                                
                                
                             LAUNDER
                                
                                

Last updated by Roedy Green on 1996 October 25


Introduction

LAUNDER is a diskette laundry.  It rapidly launders (erases)
diskettes and disinfects them of all viruses in a second or two.
It brings old diskettes up to the latest DOS 6.0 standards.  It
erases all directories, files and volume labels.

LAUNDER lets you rapidly recycle a pile of diskettes.  Depending
on your BIOS and brand of diskette drive, it will take between 1
and 6 seconds per diskette.


How To Use It

Just type LAUNDER A: or LAUNDER B: and follow the prompts.  That
is all you need to know.  LAUNDER by itself is equivalent to
LAUNDER A:.  LAUNDER never touches hard disks.

At any time you may hit the Esc key to exit LAUNDER.  At any time
you may hit the space bar to prod LAUNDER to look afresh at the
current disk and re-launder it.

As you erase each diskette, LAUNDER tells you what kind it is.
It changes the background colour of the screen so that you can
tell out the corner of your eye.  Further it makes a distinctive
tone for each type of diskette.

LAUNDER will warn you with a message and "prang" tone if you have
just laundered a diskette with bad clusters.  You can still use
the diskette, since the record of the location of bad clusters
will be preserved.  However, for many purposes, such as diskette
duplication, you should only use perfect diskettes.


Colour Code

Type     Size     Density                Format     Colour
AT 3"   1.44 MB  High density           18-sector  GREEN
AT 5"   1.2 MB   High density           15-sector  RED
XT 3"   720 KB   Double density         9-sector   BLUE
XT 5"   360 KB   Double Density         9-sector   YELLOW
XT 5"   320 KB   ancient Double sided   8-sector   VIOLET
XT 5"   180 KB   ancient Single sided   9-sector   VIOLET
XT 5"   160 KB   ancient Single sided   8-sector   VIOLET
VIRGIN            unformatted                       WHITE
NORTON            proprietary format                PINK
Damaged           bad media byte                    BLACK


Trouble Shooting

LAUNDER is not designed to work on the XT.  Further it is not
designed to work with diskette drives that don't have changeline
support i.e. old 360 KB and 720 KB drives.  If you try to use it
on such equipment, it will apologize for its ineptitude and
abort.  Some AT 1.44 drives such as the Toshiba don't have
standard changeline support.  LAUNDER will act as if you were
constantly yanking the diskettes out from under it.  LAUNDER will
be unusable on such machines.

Sometimes after using LAUNDER, DOS will complain of an "invalid
disk change".  This will occur if you:

a) Use Norton Cache
  
b)   Insert the first diskette before you start LAUNDER rather
     than waiting for LAUNDER to prompt you to insert it.
  
c)   Fail to remove the last diskette when LAUNDER asks you to.
  
d)   Use a machine or software with bugs in the BIOS (Use
     FBIOS.exe to determine if you have floppy BIOS bugs).
  
Once the problem has occurred, only REBOOT will clear DOS's pea
brain.  To prevent the problem, either avoid Norton Cache, or be
careful about inserting and removing diskettes.  The problem is,
Launder works behind DOS's back, using only BIOS.  To DOS, a
diskette appears to mysteriously change volume serial number if
you have one inserted at the start and finish.

If you leave LAUNDER unattended more than 20 seconds, it will
turn off the diskette motors, and ask you to hit the SPACE BAR to
restart it.  If LAUNDER seems broken, try reading the screen and
pressing the SPACE BAR as requested.

If you have 3 or 4 floppy drives, you must refer to the extra
drives beyond A: and B: by strange names.  Use LAUNDER 3: or
LAUNDER 4: rather than LAUNDER F: or LAUNDER G: or whatever DOS
calls them.  LAUNDER is too stupid to be able to convert the DOS
names to the BIOS drive numbers it uses internally.


Using Option Switches

Here are some valid examples:

LAUNDER B: /Q /Boot

Here are some invalid examples:

LAUNDER A: quiet    <-- missing /


Option Switches

/BootB         Lays down a special boot track so that if this
               disk is accidentally booted from the A: drive, the
               system will reboot, not from C: as normal, but
               from the disk in B:.  This would allow you for
               example to boot a 3.5" DOS disk in a machine with
               a 5.25" A: drive.  You could use this to install
               DOS from B: if you had only the "wrong" size
               diskettes.  Once you are booted from B:, the A:
               and B: drives will be swapped until the next boot.
               
