Again, I don't mean to get in the way - and Doktor1360's recommendation to upgrade the hardware in the D8B while getting the authorization issue resolved, makes a lot of sense.
Perfect proof of that is, that the floppy drive in my D8B as well as in an old Windows 98 computer I use for this sort of stuff, didn't want to work right now. Both of them
I'd have to open the computer case for both of them to trouble-shoot, but don't have time to do that any time soon, sorry.
Because of that, I wasn't able to try "Option C" that I had suggested further above, myself. So I gotta try a "dry swimming" approach.
What I WAS able to do, is to compress the patched/hacked MackieOS.exe into a self-extracting (.exe) file, by using WinRAR. The file got small enough to fit on a floppy drive, and I'll attach it here. Unfortunately, I couldn't upload a file with the extension ".exe" directly - the D8B forum doesn't allow that (and for good reason - could be a virus). Because of that, I changed the extension to ".zip" - then it allowed me to upload. But you have to change the name back as described further below, for this file to work as it should.
Other items needed: DOS boot floppy disc
Steps:
1. Download the attached "mackieos_ex_.zip" file (again, it's not really a zip file - it's just named like that to be able to attach here).
2. Rename the file to "mackieos_ex_.EXE" (it's a self-extracting archive in .exe format. By putting the .exe extension back on, the file can be executed in DOS and Windows environments, and will "unpack" itself)
3. Copy the "mackieos_ex_.EXE" file to an empty floppy disc
4. Insert your DOS boot floppy disc into the D8B floppy drive and power on the D8B (if it doesn't start from the floppy but just boots like a mixer, you'll have to change the boot order in the D8B's BIOS so it lists your "A" drive as the first boot device).
If successful, the D8B should start to a point where it just shows a dark screen and green text that says something like "C: _"
5. Take out the DOS floppy, and insert the floppy disc you copied the attached file (mackieos_ex_.EXE) to
6. At the command prompt (where it says "C: _") type each of the lines below and hit "Enter" after you entered each of these lines (this needs to be EXACT - every letter, every space and every other character such as the ":" needs to be exactly like this):
A:
copy mackieos_ex_.EXE C:
C:
rename MackieOS.exe MackieOS.old
mackieos_ex_.EXE
rename MackieOS.EX_ MackieOS.EXE
7. After that, remove the floppy disc from the drive, and turn off the D8B
If everything worked out, the D8B should just boot up WITHOUT an activation prompt after this.
Basically, what that should do, is to copy a zipped/compressed version of the patched/cracked "MackieOS.EXE" file from the floppy disc to your D8B's hard drive.
Then you rename the original MackieOS.EXE file on your D8B harddrive (.old), so you can bring it back if needed
Then you extract the zipped/compressed "patched" version of the MackieOS.EXE file.
And because WinZip also didn't allow me to put an .exe file into a self-extracting .exe archive, I had to rename that file, too. So, what is getting extracted is a file called "MackieOS.EX_".
So, the last command line step described above, is to rename the patched/cracked file from "MackieOS.EX_" to "MackieOS.EXE".
...essentially, all this equates to having replaced the original MackieOS.exe file with the patched/cracked version, via the floppy drive.
It's just this complicated, because the MackieOS.exe file itself is around 2 MB in size, while floppy drives have a capacity of 1.44 MB maximum. So, we needed to get the file to get smaller to fit on a floppy drive. Then we need a different way to boot the D8B, that allows us to access the files on it (i.e. DOS boot floppy).
In the end, it's just a simple "replace original MackieOS.exe file with patched MackieOS.exe" thing. All the steps around it, are just there to get a "too large" file into the D8B, without changing any of the hardware, or taking the harddrive itself out. (Or getting FTP to work... which never worked for me).
If this did NOT work out for you, please let me know. I couldn't try this myself just now, since my floppy drive doesn't want to work... but generally, it should work like this (hopefully, I don't have any typos or missing steps in there - I can't double-check without a working floppy drive, sorry).
If you don't have a DOS boot floppy, let me know, and also tell me what version of Windows you're running on your PC that has a floppy drive. Old Windows versions have the ability to create a DOS boot floppy without downloading anything. But I think that stopped at some point.
Anyway - please let me know how far you got with this, then we can work out how to continue from there.
AGAIN, DO NOT DO THIS, if you're not currently running MackieOS 5.1. If you try this with any other version of the MackieOS, it will make things worse, and your D8B won't boot anymore. (If that happens, you can just rename the ".old" file back to how it was, to restore operation to how it was before this... but better to not even try, if you're not on V5.1)
