Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de> wrote:
Well "Ultima II" is a 1982 Sierra release. I doubt the copy protection
schemes were all that great already in 1982. Nothing that Copy II+
shouldn't be able to handle, at least.
It has some sort of function -- possibly a nibble counter -- invoked
shortly after boot. I remember cracking it. It used two obfuscation
tricks: it did a branch into the middle of an instruction (a BIT $xxxx),
to conceal the start, then XORed itself before and after. Once the
check was commented out it was easy to get a clean copy.
It's unlikely you'll get a simple .NIB image to work, but it's probably
a one-byte patch to fix it.