The 640 MEG Shareware Studio 2

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ The 640 MEG Shareware Studio 2 / The 640 Meg Shareware Studio CD-ROM Volume II (Data Express)(1993).ISO / utility / scopy1.zip / SCOPY.TXT < prev

Wrap

Text File | 1992-07-17 | 29KB | 1,004 lines

====================== SHAREWARE VERSION 1.03 Beta Super Copy Utility - SCOPY edited by David A. Mary (C) Copyright 1989,1990 by David Risack and Federated Telecommunications, inc. ====================== SHAREWARE NOTICE ---------------- This program is currently distributed as shareware, this doesn't mean that it's free. If you find this program useful, please send a donation of $20 or anything you can afford. If you don't find the program useful, please pass it on to someone else. This initial donation will entitle you to product registration, notification of updates and new products, and to ask as many questions as you like over the Micro-Fone BBS. I've spent a lot of time writing this program, and as much as I like to write programs I had to realize that I cannot survive on programming alone, money seems to be a factor unfortunately; a lot of it just to buy all the soda I drank while I sat in front of my computer for hours programming and pondering what insane idea got me started on this thing. So please help me out! Thanks, Dave Risack Send any donations, comments, questions, useful criticism's, and suggestions on improvements, or suggestions for new products to: Federated Telecommunications, inc. Software Engineering Division 99 Stephenville Parkway Edison, New Jersey 08820 Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope along with your donation payable by check or money order to Federated Telecommunications. This is a donation, and certainly not required, but it does help pay the bills and guarantee a swift reply as time permits. All donations are non-refundable. For BBS support, dial into the Micro-Fone Bulletin Board System. Metuchen, New Jersey (201) 494-3649 NOTE: Although I would recommend this board highly, the Micro- Fone Bulletin Board system NOT affiliated with Federated Telecommunications, inc. You must leave mail for David Risack in order to get a reply. Requests will be answered as time permits. See Appendix C for complete ADAPSO's Thou Shall not Dup - i - Table of Contents ---===========--- Chapter Title Page ------- ----------------------------------- ---- Introduction 1 1 Setup and Installation 3 2 Basic Commands 5 3 Trouble Shooting 6 4 Reading the Display 7 5 Technical Info 8 Appendix A - Function quick reference Appendix B - Standard disk configurations Appendix C - ADAPSO Appendix D - Other uses of SCOPY NO LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES -------------------------------------- In no event shall David Risack and/or Federated Telecommunications, inc. be liable for ANY damages whatsoever (Including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, or other pecuniary loss) arising out of the use or inability to use this Federated Telecommunications, inc. product. Use this product at your own risk; you the user are solely responsible for any and all uses of the product. Illegal use of this product is forbidden. INTRODUCTION ------------ The problem with copy protection is that it punishes the people who made the investment by not allowing them to back up their valuable software. You are given the right by law to make archival backup copies for your own personal use. (Your rights may vary from state to state, so please check your local statutes before making backups.) This program is intended to safeguard your investment, by allowing backup copies of some protected software. It is not intended to be used for illegal purposes. There are many copy programs available on the market, but no purely software product gives the user the flexibility and power that SCOPY does. The only thing we've seen that surpasses SCOPY is the Option Board (Option Board is copyright by Central Point Software, inc.) Of course you must pay over a hundred dollars for the special hardware AND software. While we do not claim this program comes even close to the capabilities of the Option Board, We do claim that it is your option to try before the Option Board. If this software can't copy your IBM software, then you definitely need an option board to copy it. This program is not intended as a substitute for the normal copy program, as it is relatively slow on the older slower processors. We make up for this slowness by copying anything that was produced by a standard disk controller. Super Copy Utility goes beyond what most copy software does, in terms of looking for data. If you tell it to, and you have the time, SCOPY will search for anything and everything that can possibly be read by a standard disk controller. It will take all of the data and make analysis files and a data file on your hard disk, that contain all the information