Copy MUSIC WRITER (long)

[casa@unm.edu (Jim Pittman)]

Can anyone suggest how to get a backup 5.25" copy of Pyware's
MUSIC WRITER boot disk? This is an Apple IIe music program.

One of our club members uses Pyware's MUSIC WRITER with her
Apple IIe. It is a program that uses a copy-protected boot disk,
then everything else loads/saves to copyable disks.

The problem: when she bought this program years ago, she never got
a backup disk (I know, I know... big mistake) and now she fears that
sooner or later disaster will strike and the original boot disk will
fail. She really likes the program and wants to continue using it!

As one might expect, at this late date the company, while still in
existence, will provide NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER. They have no more
copies of the program, they apparently didn't port the program to
MS-DOS or Windoze or Mac, and they claim they no longer have any
technical knowledge of the program at all.

If you can tell us how to copy the boot disk, or if you happen to
have this program gathering dust and would be willing to give/sell
her your copy, please let me know.

(( Quit _now_ if you don't care about the gory details! ))

What I have done and learned so far in trying to make a copy:

First, it appears this program is essentially Apple Pascal (or maybe
UCSD Pascal) because the disks show up as "Pascal" on an Apple IIgs
running GS/OS.

Second, the program gives an option to copy the program disk (but
obviously not the boot disk) and data files to a hard drive or a 3.5"
disk (the hard drive or 3.5" disks must be formatted as Apple Pascal
to be able to do that, though).

Third, the program is a 128-k program; it will run on a non-enhanced
or an enhanced Apple IIe, but not on a IIe with only 64-k of memory.

Fourth, I can find no entry for MUSIC WRITER or PYWARE in any of my
versions of Copy II Plus (I have 'em all).

Fifth, I was confident that I could use my Wildcard-2 copy card to
make a BRUNable binary copy that could then be copied to make a new,
copyable boot disk. I tried doing this as follows:

a) What do I know about the copy protection scheme on this disk?
   Nothing. But I thought, I'll just try making a binary BRUNable
   copy of Apple Pascal 1.3, and if that will work, then the same
   technique should work with MUSIC WRITER. After all, my copy of
   Apple Pascal 1.3 is a 128-k program using the Pascal file system.

b) I installed the Wildcard-2 in an enhanced Apple IIe, slot 2. I
   removed the AE accelerator that had been in slot 3, just in case
   its presence might cause problems with the copy card. I used two
   Disk ][ drives from slot 6. The IIe has a 1-meg memory card (not
   a 64-K card) but I thought that would be okay. I installed an
   Apple II Mouse card in slot 4 and attached an Apple II (no, not
   an Apple IIgs) mouse.

c) I followed the Wildcard-2 instructions to:

   1) Start Apple Pascal with APPLE1: in drive 1 and APPLE2: in
      drive 2. As soon as the program loaded, push the Wildcard
      button to "freeze" the program and get the Wildcard menu.
   2) Follow instructions to make a 128K copy on a 5.25" disk.
   3) Restart the computer; press the Wildcard button to run.
   4) What showed up on the 80-column screen was a nasty bunch of
      noise (like miscellaneous graphic/text characters)! And,
      nothing seemed to work as it should.
   5) Start over; load Apple Pascal and this time, do "f" to go
      the Filer, "v" to list Volumes on-line, then "q" to Quit
      from the Filer back to the main program. In other words,
      make sure the program knew about both disk drives and both
      Pascal volumes before freezing it.
   6) Push Wildcard button; make another 128K copy.
   7) Try to run this copy; this time there was still garbage on
      the 80-column screen, but doing "f" and "v" and "q" did
      exactly what it should, and as soon as one command was done,
      no more garbage on the screen. I assumed success!
   8) Boot up the Wildcard-2 utilities disk, select Advanced
      Utilities and make a 64-K (there's no provision for a "128-k")
      binary file named PAS.
   9) Boot a simple DOS 3.3 program, get to the "]" prompt and do
      BRUN PAS <RETURN> and guess what -- it worked just as well
      as before! I assumed success, again!

d) Confident that the Wildcard-2 technique would work, I asked my
   friend to bring over her program so we could copy it.

e) To make a long, frustrating story short, we tried several times
   and the best we could get was a frozen screen with various kinds
   of garbage on it. There was no response to any of the command keys
   and no response from the mouse. An image of a screen from one of
   her data files appeared with the available commands under it (they
   were rather garbled), but nothing worked. We tried CONTROL-RESET
   and the main program disk in drive 1 started to boot, but of
   course stopped and asked for the original boot disk.

So at this point I'm stuck. I have not actually tried making a copy
using Copy II Plus (or Locksmith 4.1 -- I have it, but I have no
experience with it) or anything else. I don't want to do anything to
the original disk that will take it out of commission (she uses it in
her music business every day) or add to the wear and tear it already
experiences.

Maybe she should get a battery-powered uninterruptible power supply
and just leave her Apple IIe turned on with the program running and
never turn it off! But, this is not an option because she also uses
AppleWorks 5.1 every day.

Any suggestions or other enlightenment?

aTdHvAaNnKcSe

- Jim Pittman - AppleQuerque Computer Club - casa at unm dot edu