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Help with copy protected 400k floppy disk (CAD software for 68k)

Pascalg

Member
The software I want to preserve is Bridgeport EZ-Draft CAD for Macintosh which is quite rare. The Master floppy disk is required when you start the program and I have difficulties copying it or dumping it. I tried with my Supercard Pro (SCP), a Deluxe Option board (DOB) and Copy II Mac 7 but with no success so far with some of the parameters I tried.

It’s a 400k floppy disk with apparently a copy protection on track 4. I suspect that the Floppy disk drives I use with the DOB and the SCP (under Windows) may not be able to handle this old 400k format. I have a compatible drive on a Macintosh plus and maybe there’s a way to use Copy II Mac with the right setting to at least copy it, but I cannot dump it on a file.

Any advice on how to copy/dump it ? 

here is the link to the SCP dump images

https://mega.nz/file/eGxSHJqB#YtvBu-xjNLK8Wgeqdc_r0tPlL9CFGLjlCjpBxBJMQXs
 

B1CE586E-9FE0-4D5C-8491-8A713A908111.jpeg

485984EB-C3E3-4FD3-8C53-E1C6FD7BBD7A.jpeg

 

Daxeria

Active member
This isn't an immediate solution, but it might end up the quickest route to getting the software preserved in usable form:

  1. Set DiskDup to tolerate a few bad sectors, and use it to make a disk image of the floppy. This is unlikely to overcome the copy protection, but will otherwise accurately capture the contents of the disk.
  2. Upload the copy-protected disk image to Macintosh Garden.
  3. Wait for our master hackers LanHawk and powermax to deprotect it. They've achieved many successes, but still have quite a full plate.


 

olePigeon

Well-known member
The only issue with the DiskDup method is that some copy protection schemes store vital information in the "bad" sectors, and reference said information directly via the software.  I'd be worried that if you Ignore Bad Sectors, it may not make useable disk image.

@Pascalg There are a couple of Flux imagers that support Macintosh floppies.  The Apple Sauce FDC is designed specifically to work with Apple II & Macintosh disks.  That's the one I use.  If you were local to the SF Bay Area, I'd offer to image them for you.  But I'm reluctant to ship floppy disks through the mail these days.

 

Pascalg

Member
yes, using a flux imager with an Apple disk drive would probably give better results. 
@olePigeon thanks for your offer, unfortunately I’m in Europe and I’m also reluctant to send them by mail. 

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Over in this thread, someone got greaseweazel + fluxengine working with a readily available STM32 board:





That said, I'm a bit out of my depth in this subject area and if you've already tried a Supercard Pro, I don't know to what extent this would even help.  But I leave it here on the off-chance it's helpful :) .

 

Pascalg

Member
That said, I'm a bit out of my depth in this subject area and if you've already tried a Supercard Pro, I don't know to what extent this would even help.  But I leave it here on the off-chance it's helpful :) .
The problem here is that those floppies were written in variable speed mode and we tu to copy them in fixed speed mode. Theoretically it should work but practically it’s unreliable. Then if you add bad sectors intentionally created for copy protection it gets even worse.

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
The problem here is that those floppies were written in variable speed mode and we tu to copy them in fixed speed mode


I'd be fascinated to see how this kind of thing behaved with the Outbound laptops, which had PC-style floppy drives but I think varied the sampling rate to read/write variable-speed 800k floppies

 
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