necessary to copy the disk. This allows you to copy non-standard tracks and sectors. It copies disks by doing a sector by sector search for data. Since this process is relatively slow, you might wish to make a copy of the disk as best you can with a standard diskcopy, and then using SCOPY to copy over only the tracks that you got errors on, or suspect of being non-standard. Using analysis files you can even create your own copy-protection scheme, and make your own copy protected disks! - 1 - Super Copy Utility offers you all of this and more! Please read the rest of the manual carefully. If you have a problem with a particular disk, write to us, indicating what type of computer your using, what type of disk your trying to copy (5-1/4" [360K,800K,1.2M], 3.5" [720K,1.44M]) , what type of format it has, what is the name of the software and name of the company that produces the software, and any relevant other info about the format or special messages that SCOPY produced in it's report file, along with your SASE and a $3 dollar donation. If one of the messages produced by SCOPY says that you will most likely need SPECIAL HARDWARE to copy the disk then it's probably not worth writing, as the disk can probably only be copied with special hardware and software. - 2 - Chapter 1 - SETUP and INSTALLATION ---------------------------------- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------- This software should run on any IBM compatible with at least 256K of memory; CGA, EGA or VGA display; a Hard Disk, and one or two, 5 1/4" or 3.5" drives. It will run best on 80286 and 80386 machines, though it will run normally on the slower 80186, 8088, and 8086 computers. Installation Instructions ------------------------- Copy all SCOPY files included on this disk (or Archive file) on your hard disk in a directory called SCOPY (or any other suitable directory name). Either make your own batch file or use the one supplied to run the program. The batch file sets the environment variable SCOPY equal to : c:\SCOPY\ by the command: set SCOPY=c:\SCOPY\ Notice the spacing and the ending back slash, they are important. This variable is used by SCOPY so it knows where to retrieve or save data files. If you do not set the SCOPY variable at all, the SCOPY utility will use the current working directory as the default. You will also see an error message after the program has loaded, stating that the program didn't detect the environment variable. Once the batch file is complete, run SCOPY by calling the batch file. The next environment variable you'll need to know about is SERRORS. This variable can be set equal to a number 3 to 10. It is the number of retries that SCOPY will try before giving up on the read/write operation. Note: When analyzing a disk SCOPY does at least 6 read operations per sector, so if all of them are bad it will try SERRORS number of times before trying the next read operation. So if you set the variable to it's max value 10, it would be doing 60 read tries if all of them were bad/not-found; this is a quite common occurence when analyzing beyond normal sector values. The default value when this variable is not defined is 4 retries. The minimum retries is 3 as this is required by BIOS to determine if the operation was in fact bad or if it was just an error due to timing problems. - 3 - Example command to set SERRORS: set SERRORS=5 Again note the spacing, it is important. When you first load SCOPY it will display what the value was set to, in the status window, if this variable was defined. Example file: set SCOPY=c:\SCOPY\ set SERRORS=3 C:\SCOPY\SCOPY - 4 - Chapter 2 - Basic Commands -------------------------- Almost everything you can change or do can be seen or changed directly on the main screen. Up and Down arrows allow you to move the highlighted bar to the selection of your choice. The left and right arrows let you change the item you selected. On numeric fields holding the control key and pressing the left arrow changes the numeric field to it's lower limit, control and the right arrow changes the numeric field to it's upper limit. The filename field can be changed by pressing the left or right arrow keys or pressing enter, and when finished changing the field it can be exited by pressing the END key. The message area screen will display user prompts and other relevant information, about what you are about to do or have just completed. Occasionally some information will be displayed in this window during an operation, explaining about something that the program encountered during it's current operation. The status screen will display information about the current operation that is taking place; Usually track/sector/side information. The information on the left of the screen is all of the user modifiable parameters for READ OPERATIONS. The parmeters have little or no effect during write operations, normally they are just used to