6 ms·

I don't know about physical holes in the media, but a number of Apple // games had a few bad sectors sprinkled throughout the disk that would cause the 5.25" dr

I don't know about physical holes in the media, but a number of Apple // games had a few bad sectors sprinkled throughout the disk that would cause the 5.25" drives to make sort of a "BBRRRRNK" noise when copy programs hit them, and then ultimately the copy program would stop and show an error. Copy //+ defeated this by letting you choose what game you were copying, and it had a list of sectors to avoid for each game. The good ol' days. This was back when calling stolen programs "warez" was still cool.

hota_mazi 9y ago
That's not quite how it works. Bad sectors were expected by copiers like Locksmith or Copy//+. They were nothing special. The copiers tried to make sense of them by identifying the address and data markers, which were often altered (D5 AA 96, ...) but if they encountered an error, they would just signal it and move on. The cracker then had to take over, e.g. analyze the raw content of the track or just start disassembling and find out how to read these malformed tracks (or sometimes, they contained specific bit patterns that didn't represent any data but were verified by the copy protection). Source: I still crack Apple ][ games now and then for the fun of it.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  Here's some of my old games: https://imgur.com/a/8Psom https://imgur.com/a/8Psom I (re)bought most of them in the late 90s after chucking my games in the early 90s when I got tired of my Apple //e. Still have my original Apple //e and a backup. Finally got that color monitor upgrade too!
  - hota_mazi 9y ago
    Wow, are you me? I actually have the Ultima VII games on my desktop as we speak.
    - justherefortart 9y ago
      I've restarted AutoDuel. The only issue is there was some glitch or easter egg in the game copy I originally had which gave me 850k in cash. Playing w/o a ton of cash is much harder.
  - ceautery 9y ago
    Nice! Bards Tale 2 was boss.
- ceautery 9y ago
  Eeeenteresting. That makes more sense than going through the effort to jank physical media in a way that can be easily side-stepped.

hota_mazi 9y ago

That's not quite how it works. Bad sectors were expected by copiers like Locksmith or Copy//+. They were nothing special. The copiers tried to make sense of them by identifying the address and data markers, which were often altered (D5 AA 96, ...) but if they encountered an error, they would just signal it and move on. The cracker then had to take over, e.g. analyze the raw content of the track or just start disassembling and find out how to read these malformed tracks (or sometimes, they contained specific bit patterns that didn't represent any data but were verified by the copy protection). Source: I still crack Apple ][ games now and then for the fun of it.

justherefortart 9y ago
Here's some of my old games: https://imgur.com/a/8Psom https://imgur.com/a/8Psom I (re)bought most of them in the late 90s after chucking my games in the early 90s when I got tired of my Apple //e. Still have my original Apple //e and a backup. Finally got that color monitor upgrade too!
- hota_mazi 9y ago
  Wow, are you me? I actually have the Ultima VII games on my desktop as we speak.
  - justherefortart 9y ago
    I've restarted AutoDuel. The only issue is there was some glitch or easter egg in the game copy I originally had which gave me 850k in cash. Playing w/o a ton of cash is much harder.
- ceautery 9y ago
  Nice! Bards Tale 2 was boss.
ceautery 9y ago
Eeeenteresting. That makes more sense than going through the effort to jank physical media in a way that can be easily side-stepped.