On 'tros vs. pure cracks, my opinion

[Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co>]

First, I know not everyone here comes from the same background.  As an 
Apple ][ fan I'm a relatively young 32, and when I had my greatest 
exposure to the machine, where I lived, we saw it as a GAME machine, a 
"console on steroids" not unlike the C64's perception.  So most of my 
exposure to the ][ outside of class work was as a gaming machine.

I understand the attitude of some that cracktros are a product of their 
time or the price one pays for pirated software.  Not exactly the same as 
my own attitude, as I'm mostly a purist and like my cracks "clean".  (I 
have done a few filecracks myself, and none of these have any cracktros 
nor is there any altered text in them.)

Additionally, the cracktros in some software just take up space that could 
be used for other things (this adds up a bit better when replacing KEY-CAT 
with Micro Keycat and DOS 3.3 with STOS, netting an extra 26 sectors, and 
when compressing games!).

I also noticed sometimes the crackers checksummed their plastering >:P. 
So for some games (Diskman's Ms. Pac-Man and Mr. Krac-Man's Hard Hat Mack 
come to mind) if you unplaster them they fail to work :P.

I guess to me it's more important to preserve the games as intact as 
possible barring the format change (e.g., disk to file, disk to tape) for 
archival purposes or whatever.

(BTW, I did find out what the correct text is for Hard Hat Mack's signon - 
the unaltered title card can be seen at 2:09 in this video)
  http://youtu.be/abOXbHPga30?t=2m9s

-uso.