-------French Vocabulary Builder------- A 4am crack 2014-05-15 --------------------------------------- "French Vocabulary Builder" is a 1982 educational program distributed by Control Data Corporation as part of their "Plato Courseware" series. COPYA fails immediately with a disk read error. EDD 4 bit copy appears to work, but the copy just hangs on boot. Turning to my trusty Copy ][+ sector editor, I find the "DOS 3.3 PATCHED" option (press "P" to go to the Sector Editor Patcher) allows me to read every sector on every track. Track 0 feels like a DOS 3.3 RWTS, and I see a VTOC on track $11. Based on my experience with other disks, this evidence suggests that this disk has - Standard prologue bytes before the address and data fields [otherwise Copy ][+ sector editor would give read errors, even with the "DOS 3.3 PATCHED" option] - Non-standard epilogue bytes after the address and data fields [otherwise COPYA would work] - Some secondary protection [otherwise the bit copy created with EDD 4 would work] The easiest way to convert the disk to standard epilogue bytes is to use COPYA with a patched RWTS that accepts any epilogue bytes on read but includes standard epilogue bytes on write. [S6D1=DOS 3.3 master disk] ]PR#6 ... ]CALL -151 *B942:18 *3D0G ]RUN COPYA [S6D1=original disk] [S6D2=blank disk] ...read read read... ...grind grind grind... ...write write write... OK, now I have a copy in standard disk format that can be read by any tools. i.e. I can copy the disk that's in drive 2 with COPYA without patching the RWTS beforehand. I can sector edit the disk without messing with the Sector Editor Patcher. There are two problems with this copy: 1. Depending on how the original disk was written, this copy may or may not be able to read itself. I may need to patch the disk's RWTS to deal with the fact that the disk is in a standard format. Or I may be able to replace the DOS completely. 2. Even if it can read itself, it won't get very far, because it still has some sort of secondary protection checking if the disk is original. (Hint: it's not.) To investigate problem #1, let's see if I can see any files on the disk. ]CATALOG,S6,D2 DISK VOLUME 254 A 003 HELLO *B 003 APHANGM.SHAPES B 036 APFRNCH1.OBJ B 023 APFRCHOC.OBJ B 039 APFRPYR1.OBJ B 033 APFRHNG1.OBJ B 029 APFRHNG2.OBJ B 012 APFRLIST.OBJ *B 017 RUNTIME *B 026 APFR.GEN A 002 DISK LAST UPDATED: 10/30/82 B 042 APFRHNG3.OBJ *T 009 APWFRE0 *T 009 APWFRE1 *T 009 APWFRE2 *T 009 APWFRE3 *T 009 APWFRE4 *T 009 APWFRE5 *T 009 APWFRE6 *T 009 APWFRE7 *T 009 APWFRE8 *T 009 APWFRE9 My suspicion was correct: this disk has a standard disk catalog. It even has a HELLO program. That looks inviting. ]RUN HELLO Success! The program loads and runs without complaint. That tells me that whatever was causing the copy to hang during boot was confined to the boot. In other words, the copy protection was entirely contained within the custom RWTS and DOS on tracks 0-2 of the original disk. Booting from the DOS 3.3 master disk, I was just able to run the program -- from drive 2, no less! So, if I'm right, I don't need to worry about problem #2 at all (the copy protection routine). To getting a fully working copy, all I need to do is to overwrite the disk's custom DOS with a standard DOS. I usually choose Pronto-DOS by Beagle Bros. for this purpose, since it's highly compatible with DOS 3.3 but much faster. I keep a freshly formatted Pronto-DOS disk around for precisely this occasion. Copy ][+ --> COPY --> DOS --> from slot 6, drive 2 --> to slot 6, drive 1 [S6D1=my non-working copy] [S6D2=newly formatted Pronto-DOS disk] ...read read read... ...write write write... Quod erat liberandum. --------------------------------------- A 4am crack No. 33 -------------------EOF-----------------