/Government    erases entire surface multiple times to make it
               very difficult to recover data, even with special
               spy analog equipment.  Even with the /Government
               option the KGB or CIA could still probably
               reconstruct your data.  It uses the American
               D.O.D. standard 5220.22M.  It overwrites the data
               first with 0s then with 1s, then with division
               marks.  Then it verifies the last write.  This is
               for confidential, not secret data.  This takes a
               long time because there are 4 complete passes over
               the entire disk surface.  I don't have a copy of
               the D.O.D. standard, so I am sure if I have dotted
               my "i" and crossed my "t"s.  If you discover it
               should be done slightly differently, please let me
               know.
               
/Keep          updates floppies with fancy auto-reboot and full
               DOS 6.0 disk geometry fields in the boot record,
               but leaves data intact -- a fast SCAT, with
               warning of bad tracks.  Makes old disks work with
               new programs.  It does not erase the volume label.
               There are two copies of the volume label on a
               disk, one in the directory and one in the boot
               record.  If they do not agree, /Keep
               resynchronizes them to match the one in the
               directory.  This means /Keep will automatically
               update to the latest standards older floppies that
               did not have the second volume label in the boot
               record.
               
/Prompt        displays the root directory and waits for keyboard
               go-ahead before erasing.  /Prompt can also be used
               with /Keep so that you might avoid making a
               bootable disk unbootable.
               
/Quiet         no sound.  Turns off all sound effects so that you
               can use LAUNDER without disturbing your
               neighbours.  You would have to look at the screen
               to use LAUNDER in /QUIET mode.  Normally you can
               run it blind using only the sound effects to guide
               you.
               
/Secure        erases entire surface to prevent unerase attempts.
               Will foil Norton Unerase and Norton DiskEdit
               scavenging, but will not stop the CIA.  The normal
               LAUNDER process just erases the root directory,
               but leaves the file data alone, where it could be
               recovered Norton DiskEdit, but not with a simple
               UnErase.  It takes 40 seconds to erase a 1.2 MB
               floppy with /Secure.  In contrast, Format takes 70
               seconds.  Peter Norton's WipeInfo A:/R1 does the
               same thing, but it takes 6 minutes and 15 seconds.
               

How It Works

LAUNDER works by writing a new FAT and null root directory entry.
This way it does not need to erase the files and directories one
at a time.

LAUNDER does NOT write to the data part of the diskette.  If you
wanted to ensure that information could never be recovered using
tools like Norton DiskEdit, you would have to use the COVERUP
utility on each floppy.  This would take much longer than a
simple LAUNDER.  You can get that effect however with the
/Governent or /Secure options.

The BOOTB feature works by setting up a intercept to int13 to
change the DL register which specifies the drive to be operated
on.  The boot record generated loads the boot record on the B:
drive and fools it into thinking it was just booted.  BOOTB hides
the code to swap A: and B: right in the interrupt vector table at
int 50H.  This may conflict with other software.  You can move it
elsewhere by changing the StealInt configuration constant an
reassembling.


Benefits

     1.   LAUNDER is faster than any other method of erasing
     diskettes.  Even when the diskettes have many branching
     subdirectories, LAUNDER erases them out just as quickly.  It
     takes 1 to 6 seconds per diskette, almost as fast as you can
     shovel them in.  In contrast, reformatting them would take
     about 70 seconds.
     
     2.   LAUNDER is very easy to use.  No training is required.
     For the most part you can use it without even looking at the
     screen or touching the keyboard.  Because of the colour
     coding and sound blind people can use it too.
     
     3.   LAUNDER removes all viruses (both known and unknown)
     from the floppy as it erases.
     
     4.   LAUNDER updates your diskettes, putting DOS 6.0-style
     volume serial numbers, disk geometry information etc. on the
     boot track.  Diskettes formatted a long time ago without
     this full information confuse some new programs.  Humours PC
     DOS and OS/2 by putting "IBM" in as the OEM.
     
     5.   If you accidentally boot with a floppy treated by
     LAUNDER, it automatically reboots from hard disk, often
     faster than had no floppy been there at all.
     
     6.   LAUNDER tells you what kind of floppy you have,
     including Norton Proprietary format backup diskettes.  You
     can then sort them into piles for recycling.
     
