Sullivan@cup.portal.com (kevin lee smathers) (12/05/88)
Starglider is actually rather easy to copy. Keeping in mind that the disk is in Atari ST format, (the hardware on the ST is restrictive enough so that making an Atari read an Amiga disk is unreasonable,) use a copy program which duplicates ST disks. I recommend Project 'D' (Fuller Computer Systems.) The included "OmniTool" copies the disk quite nicely (it still boots even on an ST. I haven't used the distribution diskette since the day I bought it. As for $5 fees to copy a diskette, if you think that is "nominal," you must have been one of those people who bought their TRSDOS disks preformatted at twice the cost. Disks cost a little over $1 each. I'm not about to send RainBird $10 or even $5 for something that I should be able to do myself. Especially when they want 500% more than it would cost me to do it. As for the annoyance level of the program's copy protection scheme, despite the author's reply, I do feel that there is a sizeable enough percentage of the owners who have their machines expanded to 1 Meg, that limiting all of the users to booting off of a disk with a proprietary loader and no facility for hard-disk support or intermittent multi-tasking, is a major design flaw. I originally purchased the program for what it can do. The graphic update rates *are* exciting. However, the annoyances of using the program (rebooting answering questions, waiting five minutes for the game to load, (games should have *optional* greeting screens. Press escape to start playing immediately.) etc.) that after two weeks, I stopped using it entirely. I suppose that Rain- bird is happy (after all they got their money) but *I'm* not. I bought an Amiga, not an ST. I want to be able to quit to AmigaDOS (another five minutes rebooting.) The Author claims that Rainbird is not responsible for the program, but I believe strongly that any distributor who doesn't first examine the software and insure that it meets their standards before selling it, is even worse than a company which purposely and consistantly sells programs which aren't worth owning. The latter I can simply avoid. The former is so inconsistent that I never know whether I'm wasting my money until the disk arrives. Companies like RainBird are the ones that I've learned to avoid like the plague. Otherwise one nice little program will come out, and I'll spend another couple of hundred dollars on the company before I realize that the one good program was just a fluke. Hmmm. This didn't start out as a flame, but I guess it trailed off that way. Anyway, you can copy your Starglider disk. If that's all you want then happy computing. -kls