Re: Toy Shop

[sicklittlemonkey <nick.westgate@gmail.com>]

On Jan 21, 10:42 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> Yes, I meant keeping the partial (and whole) tracks properly
> time-aligned so that protection code would find the right things.

I've thought about this a bit. The main problems are that (a) sync is
difficult to calculate on an Apple II, and (b) no emulator that I know
of simulates adjacent track positioning, primarily because NIB doesn't
store the length.

It should be possible to have ADTPro send each track image and process
it server-side (length, sync marks) then send that analysis back to
read the next track with sync.

> I know there are some collectors who prize preserving the protections
> themselves, but just keeping an archive of deprotection of them would
> preserve the technology.  Copying the copy-protections themselves is
> just perverse.  ;-)

I'd like to be able to have (and _use_) images that are as close to
the original as possible, but are easily created by anyone with an
Apple II. They can still be partially deprotected but in their
original format - like a firearm made inoperable. ;-) This could be a
NIB-like format.

There's value in preserving everything - including the protection -
but that's for a different purpose, and it looks like the specialised
tools to do that are almost here. That format won't be NIB-like, but I
wonder if it could serve both purposes: use and preservation.

Cheers,
Nick.