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[supernova777]

looks like its an ISA card
300$ ouch

[GaryN]

Maybe this will help.

The early floppy copy protection on Opcode disks was developed by PACE. It allowed you to copy / install the app to your HDD and authorized it. There were two allowable installs on the floppy - the intention being that you should always have a spare in the event of a drive crash. The app would also run unauthorized as long as you had the original floppy on hand at launch.

Somehow - and we never could figure out how at the time, the auth would write (increment) to the HDD and decrement the floppy, You could could de-authorize your HDD at will which would decrement the HDD and re-increment the floppy. This was mandatory before defragging your drive or migrating to another. In fact most of the time, the second install on the floppy was used because the owner would forget to uninstall the app before running Norton or some such utility.

Many people tried, but with at least with the tools readily available at the time, no one (at least that I know of) ever found what was being written to the HDD or removed from / altered on the floppy. Many tried various methods of cloning each, and they all failed to maintain the authorization. Even doing a bit-by-bit comparison of original and cloned floppies was fruitless. They appeared identical but the clone simply wouldn't work. You therefore couldn't just run off copies - either new or used up… they just wouldn't work.

On the other hand, Opcode was well aware that the system was a pain in the ass and was extremely cooperative about replacing used-up floppies to their registered owners - at least up to the point where it would start to smell like you were authorizing all of your friends drives too…

[GaryN]

ADDENDUM

The Central Point board IS the answer. The question now becomes:

1) What will it take ( $$ ) to put together an IBM machine + drive to install it into?
2) Where will you find the un-decremented floppies to copy from since you still won't know what the actual scheme is and it's very unlikely you'll be able to restore a "used-up" floppy, although you might be able to generate a working clone that will function as a key disk - BUT
3) What will you use for a drive? Now we're right back to the unavailability of 800k USB drives and the functionality of "converted" floppy copies and / or disk images is untested and therefore unknown.

My head hurts…

[supernova777]

wait.. u mean the disk would stop working if u installed from it too many times??? that doesnt even make sense..... t

the company is defunct now.. so how is there disks that still work?
or are they all used up at this point ?

the copy protection was removed from SVP by opcode themselves in 1999 and made public.. or was that just for the latest version 4.5.1?

in all this time noone ever cracked the floppy protection on 1.44mb floppy? are u kidding me?

[MacTron]

i thought u would have more technical knowledge with regard to how the authorization from floppy works...

and what tools one would use to attempt to make a working copy of it.

I don't know the exact procedure. Now a days we have a lot of tools, DiskCopy, Shrinkwrap ... etc.
But remember, sometimes the main point isn't the copy procedure, but the restore procedure, as in the ASR trick.
The main problem nowadays is to find old Sony SuperDrives and floppy disk in good shape.
... and remember that you can use a PC with the Mac formatted 1.4 floppies and the appropriate software.
Any way, you probably will find this work already done. I'll take a look, if I found something I'll post it.

[DieHard]

OK... maybe this will help....

There are a few reasons that the "Software Solutions" for duplicating copy protected floppies would not work as compared to the copy2PC board (which was a hardware solution); AFAIK the hardware duplication board solution had 2 major advantages, it could read "hard errors" that the OS and other programs could not read correctly and reproduce the magnetic error pattern on a new floppy... these "Hard errors" were really not errors at all... they were the implementation of the copy protection scheme.  Secondly, the copy2PC board could read data present before the normal track area and past and then write it, this was similar to "Overburning" with an optical drive... basically to write beyond the normal specifications.

I remember it like yesterday, the Copy2PC Board was the ultimate weapon, we NEVER fould a Key disk that we could not dupe

[GaryN]

  Secondly, the copy2PC board could read data present before the normal track area and past and then write it, this was similar to "Overburning" with an optical drive... basically to write beyond the normal specifications.

I remember yesterday too… very little beyond that however!

We suspected at the time that somehow data was being read and written "out of bounds" on the disks and that was why nobody could find any difference in a non-functioning clone - the difference was essentially invisible to the user. We were also puzzled by the idea that in order to make that work, you had to somehow force a normal user's drive to read and write outside the normal limits.

This scheme was there from the very beginning. I had it on Opcode DX-TX and Roland D editors that pre-dated Galaxy that I ran on my first Mac Plus under System 6.

The whole thing became moot when SVP Free was let out of the cage. Remember Chris, this thread started because you wanted a working copy of Vision 1.4…

[supernova777]

I remember it like yesterday, the Copy2PC Board was the ultimate weapon, we NEVER fould a Key disk that we could not dupe

thats pretty hardcore
i wish i knew that info back in the early 90s
how much was the damn thing back then??

[mrhappy]

$159!

History

In 1981, a little-known company called Central Point Software released a nibble copier for the Apple ][ called Copy ][ Plus. Overnight, it shook up the industry. Never before did a user have so much control over the data on their machine. Copy ][ allowed the user to do anything from file management to making perfect bitwise copies of copy protected software diskettes.

Copy ][ was a massive success. In 1983, Central Point released a similar utility for making disk copies on the IBM PC called, aptly, Copy II PC. It was a vast improvement over the DISKCOPY command that was shipped with DOS. But, it could only do so much, due to the IBM PC's floppy controller hardware being asymmetric in nature (it can read much more information from a disk than it can write). Hence vendors would custom-format floppies to put information in the readable but not writable area, making it uncopyable by the IBM PC hardware.

Enter the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board. Released in 1986, it is probably one of the most unique pieces of hardware ever produced for the PC platform. It is a simple board that is installed in between the floppy disk controller card and the floppy drive. Its function? To place the floppy drive completely under control of the Transcopy software that it shipped with, enabling the drive to do everything that the protection vendors were counting on PC drives _not_ being able to do.

