Your Top 3 Favourite & Most Used Amiga Utils....

[Franko]

What's you three favourite and most used utility programs that you use on your Amiga's that you just couldn't do without...
(PS:I'm talking here about proper utils DPaint etc...  and not things like patches, FBlit, MUI etc... )

For me it's :-

1) DirWork- I spend about 80% of my time on the Amiga doing almost everything from it (much easier and more powerful to use than Workbench), viewing files (docs, guides, html, pictures), playing audio (mods, 8SVX, aiff's, MP3's) editing text files, copying files, copying partitions/ HD's/ floppies/ CD's & DVD's, mounting partitions DVD/CD drives etc... and far too many other things to mention (plus it's a good example of a program that uses a third mouse button and scrollwheel)...

2)ADVDutils- a small set of utils I wrote for burning DVD's on the Amiga...

3)ImageFX - For Gfx/ Photo editing...

Here's a wee video of my customised version of DirWork in action, showing some of the stuff I use it for on a daily basis (even for playing audio cd's and mixing them with the Amiga's audio)...

[youtube]spVzlw5swGc[/youtube]

PS:sorry for the incoherent babbling I was pretty tired when I made that video...

[Franko]

Noticed most folk seem to have DOpus in their list, never liked DOpus meself wasn't as configurable or as flexible as DirWork in my opinion especially the version that sorta let you "replace" workbench...

Reckon if you like the original "FileList Style" version of DOpus you should check out DirWork Ver 2.1 and see just what you can make this wee gem of program do...

[Franko]

1. Multiview
2. Clock
3. More

2 & 3... :eek: You're having a laugh aint ya... (I hope)... :eek:

[Franko]

@ Brian

DirWork 2.1 was a commercial product sold by Chris Hames of Quaser Products (Australia) way back in 94. I'm pretty sure it was given away free at a later date on a magazine coverdisk/cd at some point (can't remember which but I'll find out)....

You can have as many or as few buttons as you like in DirWork and they can be placed horizontally or vertically or anywhere you choose in fact. DirWork can be a window that opens at any size on your Workbench screen or it can open on it's own screen with whichever number of colours you choose...

You can use DirWork in a way that you can't with DOpus, for example you could configure DirWork to be an app or game launcher on you're Workbench screen as it's down to the person using it just what you want it to do or how you want it to look...

DirWork would be best thought of as a GUI or frontend for any program or app you want on the Amiga and not just a file manager...


@ Retro_71

My DVD burning tools have been on AmiNet for the past year...
They might not work on your set up though as they were really only written for my own use but you can give them a try...

ADVDutils on AmiNet

[Franko]

@ Brian

Searching right now, I'll pm you when I find it...

Dirwork 2.1 was a vast improvement over earlier versions and is just a tad bigger but it's entirely self contained and only requires a small configuration file that you create with it's configuration editor...

Like I say it's way more configurable and flexible than DOpus and I often wonder why it never caught on as much by Amiga users...

[Franko]

It's on CU Amiga Cover CD17

I'll give it a try now.

Forgot to mention...

The original DirWork Ver 2.1 has a major flaw... :eek:

It can only handle filenames & path of up to 256 characters. The author at the time this was written (about 94) obviously thought that this was more than enough (and it was for the time) but with CDs/DVDs and bigger HDs path names kinda grew in some cases to really silly lengths which DirWork Ver 2.1 cant handle....

Solution- I disassembled it years ago into it's source code and fixed this bug and the version I now have can handle the longest filenames/ pathnames you can throw at it...

I doubt it would be ok for me to give away this version as it was after all a commercial product but I suppose I could  write a patch that would solve the problem by patching the original to the bug fixed version I use...

If anyone is interested in using DirWork and thinks it would be worthwhile me writing a patch for this bug so you can use it like I do then let me know and I'll start writing a patch for you to fix this bug...

Also if anyone would like my own config file that I use in the video send me a PM with an email address and I'll send you my config file and my own font sets that I use to give it the look it has in the video...

[Franko]

@ Mechy

Come off it... we could all write a never ending  list of our favourite/ most used Amiga stuff... (that's why I restricted it to 3)...

The locals from the west cost (Glasgow) where I come from understand me no bother but the east coast mob (Edinburgh) have a wee bit of a problem sometimes. Where I live now Livingston is kinda in the middle and so is a mixture of the two...

But since the Scottish Parliament came into being we seem to be getting out numbered by the bloody English Civil Servants who came up here to work and nicked all the jobs...

