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From: unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: DOS 3.3 on a hard drive. WHY? a reply
Message-ID: <14258@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 91 03:15:04 GMT
References: <steveh.671118091@tasman> <15768@smoke.brl.mil>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Open Access Computing
Lines: 43


In article <15768@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <steveh.671118091@tasman> steveh@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Steven Howell) writes:
>>cad it use DOS 3.3 or UniDOS 3.3.
>Why would you want to?

	Why? So you can put scads and scads of old DOS 3.3 file games on
a hard drive instead of having to boot 'em off of a 3.5" disk or even (EGADS!)
a 5.25" drive.
	In my opinion, a larger proportion of those games were incredibly fun and
playable for a longer time than most arcade and computer games nowadays.

>>can it boot from the drive under dos 3.3 or unidos
>I suspect that DOS 3.3 variants would not understand the SCSI hardware.

	With the DOS 3.3 clones I know of for 3.5" drives, you have to boot
into ProDOS but it's simply a matter of running a small system file to get over
into DOS 3.3.

>>can i create 5.25' allocations and copy protected software to them.
>I don't understand this question.  You can copy protected software
>anyway, but the copy probably wouldn't work.

	He means, can he copy a disk image of a copy protected program to 
some sort of a special 143K partition of a hard drive.

	It ain't possible with current software. You could probably invent some
sort of a way to trap all direct calls to the hardware from a program
and then read the volume instead of the literal floppy disk.

	That would be orders of magnitude more work than simply converting
the program into DOS 3.3 or ProDOS file(s).  It seems many copy protected
programs use slight variants of DOS 3.3, and there probably exist slight variants
of ProDOS in copy protected programs..

	Once again, a call for someone to make Ultima V bootable on 3.5" disks
rather than 5.25" disks. (I know that the first disk is a ProDOS disk.. the others
aren't)....  A file version of Willy Byte and Short Circuit would be fun too!
(just trying to think of the good games that haven't been hacked into file
versions)
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