Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

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jznomoney
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Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by jznomoney »

I downloaded the personal deskmate 2 for tandy 1000 hx off tvdogs website. When launching the executable it says packed file corrupt in PCem. If I launch it under dosbox the application runs normally. Is this expected or a bug? Thanks in advanced and Happy Holidays.
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ender
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by ender »

See if any of these hints help you.
jznomoney
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by jznomoney »

Thanks for the pointers ender, it doesn't say packed file corrupt anymore just hangs at the first loading screen with the text saying
Personal DeskMate 2
Version 01.00.00
Copyright 1987, Tandy Corporation
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

I'm unable to run DeskMate as well on v15. Any thoughts?
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

I figured it out. The files from tvdogs site must as an issue as it never loads. It will load on a real Tandy 1000 HX but not on PCem or DOSbox. The following download does work fine...
[Moderator: Please do NOT link to copyrighted material]
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

Copyrighted material? Who owns the copyright to Deskmate now-a-days? I would considered that abandonware. For quite some time now. Decades.
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SarahWalker
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by SarahWalker »

There's no such thing as abandonware.
Zup
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Zup »

SarahWalker wrote: Tue 29 Sep, 2020 8:04 amThere's no such thing as abandonware.
Did you miss a word?

The sentence should be: There's no such thing as legal abandonware.

I like having a term like abandonware to refer to software that is not cared for anymore, but (as you tried to explain) unless the copyright owner releases it as public domain, it is illegal.
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

I understand your reasoning but as a developer myself, things I have abandoned twenty years ago, feel free to do with what you want. I no longer have interest in them. I feel the same way about a 30+ year old OS. No one is going to ever do a thing with it. It's been abandoned.
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leilei
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by leilei »

Chilly Willy wrote: Tue 29 Sep, 2020 12:00 pm It's been abandoned.
That's an opinion, not a legal status. It hasn't been 75+ years. The rights are always somewhere. If they weren't, GoG wouldn't have been able to sell all those "abandonware" classics in the first place, for example. Maybe you should fire an email at General Wireless Operations and tell them what you think.
Zup wrote: Tue 29 Sep, 2020 9:41 amI like having a term like abandonware to refer to software that is not cared for anymore, but (as you tried to explain) unless the copyright owner releases it as public domain, it is illegal.
There's so much fallacy with the term, it's been twisted enough to go as far as to certain pop-culture-defining videogames, as well as blanketing everything under the DOS platform with the word on sketchy sites that just dump whatever some big warez torrent has, much like all tracker music being relabeled as just "KEYGEN CHIPTUNES"

Also "abandonware" copies are also often factors in false bug reports. It's why DOSbox's forum has had the stance against supporting them, so it's more than just legal reasons to not allow links to certain unauthorized distributions of copyrighted material.
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

Comparing an old/classic game to an 8-bit OS is two different things. If a person or company owns the rights to a game and can get that game to run on a modern OS/Hardware, you bet they will sell it. No one is ever going to start selling a 8-bit OS nor do they care about it. Specially when you could easily pick up a back up copy if you lost or damaged your floppy disk back in the day. Tandy was a hardware seller. The OS was a bonus but definitely not needed in order to use the Tandy. Also, PCem is a developer who enables this to happen. Either way, I own a Tandy 1000 HX. I just like to see what PCem is up to and how things are going.
UPerschke
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by UPerschke »

IMHO it doesn't matter for the copyright status whether they monetarize it or not. They don't plan to monetarize I guess because their trademark was canceled in 2006.
But Tandy still exists: RadioShack. Hence the software is still part of their copyrighted assets, even if they wouldn't have the source code anymore.
DeskMate was released after 1978, so it doesn't fall within the complicated mess of pre-1978 US copyright laws, which might have had a loophole to invalidate the copyright.
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gen_angry
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by gen_angry »

Honestly - whether it's copyrighted or not - and what you, I, or anyone else outside of Sarah believes is irrelevant, really. Sarah owns the forum & host and she doesn't want anything that's grey-area at all on here. There's really nothing to debate outside of that. There are things that I agree and others that I disagree with on here but it is her site so her rules.

I can understand it in a way, if you start to allow some 'grey area' files - where do you draw the line? And I'd imagine she doesn't want the job of looking up & keeping track of what's abandoned, what's in public domain, and what's not. Taking a relative stranger's word on copyright status is about as safe as playing with matches in an explosives shed.

Safer and easier to just say 'none of it'.
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SarahWalker
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by SarahWalker »

gen_angry has it. I really do not want to be deciding what would be allowed and disallowed, what copyright claims are valid and what aren't. So it's just easier to have a blanket ban. Sorry.
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

If this was truly a case to be worried about, then [Moderator : removed] would be in a serious lawsuit. They have all kinds of things archived from the past and allow people to download them.
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SarahWalker
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by SarahWalker »

Other sites can do what they like. I've made my position clear.
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Chilly Willy
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by Chilly Willy »

Don't get me wrong. I respect your honesty but your software is an enabler. In order to use your software and respect copyrights, you should already own the original hardware. Speaking of BIOS/ROMS and the OS that goes with it. Otherwise, anyone who uses your software is breaking copyright no matter the age or if one considers it abandonware or not. So my question is, how is one suppose to use your software and why should they if the own the original? It's a serious question and I'm not being a smart ass by any means.
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SarahWalker
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Re: Personal Deskmate 2 for Tandy 1000hx

Post by SarahWalker »

Not my problem.
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