     7.   Decontaminates FastBack Plus diskettes of the
     "unvirus".  LAUNDER prepares partly-compatible FastBack Plus
     and Norton Backup diskettes for re-use as 100% compatible
     DOS diskettes.
     
     8.   LAUNDER warns you about bad tracks, so you can discard
     imperfect disks, but it also preserves that information, if
     you decide to reuse imperfect disks.  DOS Format.Exe loses
     track of which spots have been found to be bad in past,
     though it does do a full surface test, something LAUNDER
     does NOT do.
     
     9.   LAUNDER can be run in the background in a Windows or
     DESQview window.  You don't even need to make its visible to
     use it.
     

Status

When you register you get the latest version with source.


Ideas for future Registered version of LAUNDER

/Broken        for AT machines that don't have changeline
               support.  You will likely often have to hit the
               space bar to prod LAUNDER along, especially if you
               accidentally insert a virgin diskette.
               
/Model:filename
               you provide your own boot model, sample disk or
               512-byte file to customize the message when you
               accidentally boot from floppy.
               
CUSTOMIZER     program to let you patch in your own messages for
               the standard reboot code.
               
/Number:1      counter that stops LAUNDER after processing N
               disks -- usually 1 so you could use LAUNDER to
               ensure a blank, formatted diskette is inserted.
               
COUNTS         display running counts of each type of disk
               processed.
               
FANCY          fancier screen layouts -- boxes & stuff.
               
/Coverup       like Jay Vanderbilt's CoverUp.  Erases file tails
               and empty space, but leaves drive data intact.
               Hides information on disk that is supposedly
               erased.  Like /Keep, it also sexes up the boot
               tracks.  Equivalent to /Keep plus /Secure.  You
               could also do /Keep plus /Government to just
               seriously erase the data on the unused part of he
               disk.
               
/Full          checks that floppy is fully formatted ensuring it
               can read the last track.
               
/Unix          Erase Unix disks that are missing media bytes,
               FATS and root directories.  Pays no attention to
               the media bytes currently on the disks.  It
               classifies disks by trying to read the extreme
               "corners" of the disk.  Noisier and slower than
               regular laundering.  Also can be used for DOS
               diskettes when disk boot tracks are badly
               scrambled.
               
XT version     You will need to tap the space bar for each
               diskette.
               
DUAL           ability to switch is midstream back and forth
               between A: and B:.  You have to hit a key to
               switch.  You can't shovel disks into both drives
               at once.

GETTING THE LATEST VERSION

Look for the latest version at my Web site:
  http://oberon.ark.com/~roedy
               
Registering

LAUNDER Registrations
Roedy Green
Canadian Mind Products
POB 707 Quathiaski Cove
V0P 1N0
(250) 285-2954

We will send you a version of Launder with some extra features.
Since they have not all been implemented yet, please tell us
which ones are important to you.  We have an old saying up here
in Canada "He who pays the piper calls the tune."


Site Licenses

Unit cost = $10 * sqrt( 1/n ) where n is the number of copies.

Total cost = $10 * n * sqrt( 1/n ) (rounded the nearest dollar if
you wish).

          Count   Unit Cost  Total Cost
              1      $10.00      $10.00
              2       $7.07      $14.14
              3       $5.77      $17.32
              4       $5.00      $20.00
              5       $4.47      $22.36
              6       $4.08      $24.49
              7       $3.78      $26.46
              8       $3.54      $28.28
              9       $3.33      $30.00
             10       $3.16      $31.62
             15       $2.58      $38.73
             20       $2.24      $44.72
             25       $2.00      $50.00
             30       $1.83      $54.77
             40       $1.58      $63.25
             50       $1.41      $70.71
             75       $1.15      $86.60
            100       $1.00     $100.00
            200       $0.71     $141.42
            250       $0.63     $158.11
            500       $0.45     $223.61


500 copies is considered an unlimited site license for $223.61

Unlimited licence would entitle you to a non-exclusive
irrevocable worldwide licence to use, copy and distribute Launder
within your own organization.  You would not have the right to
sell it to other parties. However, if you were a retailer, or
manufacturer, it would give you the right to install it on any
machines you sell.  If you were a consultant, it would give you
the right to install it on any machines you service.

You may modify the source code to your own requirements, but the
name and address of Canadian Mind Products must not be removed
from the executable code COM file. However, our name and address
need not display when Launder is run. Launder must be used for
non-military purposes only with the exception of U.N. sanctioned
peace keeping missions.

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