Protection schemes
3 messages in this thread
Ed,
I've seen the 'Key' dongles sticking out of the back of clones quite often.
They do work, but have one major drawback…ever see twenty (measured!) inches
of them sticking out of the machine? They guy was absolutely _desperate_ for a
right angle conector, as he had them propped up to keep from ripping the port
out of his machine.
Unless you use a dedicated machine, stacking dongles is _not_ a friendly way
of treating the user. "Another $&%#$ DONGLE??!! Marty, Get the jackhammer.
We have to put a hole in the office wall."
And as the Amiga's scheme seems to be using the mouse port rather than the
RS-232… how about, "Well, Officer, he sat down and then reached over to turn
on the modem, and disemboweled himself on the dongles."
Doug
One company which I purchased PC software from was kind enough to include a
two-foot cable with the package. You plugged the cable into your PC and all
your dongles into the other end, and your printer cable then plugged into that.
I still called them and griped about the use of a dongle, but it was better
than having several stacked up directly on the PC's connector.
Acutually having a lot of dongelized programs ould give Amiga owners something
new to brag about….i.e. "Well I've got a 10 inches"…."Big deal! I've got
at least 20 inches!" <grin>. Actually with dongles on the serial/parallel por
you could just plub in a short cable and then plug in the dongles into the
cable and then connect your regular serial/parallel cable. This would allow
your dongles to dangle down behind your desk and avoid them sticking out behind
your machine <hmmm…that description can set your imagination going>.
Unfortunately the same solution isn't possible with joystick dongles. I did
see recently an ad for Practical Solutions (Mark Sloatman used to be around
here awhile back) new hw box which plugs in (don't know if it goes into the
joystick or mouse ports or both) and then gives you one mouse and two joystick
ports. It also had a switch on top (don't know what that was for though).