****************************** * * * The RawCopy V1.3a Copier * * * * USER'S MANUAL * * * ****************************** Micro Systems International Copyright (C) 1988 1143 Monroe St. * Carleton, Michigan * (313) 654-8402 ---------------------------------------------------------- Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thank You! You have just purchased the finest disk copy system available for the AMIGA TM computer. The RawCopy V1.3 Copier is designed to allow you to backup your protected software. WARRANTY: Since the RawCopy V1.3 will not copy itself and since there is also the potential for disk failure or damage, we will replace or repair any damaged original RawCopy V1.3 disk for a $3.00 shipping and handling charge. Should you find your RawCopy V1.3 disk to be defective within the first 30 days. We will replace or repair it for free of charge. This warranty applies to the registered owners only and is non-transferable. REQUIREMENTS: RawCopy V1.3 requires an Amiga computer with at least 512K of memory to operate. RawCopy V1.3 works best on machines with extra expansion memory and more than one drive. RawCopy V1.3 also requires Kickstart version 1.1 or greater. WARNING: It is illegal to sell or otherwise distribute copies of copyrighted software. Software companies have a right and necessity to make a profit on their product. This product is supplied for lawful purposes only and you are not permitted to use it in violation of federal copyright law or state software license enforcement laws. By using this product you agree to be bound by the terms of this notice. Booting Procedure: To boot your RawCopy V1.3 disk simply insert it in drive 0 when your computer asks for the workbench disk. The RawCopy V1.3 will boot automatically in about 6 seconds. Operation Procedure: 1) After booting RawCopy V1.3 select the proper drive configuration using your Mouse as follows: 2) You will see four boxes right below the word SOURCE these boxes represent the drives to read from. The box labeled DF0: when choosen is highlighted, the system will read from this drive. 3) You will see four boxes right below the word TARGET these boxes represent the drives to write to. The box labeled DF0: when choosen is highlighted, and system will write to this drive. 4) If you have only one drive then both SOURCE and TARGET drives must be set with your Mouse to DF0: 5) If you are using two or more drives the copy process should take about 90 seconds. RawCopy V1.3 will tell you when the copy process is complete. 6) Using the left button on the Mouse click the START box to activate the copy process. If you are using one drive and a 512K machine, you will have to swap disks as prompted 5 times before RawCopy V1.3 will inform you that your copy is ready. It is for this reason that we recommend two drives for making backup copies thereby eleminating the need for swapping of SOURCE and TARGET disks. Selecting Source and Target Drives: On single drive systems the source and target drives must be the same and are both selected as the internal drive. On systems with two or more drives the default selection uses df0: as the source and df1: as the target. To select source and target drives click the left mouse button on any of the gadgets in the "SOURCE" and "TARGET" gadget area. These gadgets are labeled "DF0:","DF1:","DF2:", and "DF3:". Selected drives are hilighted when ON and a previously selected "TARGET" drive may be deselected by clicking the left mouse button on the hilighted gadget. The "SOURCE" drive cannot be deselected, but it can be changed by clicking on another drive gadget. Example: To set-up a two drive system using "DF0:" and "DF1:". Click the left button on your mouse over "SOURCE DF0:" and click over "TARGET DF1:" and the system will read from "DF0:" and write to "DF1:" when you click the "START" gadget. You also could reverse this example and read from the other drive. Multiple Copies: RawCopy V1.3 has the capability to make several copies from a single original. It can also make multiple sets of copies without having to read the original again. To make multiple simultaneous copies, simply select more than one TARGET drive using the drive selection procedures above. RawCopy V1.3 will prompt you when it's time to swap disks. Changing Boot procedure: RawCopy V1.3 can be modified to boot alot faster if you aliminate the Title Screen. Follow the directions below if you choose to do this. Below are two copies of batch files, the top one already exist on RawCopy V1.3. 1. Activate the CLI from the workbench and type at the prompt. 1> copy c/ed to ram: 1> cd ram: 2. Remove the disk in df0: and insert RawCopy V1.3 and type at the prompt. 1> ed df0:s/startup-sequence 3. Delete MSILogo from the batch file. Like the second example below. 4. Push the ESC button at top left of the key board and you should see a star appear below. Then push the x key followed with . This will complete the change to the batch file. echo "*ec" echo " " echo " Loading RawCopy V1.3 ..." MSILogo RawCopy echo " " echo "*ec" echo " " echo " Loading RawCopy V1.3 ..." RawCopy echo " " Rawtracks: Referring to (Figure 1), the left lower side contains the read variables and on the right side are the write variables. These gadgets are set to their correct values. WARNING: If you experiment with this portion of the copier, please replace the gadgets to the default position when done. Example: Let's say you used [ErrorCheck] on an original program and found a abnormal track 30. You could read this track into a space in Ram, then write this track on to your disk so the abnormal track would exist on your copy. Some software uses this