Lotus Trilogy Backups

[sean_skroht]

Hi there,

About a week ago I had made images of all three Lotus Turbo Challenge games and had uploaded them to the FTP server.

After having made those images i realized the following:
(I'll use Lotus 2 as an example)

The image worked fine in WinUAE and, when written to back up floppy disk, it worked in the real Amiga.
Then, as a test, I re-imaged the backed up version to the hard drive but found that the second generation image created did not work in WinUAE nor did it work in my Amiga when re-written to another floppy.

I noticed that a Kryflux image of Lotus 2 that I downloaded was created with 83 tracks whereas my backup was 80 tracks. Therefore I re-imaged the original retail disk at 83 tracks and that fixed the issue of the second generation image not working.

Therefore I have uploaded the new images just in case and have "(new)" in the filenames.
The SCP manual states: "Some copy protection schemes use extended tracks, so keep that mind." Would that apply to Lotus 2 in this case and would it explain why the second generation image wasn't working?
When backing up a copy protected game, is there a way to find out if copy protection uses extended tracks?

Thank you very much.

[SomeGuy]

There is really no good general way to determine what areas a copy protection scheme uses. It is usually a good idea to include as many extra tracks as your floppy drive supports. Note that many floppy drives can not position their head beyond the 82nd track.

You can examine a flux dump with the HxC tools to see if the tracks contains data. However, these tracks often contains informational data written by mass duplicators that is not used by copy protection schemes.

[admin]

If the disk worked with tracks 0-79, then clearly only those tracks are needed.

Sounds like maybe the disk drive was dirty or something. The success of generations of generations of copies are all dependent on drive and the magnetic media being used.