looking for: Option Board, Trackstar, Turnover Card or similars

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Mon Dec 22 00:15:38 2003

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Rich Sias wrote:
> I HAVE a Deluxe Option Board. I am trying to get it to write to a 1.44
> floppy.
It does not work reliably on "high density"

> Is there a limit to cable lengths being used before problems
> arise?
Yes
(about 6 feet?)

> TCM & TE both read 1.44 floppies just fine, but the write
> functions do NOT work for me. It has been over 12 years since I have
> used this board and I may be missing some steps. I have a printed manual
> and I have tried everything I can find in it. Now I am in need of
> "experts" suggestions to get it going.
You'll havto settle for us.

> I am trying to copy a plain 1.44 Mb floppy as an exercise. I want to

reasonable

> copy tracks 80-81 to see if that captures some copy protection of a
not all drives will step past track 79
TC and TE will often fail to notice a problem on read, but write will
fail
> protected disk. (The company does not replace lost disks, just SELLS you
> another registered copy) Running diskcopy gets you an Unregistered copy.
> Doing diskcomp shows them to be identical. The difference must be in
> tracks 80-81 or other places diskcomp doesn't pay attention to.

Track 80,81 is not a very good way to implement copy protection.
Do you have a reason to assume that?

You might also want to check for additional sectors on regular tracks,
sector sequence on regular tracks, or skew.
Received on Mon Dec 22 2003 - 00:15:38 GMT