Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!uokmax!norlin From: norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit Subject: Re: M.U.L.E. Sorrow! Message-ID: <1991Feb25.022602.10895@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> Date: 25 Feb 91 02:26:02 GMT References: <1991Feb21.000558.15650@dhw68k.cts.com> <39563@cup.portal.com> Organization: Engineering Computer Network, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK Lines: 50 Chris_F_Chiesa@cup.portal.com writes: >After all the recent mentions here of M.U.L.E. (probably THE BEST game ever >created for the 8-bit Atari), I went to play MY copy thereof, for the first >time in ages, only to find that it would no longer boot. I get about three >or four sectors read in (i.e. three beeps), then the system locks up. I >can only assume the disk has "gone bad" with the passage of time, although >this is one of only a handful out of hundreds I own that shows this kind of >deterioration. >Anyway, can anybody suggest a course of restoration? Anything _I_ can try >on my disk, any way to obtain a fresh copy (I assume the original authors >have long since moved on to other places and projects), anybody looking to >SELL their copy? It may be the case that your drive has slightly changed speed over the years. Archaic protection schemes sometimes involved precise disk drive alignment. Though I am not completely familiar with the principle, I hypothesize it is something like this: some diskettes, when formatted specially, can be read faster than other diskettes. The DOS III (ugh) master diskette was so formatted, and it said so in the manual -- it also said if you reformat the disk, you will lose this "fast sectoring." I would guess that a viable protection scheme would be to fast sector a disk, so that the sectors take a specific (short) amount of time to read in. The protection code in the program would time the disk read. If the disk read was slow, this would mean that the diskette was a copy since the fast sectoring could only be produced on specialized hardware. Thus, a drive out of alignment may read the diskette in slower than usual, leading the program to the incorrect conclusion that the diskette is a copy. Re-aligning the drive, perhaps, may help. This is, again, only my hypothesis, after playing around with a few Electronic Arts games. I'm sure that few people would be concerned at this point about keeping such archaic copy protection schemes secret, so can anyone shed any light on exactly how it was done? I've always wanted to know. >Tnx for any help... > Chris > Chris_F_Chiesa@cup.portal.com ---|\-#-/_|-------/|-------,*.----||---Norman Lin, University of Oklahoma---- ---|/-----|------/-|---,"--|---,"-||------norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu------- --/|------------/-*'---|/------|--||-----(IP addr: 129.15.[20|22|24].2)------ -|/|\---/_|-----|-----------------||-"I gazed in your eyes, and saw the moon- --\|/-----|----*'-----------------||------------and the skies"---------------