Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!mart
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
From: mart@csri.toronto.edu (Mart Molle)
Subject: Copy protection vs Mac IIci (was: complaints about Pirates!)
Message-ID: <1990Jan9.101740.6806@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Summary: I think the 1.44Mb floppy drive might be to blame
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <84978@linus.UUCP> <1031@pmafire.UUCP> <1990Jan5.055220.4463@athena.mit.edu> <1359@key.COM> <104950@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
Date: 9 Jan 90 15:17:41 GMT
Lines: 37

In article <104950@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> martin@m2.csc.ti.com (Steven Martin) writes:
>I only have one problem with the copy protection on Pirates.  When I
>insert the key disk, my IIci crashes.  It worked fine on the II.
>Wouldn't it be funny if the game works fine on the IIci but the copy
>protection is the only thing that is making it crash.
>
I haven't tried Pirates!, but I did try to buy "Where in the World is Carmen
San Diego" (I hope I spelled that right...) for my kids for Christmas.  It
was completely unusable on the IIci due to the copy protection.  You couldn't
boot from the game disk, because it was not 6.0.4 (machine bombs).  And, you
couldn't boot the Mac and insert the master game disk and run it because of
the copy protection.

	Running from the *master* game disk resulted in the master
	disk being ejected, with a dialog box asking for the original
	disk to be inserted.  When we (re-)inserted the master disk,
	it spit out the disk again, brought up the same dialog box,
	ad infinitum.

My guess was that the copy protection scheme depended on side effects from
(mis)using a standard floppy (e.g., record data at wrong speed, or look for
some particular error code when bipassing the OS to read a specific block),
and the IIci, of course, has the new 1.44Mb superdrive.

My kids were very disappointed, but I had no choice but to return the game
and get my money back.  (Sigh.)

BTW, there was a lot of flamage a couple of weeks ago wrt one person's bad
experiences with SimCity.  He complained that it wouldn't work, and lots of
others jumped in that he was wrong because it worked fine for them.  I wonder
if that was caused by a floppy drive problem too...

Mart L. Molle
Computer Systems Research Institute
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
(416)978-4928