Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!evax!cs4344af
From: cs4344af@evax.arl.utexas.edu (Fuzzy Fox)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Archiving programs
Message-ID: <1990Dec3.071738.26581@evax.arl.utexas.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 07:17:38 GMT
References: <90335.140240XWUU@PURCCVM.BITNET> <1990Dec1.212239.21351@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <90335.224217CMWOLF@MTUS5.BITNET>
Organization: Computer Science Engineering Univ. of Texas at Arlington
Lines: 33

In article <90335.224217CMWOLF@MTUS5.BITNET> CMWOLF@MTUS5.BITNET asks:
>[What is a RAMboard?]

A RAMboard is a hardware modification to your 1541/71 disk drive that
adds an extra 8K of memory.  That's all.

However, 8K of memory is now plenty of memory to buffer an entire track
of GCR ("nybble") data, which means that backup software specially
written to recognize this memory can now copy entire tracks at a time
without worrying about time delays and other problems in copy
protection.

Such hardware/software disk backup systems can cope with nearly any sort
of copy protection on the disk, since they can duplicate it almost
exactly.

However, exact duplication depends not only on reading/writing entire
tracks; it also requires having your drive speed set very carefully at
specific rates.  When the drive reads info off the disk, it can actually
synchronize to a wide variety of data rates.  But when writing, the
drive can only write at the rate that the disk rotates, so if you want
to duplicate both patterns and timing, you need both extra RAM and a
drive speed controller.

Fortunately, Software Support International makes both of these hardware
products, as well as distributing Maverick, the software part of it all.
Contact them for details.

*DISCLAIMER*  Only about 5% of the programs out there need any hardware
at all in order to be successfully backed up.  If you buy only the
Maverick software and forget the hardware, you will go quite far,
especially if you don't bother trying to back up your game software.
Productivity software is by far the easiest to back up.