type of protection to keep you from cloning the original. Non Standard DOS: This Backup mode is located in the menu at the top of the screen. Some software is protected by using abnormal DOS to keep you from making a backup copy of your original. This mode is very powerful and has been tested on several programs that have this type of protection. CAUTION: Please be careful when using this backup feature, and also turn this mode off when done! Standard DOS: Approximate 90 sec. (2 drives) Non-Standard DOS: Approximate 5 min. (2 drives) Raw Edit: Referring to (Figure 3), this portion of the program is located in the Menu at the top. After you read a Rawtrack you can examine this track with this module. You also can edit this buffer if you chose to do so. But make sure you correct the Checksum located at the top in the Menu if you are going to write this buffer to a disk. If you don't correct the Checksum before you dump this buffer to a disk, you will create a error that you may not want on your copy. WARNING: If you experiment with [RamEdit] be very careful that you don't go beyond the buffer limits. If you alter memory space beyond the buffer limits you may crash the system. The only thing to do if this happens is to Reboot the system. Extended Cylinder: This feature is located at the top of the screen in the menu. It is possible to protect software by hiding data beyond cylinder 79. RawCopy V1.3 allows you to clone these extended tracks if needed. If you are trying to make a backup copy of a program and it doesn't work. Set this [Extended Cylinder] feature to 82, and retry. Modify Read/Write Buffer: To modify the buffer, you have to activate the DM Request feature of RawCopy V1.3. To do this, double-click the right button on your mouse to activate the default gadgets. If you want to read a raw track into a buffer, you need to do a overlap read so you have all eleven sectors. Example: Let's say we want to do a Raw Read of a particular track. You might get a group of sectors, than a gap, and some more sectors. Because of the gap, if your buffer is not large enough you will loose some data. Error Check: This section of the program located in the MENU is for checking a protected disk for errors. You are able to check the complete disk at one time or any number of tracks. Error Check will display Error number and gap length of each track. Looking at example (figure 2) Cylinder 0 Top Side, the gap is much wider than the other gap lengths. This is how some software is protected. The only way to backup software of this type is to change the speed of your drive or to alter the program so it doesn't look at this gap. Trackdisk Driver Error Codes: Error Number Meaning 20 Error could not be determined 21 Could not find sector header 22 Error in sector preamble 23 Error in sector identifier 24 Header field has bad checksum 25 Sector data field has bad checksum 26 Incorrect number of sectors on track 27 Unable to read sector header 28 Disk is write-protected 29 Disk has been changed or is not currently present 30 While verifying seek position, found seek error 31 Not enough memory to do this operation 32 Bad unit number ( unit # not attached ) 33 Bad drive type ( not an Amiga 3.5 inch disk ) 34 Drive already in use ( only one task exclusive ) 35 User hit reset; Awaiting doom Drive Speed on Copy Protection: It is possible to use a slow drive and create a track or tracks that are so long that a normal drive cannot duplicate them. The only way for the normal drive to be able to copy the longer track would be to run slower also. Those of you who own drives that have manual speed adjustments may desire to adjust your speed to aid in the copying of problem tracks. It is important that should you ever slow your drive speed down for the purpose of making backup copies, that you return it to the correct operating speed after you have finished making your copies. A drive that is writing longer than normal tracks could cause problems when making backup copies of some disk that don't need longer tracks. This problem will only arise on some protected software and not on standard format disks unless your drive speed is extremely out of range. Additionally, we have seen some drives slow down on their own as time has gone by. If they slow down too far the copying process on some protected software could be affected. The optimum drive speed is 300 RPM. This produces a word write of 6368 words per revolution. For optimum performance, it is best to keep your drive close to this figure. General Information: RawCopy V1.3 is specially designed to copy heavily protected software. It uses no parameters in the copying process. It employs a track by track analysis of all 160 tracks on the disk. RawCopy V1.3 will operate with one or a maximum of four drives, although more than one drive is recommended. Operating with one drive sacrifices no copying power, It just requires swapping the disk. Single drive systems using RawCopy V1.3 will operate on any memory configuration, automatically making full use of the memory therein. Multiple drive users may select any drive as SOURCE or TARGET it will make no difference to the operation of the program. Also systems with two or more external drives can duplicate multiple simultaneous copies from one original. Speed of program execution is also a major concern for us. A program written in assembly language will be anywhere from 2 to 100 times as fast as its high-level language equivalent. In addition, high-level languages often do not provide the control structure flexibilty needed to program efficient routines. This is why RawCopy V1.3 was written in 100% assembly language.