Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!iuvax!silver!sl161011
From: sl161011@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Kevin Clendenien)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Migraph Touch Up needs dongle
Message-ID: <3002@silver.bacs.indiana.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 89 07:15:02 GMT
References: <13545@cup.portal.com> <5440011@hplsla.HP.COM>
Reply-To: sl161011@silver.UUCP (Kevin Clendenien)
Organization: Indiana University BACS, Bloomington
Lines: 24

In article <5440011@hplsla.HP.COM> andyc@hplsla.HP.COM (Andy Cassino) writes:
>{[Touch Up needs a dongle]
>
> Um, what's a "dongle"? (I am interested in Touch-Up, and I'm pretty sure I
> don't have one of these exotic things).
>
A dongle is a piece of hardware that comes with a piece of software that
must be present for the software to run.  In this case, the dongle must be
plugged into the parallel port for Touch Up to run because the software looks
for it.  This is a hardware oriented solution to pirating.  You can copy the
program, but it won't run without the dongle, so giving the program to 
someone else will do no good, unless they too have a dongle.  The problem
comes when the dongle must be plugged into the same place something else
might need to be plugged.  In this case something like a parallel printer.
I don't have Touch Up, so I don't know if there is a way to plug both a
parallel printer, and the Touch Up dongle into the parallel port.  Probably,
the Touch Up dongle has the facility to have a parallel printer plugged 
into it, but even this might cause some problems with certain printers if
the Touch Up dongle affects the signal strength at all.  Certainly when
buying Touch Up, you should ask about this possible problem.
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sl161011@silver.UUCP                                    Kevin B. Clendenien
"My dongle is bigger than your dongle"
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