[cctalk] Re: Mac G4 and SATA drives :o)

It is NOT A MYTH. The fact that it can be trivially circumvented AFTER you know how, doesn't make it a "myth" It comes from it being DELIBERATELY blocked. Yes, somebody who already knows how can beat Apple's attempt at lock-in. For somebody who DOESN'T already know, it's a bit of a project. If you ALREADY know HOW it does it (looking for "(c) APPLE" in a known region), it's not hard to crack something like that. If you HAVE an Apple ddrive, you can search for it, and know where it needs to be patched on the other drive. But, if you do NOT have access to an Apple drive, the disassembly to determaine what needs to be patched and where is more than a little daunting. If you ALREADY know that a given protection can be defeated by replacing a conditional jump with an unconditional jump at a known location, it is trivial. If you DON'T ALREADY know, it's a small project, without guarantee of success sufficient to warrant purchase of a drive that may or may not be patchable. Consider the classic CE story/joke. The CE arrives, measures position on the case and hits it with a hammer. Customer balks at the bill. CE responds, "yes, it is only $1 for hitting it with a hammer. The rest of the charge is for knowing where to hit it." IFF you know what you are doing, it's not always difficult. MS-DOS started to key EVERY program, disunirregardless of whether there was a need, to only work with its own specific version. But, without patching, your development work is seriously inconvenienced by not having a copy of LINK.EXE or EXE2BIN.EXE that will work with the running OS version, and getting "WRONG DOS VERSION" errors. "DOS 2.00 LINK.EXE DOESN'T WORK WWITH DOS 5.00" is a true statement, UNTIL you determine what to do and fix it. Knowing about function 30h, AND knowing that there isn't any reason NOT to make the patch, makes the patch trivial. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com