Transfer 8050 disks (was: PET 2001 Fix)

Bil Herd wrote:

> When we included the Monitor program in the TED (Plus4, etc) that allowed 
> disassembly and display of memory the head of Commodore England sent a 
> Telex saying that we had created the perfect machine for software piracy.

Surely a few earlier Commodore machines had some sort of built-in monitor, 
at least the CBM-II series? Now again, those were expensive and meant for 
businesses while the C16 and Plus/4 clearly were home computers. I presume 
software piracy back then was almost entirely associated with home users and 
games. However I have come across a number of Datatronic administrative 
software packages which require different key dongles in the cartridge port 
to run on the CBM 700. Interestingly enough almost all of them origin from 
earlier PET 3000 and 8000 versions, on which there was no cost effective way 
to create dongles, thus the business software on the PET side seemed 
completely unprotected?

For the moment being, I'll archive those PET/CBM software packages that seem 
meaningful: Basic compilers not already present on Zimmers etc, but skip 
those billing, factoring and store handling softwares entirely in Swedish. A 
bunch of these are in 8050 or 8250 format which complicates the archiving 
further.

Since we have have drifted off the original topic, could anyone suggest the 
best or easiest way to archive 8050 formatted floppy disks? These are my 
choice of weapons:

PET 3032 / 4032 / 8032-SK / CBM 610 / CBM 710
VIC-20 / C64 / C128
Drives: 2031 / 8050 / 8250 / 8250LP / 1541-II
Interfaces 1: VIC-20 IEEE interface, possibly C64 IEEE interface
Interfaces 2: C2N232I, uIEC/SD (with CBM 610 patch), XM1541

The only possibly interesting cable I have not built would be a cbmlink 
cable, but I assume the C2N232I in many ways fill the same function. 
Obviously I would need the names of some good copying programs too. Some of 
those interfaces shut out access to other drives, i.e. it tends to be hard 
to use an IEC and an IEEE drive at the same time on a VIC/C64, but it 
depends on which IEEE interface one got.

Best regards

-- 
Anders Carlsson


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