Did anyone use Black Rabbit disk copier back in the day?

[zenassem]

I remember using BlackRabbit to copy most of my disks back in the mid-late 80's. I believe it did a sector by sector copy and was able to make note of error tracks (copy protection), and reproduce them on the copy.

 

I can still remeber the black screen with the white dots as it was copying the disk?

 

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It's the only disk copy program I had back then. I remember being a young kid, and feeling like an underground Pirater with my BlackRabbit disk. Quite funny to think about it now.

 

 

Was this considered a good disk copier? If so, does anyone have information on it, and where I can find it these days?

 

Was there better programs for copying disks? Where can I get them?

 

Thanks,

~Zen

[Shawn Jefferson]

I remember having it in my collection, but not using it. I remember using Copymate 4.4 quite a bit for normal disks. AFAIK, the stock 1050 was unable to reproduce error tracks on the drive, so no copy program could do that without a hardware modification like the Happy board.

[zenassem]

Shawn, That's kind of strange. because I know I had a normal 1050. And sure enough Blackrabbit allowed me to copy games that had copy protection. And I remember it marking bad sectors on the onscreen display. It used the INERSE VIDEo of the CONTROL+T graphic. In fact I never came across a disk it didn't copy.

 

I'm trying to find information on it. But I don't remember who wrote it. I haven't had any luck finding it on the net.

 

!zen

[ndary]

if i am not mistaken, it was wirtten by Brian Moriarty and a source code was published in ANALOG magazine.

 

i used this copy program a lot since it did not stop and prompt on bad sectors, later when i got a modified disk drive i used the MyCopier software since it supported faster formats

[zenassem]

Yeah, I should also add that depending on the disk, it could take quite some time to copy. It wasn't fast, but it always did the job. I'll need to research it a bit to find out how it allowed a stock 1050 to prduce those error tracks. But I am fairly certain that it did.

[www.atarimania.com]

I really like US Sector Copier 4 by E. Reuss. There's a fairly recent Polish copier which is very good as well (can't remember the name...).

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Shawn Jefferson]

I had/have a Happy board in my 1050, and I'm reasonably certain that without it, a 1050 could not reproduce errors on the disks. Even with it, some copied games had to be run in the happy drive, and wouldn't work in a stock 1050.

 

Almost any copy program that doesn't abort on bad sectors will copy any disk, but there is no way the copy program can recreate those bad sectors on a stock 1050 drive. The program, if it is written to look for those bad sectors will not work properly. There were some copy utilities that would patch the disks to nullify this copy protection, but that only worked for the games it had patches for.

 

I certainly could be wrong, but I know there was some reason I bought a Happy upgrade back in the day.

[zenassem]

Shawn,

 

You're more than likely correct. I was a young kid back then, so for all tense and purposes, It may have just been able to get past the error tracks, and possibly it had some patches. It's also quite possible that It was just able to copy disks that normal copiers would crash on, So as a young kid I thought that it must be able to reproduce the error tracks. As far as I recall I didn't have any problems copying (backing up) my store bought copies to disk.

 

I also used it extensively to copy a friend's library of a 1000 or so utilities, games, Demos etc... IIRC some of my disks didn't work, but I can't be sure if it was because of copy protection, failing disks, or bad originals. Any program I valued I automatically made 3 copies of. Because I could never be certain that a Disk would go south on me.

 

I think everyone developed the fine technique of pushing the disk back and forth in the drive to get past difficult areas. I actually began to memorize how to finesse each disk that was giving me problem. But then again maybe I just had a 1050 and didn't know any better.

 

~ZEN

[miker]

Frog: you probably mention the TOMS COPIER by Our 5oft. A very good copy program for modified drives, hovever, it can't copy bad sectors but it's good for disks which were not-so-good written (it has very usable Retry option).

 

Here it is:

toms_copier_2.0.zip

[Curt Vendel]

Never heard of that one, I used Copy Mate and Chipmunk as I found them to be the best for what they could do, I especially liked Chipmunk, it got past just about anything.

 

 

 

Curt

[Bunsen]

found it!

black_rabbit_3.0.zip