Commercial tape-to-disc transfer programs are everywhere, and this is one of them. Written by Rob Scott, it transfers games using the Speedlock protection system to disc. Rob claims that Soft-Lok can transfer over 90% of all Speedlock games to disc, which is a pretty good record. Soft-Lok only works on a CPC with a disc drive and 128k RAM, and some of the programs which it transfers can only be run on a machine with extra RAM. There are many versions of Speedlock used in commercial games, and Soft-Lok can cope with most of these. Well, upon loading Soft-Lok, you get a menu which lets you select which version of Speedlock you want to use to transfer the game. These range from the 1985 to 1991 versions. There is a list included with the instructions, which shows you a host of games, which method of Speedlock to use, and any other comments. If there's a game you want which isn't on the list, you can use the analyser, or a "somewhat different" header reader. Both of these tell you which version of Speedlock your game uses, but I came across a small problem here, because the header reader and analyser sometimes told me they were different Speedlocks! Soft-Lok is pretty easy to use overall. The instructions that come with the Soft-Lok disc are a bit lacking, though. Most of the Speedlock games I had were able to transfer to disc OK, although I did find that "Wizball" wouldn't work. Sometimes you'll need to do a little additional tweaking to get things right, but this doesn't occur too often. Remember that Soft-Lok should only be used to make backups of your tape games, and not for pirating software! OTTO |
