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Re: Two different versions of 'Moon Patrol'?
sicklittlemonkey wrote:
Michael J. Mahon wrote:
Assuming you can get it to boot, the best approach might be to
capture it's image as a single-load game.
Except it's not a single load game. The pirates who cracked it into one
have gone to some real effort there! ;-)
Interesting. Usually games that would fit were single-load, just
because it was simpler. Of course, as Wildcards proliferated, there
were reasons *not* to be single-load. ;-)
I'm working on deprotecting some Passport Designs software (Polywriter
and friends), and have found some very interesting disk signature
techniques, a ridiculous level of obfuscation, and encrypted M/L code
and Applesoft code!
An internal notice reveals that the protection was written by
none other than Bill Basham, of Diversi-fame.
When I complete it, I'll write it up for historical purposes. ;-)
Awsome, I look forward to the write-up. Is the protection too much for
a NIB image? I really think it's worth preserving these kinds of disks
with the protection included, just for the sake of preservation. Even
if the current NIB format can't recreate the original.
I believe the signature tracks involve synchronization, but I haven't
fully unravelled that yet. I *have* recovered the unprotected code so
that I can make a deprotected version.
I'll check whether a NIB image will work.
It is the most full-blown case of security by obscurity that I've
encountered. I wrote to Bill and he confirmed that he used a Pascal
program to "scramble" his code into hundreds of little pieces connected
by indirect JMPs! I, in turn, wrote a little Ctl-Y routine to call
INSTDSP one instruction at a time, *following* JMPs instead of LISTing
them--which straightens out the scrambled code. ;-)
-michael
NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."