Re: Disk Muncher ... Deprotected wares on hard disk

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Jason Whorton writes ...
> 
> Hi.  Since the topic is being discussed, will I be able to copy my
> "copy-protected" programs to a hard drive?  I have a few copying programs,
> but I haven't used them in a while and I was just backing up software I
> bought to another floppy (honest :-), so I have no experience with copying
> it to a hard drive.  If anyone has any suggestinos or information, please
> let me know.


     For sure, it is very nice to have copies of favorite games and
other old wares on diskette backed up on hard disk. You can use ShrinkIt
v3.4 to convert a deprotected 5.25" or 3.5" diskette to shrinked form
(usually called an ".sdk" file). These generally run about 70kB or so
for a shrinked 5.25" diskette side. It takes ShrinkIt about a minute to
convert a shrinked disk file back to diskette form; so, .sdk files on
hard disk is a practical way to reclaim space taken up by stacks of
diskettes.  

     
     If the idea is to run the software from your hard drive, then, as
Brian indicates, you can eliminate quite a few wares.

     Most old 5.25" protected software ends up as DOS 3.3 or some
variant when deprotected. Quite a few of these make assumptions about
format which makes running them from hard disk impossible without
modification or, even, dangerous. For example, a game which does
direct-to-disk writes could trash hard disk files and directories.

     The best way to run deprotected DOS 3.3 and weird-DOS wares is to
just boot the game or whatever from Slot 6, Drive 1.

     Deprotected ProDOS wares are more likely to run okay from hard
disk. Still, a ProDOS program may assume that it is running from a
specific diskette and feel safe in writing "High Scores", "Learner
Progress", "Config", etc. to a specific block which, on your hard disk,
could be the middle of a directory. It is safer to transfer deprotected
5.25" ProDOS files to 3.5" diskette and run them under ProDOS booted
from the diskette.

     Checking through the "Cracks", "Deprotects", ... folders of sites
like Asimov and Asimov-GS will produce help in moving some popular
products to hard disk. Unfortunately, hard disk for Apple II was so
expensive for so many years that relatively few users even owned one
until the 1990's. There is much more information for deprotection than
there is for converting wares for hard disk.

 

Rubywand