I don't have it, but would be interested in seeing what you come up with for repairing.

You should be able to substitute a good boot sector from a formatted floppy of the same capacity, or you can manually edit the geometry parameter fields if you know how. If the second FAT is good then you can copy it to the first. Damage to directory entries or file clusters is not so easily repaired.

What if there are "hidden" copy protection tracks?

If there is any physical copy protection on the disk, which is unlikely for a game of that time period, it certainly does not involve the boot sector or FATs. However, care should be used when writing to any old media, e.g. using a low-density drive on low-density media; but it's better to do any repairs in an image file than on the original disk.

Don't think there's any security protection on the disk and it's probably unlikely given that it's a budget Kixx XL release.

I've just been cobbling together some C/C++ code that'll allow me modify all of the properties of the disk so I can replace the FATS, boot sector properties etc without too much issue. I just ideally want to have everything right... 😀

is that MicroPlay Software : Sharkey's 3DPool?

The game fits on a 360KB 5.25" floppy.
I use have that game and play it a lot, but the floppy has became bad.

I resort to unofficial sources in 2011. ... it works on DosBox.

Off topic, sort of, but if that game is the same as on the Atari ST, then it's not much good at all. *Much* better are the two games Archer Mclean's Pool and Jimmy White's Snooker, and on the PC they are DOS games so you can run them on almost anything. The best PC pool/snooker game I've ever played though is the Windows only game Virtual Pool 3, which is extremely good, and if you want to play snooker or pool on a PC then I'd definite recommend Virtual Pool 3.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

If there is any physical copy protection on the disk, which is unlikely for a game of that time period, it certainly does not involve the boot sector or FATs.

If that game really is the Sharkey's 3DPool, i convinced its not contain any copy protection as my friend did nag me for a copy as he can't find it on store anymore, so i did so using diskcopy.

But some other games at time period did employ copy protection.
Zoom! (Dos) released 1 year earlier (1988) which i never able to make any working copy using any standard MSDOS program.

that volume label could be copy protection, ive seen that before
micoprose gunship used ascii char 3 in the volume label

Yup it's Sharkey's. I reckon it'd fit on a 360k disk for sure 😀

it's on a white/grey disk and just branded "3D Pool" - 1989 Aardvark software, published by Firebird. Think this is the normal for the UK.

How would the label copy protection work?

sirlemonhead wrote:

How would the label copy protection work?

Programs can check the volume label on the floppy drive and refuse to install or operate correctly if a specific label is not found; and an unusual label can present difficulties for someone that only has a copy of the game files. However, anything that is easily reproduced by the DISKCOPY program in DOS or the simplest of image-making programs is weak protection indeed.