Disklavier

Hi all,

Apologies if I'm repeating stuff people already know, but hopefully it
will help some people:

*************************************************************************
Please note: doing this might well be against the Yamaha license, and I
accept no responsibility for any damage / loss of data / earthquakes /
flying pigs appearing that might occur from the following!
*************************************************************************

Anyone who has ever tried to read the files from "protected" Pianosoft
disks will know they are unreadable in a PC as Yamaha put an invalid boot
sector to make Yamaha think the disk is unformatted.

There are some utilities around which will make a copy of a protected 720k
floppy and write a valid boot sector so that Windows / others can read the
data on the disk. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any software for
doing the same with 1.44MB (2HD) disks (although if you have Linux it's
easy).

If you wish to unprotect one of these floppies (ideally make a backup copy
of the disk first) you can use a utility for Windows called "rawrite"
(which is usually used for making Linux boot floppy disks) to put the boot
sector back on. I have attached the boot sector from a floppy disk to this
email.

Grab RAWRITE.EXE / RAWRITEXP.EXE from your favourite Linux site /
distribution, such as a mirror of the Slackware ftp:

ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-8.1/bootdisks/RAWRITEXP.EXE

Then write the attached image file to the disk, and you should then be
able to read the disks in Windows and make use of the conversions utils in
dkvutils.zip as you would on a 720k disk. I've tried this on a couple of
my 1.44mb protected floppies and it appears to work great. I guess
theoretically it would work on a 720k disk too, but I don't have any to
try it out on.

Hope this is of use to someone :)

James

----- James R Fry - email/MSN james.fry@... - ICQ 4607456 -----
------------------ "Those who can't write, write manuals" ------------------

Thank you for posting this!  However, it did not work for me.  My Pianosoft 
disks are 720k.  I thought ALL PianoSoft disks were double density!  I used 
AnaDisk to make an exact copy of the PianoSoft diskette - one 720k disk 
copied to another 720k disk.  I used a laptop running Windows XP 
professional.  I was surprised that Anadisk worked in virtual DOS as the 
dkvcopy does NOT!  I suppose I could try using AnaDisk to copy a 720k 
PianoSoft disk to a 1.44 disk, then perhaps this would work.  Are your 
PIanoSoft disks 1.44?

Carol Beigel
crbrpt@...

>From: James Fry <linx@...>
>Reply-To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
>To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [disklavier] "Unprotecting" 1.44MB 2HD Pianosoft disks
>Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 02:25:01 +0000 (GMT)
>
>Hi all,
>
>Apologies if I'm repeating stuff people already know, but hopefully it
>will help some people:
>
>*************************************************************************
>Please note: doing this might well be against the Yamaha license, and I
>accept no responsibility for any damage / loss of data / earthquakes /
>flying pigs appearing that might occur from the following!
>*************************************************************************
>
>Anyone who has ever tried to read the files from "protected" Pianosoft
>disks will know they are unreadable in a PC as Yamaha put an invalid boot
>sector to make Yamaha think the disk is unformatted.
>
>There are some utilities around which will make a copy of a protected 720k
>floppy and write a valid boot sector so that Windows / others can read the
>data on the disk. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any software for
>doing the same with 1.44MB (2HD) disks (although if you have Linux it's
>easy).
>
>If you wish to unprotect one of these floppies (ideally make a backup copy
>of the disk first) you can use a utility for Windows called "rawrite"
>(which is usually used for making Linux boot floppy disks) to put the boot
>sector back on. I have attached the boot sector from a floppy disk to this
>email.
>
>Grab RAWRITE.EXE / RAWRITEXP.EXE from your favourite Linux site /
>distribution, such as a mirror of the Slackware ftp:
>
>ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-8.1/bootdisks/RAWRITEXP.EXE
>
>Then write the attached image file to the disk, and you should then be
>able to read the disks in Windows and make use of the conversions utils in
>dkvutils.zip as you would on a 720k disk. I've tried this on a couple of
>my 1.44mb protected floppies and it appears to work great. I guess
>theoretically it would work on a 720k disk too, but I don't have any to
>try it out on.
>
>Hope this is of use to someone :)
>
>James
>
>----- James R Fry - email/MSN james.fry@... - ICQ 4607456 
>-----
>------------------ "Those who can't write, write manuals" 
>------------------
><< boot.img >>


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On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Carol Beigel wrote:
> Thank you for posting this!  However, it did not work for me.  My Pianosoft
> disks are 720k.  I thought ALL PianoSoft disks were double density!  I used
> AnaDisk to make an exact copy of the PianoSoft diskette - one 720k disk
> copied to another 720k disk.  I used a laptop running Windows XP
> professional.  I was surprised that Anadisk worked in virtual DOS as the
> dkvcopy does NOT!  I suppose I could try using AnaDisk to copy a 720k
> PianoSoft disk to a 1.44 disk, then perhaps this would work.  Are your
> PIanoSoft disks 1.44?
> Carol Beigel

Some of the newer ones appear to be 1.44MB disks - certainly if you
download PianoSoft Plus disks from www.YamahaMusicSoft.com the latest
software insists you write them to 1.44MB disks. These are what I've been
working on. All the information I've used was found on the internet and
written for 720k disks - mainly in the archives of this list. I've not got
a protected 720k disk to try - I'll see if I can get one in the near
future though.

By the way, what exactly didn't work - the actual disk copy, or attempting
to write the boot sector back to the disk ? If it was the latter, and you
used the boot.img I attached then it is most likely due to the boot
sectors being different between disk formats. The specifications I have
show the boot sector containing disk format information, so you probably
need to copy the boot sector from a 720k disk.

Regards,

James