This tutorial will show you how to UnDMS those DMS archive found at many Amiga resource sites - a good example is Aminet. 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 UnDMS 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 Workbench).

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.

Now, everything is almost setup - all you need to do now is change directory to were ever you have stored your DMS files, so in the same window and remembering that DH2 is the drive name of your PC hard drive type - lets assume for this example that your DMS files are stored in a folder named DMS-Files:

• DH1:
• DMS-FILES

Almost done!, all you need to do now is create a blank ADF image and Un-DMS your files .. trust me it sounds more difficult than it is. Press F12 to get back to the WinUAE interface - your screen should look something like this:

• Click Create Blank "Floppy"
• Enter A File Name
• Click the [:] button and select your newly created ADF
• Click OK to return to Workbench.

In the AmigaShell Window type:

• DMS WRITE NAMEOFDMSFILE.DMS

Now hit the return key to UnDMS the file!.

From this point on all you need to do is load Workbench, load the AmigaShell, Change directory to the folder containing the DMS files, create a blank floppy disk and type DMS WRITE NAMEOFDMSFILE.DMS.

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 unpacking.

You should now be back at this screen:

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

• Create a fresh ADF by pressing F12 and selecting Create Blank "Floppy"
• Click the [:] button next to DF0: and select your fresh ADF
• Press OK to return to Workbench
• Click the Get button next to Archive Name
• Select the DMS file you want to UnDMS and press OK
• Make sure you select "Write To Disk" and click Start

Now your DMS file will UnPack to DF0: