On 30/11/05 20:15, "Julian Wolfe" <fireflyst at earthlink.net> wrote: I tried using that when I was trying to write 400k disks for my Lisa but gave up and used TransMac instead. The process was: Format 1.4mb floppy on Mac Use HFVExplorer (or transmac) to copy image file to this disk on PC Use appletalk to transfer said floppy from the mac that formatted it to a mac capable of writing 400k disks (Iici I think) Create 400k disk Boot lisa Drink beer :)

On 30/11/05 21:39, "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Call me a masochist, but I *want* to use a twiggy based machine :) Booting off a ProFile is too quick! Sorry, I should've said I was creating disks for my Lisa..... I checked my entire Mac collection and none of them would read 1.44 AND write 400K, hmm, I didn't get my SE/30 out of the garage..... I don't drink during the day though, by the time I'd booted Lisa for the first time it was past beer o'clock :) A

the original II didn't have the superdrive, though possibly later ones did. My old IIx had a superdrive, and I'm guessing that predated the SE/30. Come to think of it, my SE has a superdrive, and it even says so on the case. --- Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

On 30/11/05 23:34, "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: I think it was, and I also think I was trying to get my lisa going well before I got a working SE/30.....at the time I had a machine that had been destroyed by the UK's favourite package destroying courier company :o| Nice! I've never toyed with Smalltalk despite having both the Lisa and PC versions kicking around somewhere.... A

On 11/30/2005 at 5:07 PM der Mouse wrote: I've actually found somewhat the reverse to be true, at least as far as floppy drives go. Or am I missing something when I don't succeed in reading an 800K Mac floppy in my nice shiny new USB drive? Cheers, Chuck

Chuck Guzis wrote: Well, to be fair, it's the *controller* you should be blaming and not the drive. I'm sure floppy drive technology hasn't changed in 15 years, but the controllers and software support sure has. For the record: It is impossible to write 800K mac floppies (and 880K Amiga disks) if you have a traditional NEC-based floppy controller. Through extreme clever trickery you can *READ* Amiga 880K disks (Disk2FDI), but so far nobody has been able to read Mac 800K disks. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: I've been "lying" for 20+ years. But there is ALWAYS somebody who has heard about some program that "will do it", reading PC disks with an Apple][, reading the inner tracks of an 8" by cutting it down to 5.25", etc. Disk2fdi does claim specifically that. But it is NOT included in the free "demo" version. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Chuck Guzis wrote: On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Jim Leonard wrote: No, He's expressing some amusement or annoyance about people who refuse to believe that it is impossible. At Comdex once, I had a "heckler" who INSISTED that Apple ][ disks could be read and written by the PC "because they are both 300 RPM". He kept DEMANDING to know why we "refused" to do it. I finally got rid of him by telling him that the reason why we didn't do it was because of threats from Apple's lawyers. (NOT TRUE) There HAVE been two companies who DID make such threats! (At NCC 1983) They couldn't imagine ANY possible use for copying files from one disk format to another other than "to steal our software." (I added both of those formats to XenoCopy that night in my hotel room, but they never kept their promise to sue me.) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: possibly: IBM provided a cable to transfer files/programs from 5.25" based PCs over to 3.5" PS/2s. Many copy-protected programs would have to be unprotected to be able to get the resulting 3.5" copy to work.

On 12/2/2005 at 3:37 AM Jim Leonard wrote: That feels about right. I recall that there was a bit of embarrassment on the part of the IBM that they had to recommend this route. And let's not forget that Lotus wasn't the only one to use very hardware-dependent copy protection schemes--Harvard Graphics was another widely-used package--and games were infamous for it. Oddly, many copy protection schemes could be defeated by simply patching the code to dummy up the subroutine that reported that the copy protection was intact. Such schemes actually worked since the WWW hadn't really gotten going and distribution of code and knowledge was a little slower, although BBS dissemination was taking its toll. This feels to be contemporary with the IBM PC/AT "You're not going to overclock your CPU" BIOS patch. Cheers, Chuck

On 12/2/2005 at 5:42 PM Jim Leonard wrote: the 41st I'd have to go through my very very musty notes, but someone sent me a KQ 2 disk with an "I bet you can't crack this one". It was very clever, even with the INT 3 vector being clobbered, so you couldn't breakpoin it. However, most things will yield to interpretive execution or an ICE box. I used the former, but the latter would have been easier. P.S. I did crack it. (this was before DMCA, so I think it was still legal back then). Cheers, Chuck

