Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:11367 comp.misc:1727
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From: suhler@im4u.UUCP (Paul A. Suhler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Copy protection and the consumer (dongles)
Message-ID: <2514@im4u.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jan 88 13:31:19 GMT
References: <3902@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: suhler@im4u.UUCP (Paul A. Suhler)
Distribution: na
Organization: Univ of Texas Electrical & Computer Engineering Dept
Lines: 23
Summary: ADAPSO's Software Protection Committee

William S. Graefe writes:
>Apple has recently created a provision for the Mac's.  On the SE, II, and
>IIgs, they have created a new bus for input devices, called Apple Desktop Bus.
>ADB has a provision for dongles which are called ADAPSO's.  They are the same
>thing.  You plug it into an ADB port and the program will search it out,
>and run, if it finds it.

ADAPSO is actually the Association of Data Processing Service Organizations,
whose Software Protection Committee had a project to establish a communi-
cation protocol for dongles attached to IBM PC serial data ports.

I hadn't heard of "ADAPSO" being used as a generic name, but it's not
surprising.  They finally abandoned the effort in about August 1986, as
it looked like software protection was a dying effort.  I hadn't heard
of anyone's trying to put dongles on Macintosh products.

I was part of a group here at UT that launched into an ADAPSO-sponsored
Consumer Reports-style study of various protection devices for IBM PCs.
They called it all off before we actually began testing devices.  The
only result was a survey of the field in the September 1986 issue of
IEEE Software.
-- 
Paul Suhler        suhler@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU	512-474-9517/471-3903