VERY true! And I've done ALL of the above! Back in the C-64 days, I had a nice reset switch hooked into my FastLoad cartridge that allowed me to reset the game at whatever state I wanted, AND, it circumvented the protection put in place to stop me from doing it. (CBM80 at address $8002, which when the kernel saw, it jumped to the address stored at $8000, and that function was normally an "erase all memory" function).

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The most important thing about the radix suggestion was that it was something that I could do from inside a program for each item that comes along. So, I can have it making links when I'm away from the computer. If you see where this is going.

Frank,

Geesh, this is a forum full of old geezers! - my first reversing project, (in my earl 20's), and where I learned assembler was reversing the copy protection on a TI99/4A - I probably invested over a thousand dollars in to it (expansion box, 32K memory, 5.25 floppy and the TI Disassembler Debuger, ($200.00 by itself)). - the answer was simple - the first 2 bytes in the file were reversed. BUT the book did say IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE DONE!! - that's all I need to hear.

SiGiNT

I had a TI. I remember the big silver box that contained the Floppy drive as well. What I don't remember was software on floppies. All I ever saw was cartridge games. What were you reversing?

And, FWIW, on Halloween night this year, I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary of being "Fabulous Furlough". So yeah, I'm definitely a geezer.

Its a pleasure to meet one of "The Humble Guys", if I've followed your reference correctly.

However, "geezer" is a "relative" term .

Unless you are already drawing Social Security Benefits and in your late 60's, I probably have a few years on you. Your reversing appears to have started earlier than mine, and probably was/is more involved, since I already had a family to support and a demanding, non-computer related job to perform during those/these years. Started my reversing on an original Mac and had no idea what assembly language was or anything else about "computer code."

Regards,

Geez Grampy,

They didnt have computers you could buy until you were like 45 years old .

I was late to the scene and didnt get a box until well into the 80's.
I typed in "hello" and the damn thing didnt answer me .
I had to know why it didnt answer me so here I am today.
"the need to know" is what I tell people when they ask me such things as
"why are you taking that broken XXX apart?"
I must have an answer.
Well I soon learned that computers on TV dont work the same as the one you have at home.

All my friends had Apples and I guess I had to be a rebel and get an 8086.
Shit I dont even remember who made it. It came with Basic on floppies and a manual that fell apart from use.

Enough of the nostalgia tour...........

Woodmann

Yep, That was us. It was a magical time, when protections were, for the most part, simple. (At least when you're using Soft-Ice and they have no defense for it!)

There were some that required a little more work. Like CopyLock, and those Accolade games like Mike Ditka football that included the virtual x86 mode checks. But it was fun! I wrote a lot of tools for removing generic protections, made a few friends, and was "king for a day". Everyone should get the opportunity!




Yeah, I'm in my early 40's, and got started quote literally by accident. I had started loading a game (Scrolls of Abadon by Access Software), and realized that I didn't really want to play it. So, I hit Run/Stop Restore on the C-64. And I got back a "Ready." prompt. So, I typed in "List", and up came a BASIC program. I wrote it down, and used a file copier to copy the game files from 1 disc to another, ran the "normal" loader, and the game froze. Reset the 64, typed in the BASIC program I had seen, ran it, and the game loaded and ran! I was happy as a clam. Then, I started messing with others, found that they required more skill, and more knowledge. So, My friend had Compute's "Assembly Language programming for the Commodore 64" which he loaned me, and there I was. The only kind in my high school who knew not only BASIC (we had JUST got TRS computers), but also assembly. As time went by I decided that I needed to put my name in the games somehow. So I started sector editing the title screens of the games. Halloween night 1984, I had just cracked "Wizard" by Progressive Peripherals and Software, and was in the process of sector editing the title page. I counted the spaces. 27. "Cracked by ..." And in a moment of extreme bravado, "Fabulous Furlough" popped into my head. I checked it, it fit, we laughed, and it stuck. So, this Halloween night, it'll be 25 years.

More than you probably wanted to know, but there it is.

I'm gonna have to start a new thread in the off topic forum tomorrow dedicated to "old geezer" discussions.

But since I'm an old geezer I need to sleep at this very early hour of 10 PM.

Later you young bastards .