Central Point charged $159 for the Option Board when it was released, and the boards flew off the shelves faster than they could make them. Central Point was an overnight household name in geek circles. When vendors released new protections, Central Point issued updated Transcopy software to handle the new schemes.

edit: They also purposefully removed some functionality in later releases due to pressure from the companies whose software was broken by the Option Board. Thus earlier versions of Transcopy may copy software that later versions will not. Thanks Trixter.

Nearly immediately, the PC diskette protection business came to a grinding halt. How could you make a profit when it's costing people practically nothing to completely undercut your business? Protections shifted from disk-based schemes to documentation checks, serial numbers, registration keys, and port dongles. By 1990, nearly all diskette-based copy protection had disappeared forever.

The result was disastrous for Central Point. Demand for the board ceased once new software no longer had disk-based protection. In 1989, Central Point stopped manufacturing new Option Boards, and in 1990 closed out the stock at $100 apiece. In 1993, Central Point (and its PC Tools and CP-Backup franchise) were swallowed by Symantec. The thrill ride was over.

Epilogue

One legacy remains today from the Option Board and from Central Point Software, the gutsy little software vendor who defied the desires of an entire industry, and against the wishes of its megacorporate brethren, gave users the power they wanted over the software they owned.

edit: Actually this isn't entirely true; in the end they caved into vendors' demands, and removed some capabilities from later versions of Transcopy, as Trixter points out. See this BBS post, sent by aw79 (thanks!)

If it weren't for the Option Board, we might still be dealing with keydisks and booters today. Who knows?

Of course, we still have media-based protections today that, while inconvenient, are easily defeated by commodity hardware. Any kid in the world with a decent CD burner can copy any protected disc out there. So the issue of protected software is almost not even an issue anymore.

The Deluxe Option Board will forever haunt vendors of copy protection malware; a marvelous feat of engineering and ingenuity that it was. Central Point saw a need for something, and in the truest of American tradition, fulfilled it, even having their legs broken for it.

The Option Board proved once and for all, and is still a reminder in the DMCA-threatened time of today, that no matter what draconian and proprietary barriers are put in its path, fair use will always conquer, as human ingenuity knows no bounds.

[supernova777]

interesting - thanks guys 

[DieHard]

My Old company was a Central Points Re seller and we re-sold a bunch on the Deluxe versions... and YES, I remember specifically that the software was changed (copy-write pressures as described above) and was "limited" they also had a newer BIOS rev that I believe was also more limiting; we, of course used the full blown version and the original board for personal tech use

As one last side note (which may be obvious to some)... the DOS version of the software which launched the duplication was NOT format specific, the board copied the diskette as a perfect mirror image, so basically we used it to copy BOTH Mac and PC floppies, I even used it to copy a propriety diskette from and embroidery machine that was neither PC or Mac

 

[macStuff]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Point_Software
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?27509-COPY-2-PC-Option-Board

[macStuff]

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/copy-ii-mac
someones put Copy II MAC on the garden; does this actualy work without any additional hardware :?? 


also:
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2584-mactools
https://winworldpc.com/product/mactools/pc-tools-deluxe-mac
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/13002-mactools-7-x

[smilesdavis]

so with diehards knowlege

what to get to make copies of my last pace protected floppies?

copy II pc deluxe extension card will do? or greazeweazle?
.

[IIO]

one of the free image tools worked for this under system 7... not sure about the name ... diskdup?

[smilesdavis]

ok we need to streamline this
has any effort ever been undertaken to collect every digidesign floppy and cd ever released up until os9?
because im trying hard to compile them but im just starting and the history is getting fragmented to be even able to do so

[DieHard]

ok we need to streamline this
has any effort ever been undertaken to collect every digidesign floppy and cd ever released up until os9?
because im trying hard to compile them but im just starting and the history is getting fragmented to be even able to do so

so... confirmed by one of our members (I don't want to give out his name without permission), there is a much newer hardware device that can dupe the ancient license disks...

This slippery, slimy, but beloved...greaseweazl

Found here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125038985845?hash=item1d1ce78275:g:W5wAAOSwQYFgyioe

From his PM...

... I'm writing because I have just started experimenting with a hardware device called the greaseweazle.  If you aren't familiar with it, it creates flux level copies of floppy disks - meaning that it can read and write pretty much any floppy disk, whether there is copy protection on it or not.  (It's probably a little - a lot - more complicated than that but I'm just starting to learn about it / use it).

In my mind, what makes it relevant to MacOs9lives has to do with the old authorization floppy disks that used to ship with software.  I've done a couple of tests and was able to read Emagic's "zap" floppy as well as Digidesign's "MasterList 2.1" authorization floppy.  After reading the original, I was able to write the image file to a generic floppy and authorize a computer using it.  I then "re-wrote" the flux image onto the same floppy and was able to authorize another computer.
... right now I have a couple more fresh authorization floppies and I'll probably archive them over the next little bit.

If this info. draws much attention, I will break discovery this into a separate topic

[IIO]

has any effort ever been undertaken to collect every digidesign floppy and cd ever released up until os9?

i dont know for sure, but to my knowledge all products which required a key disk in floppy format either have later versions with fullcrack available or became free, like for example bruno/reso audiosuite which later was bundled with protools, or cubase 3.5 which was followed by 4.1 which is basically the same program with no old functions missing.
 
 
this answer might be a bit colored by my personal OS9 philosophy, where it is usually enough to have the latest version of everything working.

maybe i sell my last VST 3.5 and AS plug-ins one day.^^

[smilesdavis]

oy please pm me if you sell plugins or daws