Retro computing is a pain for one reason: Every single manufacturer in the 80s had their own proprietary floppy format. Not only file system, but physical disk shape.


This also doesn't touch on an issue specific to Commodore Disk Drives: You generally cannot use a clone drive with uncracked commercial software. The 1541 disk drive effectively was it's own computer, allowing you to upload code directly to the drive. Copy protection schemes became reliant on this, with most software not even being in a standard file system aside from sector 16.

Cloning the hardware was easy enough, but you couldn't clone the ROM without being sued by Commodore.

This shows the importance of file system and physical media standardization and the evils of DRM all in one.

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