Question about Quality 99 Software

[jenorton]

Hi all:

 

Back when I had my real TI, I purchased 2 programs from Quality 99 Software.  The first was called "The Duplicator" and the second "Disk Manager IV".  I see disk images for DM4, and something called Quick Copy.  Is that the same thing as "The Duplicator"? or did one have more features?

 

Also, can the tools available with emulation allow me to list any of the programs used, such as the XB program for DM4 (and maybe DM3), though I am not familiar with DM3, and I see there's also apparently a TI cart called Disk Manager III.

 

Next, As to the copy-protection, I could tell they left one sector unformatted, because I used to listen to RF interference from my TI's components, and the disk drive made a certain sound when it couldn't read a sector.  At the time, of course, I didn't know how to get around it.

 

One thing I did do, though.

 

The DM4 used an Extended Basic program for its menus, and, you couldn't actually list it, even if you did the poke that was supposed to unprotect an XB program.  However, I did figure out that I could list it in TI basic, and, it would list the program, with the garbage strings when it came across the XB tokens.  I actually listed it to my Echo GP speech synthesizer, spelling everything out, and re-typed the program, although I couldn't actually type the multiple colons they used for blank print lines, since double colon was its own thing in XB.  But, I could modify it to speak, but, that was so long ago I can't remember much about it.

 

Other than TI's own rudimentary copy-protection, that was the only experience I had with copy-protection.

 

Thanks!

Edited August 6, 2021 by jenorton
Minor correction

[+arcadeshopper]

2 hours ago, jenorton said:

Hi all:

 

Back when I had my real TI, I purchased 2 programs from Quality 99 Software.  The first was called "The Duplicator" and the second "Disk Manager IV".  I see disk images for DM4, and something called Quick Copy.  Is that the same thing as "The Duplicator"? or did one have more features?

 

Also, can the tools available with emulation allow me to list any of the programs used, such as the XB program for DM4 (and maybe DM3), though I am not familiar with DM3, and I see there's also apparently a TI cart called Disk Manager III.

 

Next, As to the copy-protection, I could tell they left one sector unformatted, because I used to listen to RF interference from my TI's components, and the disk drive made a certain sound when it couldn't read a sector.  At the time, of course, I didn't know how to get around it.

 

One thing I did do, though.

 

The DM4 used an Extended Basic program for its menus, and, you couldn't actually list it, even if you did the poke that was supposed to unprotect an XB program.  However, I did figure out that I could list it in TI basic, and, it would list the program, with the garbage strings when it came across the XB tokens.  I actually listed it to my Echo GP speech synthesizer, spelling everything out, and re-typed the program, although I couldn't actually type the multiple colons they used for blank print lines, since double colon was its own thing in XB.  But, I could modify it to speak, but, that was so long ago I can't remember much about it.

 

Other than TI's own rudimentary copy-protection, that was the only experience I had with copy-protection.

 

Thanks!

wonder if the tipi basic program viewer would view it