MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Apple II current status thoughts from 4AM

All the Apple fans should be familiar with 4AM's work by now

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4am

https://twitter.com/a2_4am

https://github.com/a2-4am/passport :a verification and copy program for 5.25-inch Apple II floppy disks
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Progress for this year includes various Apple II emulators, besides MAME, running .woz images in a virtual Apple II environment with ability to use 4AM's passport utility to crack protected diskette data images to data images of games playable in an emulated Apple II virtual environment.

See RB's post for example

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https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=113516#Post113516

Auto-cracking protected .WOZ images inside of MAME works:

And the resulting .DSK plays fine.
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4AM tweeted his thoughts about current status of Apple II diskettes preservation. It is worth reading for those that are Apple II fans.

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Aug 26
https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/1033722440562737153

Here's a thread on the current state-of-the-art of Apple II preservation.

We can now make flux-level captures of physical floppy disks with a modified Disk ][ drive + a custom hardware controller applesaucefdc.com + software.

The flux-level capture gives you an .a2r file, which contains a short header, multiple captures of the flux timings of each quarter track, and some metadata. The file format is fully documented here: .

Given an .a2r file, software can analyze the flux timings and determine how physical hardware would translate them into bits to feed to a real Apple II, then create a (much smaller) file containing just the bits on each track that actually has bits. This is a .woz file.

The .woz file format is also fully documented, here: applesaucefdc.com/woz/reference

A .woz file contains enough structure to describe every Apple II disk, i.e. you can create a .woz file of a copy protected disk that boots in an emulator and passes its own protection check.

Multiple emulators support .woz files: Virtual II , OpenEmulator , MicroM8 , MAME .

The "modified floppy drive" I mentioned earlier adds a sensor so the Applesauce controller can get exact timing of when the disk has spun around 360°, something that is otherwise impossible — and which is exploited by multiple protection schemes, most famously Electronic Arts.

The sync sensor, hardware controller, and software are part of the Applesauce project by @DiskBlitz applesaucefdc.com The hardware sold out its first run but John is gearing up for a second.

Currently, Applesauce is the only software that can take an .a2r file and create a .woz file out of it. It's still in active development, so not every .a2r file converts (yet!), and not every .woz file actually works (due to emulator bugs, mostly).

Several people, including myself, have been imaging their personal floppy disk collections and uploading .a2r files to

I have also been making .woz files and uploading some verified working images to

Realistically, many older emulators and hardware add-ons will never support .woz files. It's not simply a matter of a new file format; they need to accurately emulate how floppy drives worked. Historically, they all took shortcuts. Emulating copy protection means no shortcuts!

Cracking is not obsolete, but its importance has shifted. It used to be that clean cracks were the only way to preserve old software in a useable form. Now I would say that cracking maximizes compatibility and enables other uses (research, aggregation, derivative works).