angelini@calculo.irisa.fr (Pierre Antoine Angelini) (02/20/90)
I had this week a very interesting talk with Glen Eustace ( G.Eustace@massey.ac.nz ) about his and my network and the way PC-NFS is used. Both of us had to find a turn-around to the normal and legal PC-NFS protection against copy, for our users are students and most of our PC are without hard disk. It's impossible to leave a disquette into the A drive : It will dissapear almost immediatly. It's also impossible to have as many copies of PC-nfs as registered users ( 1600 on my network). G.Eustache put his A drive inside the PC. It's clever, but he says that dust causes problems. I would like to know how you solved that problem. It could be useful for many people. Mail to angelini@irisa.fr and I'll summarize. In Rennes, we studied the way the protection works. The check is made when you issue the very first NET command. What we have done ( with 3C501 board) was: - Replacing the PC-NFS serial number in PC-NFS.SYS by xxxxxxxxxxx and giving to the users a full system with that invalid PC-NFS serial number. - Putting the good serial number in a PROM , and plugging it into the free socket available for "future development" on the 3C501. Have it recognized with the mem enable strap. - Before the first NET command, a small program searches through the memory for the string xxxxxxxx and replace by the real and valid serial number found in the PROM. The serial number is machine dependant and not floppy dependant. COPY PROTECTION IS RESPECTED. It works without problem for 3 years now. I didn't carry any further investigation on others boards. One of my friends in an other university added the Internet number into the Prom, for he had no RARP daemon running on his machine. And you, what's your solution ? I would like to know it . I don't think I will buy 3C501 ( rather old, and not so fast than new boards) for our future PCs and that solution will not work on every board. ________________________________________________________________________________Pierre Antoine ANGELINI (PAA) | E-MAIL : angelini@irisa.fr IFSIC /IRISA | Atelier Micro | Telephone : 99.36.20.00 poste 480 Universite de Rennes I | Campus de beaulieu | Fax : 99.38.38.32 35042 RENNES CEDEX - FRANCE | --------------------------------PACE ET SALUTE----------------------------------