21 Second Back up – Spiral track protection

A new format of C64 copy protection found 25+ yrs after it’s release?

Most of use know that Bounty Bob was likely to be the hardest C64 game out to copy. But have you tried to copy 21 Second back up? Well it pretty much impossible to copy also. It wasn’t until just recently that Jim Drew (interviewed here) maker of the SuperCard got his hands on an original copy of it. Here is Jim’s Quote from his post on LEMON64,

“Because this disk uses true spiral track protection.
Tracks 10, 10.5, and 11 contain valid data that was written WHILE the head was stepping.
So, the data (which is 10 x 512 bytes long) is written on an ‘arc’ as the disk spins
and the head steps between tracks 11.0->10.5->10.0->10.5->11.0″

Goto the Lemon64 link above to learn more!!

 

Nibtools updated

There has been an update to Nibtools. In case you haven’t heard of Nibtools it is used to image a Commodore disk to your PC and to write a disk image (D64, G64) back out to a real Commodore disk. I use it with CBMXfer program. Nibtools has options to read/write out to track 40, half track, fix short tracks, reduce gaps, and more.

This update includes a number of fixes.
Can deal with Half-Tracks better
Now creates Standard G64 files
Patch the drive code foe use the a Zoomfloopy
The update is build 587 and can be found on the C64 Preservation Page