How Long Have You Been Pirating Software

**Chewie** · 02-05-2006, 06:13 PM

Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234

Originally Posted by Seedler

Haha I remember when I was like 4 or so, and my dad tried to copy games from legal purchases of 3.5 floppies and it didn't work...

Apparently they wrote data on separated sectors of the floppy and if you just copy the content onto another floppy, the games won't run because the content is written in order.

Man that's gotta be the first anti-pirating technology invented...

No. There were fake bad sectors on Atari 5¼" diskettes. The program would load and when run it would check that sector and if it could read that sector then the program wouldn't run. I even saw one that would check the sector, find it to be good (not supposed to be) and then format the diskette blank and then display a message: "Your pirated copy has just been formatted. Have a nice day!"

I found that writing to a sector with the speed control of the drive slowed down it would create a bad sector when trying to read it at normal speed.

Also write protecting the diskette would prevent the "unexpected" formatting.

A few years after the Amiga hit the shelves it's world was dominated by "Cyclone" leads and adapters.
I remember sitting up late at night in a neighbour's flat soldering wires between two 23D connectors, making them to sell.
That was back in the days of Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Jimmy White's Snooker, Kick Off 2 and Populous

**Busyman** · 02-07-2006, 12:19 AM

Originally Posted by Seedler

wow...5 1/4 diskettes? I was too young t remember them I guess...

They were "floppy" diskettes.

They actually flopped.

I remember when the 3.5 disks came out, I called them "hard" disks.

**Virtualbody1234** · 02-07-2006, 03:22 AM

There were 8" floppy disks.

**fkdup74** · 02-07-2006, 03:51 AM

I am not a pirate.

**Filliz** · 02-08-2006, 08:38 PM

Voting on this poll through the frontpage gives a 404

**tesco** · 02-10-2006, 03:17 AM

I used to have an 8inch disk.
My dad got it from my aunt, and kept it for years, before realizing how outdated it was and then just gave it to me...i broke it open

**Tempestv** · 02-17-2006, 04:39 AM

wow, that takes me back, i voted 2-3 years, when I got into p2p, but with disks, I was copying software back... I'm just going to say that the comp was a Mac II, and fairly cutting edge for the time. two true floppy drives and no harddrive- program disk and a file disk- boot up with the OS disk, then to type, replace the os disk with the typing program disk, and put in your files disk where you saved your docs to, wow I remember it like yesterday. the big computer that was all one unit- the computer monitor and keyboard all molded into on shape, long before the days of mice. what a shock when we got my laptop with win 3.11 (still use that today sometimes). but ya, i had a couple pirated games on those big floppys.

**Silentredninja** · 02-22-2006, 01:08 AM

This discussion brings me back to the days when I would walk down to my parents dark dank basement, fire up my 286, connect my 2400 Baud to a bbs and eagerly wait 30 minutes for a low resolution gif of boobs while I watched a new episode of Star Trek: TNG.

Good Times!!!!