, D40 and D80, have disappeared), but compatibility problems will mean that you'll probably need to use normal format B: disks with certain programs. Thafs not to say that you can't use normal format disks - you can, but like other DOSses, you have to switch the extended formats off first. The disk utilities, accessed by |XL, include a fairly standard copier - like most of the others reviewed here, it won't copy with over-long files The other major utility is a directory editor, which includes the very useful facility to set files to Read Only, System (invisible) and other such attributes. However, one problem is that it only edits the first 64 files on a disk - not much use when all the formats support at least 128 files. ROMDOS XL isn't a bad program by any means, but it's not as good it could be. There are a few worryingly rough edges that need to be sorted, and the loss of automatic detection of normal formats eliminates one of its major advantages. AA
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