I want to distribute my prgs on a floppy but i dont want people formatting them after they copy the prog. I sthere any way to allow a read-only access to the floppy?
yes there is a switch (left under) on floppies you can move :) open = no write
MovingFulcrum,
Yes, you can format floppy as Microsoft system disk, but
you can't prevent people to burn it or throw your disk
out of window.
Smarter way is to make your program run from floppy only.
You could even prevent disk copy or even to copy your
valid files from floppy to HD.
But honestly I have not a clue as why to prevent formating.
forge
The reason why i dont want ppl formatting my floppy is that say if i give my prog to my friends they would take it from me only to get the damn floppy from me. So i want it to be such that once i give a prog to someone on a floppy he cant reuse it.
Ohh that is simple:
make a hole with a needle in your floppy before/or after writeing data (after is tricky)and make sure your data uses just a little space (the one that was not ruined by the hole/holes) . Eventually make 2 or 3 floppys...now IF they reformat them they will geat a lot of bad sectors on that floppy and eventually just a 350K of free space :) that is annoyng enoug to make them flame the disk ;) and give it no real commercial value ...
If you are a PRO, you can make own hardware routines for reading absolute sectors from disk...and ignore holes in the FAT/root area of the floppy...but OS can not ingnore them and this makes the disk unusable for most other uses
but such a problem for such a cheap disk? eh...
Ok but where exactly should the hole be made supposing the data is arnd 300 kb. Should it be made in the center or at the side?
BogdanOntanu,
Nice to know that you still remember Dbase3
and laser holes for copy protection.
disease_2000,
What the mood you are in today???
the other x is just there
This notch x is for 1.44mb floppy as 720kb have not
this notch. Plug it and nobody want it.
Have a happy day.Hi
Well, the FAT and ROOT directory are at the external side of the floppy (near the margins) and data starts to be written going to the inside.
Just open a floopy drive on your table (top cover) plug it in (take care) and write a 300k data file... then write a second one (yours) note the approx position where the floppy head started to write ;) (please note the speed returns of the head to TRACK ZERO after each file to write into the FAT....
make a hole in the middle of the distance from the exterior and your noted position (for safety) then another hole near the external margin (to kill the fat and root)...
use your own routines to read data from the floppy OR forget about killing the FAT and root and use plain int 13h ;)
The knotch trick (write protect one) WILL NOT WORK. any decent ;P guy knows to place an adhesive tape around the knotch and remeake the disk usable/writeable ;) dosent matter if you superglue/broke it ;) as its protected ONLY when light does pass thru...and it will not pass thru simple adhesive black tape...
This message was edited by BogdanOntanu, on 6/5/2001 9:33:00 PM
BogdanOntanu,
you are to technical, to process floppy like
this is more expensive then to buy new floppy.
MovingFulcrum,
you should make your program to run from floppy only,
make it impossible to run it from HD.
If this ppl format the disk, they will loose your program.
Or exchange the floppy with them one for one.
I will love to give you a few in exchange for your program.
forge
Thankx for ur ideas guys. Bogdan i think ur method is way too technical to care for in such a cheap floppy. Forge i think ur idea of exchanging diks is the best one till now.
just but it on a CD, CD's are getting as cheap as
floppy disks anyway, even if your program is small
you can now get 50 CD-R's for only $10.00