help determine correct information for operation status reports (except of course for the DRIVE, FILENAME and SCOPY options items.) - 5 - TROUBLE SHOOTING ---------------- There have been a few problems noted, when SCOPY is run on particular machines with a particular DOS. Here are the ones we've encountered: Disk copy worked, but the disk created was unusable- General failure error - ------------------------------------------------------------ We encountered this problem when running on an IBM PS/2 Models 70 and 80 under PC-DOS 3.3. This is possibly due to a bug in the ROM BIOS and PC-DOS, that incorrectly handles multiple sector reads/writes. We have been unsuccessfull at obtaining a patch from IBM as yet, which we hope will clear up this problem. This problem can sometimes occur during some bad formatting operations. While all efforts are made to verify the information layed down, sometimes even that isn't adequate. You might try letting the program re-format and copy the data onto the first couple tracks. This usually fixes the problem, if this is the case. Top 3 or 4 lines of the screen flicker during copying ----------------------------------------------------- This problem occurrs on some IBM compatible 8088 system, with a CGA card. Slower systems with CGA cards sometimes have problems keeping the screen updated during intense scrolling operations. While this is quite annoying, it should not affect program performance. MEMORY ALLOCATION ERROR - SYSTEM halted --------------------------------------- This error can occur sometimes due to memory-resident programs installed in the system. Make sure you remove all resident software, disk cacheing, etc. before trying to run SCOPY again. - 6 - Reading the information on the display -------------------------------------- During read operations, the status window will display the track information with a "R>" before it meaning that it is reading. The ">" at the end means it is currently diagnosing this sector, checking all possible combinations of sector types. After completing it will add an ending to the line usuall "F2<", for standard IBM disk sectors. The "F" means that the sector was found, the "2" is the sector size (0=128, 1=256, 2=512, 3=1024, 4=2048, 5=4096, 6=8192). Occasionally on copy-protected disks there will be some non- standard sectors, usually having sector size numbers other than "2". If you see sectors like this, it is almost a sure sign of copy-protection. Another thing you may see instead of just an "F" might be an "FC" or an "FH", followed by the sector size number. The "FC" means that the sector when read normally would produce a Cyclic Redundancy error (CRC) and SCOPY should have no problem copying it; this will almost always be because the sector size value is non-standard. The "FH" ending means that a HARD CRC error has occurred; meaning that this error could only be generated by fairly sophisticated hardware devices for copy-protection or this error occurred because the disk sector is bad. User prompting messages and some special messages will appear in in the long window on the bottom of the screen. Operation status information, will be displayed in the rectangular window on the right of the screen. - 7 - MEDIA TYPE VALUES - Displayed by the ALT-D (Examine Disk Boot ----- --------------- Sector) 65520 - 3.5" 1.44M Disk 65528 - Should never been seen (fixed disk) 65529 - 5 1/4" 1.2M or 3.5" 720K Disk 65532 - 5 1/4" 180K 65533 - 5 1/4" 360K or 8" 501K Disk 65534 - 5 1/4" 160K or 8" 250K or 8" 1.252M Disk 65535 - 5 1/4" 320K SCOPY IMAGE FILE Information ---------------------------- The first 8 bytes of the SCOPY files .ANN and .DAT files are bytes to let SCOPY know that this is a file that it created. This is too keep from accidently trying to use another file as an image file; without this information, SCOPY would happily read in any file you specified, and use it as sector information. The Data file is just a big sequential data file, it's layout is only defined by the .ANN file that goes with it; If you mix up a differnt .ANN file with a differnt .DAT file, the results could be rather unpleasant to think about. The .ANN files contain 4 bytes of information on each sector; it's track number, sector number, side #, and byte size (not necessarily in that order (This information starts after the initial 8 byte identification header.) All the sectors that are put in the .ANN file will be listed for you in the .RPT file in text format for you to read. The .RPT file: This file contains text information about all of the sectors that were read correctly. This is generally just the track information that was displayed during the Analyze operation; but occasionally it contains statements about certain sectors, stating that SCOPY will not be able to copy it accurately. This type of error will be made known to you at the end of an operation (usually the analyze) and will