The Shadow

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

The Shadow was sold my Megasoft in 1985-86. This was a hardware/software combination. Claiming a 99.9% effectiveness.There was also a GT Package that you would install in your 1541 to display the Track and Sector, very much like an Indus GT disk drive. Also added a reset switch and a device number change. I am not sure how you installed this.

From old Usenet postings it seems that there was questions on if this hardware actually worked or not. Megasoft was rumored to spend $400,000 on advertising for this produce. Also rumored that Megasoft went out of business because of this? Can anyone confirm or deny these rumors?

9-2020 – More photos added sent to me from Craig Ernster – Thank you

THE SOFTWARE DIRECTORY:

Renegade

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

If you noticed from the screen shot below, Renegade looked like Maverick. This is because Renegade was renamed to Maverick. This was a very good copier in 1988 and could copy the Electronic Arts stuff. Rapidlok, Geos disk and came with 300 parameters to unprotect many disk. I should add that Parameters also would remove those super annoying manual or codewheel look ups. Anytime I had a game that used those, the first thing I always wanted to do was to remove the protection check. Most of the time I could do that with my Isepic or Snapshot cartridge. If not I would find a parameter to do that.

I heard: Renegade was Sued by Taito America for using their game name of Renegade, so the name change to Maverick

The Renegade Manual V1.0 The_Renegade_V1.0

The Renegade Manual V2.0 The_Renegade_V2.0

Ad Flyer

RAMBOard

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

The RAMBOard was a small card that you installed in your 1541 drive to be able to copy games that software only copiers couldn’t. Added more memory to your 1541 and worked with the Maverick copy software.
The installed photo is from ShadowM’s Commodore 64 Pages

Here is the software disk that came with the RAMBOard: Ramboard D64 disk

Peek A Byte 64

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

This was more of a Disk Editor utility with the later 2.0 version added a Nibbler. This nibbler could read raw GCR. A few other features was it could read and write to track 40, including 1/2 tracks. Check out the menu screen below!

Parameters R’ Us

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

These were parameter packs that had about 100 titles per pack. Again a Parameter would remove Or Eliminate all the protection from a back up copy. These are very easy to use. You could make a fast copy and then run these patches on the copy and then you should have a working back-up.

Parameters Construction Set

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Steverd

The ad claims that this software will take your disk and automatically write a parameter for you! Does anyone have more information on this one? How did it work?

C64 Copy Protection

Documenting the History of the Commodore 64 protection scene

Author Archives: Steverd

The Shadow

Renegade

RAMBOard

Peek A Byte 64

Parameters R’ Us

Parameters Construction Set