Making Disk Image of Copy Protected Floppy

Well, un-writeprotecting it is as simple as putting tape over the holes in the disk. As far as software, I really didn't use pre OS 7 very much, so I can't help you there.

I think Mac128 means they are protected against copying, rather than write-protected.

The only program I've come across is disk-dup-plus, but have not used it myself, so YMMV.

For years, I've wanted to have digital "disk image" copies of my old 400k and 800k disks. I've done that for all non-protected disks. But copy protection makes it impossible to image the disks. Copy II Mac only works to copy from floppy to floppy or from floppy to hard disk (not the same as an Image). Perhaps if the Central Point Software people were still in business today, they could develop a solution quickly. Because if they could make Copy II Hard Disk copy a protected floppy's data to an Apple HD20, they surely could get it onto a disk image. But disk images didn't exist in the very early days, and so Central Point never came out with that feature.

Another consideration is that some copy protection is a physical hole or scratch on the floppy itself, which even Copy II cannot handle. To dupe the disk to another floppy in that case, you have to match the hole/scratch! So such disks are totally impossible to make disk images of.

The best solution is for a hacker among us to hack the original code. If you can strip out the original copy protection, you can image the disks all you like! This is the ideal solution, but I myself lack the know-how to do it. However, I often read posts over at 68kMLA about people who want to program for System 6 or 7, so this, in my humble opinion, would be an ideal task! I would even be happy to mail duped floppies to the programmer who would be willing to perform this work!

What version of DiskDup+ are you using then? Because I've used one version of it in the past on my copy-protected disks (like SmoothTalker 1.0 and SmoothTalker 2.0, and the resulted images were not usable).

Please also provide a comprehensive listing (if you can) of the protected software that you successfully have "imaged" with DiskDup+. I think that would be very helpful. I myself will then download the version of DiskDup+ you are using (if I can find it) and give it a try on my disks (using my SE/30, booted into 6.0.8).

Thanks.

I've been using this SE/30 to make 400k and 800k disks for a very long time. I've never had a problem. However, it won't work if I boot into any flavor of System 7 and try to make 400k disks. You have to use System 6 to make 400k disks. And yes, my floppy drive is a 1.4MB type, and my SE/30 has the SWIM chip too.

Macintosh Guided Tour and Apple OS disks are not copy protected, so I am not surprised you were able to image those. I've done as much with Disk Copy 4.2. And depending on what version of MS Word you have, it may not be copy-protected either.

I myself have an original MultiPlan disk which I know is copy protected, so I can test that. I can also test my SmoothTalker disks too. But again, what version of DiskDup+ are you using? To make my testing a bit more scientific, I'd like to use the same version you are to ensure we can match that part of the testing equation.

Thanks.

Hello! Can somone share these images of old Mac programs? I am looking for Jam session, PageMaker 1.2 and Bouncing Pepsi Caps, anyway I allready have Jam Session images, but can run only Jam Session Player, and when I try to start the jam session app it alerts me with insert original disk message, so I assume that the floppies were protected. Watch the jam session player on YOuTube I made a clip of and some other old applications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz6jr3wIHZY

http://www.youtube.com/slomacuser

Sorry, Mac128, but my eyes tend to avoid reading titles and jump to the meat of the post! I appreciate your patience with me in making the version more clear though. Got it this time!

I was not suggesting that Word 1.0 was not copy protected. In fact, I know first hand that version 1.0 is protected. I was simply saying that LATER versions were not copy protected. And by that I mean "around version 3.0 or later." I don't have every single version in my possession, so I can't get more specific than that. But I agree with you that version 1.0 is protected.

I still haven't done the scientific testing yet (it's a busy day today), but what I can say for sure is that DiskDup+ (just as you pointed out) will copy even the bad parts of a disk (which are often the copy protected parts). However, this will not copy all disks. I know this for a fact without even testing (but rest assured I will do some testing though). Why do I say this? Because DiskDup+ incorporates only one of the 4 copying features of CopyIIMac. CopyII has the following methods:

Sector Copy
Bit Copy
Keep Track Lengths
Synchronize Tracks

Sometimes a Bit Copy will do the job. Other times, Sector Copy. Other times a combination of the two. And other times, you need to mix all 4. Copy II comes with a listing of old software and the copy methods required to copy them. Central Point spent a lot of time doing that work for us.