have a number other than zero for HARD errors listed in the operation report. Refer to the "Reading the display" section of the manual to understand what the sector information means in the .RPT file. - 8 - APPENDIX A ---------- SCOPY OPTIONS: ============== IMAGE TO DISK ------------- Takes an image file you've already created (.ANN and .DAT files), specified by the FILENAME option, and will make a disk using these files on the destination drive (specified by the drive option). Always formats the destination disk as it copies. ANALYSIS ONLY ------------- Only makes .ANN and .RPT files; does NOT read in data. Will overwrite existing files of the same name if they are found in the working directory specified. FULL IMAGE COPY --------------- This is the full disk copy routine; (Makes .ANN, .RPT, and .DAT files) it first reads in the entire source disk onto your Hard Disk, and then asks for a destination file and makes you a new disk from the Image files. Always formats the destination disk as it copies. USE ANALYSIS ------------ Uses an existing .ANN file, specified by the FILENAME option, to read in data from the source disk. This is useful if somebody gave you an analysis file that will enable you to copy a particular disk. FORMAT ONLY ----------- This option will make an initial format only! (uses the .ANN file). It does not copy any data. COPY-NO FORMAT -------------- This option will copy only the data to the destination disk, and will not format it. (It is suggested that you let SCOPY format the disk as it copies, unless this causes more problems than it's worth). QUICK REFERENCE --------------- Up Arrow - Move up to next item Down Arrow - Move down to next item Left Arrow - Change current selection Right Arrow - Change current selection Ctrl-Left Arrow - Change item to lower limit Ctrl-Right Arrow - Change item to upper limit Ctrl-Home - Clear Message and Status screens ALT-S - Save current configuration ALT-D - Display disk format information ESCAPE - Abort operation and/or leave SCOPY END - Exit filename field ENTER - Go to next item (or enter filename) APPENDIX B ---------- IBM DISK STANDARD CONFIGURATIONS -------------------------------- Bytes Sectors per sector Disk Type per Side Sides Tracks ---------- ----------- -------- ----- ------ 512 180K 5-1/4" 8 or 9 1 0 - 39 512 360K 5-1/4" 9 2 0 - 39 512 800K 5-1/4" 9 2 0 - 79 512 1.2M 5-1/4" 15 2 0 - 79 512 720K 3-1/2" 9 2 0 - 79 512 1.44M 3-1/2" 18 2 0 - 79 APPENDIX C ---------- ADAPSO's Thou Shalt Not Dupe ---------------------------- EITHER WAY IT'S WRONG --------------------- People who would never walk into a store and shoplift a software product think nothing of making several copies of the same software. The results are the same. The act just as wrong. When it comes to unauthorized duplication of software, many people do not realize the costly impact on the software developer and the customer community. The relationship between customer and developer in a software transaction is one of mutual trust. The customer trusts the developer has produced a product that will deliver the desired result, performs according to specifications, and is properly documented and supported. The developer trusts that the customer will make use of only those copies for which he has purchased a license, even though making additional, unauthorized copies is relatively easy. Unauthorized duplication of software violates the U.S. Copyright Law, and unfairly deprives software developers of revenue they are entitled to receive for their work. Software developers find that thousands of illegal copies have been made by customers who either innocently believe they are doing wrong or simply choose to ignore the law. THE LAW IS CLEAR ---------------- Reproducing computer software without authorization violates U.S. Copyright Law. It is a Federal offense. The money paid for a software product represents a license fee for the use of one copy. It does not represent an authorization to copy. Civil damages for unauthorized software copying can be as much as $50,000 or more and criminal penalties include fines and imprisonment. Bills have been introduced in Congress to strengthen the law and increase penalties. MYTHS AND FACTS OF SOFTWARE --------------------------- Let's start by dispelling some myths with a few facts. First, software developers do not condone unauthorized copying in order to gain market penetration. Second, the price of software does not make unauthorized copying justifiable. The cost of a software product to a consumer represents only a small fraction of the publishers development and marketing costs. Third, although the cost of soft-lifting is borne initially by the software developer, it is paid for ultimately by legitimate users. WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU -------------------- It's obvious that legitimate software users are paying for theft along with software