Happy & Super Archiver backup mtrix

[ebiguy]

Hi,

Anyone knows about some kind of matrix which would tell which drive enhacement can copy a software ?
I am testing the creation of real floppy disks from the beta version of RespeQt but some titles do not work after copy.
Then the question is : Would Happy and Super Archiver produced a working copy if it was from real floppy to real floppy.
So I was wondering if a matrix like this has been created :

Happy v5   Happy v7   Super Archiver   Bit Writer   Title
-------------------------------------------------------------------
   OK         OK            OK             OK       Archon
   No         No            No             OK       Archon II
etc

Or maybe by kind of protection...

[_The Doctor__]

Hi,

 

Anyone knows about some kind of matrix which would tell which drive enhacement can copy a software ?

I am testing the creation of real floppy disks from the beta version of RespeQt but some titles do not work after copy.

Then the question is : Would Happy and Super Archiver produced a working copy if it was from real floppy to real floppy.

So I was wondering if a matrix like this has been created :

 

 

Happy v5   Happy v7   Super Archiver   Bit Writer   Title
-------------------------------------------------------------------
   OK         OK            OK             OK       Archon
   No         No            No             OK       Archon II
etc

Or maybe by kind of protection...

such a spreadsheet would be very very nice. I do not believe I've seen one...

[ijor]

Happy v5   Happy v7   Super Archiver   Bit Writer   Title
-------------------------------------------------------------------
   OK         OK            OK             OK       Archon
   No         No            No             OK       Archon II
etc

Or maybe by kind of protection...

 

There is no such list that I know. It shouldn't be difficult to compile a table by protection type. There aren't that many protections on the 8-bit.

[Wilheim]

Just as a kickstart, I share an initial Excel spreadsheet of only 4 titles that I'm aware of their protection.

 

Maybe we could start from there.

 

Cheers!

Atari 8-bit protected disk list.zip

[ijor]

Just as a kickstart, I share an initial Excel spreadsheet of only 4 titles that I'm aware of their protection.

 

Nice. But do be aware that many titles have multiple releases with different protections. e.g., Seven Cities of Gold.

[_The Doctor__]

The spreadsheet could point out how to check and what method to use to re create it then.

Edited November 4, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[+DrVenkman]

The folks running the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative could probably provide this data. Hell, DjayBee's cracks thread is full of info like this scattered throughout, title by title as he cracks the ATX files.

[DjayBee]

Attached my latest list of cracked images.

 

The interesting information here are titles with the same "Protection Type".

Columns of the CSV table:
======================
ATX-File		filename of the ATX
Protection		protection of this image (see below for codes)
Publisher		publisher of THIS image
original Publisher	original publisher of this title
Protection Type 1	similar protection has same title
Subtype 1		identical protection has also same subtype
Protection Type 2	same as above if disk has two protection types
Subtype 2		same as above if disk has two protection types

codes for protection list:
===========================
bad	missing sector
mis	missing sector
crc	sector with bad CRC
del	deleted sector
weak	weak sector
pha	phantom/duplicate sector
tim	tested for timing
aln	track alignment
skw	sector skew
spt	sectors per track (if >18)
EOR	code is EORed for obfuscation
checksum	code is tested for checksum

CSS-Cracks-20181105.csv.txt

[ebiguy]

 

Attached my latest list of cracked images.

 

The interesting information here are titles with the same "Protection Type".

Columns of the CSV table:
======================
ATX-File		filename of the ATX
Protection		protection of this image (see below for codes)
Publisher		publisher of THIS image
original Publisher	original publisher of this title
Protection Type 1	similar protection has same title
Subtype 1		identical protection has also same subtype
Protection Type 2	same as above if disk has two protection types
Subtype 2		same as above if disk has two protection types

codes for protection list:
===========================
bad	missing sector
mis	missing sector
crc	sector with bad CRC
del	deleted sector
weak	weak sector
pha	phantom/duplicate sector
tim	tested for timing
aln	track alignment
skw	sector skew
spt	sectors per track (if >18)
EOR	code is EORed for obfuscation
checksum	code is tested for checksum

 

Thank you so much.

