stas'den - Total Commander

MD5/SHA1 checksum

Tue, 09 May 2006 12:17:37 -0300

An enhanced file checksum plugin for the Total Commander (TC for short). It supports both MD5 & SHA1 algorithms, and is able to checksum the entire directory trees. Note that it's MD5 checksum function is much faster than TC's internal one (70% faster on my Athlon XP 1700+ with Seagate IDE 160 GB 7200 rpm HD!). Both MD5 & SHA1 algorithms were ripped from PuTTY by Simon Tatham, who implemented them directly from the specification.
Basically, the file checksum plugin integrates the functionality of GNU utilities md5sum and sha1sum into the Total Commander GUI. This is done through the packer extension API: you simply select files/directories you want to checksum, and "Pack" (Alt+F5) them into a .md5 or .sha "archive". It will be a plain text file which looks like this (just the same format as that of above GNU utilities):

3fb2924c8fb8098dbc8260f69824e9c437d28c68  FC4-i386-disc1.iso
31fdc2d7a1f1709aa02c9ea5854015645bd69504  FC4-i386-disc2.iso
032455cdf457179916be3a739ca16add75b768b7  FC4-i386-disc3.iso
f560f26a32820143e8286afb188f7c36d905a735  FC4-i386-disc4.iso
736e1555e88740d6131c5c84fbe69ed1073ba82d  FC4-i386-rescuecd.iso

Note that as TC runs on Windows, checksum plugin will use DOS line endings (CRLF). To "export" the generated checksum list to a UN*X system, you can use my ToFroWin utility, which also integrates itself into TC
Then, to verify files consistence from TC, select .md5 or .sha file and "Test archive" (Shift+Alt+F9). Files generated by *BSD md5 utility are also supported. You can also browse checksum files as they were directories; this is specially useful to locate and check for consistence a single file from the huge directory tree. To do that, just "View" (F3) a file, and TC Lister will pop you a window with content like this:

D:\_INSTALL_\stentz-binary-i386\FC4-i386-rescuecd.iso

expected:	736e1555e88740d6131c5c84fbe69ed1073ba82d
computed:	736e1555e88740d6131c5c84fbe69ed1073ba82d

SHA1 checksum OK!

Check this screenshot to see the checksum plugin in operation!

Installation:

Unzip the "checksum.wcx" to the Total Commander or Windows Commander plugins directory
In Windows Commander 4.0 (or newer) or Total Commander, choose 'Configuration => Options'
Open the 'Packer' page
Click 'Configure packer extension WCXs'
Type md5 as the extension
Click 'New type', and select the "checksum.wcx" file
Click OK and then 'Configure packer extension WCXs'
Now type sha as the extension
Click 'New type', and select the "checksum.wcx" file again
Click OK

Usage:

(This section uses MD5 checksums as example; for SHA1 the procedure is the
same, just replace every "md5" you see by "sha" )

Generate MD5 checksum:
1. Select files you wish to compute checksum.
2. Then go to "Files => Pack".
3. Select "md5" as packer.
4. PLEASE NOTE THAT ARCHIVE PATH WILL BE IGNORED!!! ".md5" 'archive' is ALWAYS generated in current directory (where checked files are), and NOT in the opposite panel! The only exception is creating checksum of the files stored on CD-ROM media as there's no way to create files there.
5. Press OK and check CURRENT directory for ".md5" list generated.
Verify MD5 checksum:
1. Certify that ".md5" list is in it's right place (filenames listed in it should be relative to the current directory).
2. Select it and do "Files => Test Archive(s)".
3. If any file doesn't matches stored MD5 checksum then "CRC error" message box appears.
4. If everything is clear Total Commander remains quiet.
Browse MD5 checksum list:
1. Certify that ".md5" list is in it's right place (filenames listed in it should be relative to the current directory).
2. Select it and enter it as it were a normal archive.
3. If any file is present in the ".md5" list but wasn't found in the current directory then "?" is displayed instead of file date/time and size.
4. PLEASE NOTE THAT FILES CAN NOT BE EXTRACTED TO YOUR DISK! ".md5" isn't an archive, it stores only the hash of the file.
5. Select file you wish to check and press F3 (call Lister).
6. Lister will show complete file name, expected checksum and generated checksum. If both checksum matches then the last line is "MD5 checksum OK!".

