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Copy II Option Board /Deluxe

Advantage? No games used them, so there wasn't a legion of teenagers with time to kill trying to break the protection.
Click to expand...

That is what I really am concerned with, whether games that came on HD media used disk based (as opposed to document based) copy protection. I think the industry had moved on by that time and this would not be a concern for me.
 
Correct, no game ever used protection on high-density disks. I know that's a pretty absolute thing to say, but I've come across thousands of original game disks from that period (don't ask) and I never saw one that was protected.
 
I've always wondered what the advantage to using the
Option board is .....

Does anyone have a list of software that can be copied using
this card ? I've used copyiipc and copywrit software and have
yet to find a single diskette that cant be copied with one of these
programs.
 
CopyIIPC

CopyIIPC

My memory fades, do the Lotus 123 & Dbase system disks copy with the software-only CopyIIPC ?
Like Chuck(G) said, though, they're the bees knees to copy some odd-ball formats.
Does any one have any idea what happened to the original equations for the Hitachi GAL on the board ?
(Not to beat copy protection, but boy, the DBase folks sure were assh**es when you tried to get a replacement diskette.)
patscc
 
mikey99 said:
I've always wondered what the advantage to using the
Option board is .....

Does anyone have a list of software that can be copied using
this card ? I've used copyiipc and copywrit software and have
yet to find a single diskette that cant be copied with one of these
programs.
Click to expand...

I think it is easier to develop a list of software that copyiipc/copywrite/Option Board cannot copy.

While I don't know exactly what tricks copywrite had in it, I know that copyiipc was continually updated to recognize certain protection methods and then make a working diskette based on what it found. Notice that I did not say "make a working copy" because the more sophisticated protection methods were disk layouts that could be read but not reliably written by the NEC 765. So for the more difficult stuff, copyiipc would do things like patch the protection code (yes, it would crack the game instead of making a 1:1 copy).

copyiipc and copywrite are great for common disks (ie. the big guys like EA, Broderbund, etc.) as the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's the more obscure stuff that the Option Board is more suited for.

One of my hobbies is finding 1980s games that haven't been released in the wild (ie. part of any oldwarez or abandonware set) and then cracking and releasing them so that they can be played, documented, archived, etc. If something's too difficult for me, I have a network of people who are better than I am to handle something, and I usually start with teledisk to see if it can copy the disk. If not, I move up to snatchit+copyiipc, and then finally I made a transcopy image with the option board and send that off (we all have option boards). Only once have I had to send the original diskette off to someone because nothing worked (and it turned out to be a protection method that only worked on the original IBM PC 5150).

BTW, the "not yet released in the wild" isn't as glamorous as it sounds. For every gem that I find, there are at least ten turkeys.
 
Copywrite would "hack" the disks it couldn't copy and disable the copy protection by patching the programs themselves.

More risky from a legal standpoint as CopyIIPC could argue that simply archiving an existing copy might be legal, but CopyWrite actively removed protection.
 
lol do it! do it! ;-)

That price wasn't too unreasonable especially with software and manuals. Honestly I forgot to bid on it though who knows if I would have bid that high.

Regardless, I imagine you'd get a similar sum and this wasn't an outlandish auction. Let us know ..er... you can just PM me if you decide to put it up there ;-)
 
Wow, and I have a boxed Deluxe option board too (with original manual, software, and cable).

Still no point in selling it, you will blow the money on stupid things like bills anyway.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Copywrite would "hack" the disks it couldn't copy and disable the copy protection by patching the programs themselves.

More risky from a legal standpoint as CopyIIPC could argue that simply archiving an existing copy might be legal, but CopyWrite actively removed protection.
Click to expand...

I have more respect for copywrite now. CopyIIPC would resort to patching the program as well, but would leave the disk somewhat in an odd format that, at least, diskcopy couldn't get past.
 
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