ralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) (04/05/89)
I called Sublogic's toll-free number to ask them why some scenery disks
(in particular, ones with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati on them) weren't
available for the Apple ][ line.
The response was that the 140K available on 5 1/4 didn't have enough capacity
to store the amount of info on those disks.
When I mentioned the 800K capacity of the 3 1/2" format, the response was
(approximately):
"We haven't decided what to do about a //GS version yet."
I pointed out that 3 1/2" drive is available for the rest of the Apple //
line, not just the //GS. I couldn't seem to make it clear to the person
I spoke to, so I suggest you all call Sublogic and express your wishes,
ESPECIALLY if they're in the middle of deciding something important .
(My wish is for a Scenery Disk Construction kit.)
Good luck.
--
- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.
Internet: ralphw@{ius{3,2,1}.,}cs.cmu.edu Phone:(412) CMU-BUGS
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
"You can do what you want with my computer, but leave me alone!8-)"
-- REWING@TRINCC.BITNET (04/06/89)
I think I can shed a little light on the 3.5 inch disk problem from SubLogic's standpoint regarding scenery disks. Back in 1985, one of my last, and probably greatest software cracks was SubLogic's Flight Simulator ][. At the time, it was one of the most brutal programs to copy, as you had to open up your disk ][ and slow the drive speed down considerably to make a good copy. To make matters worse, a normal 5.25" disk, whether DOS or ProDOS has 35 tracks, 16 sectors per track. Flight Simulator instead had a scheme in which every track past track 0 had one *BIG* secto, which was worth 16 sectors. Whenever the program did some disk access, it would switch the video to the second Hires screen bank, and then use the memory of the first bank to load in that entire sector ($2000-$35FF in memory). Once read it, it would take the information in big 4 sector chunks and do memory moves to whereever the info was needed. Of course, this leaves one thing unresolved: if you remove all the gaps that seperated the 16 sectors and combined them into 1, where does the extra gap space go? Well, ever noticed how long it takes for FSII to boot up on a 64K or better machine? (Seeming like its reading every track?) In fact, it is reading every track. They got very sneaky and used the extra space left over on ever track to throw on a small piece of 4x4 encoded data. When all the data was read in, it was worth 16K, just enough the fill the language card segment, and thus managing to get 160K+16K=176K of storage on a standard Apple II disk. Sneaky, huh? How do you crack a program that has more data on it than a standard copyable disk? It turned out that not all of the master disk was full of scenery data. The empty sectors were wiped clean with the byte $FE, so I wrote a little routine to load the language card from these sectors which I preloaded the 16K RAM software, then continued the standard loading process. Then I threw out all the read/write routines, replaced them with standard ones based on DOS 3.3 RWTS, and got them to work with FSII memeory management routines. Finally, I added a FSII Scenery disk conversion program that was loaded onto the empty space on track 0 (I had two *bytes* left on track 0 once that was finished, *whew*!) To sum this all up, FSII's disk read/write routines arecompletely tied to the Apple Disk II 5.25 format. For SubLogic to try to support 3.5" would be almost impossible considering the constraints of the program, lack of RAM memory of disk space for the routines, age of the software, and many other factors. Hopefully, if and when SubLogic releases FSIII for the Apple IIgs, it will be in a copyable 3.5 inch format, GS/OS compatible. Alas, we can always dream... --Rick Ewing Now earning a respectable career a Apple Computer Atlanta Georgia P.S. If any of you still have that FSII crack, I went under the name of the Byte Busters!
SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (04/06/89)
>I think I can shed a little light on the 3.5 inch disk problem from >SubLogic's standpoint regarding scenery disks. > [...lotsa detail deleted...] >To sum this all up, FSII's disk read/write routines arecompletely tied >to the Apple Disk II 5.25 format. For SubLogic to try to support 3.5" >would be almost impossible considering the constraints of the program, What I learned from all that was: 1) SubLogic is now losing potential revenue due to incompatibability of its copy protection scheme with subsequent hardware advances. 2) The copy protection scheme failed to prohibit copying in the first place (locks are for honest people?). 3) Sublogic PAID to develop and implement the protection scheme which only made life difficult for legitimate purchasers. There's gotta be a better way to insure the legitimate economic interests of software developers and distributors. Murph Sewall Vaporware? ---> [Gary Larson returns 1/1/90] Prof. of Marketing Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET Business School sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu [INTERNET] U of Connecticut {psuvax1 or mcvax }!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL [UUCP] -+- I don't speak for my employer, though I frequently wish that I could (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited) According to the American Facsimile Association, more than half the calls from Japan to the U.S. are fax calls. FAX it to me at: 1-203-486-5246