Diamond Rio PMP300 FS-plugin

Sat, 06 May 2006 00:26:38 -0300

Diamond Rio PMP300, with only 32 MB of flash memory, was the second portable MP3 player ever released, in 1998. Unfortunately, such a revolutionary piece of hardware is very painful to interface with: as it is connected through parallel port, highest transfer rates achieved were around 80 KB/s. And the software bundled with it was too primitive. To the luck of thousands of (un)happy Rio owners, The Snowblind Alliance released their Open-Source RIO utility, which became a starting point of several alternative Rio manager interfaces. Mine is just one of them
First of all, there's absolutely no need to write the entire file manager. Total Commander (TC for short) is one of the most feature-rich file managers ever made, and it supports a very extensible plugin API. As a result, one could use TC to manage files directly on the flash memory of his/her Rio! Actually, my plugin supports listing, uploading, downloading & deleting files from Diamond Rio PMP300 internal memory. It also displays the transfer speed and the total/remaining space. Take a look at this screenshot to see it in action. Behind the GUI, my plugin uses the source of the "RIO utility v1.07" by The Snowblind Alliance.

Installation:

Just the same as for many other FS-plugins:

Unzip rio.wfx & rio.cfg files to Total Commander directory
Choose "Configuration => Options => Operation => FS-Plugins"
Choose rio.wfx
Click OK.
You can now access the plugin in the "Network Neighborhood"
Open rio.cfg file and set the correct LPT port address (see below for more details)

Please note that DriverLINX Port I/O Driver by Scientific Software Tools, Inc. is required for plugin to operate. Get it below.

Configuration:

In the majority of cases, the plugin may work fine "out-of-the-box". If it doesn't work at all, probably you'll need to discover and specify your PC's parallel port hardware address. Open your system's "Device Manager" (on Windows XP, open the context menu for "My Computer", click "Properties", go to the "Hardware" tab, and click the "Device Manager"). Go straight to "Ports (COM & LPT)". Now locate the port that your Rio device is attached. On my case, it's LPT1. Double-click "Printer port (LPT1)", and go to the "Resources" tab. You need the first one of "I/O Range" numbers:

378 is what you need. Note that this number is in a hexadecimal format. Thus, many programs (like my plugin) may accept it as 0x378. Now, open the rio.cfg file. It looks like this, by default:

# Assume that Rio is connected to LPT1
IOPort		0x378

# default
IODelayInit	20000
IODelayTx	100
IODelayRx	2

# "turbo" mode (UNSAFE!!!)
#IODelayInit	5000
#IODelayTx	1
#IODelayRx	1

Now, just update the IOPort parameter to the value you discovered.
Note all that IODelay* parameters. For the safety reasons, the delays are high by default, and, consequently, the file transfer is slow. If you comment out the default values and uncomment the turbo mode ones, you'll get a great increase in performance! But remember to only use it when your Rio battery is 100% charged, and when your Rio is turned on. It may corrupt some bits, through.

GRP packer plugin

Sat, 06 May 2006 00:19:20 -0300

The .grp (group) file format, used by the game Duke Nukem 3D, is just a collection of a lot of files stored into 1 big one. The Build engine, upon which Duke Nukem 3D was constructed, went on to become one of the most successful engine in terms of number of games released. Other notable games developed using the Build engine include Witchaven, TekWar, Shadow Warrior, Blood, PowerSlave and Redneck Rampage (check for a more complete list and more stuff about the Build engine at http://www.icculus.org/BUILD/). Thus, all of them use the GRP file format
So, here is the plugin I wrote for the Total Commander (TC for short) to access .grp files directly. It is able to list, unpack & pack GRP files (file deletion is unsupported by the format itself...). By the way, this TC plugin is the first one (and probably the only one ever ) to be written in the pure assembler language. I suppose that it's also the smallest TC plugin, with it's 5.5 KB size! And here's a screenshot showing it in action (opening the DUKE3D.GRP).

Installation:

The same as for most TC packer plugins:

Unzip the grp.wcx to the TC directory (usually C:\totalcmd)
Choose 'Configuration - Options'
Open the 'Packer' page
Click 'Configure packer extension DLLs'
type grp as the extension
Click 'new type', and select the "grp.wcx"
Click OK