Copying Disks on the IIe...Help!

[IIe]

I have been trying to copy disks using a standard Apple IIe, a later model with the built in numeric keypad. Unfortunately, every time I try to copy using one of the copy programs I have (being ProDos and Copy II 8.4) both programs attemt to copy disk volumes and then report errors. I have tried copying from drive 1 to drive 2, and also just copying from drive 1 to drive 1 and drive 2 to drive 2, but none of these has produced success. Reformatting the new disk has also proven fruitless.

The disks I am trying to copy are educational programs that were originally copied by my elementary school to standard disks. One program reports an I/O error when trying to copy, and another states that there are bad blocks, whatever those are. I am using new disks to copy to, but have so far had no luck here. Would there be a copy protect on disks that my school was able to copy, and if so, how the heck did they do it? Also, the original copies still work fine, but as I said, are reported as having errors for some reason.

The only way I'm even figuring out how to copy disks is using the owner's manual to the computer, so any advanced experts out there will probably laugh at what are probably basic problems.

[Geo3]

Hi,
First can catalog the disk with copy II+, if you can they are not copy protected. If you can not they are copy protected.
If they are copy protected the best you can do is a nibble copy. Unless you can break the protection. Or use the Bit copy on Copy II+ to make a nibble copy. These can take up to 30 minutes and may not work. Certain tracks may have to be recopied manually with bit copier. Maybe even a few times, until you get the + sign. Even though you may copy something, there were more than one kind of lock or protection schemes on so disks.
If you can catalog the disks, you can copy the files from on disk to another. If there are some bad blocks on the original they may be in area that was not used on th3e disk. If they in on of the files, there is little you can do.
What programs were you trying to copy?

Take Care

[IIe]

I was trying to copy some of the old educational programs, which were copied by other people in school districts. How the heck did the elementary schools do it? So far I've tried to make a copy of a copy of Oregon Trail, Circus Math, other games, but I've had no luck so far. Could another issue be the disks I'm copying to? They were in a sealed package, but they came with a Commodore 64 that had been left out in the weather some time. A disk is a disk though, isn't it?

[tezza]

Hmm...other people are more knowledgable than me regarding floppy disks, but could the source disks simply be old and have some surface damage due to deterioration? Floppies do deteriorate over time due to chemical changes. If you are doing a whole disk copy, maybe sectors on the source disk are unreadable due to errors. These sectors do not contain the program, which is why it works from an original disk?

[Geo3]

A disk is a disk, but how it is formatted is another thing. If they were formatted for a C-64, they will never work or copy on an Apple until you re-formatt them on an Apple. Then you can put Apple programs on them.

Do any of these disks boot? In which machine?

The school Districts had programs that would let them make copies. On the Apple II side there was a program by Zeb which deprotected all of the 5.25 Mecc disks.

The weathering of disks. First the is the dirt which can foul out the heads of any drive you put them in. This happens even with disks that are kept inside. Over time the surface breaks down and leaves a residue on the heads that has to cleaned off. Just like the old tape players.
The second is the sleve on the inside. If it does not let the disk slide, it might pull down the RPMs of the drive for that disk alone.

A disk is a disk, just as a car is a car. The Basic are the same, but the rest can be different.

[SwedaGuy]

Picking my brain...mind you, I haven't sat at an apple II anything in over 15 years...I seem to recall having to write a couple of lines in basic (a "Hello" program, we called it) and issuing the command "INIT HELLO". But I also seem to think that this was the second step, and that there was some kind of low level format that needed to be completed first. In fact, that init program probably doesn't even need to be done, if you are copying a disk that should boot on its own anyway. That said, I probably haven't helped you much...

[willowmoon93]

Perhaps there are copy protection schemes on the original disk that "IIe" is attempting to do -- maybe that's the issue -- although Copy II was a decent program when it came to circumventing that if memory serves me correctly. When you boot up the copied disks what shows up? Or do you get the errors in the copying process?