And so, while you may have been lucky in copying some protected disks with DiskDup, it is highly likely that all of those disks could have been duped with CopyII's Sector Copy. But since DiskDup doesn't have any other feature of CopyII, any protected disks that require Bit Copy or Keep Track Lengths or a combination of copy methods, could never be duped by DiskDup!

Here is a discussion I participated in almost two years ago:

http://mac.underdogs.kirit.com/forum.php?forum=1&thread=2937&topic=2

I tried to get an image of the disk Archon. I once owned it years ago, but the disk died and the company who sold it was long gone. I therefore turned to Macintosh Garden for help. But the disk is protected, and the people who owned the disk and tried DiskDup+ were not successful.

If you read through that Macintosh Garden discussion though, some of the guys finalized realized that the only way to copy the disk would be to hack out the protection (as I mentioned in my post above in this thread). However, if you go to page 2 of that discussion, you will see that the self-designated programmer in that thread never finished what he started. Everyone had high hopes, but in the end, the programmer was either not a real programmer or he had a problem with eternal procrastination.

The link to the "underdogs" site in my previous post is now dead, however, it is saved on ARCHIVE.ORG here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20081014203122/http://mac.underdogs.kirit.com/forum.php?forum=1&thread=2937&topic=2

This is the kind of thing you would use Kryoflux for. This would let you make an image and a copy of the disk.

However, after you have an image of the disk you are stuck with the limitation of the image format and the emulator. Unless it emulates the disk system at the level required for the protection to work, and the image can contain and describe it, you won't get any further.

Hello Applefritters,
while scrolling along this thread i started flashing back in memories....
nights with gallons of coffee and cigarettes upfront of the Apple II....

Allthough related to the mac it's recommended to read this posting to understand
what you guys are dealing with...
and it's also mandatory to read similar threads in the Apple II section .....

The story with the Laserholes in disks is related to the so called "Prolok protection shema"...
we'll touch that later again.....

The history of copy protection shemata is located in the early time of the Apple II and the
habits in that days to have meetings with dozends of users and dozends of computers where
expensive gamedisks have been copied rapidly....

So companies started to protect their Games distributed with 5 1/4 disks with different
tricks.... :
- some by manipulating the operation system with modified sector headers and
thereby forcing the copyprogramm to believe they face a damaged disk and
thereby forcing errorcodes and aborting the copyprogram
- or by manipulating the operationsystem by relocating the catalog track to another track and displaying
in the "normal§ catalog track fake informations or illegal codes and forcing the copyprogram to
abort the copyoperation with errorcodes...

- some by manipulating the hardware
-and forcing the diskdrive to perform "halfsteps"
this requires to also menipulate the operation system on the disk while it loads the game...
-similar is the manipulation by slowing down the diskspinning speed of the drives
where the original disks are writen to disk....
- or by shooting a hole by laser in the disk itself....
this trick works that way, that while loading the disk there is a routine that tries to write "1"s
to that sector and verify that writing - but because of the hole that sector contains at the hole
"0"s and does not verify the write operation and then aborts the further loading of the game....

and there are dozends of other tricks besides of those listed here....

depending to the kind of copyprotection shema- is the solution how to handle the copy procedure.....

for example: in case of the Prolock shema you must load the disk under "supervision" of a debugger
and
identify where the routine for the write command is issued
and
then identify the beginning of the verification process
and
then alter the code that way that the verification code does not take the real code from the routine
- but instead gets a code from the program instead that cheats that routine that everything is fine
and the verfication failed....
and
you may replace the code of writing by so called "NOP"-operationcodes ( NOP= no operation )
then the disk will perform loadimg the disk without trying to perform that copyprotection shema...
Then such a disk can by transformed to image....

So finally its recommended to get more information about the various shematas and
then find out which shemata has been used at the disks that you want to convert....
then you have to perform the specific trick that is related to the specific
copy protection shematic
and then you may convert....

Thats also the reason that the respositores are crowded with non working disk images...
the guys just made images without knowing what they did and the images contain damaged
information or still contain copy protection that won't work with emulation....

Hint: Most such information has been published in early days at BBS systems like
!pirates harbour" or similar platforms and are nowadays only availiable as text data backups
from that platforms... some Apple II disks contain such content....

speedyG
in early days called "Collosus"