Bit copiers, what was the best?

[Keatah]

Remember the old days of using bit copiers? And how sometimes you'd stay up all night trying to figure out which one (or parameters) would copy your disk? And they seemed to go on for hours, even days and weeks!

 

Among the popular ones of the day, which do you think was best?

 

NibblesAway

Locksmith

Essential Disk Duplicator

Copy II+

 

Or perhaps another one I didn't list?

 

As kids, most of us thought of this whole thing as techno black magic. One side against the other. And the fun was in the mystery of figuring out which copier was able to get the job then.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Keatah

[MarkO]

I am partial to Central Point's Copy ][, being it's from Oregon, like me, but I would use LockSmith and NibblesAway as needed..

 

Right Tool for the Job, and I usually say....

 

 

MarkO

[Keatah]

In that case I'd have to say Locksmith, because I used to ride my bike past their offices in Northbrook. I also liked the ultra-fast copy utility it sported.

[JamesD]

I vaguely remember Copy II+ and Nibbles away being my first choices. Neither one copied everything.

[Keatah]

None of them ever do. Even, like, with EDD.. V3 copied something that V4 couldn't.

[Keatah]

I rarely ever complain about classic computing software. However this is one time that is warranted.

 

Most every copy program in existence uses the following defaults.

 

S6,D1 ORIGINAL

S6,D2 DUPLICATE

 

But EDD seems to have that that reversed. Drive two is the ORIGINAL default. It's so goddammned retarded. Just simply WHY??!?!?

Edited August 20, 2016 by Keatah

[Nebulon]

Copy II PC is pretty awesome. I still have one.

 

It'll copy both PC and Apple II diskettes.

[trash_44fr]

But EDD seems to have that that reversed. Drive two is the ORIGINAL default. It's so goddammned retarded. Just simply WHY??!?!?

 

You're right. I'm not sure but it's maybe related to the EDD Plus copy card who grabs the signal directly from the drive...

Hopefully, Ctrl-D does the job.

And you can use the latest 4.9.1 version (an annoying bug was fixed). It includes the drive swapping by default. Thanks to Antoine Vignau !

Enjoy

[TheDevil'sCompass]

I always considered Copy II+ to be the best. It seemed to handle the vast majority for me. I had lots of versions and like the other bit copiers, some older versions could copy things that the new versions couldn't. The booklet of parameters that came with Copy II+ was always a good start to making your copy, but they didn't always work. I recall buying Ultima III and being cocky about making a backup since I knew that the latest version of Copy II+ I had at home had a listing for it. I got home, used the listed parameters for Copy II+ and nothing. No copy. So I sat down and worked on cracking it the old fashioned way.

 

Locksmith was also good but I mostly used it for it's fast disk copy option. Even if it didn't copy correctly you could often use the errors it found as clues to the protection scheme.

 

I used EDD a few times too, but it was always as a last resort. I don't recall it handling disks as well as Copy II+.