The Shadow

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

Shadow (1986) Shadow (1985) Shadow - ad2(1985)

THE SOFTWARE DIRECTORY:

 

 

 

 

 

12 thoughts on “The Shadow

  1. The Shadow never existed, the guy who was supposed to be creating the hardware was convicted for fraud and sent to prison for it. He also had a record of other fraud convictions… This is noted somewhere on the net, as I have read it before.

  2. The Shadow existed. I was hired by Megasoft to take the original ECHO software (which was a hardware copier I made before SuperCard) and modify it to work with the Shadow hardware. The board needed a jumper mod too.

  3. The hardware side of this was likely another rip off of thomas templeton’s revolutionary coding in the very early 80s. It was ripped off from then, until now. There was even an article in compute magazine by jim butterfield about these blatant rip offs. He was eventually given a collection plate of 1 or 2 thousand canadian dollars for his troubles by jim from grateful users who typed it in from the magazine. Putting the ram portion of the program to rom given the massive amount of free address space on the 1541 wouldnt be too difficult.

  4. Thomas Templeton’s program hadn’t come out yet before Shadow, Echo, and a few others. Also, Thomas’ program was software based, not hardware.

  5. The shadow did exist, I have one, both the software and hardware but it did not work one bit. I was told many times that they were working on it but it never happened.

  6. I helped test the hardware which did tell me what track densities we’re changed. I then gave my info to an office in brush prairie Washington and the person who I gave the info to created parameters or software that would assist users in copying programs. I worked for a software retail store called software plus and we had to backup software that was rented out.
    I had installed the shadow in my drive and used it.
    Just my 2 cents. I got my shadow for free to help beta test it.

  7. I still have everything, the board, software, instructions and even the box it shipped in. Never did work and even with multiple calls got nowhere until the phone number was disconnected. As a young father of 3 I felt horrible because I could have spent the money on them instead of something that didn’t work. Lesson learned and they can rot as far as I’m concerned.

    • That was criminal. I know for sure $90 was ALOT of money to me in the 90’s. Do you have photos you can send me?

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