> 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.
Such memories. I used all sorts/versions of copy programs (Copy II Plus, Disk Muncher, Locksmith, even the copy program on the System Master Disk). Copy II plus was always updating its "Bit Rate" (I believe it was that option, where you can select you disk from a list of disks. Locksmith 6.0 could take hours to copy those disk. Disk Muncher was done in a couple of minutes. Nowadays, to burn a cd can take 3 1/2 minutes > > 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. Speaking on behalf of kids (being a kid formarlly), many other things can cause damage. For instance playing Conan for hours on end (assuming your family was too poor to buy a system saver fan, "accidently" forgetting to put the disk back in its sleeve, and spilling a soda on it, etc. > > 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. 2 years ago I went shopping. In front of the store was a guy wanting people to sign a petition to ask for more money for better computers on the next ballot. His argument was the Winblows was outdated. This guy was my age (30). Not only did I refuse to sign his petition, but I reminded hime that all we had waas the Apple IIe when we went to school. And that we were taught AppleWorks rather than Mocrosoft Word > > 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. I actually have this same attitude nowadays. *If* I buy a new audio CD (which is rare), I immediatly rip it to mp3 and make a back up copy of it. I would rather ruin a 10c CD rather then a $20CD > > 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. Illegal as it is, the fun part was breaking that copy protection. Even if it took days, it was quite the thrill to copy it > Steven -- 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
