Re: Locksmith ... archiving stuff

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Frank Townsend writes ...
> 
> Can someone familiar with Locksmith tell me if there is a version that will
> allow drive and slot selection of source and target.
> Does Copy II Plus work
> as well to back up protected software?
> 
> The versions I have seen (5 & 6) seem only to allow D1 and D2, unless you
> use the LS programming language.
> 
> I am trying to put copies of some of my software on my recently acquired
> Corvus Omninet network drive.
> 

     Copy II Plus versions 7.1 and up will allow you to specify Slot and
Drive for both source and target when doing a plain COPY-- DISK (i.e. when
you copy a non copy protected disk from the main Utilities menu).  The 7.x
versions will also allow the target drive to be larger than the source-- in
which case an "image" file is created on the target. (There's some info about
this at http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2FLUTILS.html#011 .)

     When it comes to copying copy protected disks, later versions of Copy II
Plus (e.g. 7.x and higher) do permit specifying a Slot when you enter the Bit
Copy program. From then on, the source and target drives for copying must the
ones associated with that Slot.

     Essential Data Duplicator (EDD) 3.1 seems to let you set separate
Slot/Drive for source and target when attempting to do a bit copy. I've never
tried this and do not know what might happen should one try to copy a
protected 5.25" disk to a network drive.

     One program that will copy some protected 5.25" disks and (I'm fairly
sure) write a file (or files) to a different Slot/Drive is Saltine's Super
Transcopy. However, SST is not guaranteed to succeed for all protected disks
and the final .nib image file is over 228k in size.


     Probably the best way to archive disks which are not copy protected is
as ShrinkIt whole-disk .sdk archive files. These are fairly compact-- usually
under 100k for a 5.25" disk side; and, they are easy to convert back to
diskette.

     For copy protected disks, the easiest way to get them into an archive is
to find and download deprotected versions on sites like Asimov, White Rabbit,
Tarnover, ..., and 'Fairway. Products which have become more or less
officially freeware may be available on Ground, TFFE, Uni-kl.de, Treasure
Chest, USA2WUG, Trenco, etc.. (For links to these and other software archives
see http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/A2FAQs4MAJORSITES.html .)

     You can find out how to deal with the .dsk, .sdk, .gz, etc. files found
on archive sites at http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2FLUTILS.html .

     If you'd like to make deprotected copies of your copy protected
diskettes, the information you need is fairly likely to be available in an
issue of Computist. Celt's Computist Project has made many Computist issues
available on-line. (See http://tarnover.dyndns.org/Computist/ . For contents,
see the issues.txt file.)



Rubywand