woodelf wrote: When you're 16 and broke (I had to go to a friend's house to use a 1200 baud modem when his Dad was out of the house -- "5 miles, uphill, both ways!"), you pirate. I did manage to scrape together enough to buy one or two games a year, but pirating helped me back then determine which games were worth paying for (usually games that came with high-quality materials in the box, like the thick informative glossy manual in Ancient Art of War, or the WWII history and tactics background novellas in some strategy games or flight sims). Now that I'm older and have cash, I still pirate: - Historical archival (old stuff) - Looking for something decent to buy (music, programs) and when I find something worth paying for, THEN I buy it Case in point: Four years ago I bought a DVD burner for $1000 to help me make a professional DVD for retail sale. I had some decent seed capital for the authoring software so I did some small research and bought Sonic DVD Pro or whatever it was called back then for $795. The reviews were way way off; it was such an unusable steaming pile of crap that I ended up not using it but WORST was I had to eat the $795 because I couldn't return it (it was an upgrade to bundled OEM software and Sonic only offered refunds for full versions, not upgrades). I went through two more programs before settling on ReelDVD which is what I ended up using to finish the project. My point is: Had I been able to pirate those programs, I would have saved myself $795 and 4 weeks of wasted time waiting for shipment->testing it->sending it back->waiting for refund->GOTO 10 etc. Early state of the industry or not, I'll always hate Sonic for taking my $795 (it remains my highest amount of "money thrown away" to date). Thankfully, most games and consumer-level software have demo copies that are somewhat functional, like the entire first level of a game, or a 30-day full-featured trial. That is one of the few things I like about the current state of hobbyist computing. Footnote: The very best x86 DVD authoring software in the sub-$5000 range used to be DVD Maestro -- but Apple bought the parent company and killed off the x86 division and products. There are people lined up around the block willing to drop $4500 for this software but it simply isn't available for sale. Fellow DVD producers I stay in contact with debate the pros/cons of pirating that software because it's unclear if it hurts anyone financially or legally. Then again, we're not lawyers :-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Jim Battle wrote: I was speaking figuratively. There is nothing wrong with the statement "When you're broke, you pirate." -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Jim Battle wrote: If that's what you wanted to write, you should have written that instead of attempting to pass it off as a grammar correction. I don't disagree with you; most people go without. But I was (and still am, to a degree) somewhat obsessive, so sitting idle drove crazy. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Jim Leonard wrote: That was supposed to be humor, to soften any criticism it implied of the underlying statement.

On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Jim Leonard wrote: It's called "the indefinite you"

On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 01:51:46 -0600 Jim Battle <frustum at pacbell.net> wrote: I coped by buying a Programmable Calculator. It was hopeless that I would ever be able to afford a real computer (circia. 1977). And I couldn't afford an HP. I got a Texas Instruments SR-56 (couldn't even afford an SR-52). Any program you entered into it disappeared when you turned it off. But it met my needs for awhile.

woodelf wrote: Yes, and not just application or games software either. Think DRM; you hand money over to the provider and they dictate how you can use the thing you've just paid for on your own hardware, whether it be video, still images, music etc. It's OK whilst you can still buy that data in non DRM form, but that choice won't be around forever the way things are going. It's going to be a sorry place for the consumer in a few years time... cheers Jules

While it's not the sort of game you're talking about, I recall discovering some of the elaborate copy-protection "defense in depth" in the Tempest ROMs. I've been on-and-off (rather "off" for a while now, I fear) working on a fully commented disassembly of the Tempest ROMs. It's only 24K of ROM, including all the vector-generator tables...and there are at least two pieces of code that try to ensure the game breaks mysteriously if you change or dike out the copyright notice on screen. (Indeed, one of them is buggy and thinks valid copies are invalid; it's responsible for the easter eggs you can find described for Tempest - certain values in the low two digits of the score at certain times can produce weird and wonderful effects. This is a misfire of copyright-anti-dikeout stuff.) Not much good unless the game is inherently "online", 'cause it means the game can't be played unless it can connect to the mothership. Still defeatable by use of emulators or ICE tools, though; while they can do things like PK-encrypt the game's code, the code must at some time exist in executable form, and can be copied then. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

woodelf wrote: How about 15 months? That's what happened to Alien Front Online, a Dreamcast game that used SegaNet to connect players to each other for online play. 15 months after the game's release, Sega closes SegaNet and bingo, no more online play (along with 99% of all the other Dreamcast online games). Yet another reason I won't spend money on a game I can't play completely disconnected from the 'net. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Teo Zenios wrote: Nope. It will take reverse-engineering the protocol to get it work, but more importantly it will take finding an ISP that you can call to get PPP working. The major dial-up providers (AOL, netzero, etc.) require custom software, to my knowledge; they aren't straight-up SLIP or PPP. TCP/IP would be easier if the broadband adapter didn't command $150-$200 on epay. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Jim Leonard wrote: When I wrote the above I wasn't thinking about setting up your own PPP host. Obviously that would be trivial for most here. Just trying to ward off the inevitable "...but you forgot to..." messages. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

I got mine for $80 and considered that a bargain. It was, of course, almost as much as the stupid DC cost new. It's still probably tied for "favourite console" with my Intellivision. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Do not use for personal hygiene. -- Actual label, toilet brush -------------

Zane H. Healy wrote: I liked gaming on the Dreamcast, but I *really* like NetBSD + X11 on the Dreamcast. Peace... Sridhar

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 02:08:13 -0600 Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote: Plenty of major ISP providers can be accessed with plain vanilla PPP. I know Earthlink can. I used to use it to connect my Handspring Visor to the net a few years back (with a plain old modem.) Any ISP that lets people dial up with the freenixes (Linux, NetBSD, etc.) can be used. Most small local providers work fine, too. Can't one just connect it through ethernet? (I don't know much about the Dreamcast)

der Mouse wrote: Game doesn't have to be inherently online -- it can be a completely offline game and still require per-run authentication. Needless to say, I will most likely not be purchasing these games unless they are completely worth it (Half-Life 2 is one that's kept me on the fence for almost a year now). Yes, but there's a time issue involved. These schemes have checks upon checks upon more and more checks, and my time is most definitely worth enough money nowadays that it's not worth it for me to spend 6 weeks creating a decrypted version of the game. I still crack older games, but that's because they're 15-20 years old and in danger of being lost forever (and they only take hours to crack). Yes, there are others for whom it is a challenge, but modern games take up at least 24-48 hours of download time to pirate -- again, more time I don't have (I need my bandwidth for more productive work). One of the problems of getting older :-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/