On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:
> On Wed,10/12/2016 6:28 AM, Bill Cotter wrote:
>
>> I run K6STI's YO, AO and TA in DOSBOX under Windows 10 with no issues.
>>
>
> Where do you find Brian's programs? I have heard he had withdrawn them
> years ago because a hacker pissed him off.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
Hi, Jim, et al.
I have AO Pro, YO, TA, etc, and run them fine under 64 bit Windows 7 & 10
using DOSBox 0.74. I did have to set some invocation parameters to get it
to behave with Brian's DOS coding, but that was so long ago that anymore I
don't know which parms, what values, and why. I primarily run AO Pro for
wire antennas. I use a couple of Brian's utilities to convert to NEC4 for
final validation.
[engage rant mode]
I've used Brian's high end stuff for a long time, and had some number of
telephone conversations with him on technical modeling issues and
solutions, including one amazing conversation where he walked me through
how AO worked under the covers, and why the method could not work for what
later became YO, and when you needed to help AO with some SWAG.
As to why did K6STI go, it was way, way more than "a hacker pissed him
off". All of his stuff was posted on a Russian web site and he watched as
dozens and dozens of posts on various listservers informed readers that
they didn't have to pay K6STI, they could just get his programs for free at
such and such URL, openly supporting the piracy. I'd have to say that Brian
was LIVID for about a year and then just said f**k it all. For whatever
reason Brian originally thought he could market the software without all
the protection stuff that W7EL was doing with EZNEC.
EZNEC Pro/4 has an individual, per user, key that you have to put in a USB
port on the PC running the program. Wanna use that Pro/4 and one will pay
for the expensive NEC4 license, and will pay for the expensive Pro/4
version. You can save on the Pro/4 license by going Unixy and compiling and
running the Unix version and maintaining a permanent Unix environment for
all your work. Or you can pay Roy what he truly deserves and have NEC4
models that when done can be converted and squeezed a bit to run under NEC2
for distributing your model ideas to friends who have the ham grade EZNEC.
It really was not *just* a hacker and the pirate sites that ticked him off.
It was a lot of hamdom who felt that they were entitled to everything for
free, and said as much openly on the listservers. It was also those that
didn't steal, but also didn't stick up for Brian, and didn't criticize
those who openly and publicly engaged in software piracy.
Sadly, I'd have to say that COLLECTIVELY, we got what we COLLECTIVELY
deserved. Brian depended on the honor system, and you can see just how
honorable was the response.
Those of us who watched a rising star go off the grid still have a bad
taste in our mouth about that, even all these years later.
[disengage rant mode]
You might find someone who is willing to sell/give their copy of AO/YO to
you and delete it off their machine. But it is currently unavailable new
anywhere, though there still might be illegal copies somewhere.
Someone on the antennaware listserve might sell to you, if you post over
there. Brian's stuff isn't on the fashionable bleeding edge anymore, so who
knows, could get lucky. Have to be in pretty deep with some specific and
well thought out needs to see usefulness in those classic programs.
73, Guy K2AV
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