egb@burl.UUCP (egb) (04/12/85)
A friend whose login is akgua!gcuxc!gccwb asked me to post the following message for him (he doesn't have net.news, just what I send along to him): Subject: An Open Letter to Bryce An Open Letter to Bryce Nesbitt ('of 1541 'FLASH'') Thanks, Bryce for sharing with us the 'Magic Incantation' that prevents destructive head-banging when loading certain copy-protected commercial software. I just bought the highly-touted 'Fleet System 2' word processing program and I must say it deserves the applause I have seen it given in technical reviews. But the folks at Professional Software, Inc. (Needham Mass.) who produce the package have seen fit to protect it against piracy by the tried-and-miserable 'bad block' method. At three points during the process of loading the program the poor head is caused to hammer itself bloody against the track 1 stop. I found it just wasn't practical for me to load the program on Monday morning and leave it there all week - just to cut down on the damage. Fortunately, I had saved the article you wrote to 1541 users about the problem so I looked it up and prepended the incantation to the boot program. Results? Superb!!! I still see the red light flash when the read errors are encountered, but the banging no longer occurs. My grateful thanks! Why does a 'J' placed at that particular spot in the drive's memory have such a beneficial effect? I hope this message in some form reaches the Professional Software people. If they feel they have to build a drive-killer into their programs, they might consider modifying the 'boot' as you suggest and thereby reduce the raging anger some of us feel when we see our purchased, otherwise high-quality software tearing up our expensive equipment. Wally Blake gcuxb!gccwb Ed Baldwin, burl!egb
dillon@ucbvax.ARPA (Matt Dillon) (04/15/85)
In article <664@burl.UUCP> egb@burl.UUCP (egb) writes: >Subject: An Open Letter to Bryce > >An Open Letter to Bryce Nesbitt ('of 1541 'FLASH'') > >Thanks, Bryce for sharing with us the 'Magic Incantation' that >prevents destructive head-banging when loading certain >copy-protected commercial software. >Results? Superb!!! >I still see the red light flash when the read errors are >encountered, but the banging no longer occurs. My grateful >thanks! > >Why does a 'J' placed at that particular spot in the drive's >memory have such a beneficial effect? The way the 'Magic Incantation' works is by modifying a flag in the drive that tells the 1541's "Brain" that it has already banged the head. The normal value for the location is (5). Up that to 128 and the head will 'shake' but never bump. 133 and most of the 'shake' goes away. 156 and you are home free. PLEASE NOTE; all this does is prevent the banging. The bad sectors (3 in the case of Fleet System II) are still there and read as such. For those that missed the incantation here it is again; OPEN1,8,15:PRINT#1,"M-W"CHR$(106)CHR$(0)CHR$(1)CHR$(156):CLOSE1