developers. It's obvious, too, that no one is going to put up with it for long. Think twice before you ask someone to give you an illegal copy of their software. Think three times before you offer to do it for someone else. Soft- lifting or software piracy is not only a crime; it's simply wrong. WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION ----------------------------- ADAPSO represents more than 750 corporate members that provide a wide spectrum of computer services and software including: micro, mini, and mainframe software products; professional software services; batch and remote processing services; integrated hardware/software systems; education and training; and consulting. For further information or questions on software protection, contact ADAPSO at: Suite 300 1300 North 17th Street Arlington, VA 22209 Or phone (703) 522-5055. APPENDIX D Other uses ---------- Archival disk storage --------------------- You can copy disks to the image files and use Archive/compress programs to store entire disks in archives! You can transmit this compressed file via modem, and if the receiver has SCOPY he/she can generate an exact duplicate of the disk on his/her end! Unprotects ---------- Currently unprotect files are passed around so that users are not hindered by copy-protection schemes. With SCOPY, you can make an analysis of a protected disk, and just keep the analysis file as an unprotect (in this case copier) file. The .ANN file is relatively small and will then allow easy copying of the disk it was intended for. Copy-protection --------------- With knowledge of SCOPY .ANN files, special disks can be made, that won't be able to be copied by normal DOS or copy programs. Currently we are considering adding many features to enhance this use of the SCOPY program. Screen selection options: ------------------------- DRIVE ----- Select drive A: or B: by using the left and right arrow keys. This will be the source/destination drive. FILENAME -------- Enter up to an 8 character filename (Do not enter an extension!) This file name will be used to make up to 3 files, with this name (extensions .ANN, .DAT and .RPT files). Pressing enter on this field will let you re-enter a new file name. After entering the new filename press the END key. Start Track ----------- Use the left and right arrow keys to change this track number to the desired starting track (or enter the number and press <ENTER>). End Track --------- Use the left and right arrow keys to change this track number to the desired ending track number (or enter the number and press <ENTER>). Sectors per side ---------------- This is used while the current track is not within the Special Begin/End track boundries. This is for reading standard IBM sectors. Sector numbers are 1 through the number selected. Selection is made the same way as stated above. Which Side ---------- You may select side 0 only, side 1 only, or both. This is useful if you wish to only copy one side (this would allow you to speed up the copying of protected disks by being able to do sides seperately you can set parameters up so it will take less time to analyze one side, if you know there is no protection on that side.) Bytes per Sector ---------------- This option can be changed using the left and right arrow keys only. This lets you select a DEFAULT sector size value for SCOPY to check. SCOPY will try this value first before doing a special analyze looking for the sector. This will greatly increase copy speed, if this option is set correctly. For almost all standard IBM disks, this value is 512 bytes. Start/End sectors ----------------- These options tell SCOPY the lowest sector number to search for and the highest to search for, when the current track is within the Special Begin/End Track boundries. A full analyze would requre you to set the START SECTOR at 0 and the END SECTOR at 255; NOTE: This will cause SCOPY to operate on the disk for a VERY long time, as SCOPY will try 6 reads per sector, and on a standard 720K disk there are around 1,440 sectors; that's 8640 reads (times the error tries option, as it retries each one of the six reads this many times (SERRORS)), so at the default of 4 retries per error, it will really try reading the disk 34,560 times! (Definately something to avoid doing when you don't have a couple hours to spare; over night is recommended if you want to try this!, although it is the most complete method. If the disk can be copied these setting will do it (if you also set Special Begin/End to 0 and the last track, respectively)). Special Begin/End Tracks ------------------------ When the current track number is greater than or equal to the Begin value and the current track is less than or equal to the End value, SCOPY will use the Start/End Sector options instead of the "Sectors per side" option. This basicly tells SCOPY when to start a special analyze of the disk, and when to end.