Wooodmann

Frank,

Not to continue a offshoot of the original thread, but if you had the Expanded version of TI Basic it came with game building tools like "sprites" and the such, you could conceivably develop a commercial product - thus the copy protection option - the 5.25 disks, (360 KB), are what the disassembler/debugger software was distributed on - other wise you could use audio tape - either way the protection was identical.

Sorry Woody!

This ends my deviation from the main topic - - really it does!!

Actually all my computer experience prior to that was on a General Automation PDP-11 clone - but that's fodder for a new thread.

SiGiNT

OK, but how did that stop copying?

Also, since we're having an old-timers day gathering in here.

What devices have you reversed code on? (Non-PCs).

I'm pretty sure the TI99/4A floppy drivess were 90k single-sided, single density models. I have fond memories of "flippies".

I had one, complete with the big silver box, 32k memory, the UCSD Pascal card and a genuine TI 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.

As to "how did that stop copying", there was (originally) only one disk duplication software program. TI wrote it, so naturally it respected the uncrackable "copy protection".

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6863/popularmechanics54.jpg (http://img156.imageshack.us/i/popularmechanics54.jpg/)

No No No. I had already posted that picture about 5 years ago. I had it on good authority that it was actually a picture of JMI and his first PC.

http://www.woodmann.com/forum/showthread.php?p=42027

Then disavowed informed us that the picture was a hoax

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp


I was very disappointed to learn that, because in my mind +JMI had earned a "+" for a being such a pioneer in the field.

That makes PERFECT sense. So the reverse engineering job was to find the code in the copy program that checked for those bytes, and "adjust it" to not care. Or did you just fix the bytes on the disc?

That IS ME. Unfortunately, however, my first computer was actually acquired in 1980, and was an original Mac, which I still have, stashed away along with a Mac Plus, a IIci, and a couple of later editions, but no current model.

I had written a long reply about my history and experience with the development of modern office equipment for typing, starting with carbon paper, moving to a small 26 or 28 character window, to DOS word processing programs. Then I digressed to copy machines from an original Xerox with burned brown paper, to the modern wonders.

I had lamented about the lack of civility in the modern age with so many people oblivious about where they are going or what they may be stepping in front of or stepping on because of solely focusing on their handheld devices, and concluded by bemoaning the complete lack of consideration of all those who apparently believe that THEY are the only individually in the world of ANY importance, and the REST OF US should have to listen to their inane cell phone calls.

Fortunately, the Forum glitched as I was submitting my reply, and it didn't save. Thereby, you all were spared that rant ....... except for this small incapsulated recap, only slightly too large to "tweet."



Regards,

Guess I'm a youngling since my first computer was a Gateway G6-350



Which is still running strong as my network storage server btw

My first computer was a Commodore 64 with a cartidge named THE FINAL CARTRIDGE 3.

This cartridge had a button to freeze (like softice ) and have dissasembler assembler, debugger, hex editor, dumper, you can dump the entire memory and the cartridge put a loader for start in the point you dumped jejeje, old and pretty days of datassetes, and cassetes of games, screwdriver for azimut for adjust for copies made in other datasettes etc, hehehe.

ricnar

I know lots of people used those, along with IsePic, and "Capture" I think the one that I used was called. (Jason Ranheim, or some company name like that.) The best thing about it was that I had ordered it COD, so I was ready to pay the shipper when he arrived, but the door bell never rang. So, I went outside, and it was sitting on the steps. SOMEONE screwed up. I got it for free.

Anyway, moving along. If you just froze an image, packed it up and released it, you were considered to be a lamer. So, we used it as a TOOL. As a way to capture the system at the moment in time. Then, you could look through the image, pull out chunks that you wanted, and disassemble them. (I used the machine language monitor built into the Epyx Fast Load cartridge for that).

guess I somewhat of an old timer myself. I remember my first computer being a heathkit unit bought from Radio Supply and Enginnering sometime back in the 70's. As a collector of things I still have all my programs that were written in RPG and COBOL that were punched on 80 and 96 column punch cards for an IBM System 3. Just don't drop or compile them out of order, really makes for a very nasty day.... I also remember hard wiring those damn compiler racks with those stupid jumpers, remember those teletype tapes?......ahhh!! the good ol days.