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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Things that break with the MC68010
Message-ID: <236@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 23:22:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: neoucom.236
Posted: Fri Jul 25 23:22:59 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Jul-86 06:16:04 EDT
References: <966@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <901@hoptoad.uucp> <2659@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 40
Summary: E-A copy protection

---Munch here, etc...---

I've had a cuple of E-A products.  1 on 1, and Dpaint.  Enjoyed
them both, and they're wonderful examples of getting a lot out of
the Amiga.

Now the bad part is that the algorithm that E-A uses is real slow
and rather unreliable.  I've been though several copies of both
programs.  It seems like the disks break after 20 to 30 boots of
the programs.

It looks like they decode some part of the program and switch its
physical location on the disk every time the protected program is
run.  It also looks like the funky blocks are not noted in the file
system as used blocks which makes them vulnerable for trashing by
legitimate writes to the disk.

I can already hear you say that one shouldn't write to such a
valuable disk.  What about preferences for dpaint?  I got a new
printer, and *had* to change them.  About 5 boots later, the disk
died.  E-A admits that writing to the dpaint disk is a bad idea.
They had nothing to offer about the problem of changing prefs.
They recommended booting from a w.b. disk with the desired prefs--
this turns out to be a pain on the system I'm using which has only
one floppy.

I called E-A on the phone and complained rather bitterly.  They did
relent, and send me new disks which they claimed were better than
the first batch.  Experience suggests that this is not true.  They
also blamed "the software duplicating house" for the problems
related to the copyproof scheme.

I think my carping might have actually done a little good, as I got
back a rather long hand written letter from the v.p. of software
development at E-A.  Now if everyone would complain about how
obnoxious their software is because of the protection used...

Bill
N. E. Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Division of Basic Medical Sciences