Atari ST Protection Technioques

[rcamp48]

Does anyone have a working copy of Atari ST Protection Techniques? My original copy is really bad, I put it in a new disk case and now I can read it with Omniflop but it says it is 10 tracks 18 sectors 2 sides, I am doing a disk map now of it but I think I need to glue the metal piece to the disk as the original metal piece was the thing that caused problems. I did recover the source code for the disk called The Protector Source Code by Timothy Purves from Michtron. It will be on a new disk soon and as an Atari .ST file. Russ

[dlfrsilver]

oh awesome !!! That's surely the protection used on Time Bandit

[rcamp48]

Cant dump it and the disk is unreadable ... really damaged my only hope is that my friend that gave it to me has another copy, but I do have the manual somewhere..... Russ

[Mug UK]

Have you tried using Pasti to make an image of the disk as it can handle most protected tracks?

[Zippy]

I had this disk + a photocopy of the manual.

I can't find the manual now although I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere, but have attached what may be the disk. If it's not then it's something similar and I don't have the actual disk anymore.

[Zippy]

Seems that one is not the same "Protector" as your file in the other thread, but maybe this one is still of interest to someone or hasn't been available before.

It has some PD utils in a folder as well as the main programs in the root dir.

[rcamp48]

The disk I had was ST Protection Techniques from George Morrison, I found the book, it is 200 pages in a small manual Russ, PS: I will try that program....

[rcamp48]

I'm going to scan the whole book on my scanner right now.... Russ

[rcamp48]

Scanning it now on my other computer but if the original disk was entitled 'ST PROTECTION TECHNIQUES granted both were written by the same company , ALPHA SYSTEMS, same year, etc. Let me know if that is the title or is it different? Russ

[rcamp48]

It will be about 71 pages in PDF form... Russ

[Zippy]

The one I uploaded was imported direct from the US by our originals guy (Mike of Trend) and he gave me it with an A4 photcopy of the manual. I'm pretty sure the title was the same or similar, it mentioned "Atar ST" and "Protection" at least. Maybe there were different US and EU releases of it?

I looked again for the manual but still can't find it. I was 99% sure it was in the cupboard where I keep my original ST but it's not there now so either I've binned it or moved it at some point.

I'll take a look at the manual once you upload it and see if it looks familiar.

[rcamp48]

was the left hand side o the cover blue with a blue disk with the words 'ST Protection Techniques' written on he disk, written by George Morrison? , By the way I am at page # 47 out of 71 with 2 half pages per page... Russ

[rcamp48]

The other disk that I have 'The Protector' is the source code...Russ

[Zippy]

I never saw the original manual or disk, just copies of both, but there was only 1 disk with it.

[rcamp48]

I finished the scan , it is definitely ST Protection Techniques, because it mentions The Protector in it, the scan will be at my Mega site.
Russ

[ijor]

I don't remember about the ST version. But the 8-bit version of the disk is heavily copy protected. The protection is (also) present as a demo of the disk protection techniques. It's very possible, even likely, that the ST version is copy protected as well.

[Zippy]

There was no copy protection on the version I uploaded above. Or at least the original disk copied OK with FCOPY (no errors) and everything seemed to work OK from the copy.

[ijor]

There was no copy protection on the version I uploaded above. Or at least the original disk copied OK with FCOPY (no errors) and everything seemed to work OK from the copy.

Strange considering that it is from the same author and same publisher as the 8-bit version, but oh well. The copy protection might be just for demonstration purposes, and then never checked by the software, and conceivable, it could be such a protection that doesn't produce any error when copying the disk, but that is not very likely. But in such case it should be described at the manual.

[rcamp48]

Has anyone got the sector to write with protect.msa properly ? I have troubles on page 110 of the manual where it tells you to put in the track and sector number, the sector number is grayed out on my copy and i took the MSA copy and wrote it with my Atari ST, no go it writes normal sectors not CRC errors on the disk. Everything looks fine but when it comes to writing out the crc error I get a bios error 8 instead o bios error 4. Is this the copy protection on this software? Can someone with an original check it out for me........ Thanks ........... Russ Campbell

[rcamp48]

An interesting development, if you set the sector number to be say 9 you must put in a sector number of 8 to check it, then you get a bios error code of 4 , the program is working as it should just keep in mind to subtract 1 from whatever sector number you use, the new program automatically puts the crc error in place one sector from what you put in, a bug in the program ??????? Maybe it starts from zero on the sector number, just keep that in mind if you are using the program to protect anything it will work............ Russ Campbell

Disregard do NOT put in the track number when creating the format , just the sector number, only usable on real disk drives.....

[ijor]

I finished the scan , it is definitely ST Protection Techniques, because it mentions The Protector in it, the scan will be at my Mega site.
...
I have troubles on page 110 of the manual ...

Difficult to comment without the manual. Did you uploaded the manual? If so please provide an URL.

[rcamp48]

I will upload the new scan which is 100 % better but its on my other computer, along with the unprotected program.

Russ

[rcamp48]

There may be a problem with your protect.msa file, try analyzing track 41, side 0 of any disk, I just redownloaded your file again and made a totally new disk, I will let you know in a few minutes whether or not it is my old file. If so can you redo it and re-upload it, please. On my machine, I get 2 bombs when doing this ...

PS: The Protector can be used to copy programs that are copy protected I used it for that diagnostics disk once successfully, all you have to do is analyze the tracks on the disk and write the format back out to a new disk, of course, you need a working Atari disk drive to do this, as far as I know, it looks for an Atari drive. Russ

[rcamp48]

A definite problem, track 41 on any disk that is Atari will cause 2 bombs, question: is that the directory on an Atari disk? or is it a bug in the program. Russ

[rcamp48]

https://mega.nz/#!AVFRDAba!HjShcmsDR40N ... A7DVblavM0