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For those who aren't familiar with this particular chapter in Apple II history: - "Copy-2-Plus" was the ubiquitous disk copier/disk utility software for Apple
by thought_alarm 4y ago
For those who aren't familiar with this particular chapter in Apple II history:
- "Copy-2-Plus" was the ubiquitous disk copier/disk utility software for Apple II computers in the mid to late 80s. The makers of Copy-2-Plus, Central Point Software, had a distribution deal with VTech, makers of a popular legal Apple II clone, the "Laser 128".
- The Laser 128 was a legal clone because because VTech provided a clean-room implementation of the Apple II firmware that was, for the most part, not super buggy. They also legally licensed Microsoft BASIC. The Laser became very popular in the late 80s as VTech was able to undercut Apple's pricing while extending the hardware in ways that Apple was unwilling to do.
- At some point in the late 80s, the source code to Copy-2-Plus went missing. In order to keep the lights on, Central Point Software had to re-implement their premier product from scratch.
- In the early 90s, a dead hard drive shows up in dumpster of a hardware recycler. This hard drive apparently contained a copy of the Copy-2-Plus source code that went missing in the late 80s, as well as the code for VTech's Laser 128 firmware and Microsoft BASIC.
- By fluke, a worker at this recycler happens to notice something about this dead hard drive, fixes it, and discovers all of this missing and/or notable Apple II source code.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 4y agoThe era of infinite git mirrors of everything has made people forget just how fragile the source code for so many things was (and still is!) - Microsoft has lost the source for a number of things that still ship with Windows (as evidenced by them doing binary patches at times. If you have any old equipment, especially if it is of unknown origin, try hard to check it before you wreck it.
- FPGAhacker 4y agoJust to add a little more context, copy-2-plus could circumvent copy protection.
- abeyer 4y agoNotably C2P was largely so ubiquitous as it was often the only way to copy or backup copy-protected commercial software you purchased. Most software came on (relatively fragile and failure-prone) floppy disks, but they were often copy-protected by way of tweaking low level parameters to the drive when the disk was written, such that data beyond the boot blocks was essentially unreadable to the standard disk read routines. The boot blocks on the disk would load the appropriate parameters before continuing to allow the software to run from what otherwise appeared to be a corrupt or unreadable disk. C2P gave the ability to tweak those drive parameters yourself during copies, and also came with a library of known software with the necessary configuration provided. Interesting to think that it wouldn't even be legal to own or distribute anymore in the post-DMCA world.
- aasasd 4y ago> It wouldn't even be legal to own or distribute anymore in the post-DMCA world. Meanwhile it would be explicitly legal in some European states, where people are allowed to make backup copies of software they buy, against anything that the vendor says—and/or to make the software work on their machine.
- RachelF 4y agoThere were rumours that Wordperfect lost their source code of Version 5.0
- philsnow 4y agoIs that the same VTech that makes kids toys these days ?