Richman's Word Processor with "Column 80"

[+Allan]

I made a copy of both sides of Richman's Word Processor with Disk Wizard II.

 

Allan

 

Richmans_Word_Processor.zip

[Kyle22]

It doesn't work for me on real hardware. Be careful with this as it appears to write back to disk.

 

Did you look at the first few segments of the main file? That's where most of the protection is. It also appears that the B side (80 column translator) is also involved.

[+Allan]

It doesn't work for me on real hardware. Be careful with this as it appears to write back to disk.

 

Did you look at the first few segments of the main file? That's where most of the protection is. It also appears that the B side (80 column translator) is also involved.

I didn't look at it at all. Just sector copied it with Disk Wizard II. When I get access to my Kryoflux I will make a copy with that.

 

Allan

[Kyle22]

Try mine: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/263470-poor-mans-80-column-word-processor-found/?do=findComment&comment=3722352

[ijor]

It doesn't work for me on real hardware. Be careful with this as it appears to write back to disk.

 

Didn't you say before at this very same thread that it is protected with physical alteration of the disk surface? That might be the reason it attempts to write back to the disk. Most of these protections write to the disk, because this is the only reliable way to verify the disk surface is altered.

[+Larry]

Hi ijor-

 

That reminds me about some of the CSS software disks that I had. I read long ago about how this was supposedly done on Atari disks, and looking carefully at the CSS disks, I *think* I could see damaged spots on the disk surface. If a disk was formatted/written using the timing hole, I can see how it might be possible to calculate the position of an area to be intentionally damaged. But that's just a guess. Or perhaps you could just damage a few areas and then format the disks and find what sectors could not be formatted, and use those in your copy protection scheme. Perhaps you have a better understanding?

 

-Larry

[ijor]

If a disk was formatted/written using the timing hole, I can see how it might be possible to calculate the position of an area to be intentionally damaged. But that's just a guess. Or perhaps you could just damage a few areas and then format the disks and find what sectors could not be formatted, and use those in your copy protection scheme. Perhaps you have a better understanding?

 

Seems they did exactly as you guessed. See the post at this very same thread: (by somebody that apparently worked at CSS at the time?)

 

Bob didn't buy CSS from Ron until 1991, so Richman's pre-dates his ownership of the company. I do remember one copy protection technique involved carefully scraping off a small area of the magnetic coating on a floppy disk, fairly close to the hub. A special software program then read the disk, found the location of the small damaged area (which would obviously be slightly different for each disk), then wrote the program to the disk in such a way that if that small area wasn't in the right location, the software would not load. I don't remember which program(s) this was done for, but it seems to me that we didn't make a whole lot of those disks.

 

[ACML]

Try mine: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/263470-poor-mans-80-column-word-processor-found/?do=findComment&comment=3722352

Can you load into Atariwriter and use spell checker?

Nice!!!