Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!lll-winken!uunet!pilchuck!del
From: del@Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: writing to right protected 5.25 inch disks
Message-ID: <1133@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 89 05:47:45 GMT
References: <6225@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: del@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 24

In article <6225@bsu-cs.UUCP> mdlawler@bsu-cs.UUCP (Mike Lawler) writes:
>
>I'd like to be able to write to some disks that don't have right protect
>noches without having to make a noch in them.  Does anyone know of software
>that will allow you to write to a right protected disk?
>Thanks for any replies.
>-- 

This is absolutely impossible to do in software, as the write protect
is controlled in hardware on the disk drive itself.  You can write
software that will ignore the writeprotect status bit and write to
the drive anyway, but the drive will not enable the write gate and
nothing will happen to the disk.  Assuming that you really want to
do this for legitimate purposes (of which there are several) and
are not just figuring a new twist on viri, your only option is to
modify the circuitry of the drive so that it no longer has a write
protect detection.  This will allow you to write to the notchless
disks, with no special software.  You still will no be able to
*distribute* software that can do this, but none of the legitimate
reasons for doing this require distribution :-)

-- 
del (Erik Lindberg) 
uw-beaver!tikal!pilchuck!del