Virtually all of the Apple educational software was copy protected. That is, unless a district bought a full license and, if you are lucky enough to find some MECC diskettes that were not CP, then you've got a gold mine. The best thing to do, though, is get Copy II Plus and make a back up. Never let the kids use an original.
Copy protection of Apple software was legalized criminalization. You buy a 30 dollar book, it will last for years, even if a page is torn. You buy a 50$ Mindscape program and you put it in the disk drive. The diskdrive dies and so does your program. Disk drives are simply not reliable. But worse than that, children are predictable. I checked out a copy protected program at a University and put it in a 3rd grade clase. This is an original, mind you, and the first day, the kids opened the drive while the red light was on and fought over putting in another disk. Of course it ruined the disk. I know, I know. You could get a backup for 10 bucks, but after that, back to the 50. What a ripoff. I'm retired now, and they got rid of the Apple IIe's in the school I worked at. I'm not sure what they did with them, but they were all mine. The kids loved them. The idiot adults in charge wanted to get rid of them so that only the moronic WIndows machines were used. Believe this or not, but Ihad 3 TRS-80 Model 4s in one class room, and the kids loved them more than Apples or a Window machine. New teacher and I took them out. I have the original disks of much of the software right here at my house. I would never let kids use an original one. It takes time to copy them, and you may have to go through several drives to get one that will copy them with the most success, but that is the only way to go. The gold mine would be to find one of those boards that was made such that it would copy anything, exactly as it was. No worry. Using Copy II Plus, you could copy 10 disks, and find out 5 of them didn't work. 15 minutes a copy. I could never copy successfully the Learning Company's Math Rabbit. Thus, the kids didn't get it in the classrooms. That company made a gold mine on schools, and ripped schools and mostly teachers off big time. Many of the teachers would buy the diskettes themselves. I have no pity for all those old Apple II companies that copy protected their software. Kids will be kids and drives will be drives. A teacher should have at least 5 backups of any good program. The rule of thumb for our secretaries is, backup your data 3 times: 1 goes to the vault, one stays in the desk and one goes home. One of our secretaries hadn't backed up her data for two months and her hard drive crashed. She had to spend nights putting the student's absences back into the new drive. Drives cannot be trusted. Same system should have been in place for educational software. I do believe in the last days, there was one a company that put a copy program on their disk that would allow you to make 5 copies of the program and that is all. That was an honest company. We've even had kids bring magnets to school for show and tell. Magnets and monitors and software spell disaster. Not only is a IIGS a good way to move data to a Mac, so is an Apple IIC+ and if you are lucky and find an Apple IIC that supports the 3.5 drive, you are in luck also. I haven't found one of those yet. IIC's have always had a problem with a pathetic handle for the disk drive. It breaks, you are de -- Apple2list is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Apple2list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/apple2.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/apple2list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
