Date: 06 Jan 2003, 23:47:38

Hï,

I'll try to describe the operation of the EOB the best I can:

The deluxe EOB is equipped with exactly the same main chip as the
regular DOB ("Transcopy 3"), and provides the same basic functionality
(There is also a non-deluxe edition of the EOB, which is equivalent to
the regular option board).

The only difference in functionality between the two cards is that the
EOB has an extra circuity that allows it to emulate a burn-hole in a
diskette and cause a running application to think that the original
diskette is present inside the drive. As it can be understood, the copy
of a burn-hole protected diskette can only be executed on a computer
equipped with the standard or deluxe EOB.

In order to create a working copy of a diskette that is protected by a
physically damaged media, the diskette has to be copied using the regular
option board methods (TC/TCM), and then the EOB utility PK.COM must be
executed in order to analyse the original diskette and locate the exact
place of the burn-hole. Once the place has been found, PK saves the data
in a file for future use.

Every time before the copied diskette is used, the PK application must be
executed with the filename that contains the information as a parameter.
Then, PK will program the EPROM that is present on the EOB, according to
the information inside that file.

Whenever the copy protected application tests for the original diskette
and tries to read from (or write to) the physically damaged sector, the
EOB emulates the very exact behaviour of a physically damaged media at the
exact place where the burn-hole was, thus confusing the application to think
that the original diskette is present inside the drive.

The EOB has two holes in its metal bracket, which give access to two
switches: an ON/OFF switch that enables or disables the emulation of a
physically damaged media, and a touch switch that clears the EPROM (the
EPROM must be cleared before programming a different information file).
The EPROM is also cleared whenever the computer is rebooted, so basically
the touch switch is only used when there is need to clear the EPROM
without rebooting the computer.

The EOB also has two LEDs on it, which indicate the state of the copy
protection defeating circuity. The yellow LED indicates that the
burn-hole emulation is enabled (and that the EPROM is programmed, as
otherwise the emulation cannot be enabled), and the red LED flashes
whenever an application tries to read from or write to the sector
where the burn hole was.

One last note - PK.COM is able to operate only on low-density diskettes
(Central Point claimed that burn-holes were used only on 360K diskettes).

I hope that this information was helpful, and please let me know if you have
any additional questions.

Andrei