Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Using this book

The new, improved second edition

About DOS

Where to start?

Do you have a laptop?

Confessions of a Stacker convert

Chapter 1. About disks and data storage

The basics of disk storage

The painless restaurant example

Tracks and sectors on a disk

The concept of cylinders

Disks and disk drives

The disk controller

Floppy drives

Hard drives

The disk operating system

Files on disk

The File Allocation Table

Clusters

The Check Disk command

Fragmentation

Using a hard drive

Partitions

Running out of room

Review

Chapter 2. Stacker's hardware half

About the co-processor

What is the Stacker hardware?

Co-processor benefits

Co-processor drawbacks

Upgrading to the co-processor

Which co-processor should you buy?

Installing the co-processor

Before installation

Taking off your PC's top

Take a peek inside your PC

Installing the expansion card

Closing up

Oops!

What's new with the co-processor

Review

Chapter 3. Configuring Stacker for your system

Stacker behind the scenes

Making files smaller

How Stacker uses compression

Stacker terminology

Preparing for Stacker

Before installation checklist

Running the SETUP program

Setup scenarios

Installation

Using the Stacker editor

Review

Chapter 4. Taking stock of installation

What Stacker has done to your system

What is the Stacker drive?

A walk through CONFIG.SYS

Special issues

Checking the Stacker drive in AUTOEXEC.BAT

Files shared between two drives

Stacker and DOS memory management

Loading the Stacker device driver high

Making the Stacker device driver smaller

General third-party memory management advice

Using Stacker with QEMM

Using Stacker with 386MAX

Review

Chapter 5. Adding more Stacker drives

Creating additional Stacker drives

Before installation

A preview of what will happen

Running the SETUP program

Post-installation discussion

Avoiding the drive letter traffic jam

Stacking removable disks

Creating an empty Stacker floppy

Stacking a full or partially full floppy

Mounting a removable Stacker disk

Reserving drive letters for removable disks

Un-mounting a removable Stacker disk

Mounting a removable Stacker disk on a non-Stacker machine

Stacking RAM drives

Doubling RAM drive size with SCREATE.SYS

Doubling a RAM drive from the command prompt

Doubling more than one RAM drive

Bonus Stacker RAM drive tip

Review

Chapter 6. Working with your Stacker drive

Improving Stacker drive performance

Checking a Stacker drive with CHECK

Checking the compression ratio

The impressive compression summary

Improving lousy compression

Caching under Stacker

Optimizing the Stacker drive

Using disk utilities

Backing up a Stacker drive

Disk optimizers

Disk repair and low-level utilities

Other forbidden stuff

Disk housekeeping

Adding a new device driver to CONFIG.SYS

Organization of the host drive

Review

Chapter 7. Altering your Stacker drive

Stacker drive password protection

DOS's limited file protection

Using the PASSWD command

Changing a password

Making a read-only password

Making more disk space

Increasing space on the host drive

Increasing the size of the Stacker drive

Un-Stacking a Stacker drive

The UNSTACK command

Paring down a full Stacker drive for un-Stacking

Removing a Stacker drive

The REMOVDRV command

Recovering an accidentally removed Stacker drive

Review

Chapter 8. Using Stacker with Windows

Windows setup

Stacker and Windows

Disk Caching

Using the XT/8 co-processor with Windows

Swap file stuff

Verboten command line utilities in DOS windows

Special Stacker Windows utilities

The Stacker Program Group

The Stackometer

The Stackometer's menu items

The Tuner

The Setup program

Chapter 9. Using Stacker's utilities

The Stacker Toolbox

Running the toolbox

Advantages of the toolbox

Stacker utility programs

CHECK

CREATE

ED

PASSWD

PREVIEW

REMOVDRV

REPORT

SATTRIB

The SCREATE device driver

SDEFRAG

SDIR

SETUP

SSWAP

The Stacker device driver

Stacker on the command line

TUNER

UNSTACK

Extra bonus utilities

CONFIG

DATETEST

SAVEHDR

SDIAG_AT

SDIAG_XT

SDIAG_MC

SGROUP

STACOMTR

STACPALM

STUNE

SWAPMAP

SYSINFO

VIDTYPE

WSETUP

Review

Chapter 10. Questions and answers

General questions and answers

Troubleshooting and tips

Troubleshooting help

Using the SHELL command in CONFIG.SYS

Using the DISKCOPY command with Stacker floppies

Disabling a command in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT

Stacker and DOS networks

Contacting Stac Electronics by modem

Setting up your modem

Using Stac's BBS

Review

Appendix A. Stacker contact information

Appendix B. ED key commands

Glossary

Index