It will help me (and save my time) build a compatibility list for RespeQt depending on the drive enhancements owned.

[+Nezgar]

Attached my latest list of cracked images.

 

The interesting information here are titles with the same "Protection Type".

"Trains (1983)(Spinnaker Software)(US)";"(pha+tim $9 / 9)";"Spinnaker";"Spinnaker";"Spinnaker pha";"a";;

 

A year or so ago, this one intrigued me, (before I knew of your efforts on this title) as the ATR from the "Best Games collection" seemed to work fine when loading in an emulator, via SIO2PC, and when written out to a real disk it also worked fine on a real Happy drive (in happy mode) but would fail when set to *unhappy* or on a stock 1050.

 

Looking at RespeQt logs, i could see it would fail after reading sector 9 about 50 times, which clued me into the timing being 'too fast' was actually causing the commonly shared versions to pass the protection checks!

 

Of course, sector 9 on an unbuffered 1050 will only read sector 9 once every revolution... so this was my inspiration to learn how to create a custom track with the Archiver, and made a track 1 on a new disk that had 19 complete sectors on 1 track, with 2 sector 9's. (one of them in the middle as usual, and the other at the end) I was not sure how to copy the data from the existing disk to the track with the custom format, so I basically just did a sector copy a few times using my-copyR afterwards in hopes that eventually both sector 9's would be written with data, but I'm not actually sure the check cares what data is in sector 9, just that it doesn't take long to get it.

 

Regardless, I was pretty chuffed to have 're-created' the protection using the Archiver software (emulated on a Happy 1050) - and the rest of the disk was formatted with the faster Archiver/USDoubler 'chicago' interleave, so on a stock 1050 it still loaded 10% faster than the regular interleave... (so kinda better than the original potentially?)

 

I was going to mention this title at some point, but if you've already cracked it properly that's great!

 

There's another vandalized cracked version in ED format too, not sure what they needed the extra space for...

[DjayBee]

"Trains (1983)(Spinnaker Software)(US)";"(pha+tim $9 / 9)";"Spinnaker";"Spinnaker";"Spinnaker pha";"a";;

 

 

Nice

 

You won't believe how many uncracked dumps are out there which will work only in emulation because of this type of protection or because they need perfectly aligned disks, which also will always succeed in emulation.

 

Btw. all nine(!) phantoms contain the same data, so the contents are actually irrelevant. The protection chekcs only how long it took to read the sector IIRC ten times.

[+Nezgar]

Btw. all nine(!) phantoms contain the same data, so the contents are actually irrelevant. The protection chekcs only how long it took to read the sector IIRC ten times.

Interesting you say the original had 9 phantoms. (9 sector 9's?) I found in practice only 1 extra is needed 180 degrees from the other, to allow continuous repeated reading of sector 9 at 1xSIO. But I guess they wanted to 'make sure' ?

[DjayBee]

Interesting you say the original had 9 phantoms. (9 sector 9's?) I found in practice only 1 extra is needed 180 degrees from the other, to allow continuous repeated reading of sector 9 at 1xSIO. But I guess they wanted to 'make sure' ?

 

Yes, they probably did. And this is true for all titles with the protection "Spinnaker pha".

 

I wrote partially nonsense this morning. There are actually 12 sectors #9. The only other sector numbers in this track are 1-6.

[+DrVenkman]

Bumping this thread a bit - I don't know why, but it's driving me bonkers that I can't write a working floppy from the ATX versions of THE GOONIES. I have two versions from last year's torrent, plus potentially a different one in this year's torrent I haven't tried yet. I even used the PDB for the title on Side B of the Happy Warp Backup disk. Using the PDB file, with either version I try, I get disk errors at Track 26 while trying to make the copy. When I try a straight copy without the PDB, I get a disk that starts to boot, but it fails at the text credits scene before the graphical title screen and music start. The same error occurs when I use RespeQt in Archiver mode, program my Happy drive to emulate an Archiver (using the attached pirate disk software) and try either version the Archiver software.

