Bill Stewart's Unique DOS Utilities is a set of 23 unique programs. These are listed below, along with a short description of each. o BLANK is a program that you use at a DOS prompt to blank the screen (a non-resident screen saver). When you press a key, the screen is restored. BLANK can also clear the screen if needed. BLANK also has a password feature so you can restrict access to a computer. o COLORS is a program that shows the 256 possible color combinations on a color monitor, along with their attribute numbers. COLORS can display the numbers in decimal or hexadecimal format. o DDEL is a program that deletes entire subdirectory branches really quickly. If you want to delete an entire subdirectory branch, DDEL is the program for the job. DDEL surpasses the DELTREE command in later DOS versions in speed and safety. o DTCLEAR is great if you use the delete tracking feature in DOS or PC Tools for DOS or Windows. It erases the contents of the delete tracking file if the information has become outdated. o DUMP is a program for displaying the contents of files in a raw format. Only alphanumeric characters (letters, numbers, and punctuation symbols) are displayed normally. DUMP displays everything else as a small dot. It's a good program to use to look for text inside binary files such as programs or device drivers. o FFIND is a fast file finder that can find files on your disks. Just type in FFIND followed by the file name to look for. You can also specify the drives that FFIND should search. o GO is a program that saves you time by letting you change directories based on partial directory names. You can tell GO to search specified drives. It also allows you to save the current directory and return to it later for batch file use. o KEYTEST lets you press keys on the keyboard and it displays the character, the ASCII code (in decimal and hexadecimal), and the scan code for the key. o KILL is a program that you can use to really destroy files. When DOS (or MDEL, below) deletes a file, the file is not actually removed from the disk--its space is merely marked as available. KILL, however, actually overwrites a file's contents and then deletes it, making it permanently unrecoverable. o LOGOUT is a program you should use before turning your computer off. It makes sure that the computer is in a safe state before displaying a "please turn the computer off" message. o MDEL is a flexible file deleter. It will let you do things the regular DOS DEL command can't do, such as delete files in subdirectories, delete zero-length files only, delete read-only and hidden files, and more. o ONCE is a program to use in batch files that lets you do things once a day. o PAGE is a utility that lets you display text files or the output of programs that display text on the screen. It includes forward and backward scrolling and paging, text searching, and more. o PATHS displays each directory in your PATH on a separate line. This makes it easy to list the directories you have in your PATH at a glance. o PTD displays the current time and date if you use it by itself. (No more typing TIME and pressing Enter twice at a DOS prompt.) If you run PTD with a program name after it, it runs the program and displays how long the program was running. o READLN lets your batch files read in entire strings of input. You can have READLN display a prompt, accept only numeric input, get password entries, and more. o REDATE does three things: it applies the current time and date stamp to files, it applies any specified time and date stamp to files, and it copies the time and date stamp from one file to other files. o SIZE displays the sizes of subdirectory branches in a quick and easily readable manner. SIZE is useful for finding the answers to questions such as "How much disk space does software package x use?" SIZE reports accurately to the byte. o SREBOOT is a program you can use to safely reboot your computer. By default, it prompts you before doing so, but you can customize the prompt. You can also tell it not to do any prompting at all. It also makes sure the system is safe before performing the actual reboot. SREBOOT is the safest and most flexible rebooting program around. o STAT displays disk space usage statistics for a disk. It shows how much total disk space a disk has, how much of that is used, and how much is free. o STUFF lets you insert keys into the keyboard buffer; that is, it can "type" keystrokes automatically to send to an application. Up to 15 keys can be stuffed. o SWAP lets you swap the names of two files. It does it safely and far more quickly than you can do it manually. o XPAUSE is a great utility you can use to create interactive batch files. It lets the user press a key, and it returns an ERRORLEVEL based on that key. It has a timeout feature. It lets you test which shift keys were pressed (Shift, Ctrl, and Alt). It lets you test if there was anything in the keyboard buffer. To compare it to the Norton Utilities' Batch Enhancer (BE), it replaces BE ASK and BE SHIFTSTATE. It also handily outclasses the CHOICE program found in later versions of DOS. You should see the following message when you unpack each file with PKUNZIP: Inflating: filename -AV (where "filename" is the name of the file being un-zipped) You should also see the following message when PKUNZIP is finished: Authentic Files Verified! # TDP185 William A. Stewart If you don't see these messages, then the original archive that the Unique DOS Utilities were stored in has been tampered with. Beware of viruses! You can contact me via the following: BBS: The Albuquerque ROS (505) 296-3000 Internet e-mail: wstewart@unm.edu U.S. Mail: Bill Stewart 1113 University Blvd NE Ste A Albuquerque NM 87102-1739 Call the Albuquerque ROS for the latest, untampered-with copy of the Unique DOS Utilities. To get a hard copy of the User's Manual, print the file UNIQUE.MAN on a standard printer. Don't use a program that formats the pages because the user's manual is already formatted. If you have a PostScript printer, you need to switch it to a line printer mode (using a fixed-pitch font). You may also print the Installation Guide (INSTALL.MAN) and a copy of the order form (ORDER.FRM) in the same way. The pages are already formatted, and should print with no problem on any printer. If this file scrolled by too fast for you to read it, simply read it with the PAGE program included with the utilities, with the following command: page readme.txt