EDD Plus Project

["Henry S. Courbis" <apl2research(a.t.)comcast.net>]

Hello everyone!

Have a few questions I was hoping to find answers to concerning the EDD Plus 
card.

First I'd like to know who here would be interested in a reproduction of the 
card?  I've never worked with it so I don't really know what it's potential 
is.  From what I understand it will allow coping of most, if not all, copy 
protected Apple II disks.  I also believe the copies created when using the 
EDD Plus card are still protected and not cracked - basically a 100% exact 
copy of the original disk.  Does anyone here have any additional information 
or clarifications to those statements?  On a side note the new design will 
support both full and half high Floppy Drives to allow the board to be used 
in more Apple IIs then the original.

Next I would like to ask who would be interested in the card if it was able 
to create Images of copy protected disks?  I know there's a version of 
Nibble out there that sort of does this already, but from my own past 
experience this program wasn't the simplest to use, didn't always work for 
some software and it also created two files for the Image.  My thoughts were 
to rewrite the EDD software to allow it to dump an Image file (preferably no 
larger then 140k) to Floppy or HDD which would then allows users to upload 
them to the Net or even store them on other media (backup) and restore at 
will.  I know there are 'purists' out there who like to have original 
versions of software as well as cracked versions.

Which begs the next question - Is there source code for the EDD v4.2 
software?  I just tried Site http://www.apple2info.net/hardware/edd/edd.htm 
and they were down, although I don't believe they had the source code 
anyway.

I recently spoke to Geoff Weiss about this software project and discussed 
some of the details.  I had an idea that it would be greatly beneficial, for 
obvious reasons, to try and write the Image feature of the software to save 
the Image as a .DSK file.  This would then fit on a 140k Floppy Disk as well 
as allow emulators to run these files.  Geoff doesn't believe that it would 
be possible to save the raw data stream in .DSK format because of all the 
extra data the EDD would be able to read unlike a standard .DSK creation 
program.  Any of you programmers out there have some comments about this 
possible .DSK Image addition to the EDD software?  I'm not that familiar 
with the .DSK format so I don't really know its limitations.  If .DSK isn't 
possible then I guess we'll create our own format unless someone can 
recommend something else that would be possible or suitable (.PO maybe?).  A 
custom format Image file would then require all Emulators to be rewritten if 
they wanted to support it.

Feel free to contact me directly (email and numbers on Web Site) or post 
comments here.  Thanks in advance for your time.  Any help would be MUCH 
appreciated and a big time saver!


-- 
Henry S. Courbis
www.ReactiveMicro.com
Legacy Hardware and Support - Come take a look at what we have to offer!