 

There's an alternate Happy backup program on this ATR as well, but it tells me to "remove write protect" on my disks when it tries to write the copy - the weird thing is, the disks aren't write protected. Dunno what's going on there.

 

Is there a better/alternate set of tools to use to try to write copies of disks with Archiver/Happy drives besides this ATR?

Happy_Utility_Menu_v1.0_1987_Pirate_Software.atr

[ijor]

Bumping this thread a bit - I don't know why, but it's driving me bonkers that I can't write a working floppy from the ATX versions of THE GOONIES. I have two versions from last year's torrent, plus potentially a different one in this year's torrent I haven't tried yet. I even used the PDB for the title on Side B of the Happy Warp Backup disk. Using the PDB file, with either version I try, I get disk errors at Track 26 while trying to make the copy. When I try a straight copy without the PDB, I get a disk that starts to boot, but it fails at the text credits scene before the graphical title screen and music start. The same error occurs when I use RespeQt in Archiver mode, program my Happy drive to emulate an Archiver (using the attached pirate disk software) and try either version the Archiver software.

 

"The Goonies" has a sector with weak bits. You can't really copy this disk with the Happy or the plain Archiver. You need a fuzzy sector maker, or something like the Kryoflux or SCP to copy this disk. The Happy PDB does create a working copy that can only be run from a Happy drive.

 

I'm not sure why you get the error on track 26 when using the PDB. It might a problem with the RespeQt emulation. But are you sure it's on track 26? The weak sector is on track 39.

[ebiguy]

Bumping this thread a bit - I don't know why, but it's driving me bonkers that I can't write a working floppy from the ATX versions of THE GOONIES. I have two versions from last year's torrent, plus potentially a different one in this year's torrent I haven't tried yet. I even used the PDB for the title on Side B of the Happy Warp Backup disk. Using the PDB file, with either version I try, I get disk errors at Track 26 while trying to make the copy. When I try a straight copy without the PDB, I get a disk that starts to boot, but it fails at the text credits scene before the graphical title screen and music start. The same error occurs when I use RespeQt in Archiver mode, program my Happy drive to emulate an Archiver (using the attached pirate disk software) and try either version the Archiver software.

 

There's an alternate Happy backup program on this ATR as well, but it tells me to "remove write protect" on my disks when it tries to write the copy - the weird thing is, the disks aren't write protected. Dunno what's going on there.

 

Is there a better/alternate set of tools to use to try to write copies of disks with Archiver/Happy drives besides this ATR?

I just tried and you are right, it does not work. There is a problem in the emulation (that's why it's called a beta !!!).

It seems that Happy dislikes the returned data from RespeQt. It will be a challenge to fix. I have no idea about the problem.

I don't understand what does the PDB for The Goonies as Happy has no way to create the weak sector.

Does it patch the software protection ? Then why does it have difficulty to write this track which becomes a normal one ???

If someone has a hint about this PDB...

 

By the way, I tried Super Archiver emulation with RespeQt and the copy works perfectly!

If you have a Super Archiver, that's the only way to have Goonies on floppy right now with RespeQt.

[+DrVenkman]

I don't have a Super Archiver, just two Happy 1050 drives. Oh well. Thank you, ebiguy and ijor, for looking into this. I appreciate it.

[ijor]

I don't understand what does the PDB for The Goonies as Happy has no way to create the weak sector.

Does it patch the software protection ? Then why does it have difficulty to write this track which becomes a normal one ???

If someone has a hint about this PDB...

 

It adds a bootstrap routine to the copy. The routine uploads custom code to the Happy drive to emulate the weak sector.

[ebiguy]

It adds a bootstrap routine to the copy. The routine uploads custom code to the Happy drive to emulate the weak sector.

Thank you for this precious information.

Then I have to understand what is bad in the data I retrun.