Apple II DOS question
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
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@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- 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)
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@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@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- 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)
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
(note re: this post: Andy Hertzfeld may also provide a reply) From: Ron Nicholson Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 2:37 PM Subject: Re: Apple II DOS question My knowledge only goes back to mid-1980, after DOS 3.3 was already on the market, but at that point in time, in-depth knowledge of RWTS (read-write-track-sector) code seemed to be fairly widespread knowledge within the Apple II programmer community. An RWTS was included in the boot ROM on the Disk II controller board. Game programmer's could probably quote the necessary 6502 assembly language code required in hex needed to implement an RWTS, and then read or write an Apple II floppy without DOS. So they didn't need DOS to load their games, and they could hardcode their own customized RWTS routine directly into their game or app. There were a vast number of schemes, using custom RWTS routines (sometimes encrypted), to render a disk format incompatible with the DOS disk copy, and then play cat and mouse against the copy apps. Andy Hertzfeld likely knows a ton more about them that I do. Ron On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 2:09 PM Brian Berg <brianberg@gmail.com> wrote:
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@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@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- 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)
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi Laine, I have no first hand knowledge of any rights issue regarding DOS, but I purchased an Apple ][ before Disk ][ was available and was particularly excited to get my Disk ][ early on. Based on my experience, I would like to share an observation. My first thought when I read your message is that I can’t imagine that putting DOS on a distribution disk ever was an issue at all. Basically almost every Apple II floppy disk that I ever saw was DOS bootable, unless it was a data only disk. My second thought is that this is probably why you could find no documentation about the issue. Just to be sure my memory hadn’t failed me,I checked an original floppy of some very early HAM software by Dr. Christopher Galfo, which I obtained from Dr Galfo himself, a couple of years ago. Sure enough it was DOS bootable. By the way, he had an unusual copy protection scheme. He put a key part of the software on a second disc which had the software on some arbitrary tracks in the middle of the disk and the others tracks were left unformatted. The program on the bootable disk knew where to look for the rest of program, but DOS couldn’t mount the second disk. This scheme had no dependency on any special version of DOS. regards, Mike Willegal
On Feb 24, 2021, at 3:14 PM, Laine Nooney <laine.nooney@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 <https://bit.ly/2GIHuK0> -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi all, Thanks for all the responses that have come both on and off list. Michael, your observation seems to sync with more feedback I've been getting on this question, which is to say there was never a prohibition from Apple against putting DOS on commercial disks, so it was something lots of developers/publishers simply did, rather than a decision made by Apple. I've also gotten a lot of good feedback on other, non-DOS related modes of copy protection, so this will generally help me refine (though simplify) my technical explanations. Happy for any other Intel folks want to send along -L 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 On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 9:17 PM MikeWillegal <mike@willegal.net> wrote:
Hi Laine,
I have no first hand knowledge of any rights issue regarding DOS, but I purchased an Apple ][ before Disk ][ was available and was particularly excited to get my Disk ][ early on. Based on my experience, I would like to share an observation.
My first thought when I read your message is that I can’t imagine that putting DOS on a distribution disk ever was an issue at all. Basically almost every Apple II floppy disk that I ever saw was DOS bootable, unless it was a data only disk. My second thought is that this is probably why you could find no documentation about the issue.
Just to be sure my memory hadn’t failed me,I checked an original floppy of some very early HAM software by Dr. Christopher Galfo, which I obtained from Dr Galfo himself, a couple of years ago. Sure enough it was DOS bootable. By the way, he had an unusual copy protection scheme. He put a key part of the software on a second disc which had the software on some arbitrary tracks in the middle of the disk and the others tracks were left unformatted. The program on the bootable disk knew where to look for the rest of program, but DOS couldn’t mount the second disk. This scheme had no dependency on any special version of DOS.
regards, Mike Willegal
On Feb 24, 2021, at 3:14 PM, Laine Nooney <laine.nooney@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
participants (4)
-
Brian Berg -
Laine Nooney -
LO*OP CENTER, INC. -
MikeWillegal