Copy protected discs

Paolo_R

I have downloaded Project Manager Workbench. The description on Win World states "Important: This software is copy protected, and no unprotect is known to exist. To run it, you must ..... recreate a copy protected disk with the images provided".

How do I create a copy protected disk from the images?

Thanks

SomeGuy

Project Manager Workbench 2.20 contains tested images in Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, Transcopy, ImageDisk, and CopyIIPC format. So take your pick.

The first three require special hardware (look them up). The last two can be written with a real PC if it has a real (not USB) floppy controller. ImageDisk formats are also supported by a number of emulators.

ibmpc5150

In this case, copy protection track seems to be simple, it can be copied by Teledisk / ImageDisk / Copy II PC / Copywrite without H/W.

Copy Protected Area is on Track 39/1 (Each sectors are just 512 bytes.)

39/1/1
39/1/2
39/1/3
39/1/4
39/1/5
39/1/6
39/1/7
39/1/104
79/1/1

Paolo_R

Thanks guys for the answers. I'm not familiar with any of the software you mention #SomeGuy :( and I don't have a PC with a real floppy controller.

#ibmpc5150, this approach seems 'easier' (no hardware required) but, as I've never delved into copy protection before, can you point me to a set of instructions on how to use the software you mentioned?

What do I have to do to the Copy Protected Area?

Sorry for the dumb questions but I'm in very new territory for me.

SomeGuy

You don't even have a vintage computer to run it on? Well then go out and buy one, better yet, buy a dozen! 8)



Sorry, there are no simple instructions. Each copy protected disk is slightly different, and there are many different emulators.

Well, putting that aside, if you really don't have any real IBM PC compatibles to run the software, then your best bet is probably either the PCE emulator, or the similarly named but unrelated PCem emulator. PCE is not user friendly though, and I don't know exactly how capable the latest PCem is. This software was tested to run on PCE.

ibmpc5150

@Paolo_R

I have old DOS PC and dumped a lot of Copy Protected Software by Teledisk / TransCopy.
Of course, I have TransCopy owner.

I also use Anadisk to analyze the disk sector.

The best way is to get copy protected software and try to dump it by your self.

PCE (Not PCEM) emulator is nice emulator for supporting Copy Protected Track.

A few of copy protected track range is simple (only different from Track/Sector ID), it can be copied with Teledisk/ImageDisk/Copy II PC/Copywrite easily.

But most of copy protected disk is not simple and copied by software but needed H/W just like TC/KF/SCP.

02k-guy

Just an observation: It's gonna be darned hard for many people to find the resources both in hardware and software to get these protected disks to do something useful.

It might well serve the greater cause if over time, the software was installed to HD and archived up in its installed state, ready to unpack and use.

I for one no longer bother with these since I gave away my last hardware board.

I mean, I appreciate and want to see the original images preserrved. But we can do that AND the other as time permits.

SomeGuy

The problem with that is pre-installing too often takes away various important options. And many protected titles CAN'T be installed to a hard drive, or still won't run without the keydisk.

What really needs to happen is for emulators to get their act together and better support copy protected image formats, and do so in a friendly way.

Of course, feel free to contact your local oldskool hacker to see if they can come up with an unprotect.

SoftPCMuseum

SomeGuy wrote:

The problem with that is pre-installing too often takes away various important options. And many protected titles CAN'T be installed to a hard drive, or still won't run without the keydisk.

What really needs to happen is for emulators to get their act together and better support copy protected image formats, and do so in a friendly way.

Of course, feel free to contact your local oldskool hacker to see if they can come up with an unprotect.

Copy protected disks are at the very least supported under PCE, The Virtual Computer Collection, and 86box as far as PC emulators are concerned. The first two support the TransCopy disk format as well as the conversion of Kryoflux and SuperCard Pro disk streams, and the third one supports the Amiga-style "FDI" format that was brought over from PCem, as well as its own "D86F" format.