Good thing though is we can insult the silly buggers all day long and most of them haven't a scooby doo that we're taking the p!ss, they just smile and say "oh really, that's nice"...

[Franko]

@ Franko : does DW handle archives the way DOPUS does ? thats the most beautifull thing I like in DOPUS (which is non existent in most files managers) being able to browse lha or zip, double clic to see a picture or a text without having to extract the archive first !

It actually handles archives for both un-archiving and archiving much better than DOpus due to the fact that you can configure it to use any archiving program on the Amiga...

You could even just create a config file with it solely for the purpose of handling all types of archives that would open up on your WorkBench screen just an easy way to archive or un-archive any files that you have the archiving program for on your Amiga...

Like I say DirWork should thought of more as a highly configurable GUI/ frontend for any program that you can run on an Amiga, it's down to the user to decide on how it appears and just what you want it to do, to me it's the most useful program ever written for the Amiga...

PS: You can launch as many different version of it as you want all at the same time with different config files you create fro different purposes...

[Franko]

My Top 3 would be:

DirWorks - Yes, it´s amazing. Unfortunately people usually don´t like to get out of their comfort zone, and take the time needed to configure it properly or learn how to do it.

WHDLoad - Come on, unless you consider it a patch (then i´ll have to disagree), it´s absolutely impossible to live without it nowadays.

SnoopDOS - An amazing little tool, so usefull that i use it just to check what i already know is causing me problems ;-) Seriously, i´m also shocked that there´s no program like this in any other platform (except for the Amiga-alike OSes).

Now, talking about your video, man! I´m surprised no one has commented yet about the amazingness of your Workbench! It´s really beatifull! Also your DirWorks configuration is very cool. I would appreciate if you share it. And that patch would be amazing as well!

And talking about sharing, what´s that interface you launch at the end of the video, that lists Amiga games? Can i have it too? :D:D

Seriously, any chance you share your system partition in an HDF file?? Pretty please?!?!

Yup... all 3 you mention I couldn't be without (especially SnoopDOS, if you aint got that installed on your Amiga then your simply making things hard for yourself)...

Leave it with me regarding DirWork and I'll see what I can do...

The Games Launcher is a small program I wrote myself that'll launch and run any games from HD on my Amiga's, people have asked for it before but to be honest unless you have your Amiga's set up like mine then it would be very difficult to use...

It requires you having a separate partition with all your games in ADF format and archived with LZX and the program simply lets you select your game, unpacks it into RAM: and runs it with WHDLoad or JST or whichever way you have configured it to run from HD...

It's pretty neat but you'd really have to set aside a special partition or dir to hold all your games in and to store saved games & high scores...



This is the one I wrote for launching C64 games on the Amiga

[Franko]

Franko i would like a Dir works patch as well.
Also can you take a snap shot of your hard drives (i.e. HDD name and what dirs it has) :lol: i want to try and recreate your Hard drives please.
Many Thanks

Seeing as so many folk have asked here and via PM, I'll write a patch today for DirWork Ver 2.1 and include my config file as used in the video along with the fonts I made which that config requires...

If I were to make a "SnapShot" of my HD's/ Partitions it would be almost 1TB in size so I think that ones out of the question...

[Franko]

Sorry folks but just did a byte for byte check and a patch would be impossible...

Simple reason being, I had disassembled the original DirWork Ver 2.1 into it's 68k source code and then bug fixed and improved it then re-assembled it which of course results in every byte of code being changed. Therefore a "patch" would actually have to be the entire program being changed byte for byte...

So unless I can get hold of the original author (Chris Hames) and get permission from him to either redistribute DirWork for free or even the disassembled source code for others to compile themselves, then if you're going to use DirWork 2.1 then you'll have to use the original release and live with the fact it can't handle long file/path names...

Can't see any other way around this problem, which is a shame as it's really such a great program that is really only let down by it's inability to handle long file/ path names which cause it to freeze or crash...

If anyone knows if Chris Hames (Quasar Software, pretty sure he wrote PC-Task for the Amiga) is still around and can be contacted then please let me know as I'd love to at least ask him about this...

[Franko]

I have emailed Chris Hames not long ago. He is a good chap, I asked him to free PC-Task, and he did.

I have sent you a PM, if you are into it, I can give you his email address and then we may also have DirWork for free.

@ Guilliver

If you have the contact info for Chris Hames that would be great, as I'd love to contact him to see if he would allow me to distribute the "bug fixed" version I made of this fantastic program or just pass him the source code that fixes this wee problem...

Thanks

Franko