[Coco] Rainbow cassettes

[Arthur Flexser]

I believe there were two tape versions of Zaxxon, an earlier one sold by a third
party, and a later one sold by Radio Shack.  I think the RS one may have been
unprotected, while the third-party one was protected, probably fairly heavily.
In general, the techniques used to protect disks are mostly inapplicable to
tape, so it is doubtful that knowing about the disk protection scheme would be
very helpful in de-protecting a tape version.

Art

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Robert Gault wrote:

> If your tape version of ZAXXON is anything like my disk version, it is 
> highly copy protected. So, if you are trying to convert it to disk, I 
> expect you to have much trouble and it may not be possible.
> 
> Here is part of the copy protection on the disk. Many unreadable sectors 
> so the disk can't be backed up. The directory track is partially 
> unreadable so the DIR command does not work. The loader is on track 34 
> so that either the DOS command or a short Basic program that simulates 
> DOS is used to start the game. The sector values extend to 31, making 
> many good sectors unreadable by stock DOS1.0 or 1.1.
> 
> There is probably more copy protection because the loader I looked at 
> fills every other sector of memory from $3CA0 to $7E00. There almost has 
> to be a second loader that fills in the missing alternate sectors.
> 
> Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks Robert,
> > My copy is indeed the RS version with the RS cat number. I have tried 
> > another tape (just a bunch) which has it on it, but it seems the same.
> > I have tried to search for Steve's email address, and it seems that his 
> > name is a common one. I wanted to get permission to post some of his 
> > stuff on my website, but so far, I havn't been able to track down the 
> > "right" Steve. If you have (or anyone ) has information on how to 
> > contact him it would be much appriciated.
> > BTW "Pooyan" worked without any problems, and "the King" works, but 
> > loads up an "opposite" color scheme, then when loaded from cassette. 
> > (the king now has a grey "King" with red-pink girders- daisy has green 
> > gray hair). interesting..
> > well enough for this evening. CSI is on.
> > -Glen
>  ><snip>
> 
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