The problem here with most PC emulators is that the Kryoflux is mainly seen as being an Amiga feature. They see much that their community is so strongly fixed on the Amiga that they simply assume that it isn't used for the PC and so they ignore it completely. A lot of other people also don't understand that there is much more to the Kryoflux and other similar formats and devices than just using copy-protected disks. There is also the fact that the same type of format can be used to simulate disk read errors and other such issues that can occur on a real machine.

Paolo_R

To all who replied: thanks for the comments - it's obviously a complex problem.

However the download for PMW Advanced contains 3 sets of disk images viz. CopyIIPC (*.cp2), ImageDisk (*.imd) and Transcopy (*.tc). I have installed the PCE emulation of an IBM XT running PC-DOS3.0.

The question now is: how do I get these disk images into PCE? Is there a further translation process involved?

SomeGuy

In this case, no. You can feed the IMD (ImageDisk) images directly to PCE.

It may try to accept TC and CP2 images, but the last time I checked support for those was messy.

Now if it did not include IMD images, you would need to convert to to PSI (PCE Sector Image) format.

PSI is not a really a standard image format, nothing else uses it, and you can't write real disks using that format. It is an intermediate format used by PCE that records a lot of extra sector detail. Usually enough to run copy protected disks.

That involves the use of the PCE tools PFI.EXE (PCE Flux Image, converting from Kryoflux or SCP), PRI.EXE (PCE Raw Image), and PSI.EXE (PCE Sector Image).

Unfortunately, this can be very complicated, requires some knowledge of the disks contents, and is a poorly documented process.

Although, if you want to try it, the following command will convert a Kryoflux or SuperCard Pro IBM PC Double-Sided Double Density image dumped using a 360k 5.25" or 720k 3.5" (300 RPM) floppy drive. This should work for most disks on this site.

pfi track00.0.raw disk1.pfi 
pfi disk1.pfi -R 1 -r 500000 -p decode pri disk1.pri
pri disk1.pri -p decode mfm disk1.psi -f -v
psi disk1.psi disk1.img
psi disk1.psi -L > disk1.txt

The last command creates a text file containing a list of all of the sectors it found. This can be helpful to determine if the process was successful or not.

Paolo_R

Thanks for that. I'll try with the .IMD disks. How do I feed the images to PCE? The pce-5160.cfg shows 2 floppy disks as part of the set up. How do I 'mount' the .IMD disks?

Sorry these are basic questions but I've never done ths before.

SomeGuy

Well, since you have to flip disks, changing the cfg won't do much good. What you have to do is enter the debugger by pressing escape-M (note when actually using applications you always have to hit escape twice or you get stuck), switch to the terminal window, and send a "message" to the the disk system. It might be sort of in the manual, but the command is in the form "m insert 0:disk.imd" where 0 is A: and 1 is B: because everyone starts counting at zero. To remove an emulated disk you use the command "m eject 0". And then when you are done, enter "g" to resume emulation. Because somehow, this is the easiest and most intuitive way to do things [shoots self in head].

ibmpc5150

@Paolo_R

PCE emulator is based on command line, it depends on user defined configulation.

At first you should know how to edit configulation and batch file to run.
There is No GUI just like PCEM, 86BOX.
I always edit .cfg and .bat file by editor.

Paolo_R

@SomeGuy, @ibmpc5150

OK, I got PMW to load and run. Apparently the command to insert a disk into drive A, from the terminal, is

-m emu.disk.insert 0:fd0.img

I found that changing the disk names from e.g. disk01.imd to fd0.img worked fine.

Thanks for your help.

SoftPCMuseum

Since the emulator that I'm developing which is based off of PCE (The Virtual Computer Collection) is currently in the process of adding a new user interface, you should try that once the first build of it with the user interface becomes available. Currently it is being kept out of the builds because it is still heavily incomplete, though I'll still work more on the dialog boxes once I finally have the time to work more on it.