X-Copy shrine

[cpiac64]

i want test with xcopy my 5 pc floppy modified, i need a game ndos for test, why?

[AVH_2009]

Hi Jope,
thats great work on your smal website.
very impressive how many time someone is able to spend for so little details.
Respect for your work, and keep it alive.

[Jope]

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately the latest update has been on hiatus, too little time after work these days. There will be one eventually, I promise.. :-)

[Eclipse]

Thanks for your website Jope, I still use X-Copy
One thing though, maybe I'm silly but I keep getting "Runme.exe: Unknown Command" on the latest versions?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Jope

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately the latest update has been on hiatus, too little time after work these days. There will be one eventually, I promise.. :-)

So, now it's about three years later. Any updates?
I have seen an english version with the colorful graphics, but it is not on the site (yet?).. Or is it a hacked version?

[mr.vince]

I still have more... e.g. an unreleased X-Mas version...

[demolition]

Originally Posted by mr.vince

I still have more... e.g. an unreleased X-Mas version...

Seems wrong to release in january, so maybe for christmas 2014?
Edit: I can see that an english version is indeed present on the site, just not under the master disk section.

[mr.vince]

Yes, did not make it for X-Mas 2012 and 2013, so 2014 may be it. Who cares, after all these years... no rush.

[Nostromo]

Just wondering... did X-Copy ever come with a hardware add-on to allow copying of protected disks?

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Nostromo

Just wondering... did X-Copy ever come with a hardware add-on to allow copying of protected disks?

I bought X-Copy a few times and always got a dongle for use with cyclone. Think I have three dongles, an older one and two that were the newer 'T2' hardware.

[Jope]

Hmm, I guess I shouldn't have made any promises. ;-)

I'm the master procrastinator.

[ancalimon]

I wonder... How is XCopy able to fix bad sectors of disks using the erase mode? I just fixed the front 79th track of a floppy and it could be formatted after that.

[Pat the Cat]

Never tried. Possible I guess. I didn't use Xcopy for disks with bad tracks on that were tricky.

I just use a big electromagnet, although a little gausscleaner for tape heads was more elegant, much less likely to screw up the disk permanently on it's own..

Xcopy was the one product we really could not cross compare on with reviews. Anyway, any such comparison would have dated very very quickly. Not worth even trying to go there. Not on a monthly magazine.

I tried some earlier similar products, on different platforms. They could be very very effective. Sooner or later you had to update or change your copier. Didn't really get deep into it, but that's the way it seemed to me. Some of the techies just always did copiers. Less work than writing, guaranteed market. You had to be good at buidling good hardware very consistently. No names, but some of them are still doing that and similar things. Not xcopy itself, but little bits and pieces of hardware that people want to buy.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

I wonder... How is XCopy able to fix bad sectors of disks using the erase mode? I just fixed the front 79th track of a floppy and it could be formatted after that.

This doesn't pertain to just X-Copy, but can be any format tool. If one track is slightly misaligned, formatting a track may not succeed properly since the head does not align up with the track. Doing it multiple times may 'nudge' the track into the proper magnetisation so it eventually passes the check, however any future writes may still generate errors unless you use the same method of writing the same data over and over again until it succeeds.

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

Never tried. Possible I guess. I didn't use Xcopy for disks with bad tracks on that were tricky.

I just use a big electromagnet, although a little gausscleaner for tape heads was more elegant, much less likely to screw up the disk permanently on it's own..

Xcopy was the one product we really could not cross compare on with reviews. Anyway, any such comparison would have dated very very quickly. Not worth even trying to go there. Not on a monthly magazine.

I tried some earlier similar products, on different platforms. They could be very very effective. Sooner or later you had to update or change your copier. Didn't really get deep into it, but that's the way it seemed to me. Some of the techies just always did copiers. Less work than writing, guaranteed market. You had to be good at buidling good hardware very consistently. No names, but some of them are still doing that and similar things. Not xcopy itself, but little bits and pieces of hardware that people want to buy.

You just use a lot of words to basically say nothing?? It's just noise.

[Jope]

It's also possible that the track gap gets written on top of the bad part of the media, if the track write is not synced with the index pulse. Also if there is magnetic damage to the disk, a format will naturally fix that.

I seem to remember the Amiga does not sync to index when writing. X-Copy has a feature for that, but I'm guessing it is not used for wipe/format, only copying.

Time will tell if your disk will hold data for a longer period of time. :-)

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by demolition

This doesn't pertain to just X-Copy, but can be any format tool. If one track is slightly misaligned, formatting a track may not succeed properly since the head does not align up with the track. Doing it multiple times may 'nudge' the track into the proper magnetisation so it eventually passes the check, however any future writes may still generate errors unless you use the same method of writing the same data over and over again until it succeeds.

The above is complete noob nonsense, repeated attempts to induce a magnnetic field on a magnetic medium will eventually succeeed if repeated often often and fast enough to cause a stable self inducing field.

It is not a case of "nudging the track", it is a case of how effective the head is at inducing the field in the magnetic medium. This can take multiple passes. Or one pass, with a stronger magnet.

[demolition]

Back in the 90's, I remember that I sometimes put something heavy on the keyboard to hold down the 'r' key when I was formatting floppies if it encountered a bad track to make it keep retrying. Left like that for long enough, and it would eventually often format with all 0's.

That didn't mean that the disk was now good since it could easily fail again when I tried to copy new data on it. But I didn't have much money back then and tried to salvage as many precious floppies as I could..

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

The above is complete noob nonsense, repeated attempts to induce a magnnetic field on a magnetic medium will eventually succeeed if repeated often often and fast enough to cause a stable self inducing field.

So you call it nonsense and then basically say exactly the same thing?

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by demolition

Back in the 90's, I remember that I sometimes put something heavy on the keyboard to hold down the 'r' key when I was formatting floppies if it encountered a bad track to make it keep retrying. Left like that for long enough, and it would eventually often format with all 0's.

That didn't mean that the disk was now good since it could easily fail again when I tried to copy new data on it. But I didn't have much money back then and tried to salvage as many precious floppies as I could..



So you call it nonsense and then basically say exactly the same thing?

If the magnetic medium is damaged, it may not be able to sustain a magnetic field of sufficent size no matter what you do with it.

TBH I had similar issues to you with 3" (not 3.5") disks. Those things, while reliable, are expensive per unit. You have to really work to save them. The disks are quite tough, the drives are usually not robust.

And if you can't take it, me trolling you, don't troll me in the first place. Is that the only way you have fun? Pointing the finger while screaming lie a chimpanzee?

[jediknight]

how many diskos did i copy um 100s of thousands , but then i was part of a hacking group bbs yall lol.

[Amiga1992]

I couldn't resist making this one, Jope!