WTB: Internal XCopy Dongle

[christopherpm]

If anyone has one for sale....

[psxphill]

If anyone has one for sale....

You mean for cyclone? AFAIK it only works with external drives, even on the big box amigas.

[christopherpm]

Sorry - yes, I meant the Cyclone cartridge. I have had an internal one in the past "back in the day". ASI released an internal and external one...
 
http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=54&id=2281&artlang=en

[psxphill]

Sorry - yes, I meant the Cyclone cartridge. I have had an internal one in the past "back in the day". ASI released an internal and external one...

It seems similar to the external one that could be disabled, which allowed verifying and for it to be used as a standard floppy. IIRC it prevented you from having DF2 & DF3 though.
 
I don't know if the PAL was ever reverse engineered, it should be pretty trivial though. I don't think anyone bothered because the disabling wasn't very reliable, so you had to unplug it anyway & the verify wasn't worth the paper it was written on (by then cyclone was unable to copy a lot of copy protections anyway).

[mrknight]

I remember seeing a schematics for a dongle somewhere on the net.  Unfortunately I cant find it now but I found something better; A whole  tutorial regarding Cyclone! It deals how to use the Cyclone software,  which version to use and how to make a dongle. It also talks about the  difference in disk rotation speed. Pretty good! Unfortunately the  tutorial is written in German. I ran it through Google Translate and it  seems to translate it ok.

http://www.mingos-commodorepage.com/tutorials/amigadiskcopy.php

To  be honest, I've never used Cyclone. I have some original that I want to  create backups of, such as Turrican II and Pinball Dreams and  Fantasies. However, I don't know if Cyclone will beat the copy  protection. And for that matter, even if the disk is copied correctly,  how will I know if the copy protection is defeated unless I play through  the game? I'm starting to drift off topic. I hope this link helps!

[Gazbonk]

I made one of those dongles years ago and used 2x DB23 connectors & some telephone wire, once I got the wiring right it worked a dream.
I remember copying F29 Retaliator & had no problem with making the copy, it took about 35 minutes to copy one disk, thought the drive had given up as it was so slow.

PS - make sure you get the wires on the right connectors and the soldered joint is secure as my first attempt when moving the Amiga 500 with the dongle plugged in a wire came loose & shorted, hence no expansion memory and the disk drive chip got frazzled.

Got the Amiga repaired and it worked fine.

[LaserBack]

xcopy dongle is useless these days
is much better option to get the kryoflux, you can make originals games on the fly

[christopherpm]

xcopy dongle is useless these days
is much better option to get the kryoflux, you can make originals games on the fly

Thanks - I agree, Kryoflux does indeed look nice, but too expensive for the little amount that I would use it.
 

I remember seeing a schematics for a dongle somewhere on the net. Unfortunately I cant find it now but I found something better; A whole tutorial regarding Cyclone! It deals how to use the Cyclone software, which version to use and how to make a dongle. It also talks about the difference in disk rotation speed. Pretty good! Unfortunately the tutorial is written in German. I ran it through Google Translate and it seems to translate it ok.
 
http://www.mingos-commodorepage.com/tutorials/amigadiskcopy.php
 
To be honest, I've never used Cyclone. I have some original that I want to create backups of, such as Turrican II and Pinball Dreams and Fantasies. However, I don't know if Cyclone will beat the copy protection. And for that matter, even if the disk is copied correctly, how will I know if the copy protection is defeated unless I play through the game? I'm starting to drift off topic. I hope this link helps!

Thanks, I'll take a look at this :-)

[psxphill]

Thanks, I'll take a look at this :-)

You might be able to build your own internal one, based on the external one in that guide. However it will always be enabled, so you'll need to remove it if you want to use the drive for anything else.
 
What do you want to use it for anyway? It's not that good a copier, it's more a collectors item.