[SIGCIS-Members] Apple II DOS question

[Brian Berg]

I have a query out to the cited Apple folks and a number of others, and
Steve here cited two more:

*From: Steve Wozniak*
Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: Apple II DOS question
Cc: Randy Wigginton, Andy Hertzfeld

*All I can say is that this was a LONG time ago, before this practice which
is common today. I never heard anyone complain about this form of copy
protection. Our platform back then was a step lower, largely hardware, and
our open source approach made it easy for others to understand and modify
things.*

I'll keep you all posted re: other replies.

Brian Berg

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 1:12 PM LO*OP CENTER, INC. <lizaloop at loopcenter.org>
wrote:

> Hi Laine,
>
> When I was at Personal Software (subsequently VisiCorp), we had Apple boot
> disks. That was in the early '80s. Maybe some of the staff from that period
> can help you - - try Visi- people Dan Fylstra, Brad Templeton, Bob
> Frankston, Dan Bricklin and others. Most of them are easy to find but let
> me know if you have difficulty. Of course, Woz probably knows and Daniel
> Kottke as well.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Liza
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 12:14 PM Laine Nooney <laine.nooney at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Some of you may know, I've been spending my pandemic days chipping away
>> at a software history of the Apple II (under contract with U of Chicago,
>> hopefully forthcoming… 2023?). Anyway, I finally had a question that
>> neither I nor my extended network of retro computing enthusiasts seems to
>> be able to answer--and was wondering if anyone at SIGCIS might have some
>> insight here.
>>
>> I'm looking for any information available on when Apple began permitting
>> publishers/developers to put DOS on the floppy disks of their own products,
>> thus allowing programs to boot without need for a System Master. My
>> understanding is that this development happened either with DOS 3.2 or DOS
>> 3.3, but I can't actually verify when this occurred at all.
>>
>> The reason this is coming up is because I'm currently working on a
>> chapter focused on the disk copy program *Locksmith* and copy
>> protection. Allowing developers to put DOS on their commercial disks would
>> seem to be an extremely important development for creating increasingly
>> sophisticated copy protection schemes. Since DOS controlled how data on a
>> disk was read, all devs/publishers had to do to create an uncopyable disk
>> was store the data to the disk in an unconventional format, and then ensure
>> they modified the DOS on their disk to be able to read it. While the disk
>> would run just fine, it couldn't be copied by the System Master
>> COPY/COPYA subroutines, which assumed a standard organization for data on
>> the disk. So while not intended to allow developers to enhance their copy
>> protection schemes, that was certainly one of the knock on effects of
>> allowing DOS on disk.
>>
>> Cheers to anyone who followed any of that. If anyone has a sense of how
>> this industry level transition came about, or is even just certain of which
>> DOS version it can be attributed to, I'd be incredibly grateful.
>>
>> -Laine
>>
>> Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>
>>
>> Assistant Professor |  MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU
>> <http://www.nyu.edu/>  | she/they
>>
>> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://bit.ly/2GIHuK0
>> -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos
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>
>
> --
> Liza Loop
> Executive Director, LO*OP Center, Inc.
> Guerneville, CA 95446
> www.loopcenter.org
> 650 619 1099 (between 8 am and 10 pm Pacific time only please)
>
> _______________________________________________
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> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member
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