Re: Activision, "The Movie Studio"

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Alex Lee <alelee@mac.com> wrote:
> On 2013-01-22 18:45:22 +1100, erolfi@gmail.com said:
> 
>> Thank you Michael for your suggestions, unfortunately I've tried the >
>> disk on Mac and it's still faulty. I'm going to get the disk cleaner >
>> soon  (will try in the mall old stuff and will eventually buy another >
>> box of floppies for spare).
>>> Alex, the disk is 3.5 inches. The name was "Movie Studio", and it was >
>>> shown at program startup on a black background written in apple-like >
>>> rainbow characters.
>> You could load a sample file showing an animation of a guy walking on a
>> > street and producing footsteps sounds while at it.
> 
> Interesting...I've now thought of what Movie Studio might be. I have an
> alpha version of that program, dated 1988, by Luc Serard. The version is
> in French and doesn't mention Activision –you may well have a later version.
> 
> I don't think the program was ever commercially released, so fingers
> crossed, Activision didn't include copy protection on the version you have.
> 
> Definitely worth the effort of trying to make a backup copy.
> 
> If the disk is a little dodgy, try using Brutal Deluxe's Fishhead:
> 
> http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/fishhead/index.html
> 
> Which can be used to try to retrieve as much data as possible in cases
> where the disk isn't in great shape.
> 
> Additionally, if you try to make a disk image (whether it be via ADTPro,
> the CFFA3000, on a Mac with built in floppy drive using Disk Duplicator
> +) try vigourously shaking the disk after you get read fails. This is an
> old trick that the FTA's Photonix copier program suggests with problem
> disks. It's actually worked for me once or twice in the past.
> 
> Let us know how you go.
> 
> - Alex

I've encountered 3.5" disks that were very sensitive to the drive speed. I
was able to work my way through a ProSel volume copy (which is willing to
retry a bad block for many seconds) by holding the reading drive suspended
under my elbow, then twisting the drive back and forth, rotating in the
plane of the disk. This changed the head-to-disk speed back and forth at
random phases relative to the recorded data, and I was usually able to get
a good read (evidenced by the advancing block count on the screen) after a
few seconds. 

I found that a difficult disk might have a few dozen of these hard to read
blocks, but I was able to finally complete a good copy. 

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon