This tutorial will show you how to create your very own DMS archives. DMS files are simply a compressed image of a floppy or set of floppies with the extension .DMS. Why is it called a DMS I hear you ask, well the reason is simple, the program used to create these archives is called The Diskmasher and is a very tiny application for AmigaDOS.

You can download DMS from ALE by visiting our utilities section, you may also want to download DMS Intuition Interface- a small front-end for Workbench, this simplifies the whole DMS process as you will see from the following tutorial.

I hope you find this tutorial useful and come back soon.

You will need the following to follow this tutorial:

• WinUAE (preffered emulator)
• Workbench 2.0+
• Kickstart Image 2.0+
• DMS (Needed for both guide)
• DMS Intuition Interface (Needed for guide 2 only)

Once you have all of the above proceed to the guide.

Okay, here is the first way to make a DMS archive, it's pretty simple once you get the hang of it and there is hardly any configuring that needs to be done before you go ahead.

Start WinUAE and insert your Workbench ADF images, click the Hard Drives tab and check "add PC drives at startup", if you have it on a virtual hard drive then select the appropriate configuration. Click OK to start the emulation, once Workbench has loaded double click the Workbench disk and open the System folder now double click Shell or CLI (depending on your version of Windows).

The following window should pop-up:

In this window you will need to copy the DMS executable you downloaded into the C folder of your Workbench disks. You will need to know the drive name for your PC hard drive (usually DH1:) - to find this out just type DHx - remember to replace the x with a number, now type DIR to check which drive you are on.

Type:

• DH1:
• COPY DMS SYS:C/

Note: DH2 is the drive name of your PC hard drive.

Almost done!, all you need to do now is select the ADF image you would like to convert to a DMS - note if you are doing this on a real Amiga simply insert your real disk in DF0:

• Click the [:] button next to DF0:
• Select your ADF image
• Click OK to return back to Workbench

In the AmigaShell Window type:

• DMS READ DH1:NAMEOFDMS.DMS FROM DF0:

How hit return and return again when ready, the AmigaShell will bring up a message similar to this:

This is perfectly normal, once it has finished you will find a fully working and much smaller DMS file stored on your hard drive ready for distribution.

Now, the above guide deals with the more advanced way of handling DMS archives, this little guide will simplify things a little more with the use of that excellent program DMS Intuition Interface.

Simply follow these steps to setup DMS Intuition Interface:

Start WinUAE and insert your Workbench ADF images, click the Hard Drives tab and check "add PC drives at startup", if you have it on a virtual hard drive then select the appropriate configuration. Click OK to start the emulation.

• Locate DMS and copy it to your C: folder on your Workbench disk
• Locate DMS Intuition Interface and start it
• Hold your right mouse button, select Preferences then Change DMS Path from the pull down menu

Locate your DMS file, in the above case it's in the C folder of Workbench and then click OK. Once you have done this the setup of DMS Intuition Interface is complete, now lets get making those DMS archives!

You should now be back at this screen:

From here on it's simply a matter of pressing some buttons to create your DMS archives so:

• Insert your original ADF images by pressing F12
• Click the [:] button next to DF0: and select your ADF image (real Amigas just insert)
• Press OK to return to Workbench
• Click the Get button next to Archive Name
• Select the location to store your DMS file and give it a name
• Make sure you select "Read From Disk" and click Start

Now your DMS file will be created and stored in the location you selected, in this case the Workbench drive with the name ALE.DMS.

The great thing about DMS Intuition Interface is that everything is simplified so you can even add a message to the front of your DMS files by simply creating a text document and clicking the Get button next to "Text Name" and select the file.