MOVING DEPROTECTED SOFTWARE TO HARD DISKS By Joe Jaworski [73307,310] *COMPUSERVE* INTRODUCTION "Copy-cracks" or deprotect schemes for many commercial software packages continue to appear on CompuServe. Although these programs do enable you to make a "working copy" so you can stash away the original, they DO NOT allow you to move and run the software from hard disk. With more and more hard disks on IIGS systems today, it is a shame that these often large commercial programs cannot share the speed advantages of the hard disk. I have developed a method to successfully copy just about every commercial program to a hard disk. My method, described below, has been used to copy programs such as Mean 18, Tass Times, Winter Games, Thexder, etc. More importantly, it allows you to organize your programs into folders (subdirectories) on your hard disk. Every program can be launched just as if it was running on its original floppy. You must start with a deprotected copy of the program. Check the DL's in CompuServe for the deprotect instructions. Once you have a deprotected copy of the software, you're ready to begin. STEP BY STEP METHOD 1) Copy every program from the deprotected floppy (except PRODOS and SYSTEM) to the root directory of the hard disk (i.e., to the VOLUME, not to a folder). This first step is just a "test" procedure to see if it can be run from hard disk. You will later delete it and copy the program to a subdirectory. 3) Rename your hard disk to the Volume name of the floppy. (For example, if you're moving Mean 18, rename your hard disk to /MEAN18). Again, this is just temporary. 4) Eject the floppy from the drive! This is important. 5) Run the program from hard disk. This can be done from the Finder or Launcher by clicking on the main segment, whose name probably ends with ".SYS16" or ".SYSTEM". 6) The program should now start-up normally. Make sure it ALL works. Chances are if it came up correctly, it can be used from hard disk. NOTE: If the program did not run properly, check the following: - Make sure that your hard disk volume name EXACTLY matches that of the floppy. - Make sure you have copied the deprotected version, (not the original) to the hard disk. - Try copying the files to the boot volume, and rename it. Some programs may run only from Drive 1 (i.e., if your hard disk has a partitioning feature). 7) If everything works OK, delete all the files and rename your hard disk volume to whatever it was before. Now Create a subdirectory and copy the program once again from the deprotected floppy into the subdirectory. 8) The key is in the name of the subdirectory. Using a block editor such as Block Warden or AptZap, You now must search for and change the volume references in the program. Here is an example using Mean 18: - The Volume name is /MEAN18/. Between the two slashes, you have 6 characters to work with. Suppose your hard drive is named /H1. You've got three characters left, so you could call your subdirectory GLF/. Pick a name that exactly matches the number of characters in the original volume name: /MEAN18/ /H1/GLF/ - Using the block editor, search the copied files for "/MEAN18". Change every occurance to /H1/GLF, exactly #replacing "/MEA" with "/H1/". 9) When you're all done, try launching the program from its subdirectory. Presto! Hard disk operation from a folder. If it won't run, re-check for more occurances of "/MEAN18" (you may have missed one). By the way, the files GOLF.SYS16 and ARCH probably contain 25 references to "/MEAN18". You don't need to change anything in the subdirectory "MEAN.DAT". You may also find that some programs use the Prodos16 convention of using different Prefix numbers (you'll see strings such as "7/xxxx" where xxxx is the file name). Some of these programs may contain only one reference to the volume name that needs to be changed. Others may run from a subdirectory with no changes. ___________________________________________________________ REMEMBER,USE THE GIVEN INFORMATION LEGALLY,AND UPLOAD NEW PATCHES TO THE APPROPRIATE GAMES LIBRARY IN APPLELINK! -S.K END