Protection format names - Page 4

dlfrsilver · 23 January 2020, 10:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Rob Northen. Rob Northern was a member of Classic

ahahah how funny XD

BarryB · 23 January 2020, 16:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Rob Northen. Rob Northern was a member of Classic

That jogged my memory, you mentioned it in this POST

So is it Northen or Northern

DrBong · 23 January 2020, 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryB

Plus the multitude of early Rob Northern protections that have no 'official' name!

Out of curiosity, can you name some of the games you're talking about here and briefly describe the protection? More than a few of the earlier ones that pre-dated Copylock used RNC Propack IIRC (and the later ones, of course, were PDOS).

In any case, perhaps Phill might be in the best position to name the earlier Rob Northen protection schemes that you're alluding to if they don't have any proper names.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=76197

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryB

So is it Northen or Northern

Ian (Codetapper) will have your head if you keep calling the chap of RNC fame Rob Northern!

BarryB · 23 January 2020, 22:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBong

Out of curiosity, can you name some of the games you're talking about here and briefly describe the protection? More than a few of the earlier ones that pre-dated Copylock used RNC Propack IIRC (and the later ones, of course, were PDOS).

In any case, perhaps Phill might be in the best position to name the earlier Rob Northen protection schemes that you're alluding to if they don't have any proper names.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=76197

Ian (Codetapper) will have your head if you keep calling the chap of RNC fame Rob Northern!

So it's not Robb Northern then

The ones I have that have been checked by Galahad/dlfrsilver are: Hotshot, Manhattan Dealers & The Three Stooges, seems to use some form of fllakey/weak sectors, discussion HERE. Found a couple more after that discussion: Football Manager II and Buggy Boy.

Hotshot & Manhattan Dealers use a different protection than the others! The others use the same protection that Barbarian (Palace) uses, which kaffer supported in Disk-Utilities, so luckily I was able to make working IPF's of Buggy Boy, 3 Stooges and FM2!!

Galahad/FLT · 23 January 2020, 23:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryB

So it's not Robb Northern then

The ones I have that have been checked by Galahad/dlfrsilver are: Hotshot, Manhattan Dealers & The Three Stooges, seems to use some form of fllakey/weak sectors, discussion HERE. Found a couple more after that discussion: Football Manager II and Buggy Boy.

Hotshot & Manhattan Dealers use a different protection than the others! The others use the same protection that Barbarian (Palace) uses, which kaffer supported in Disk-Utilities, so luckily I was able to make working IPF's of Buggy Boy, 3 Stooges and FM2!!

From memory, in one of those batch was the string "Protect Process", which i'm assuming was originally box text for a window that was disabled, so that ended up being the name we adopted for those.

So Barbarian (Palace), Buggy Boy, 3 Stooges and FM2 used copy protection called= Rob Northen Protect Process

We know it was an early Rob Northen protection because on one of the games it tries to load of a file called "RNC" (Rob Northen Computing), and that filename is unlikely to refer to anything else considering it was directly protection related.

BarryB · 24 January 2020, 00:14

Not a very 'catchy' name is it, but it's all we have I guess!

Going back to Hotshot and Manhattan Dealers, here's the protection tracks in HxC, Hotshot top & Manhattan Dealers bottom:

Just wondering if that means anything regards the 12 sector / 11 sector thing Denis was explaining regards those two protections?

Hewitson · 24 January 2020, 12:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

ahahah how funny XD

Yes, I still find it amusing after all these years. I'd love to know if Rob Northen knew about it, and if so, whether he saw the funny side of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryB

So it's not Robb Northern then

dlfrsilver · 25 January 2020, 12:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryB

Not a very 'catchy' name is it, but it's all we have I guess!

Going back to Hotshot and Manhattan Dealers, here's the protection tracks in HxC, Hotshot top & Manhattan Dealers bottom:

Just wondering if that means anything regards the 12 sector / 11 sector thing Denis was explaining regards those two protections?

On Manhattan Dealers, track 0.1 is a long track. The protection routine search for the sync $A145. the RN1 protection matches with it.

Otherwise, if i do a check simply, it says AmigaDOS, because all 11 sectors are empty. but the protection is hidden.

BarryB · 27 January 2020, 21:27

Thanks Denis

Found some more ID's of formats:

afterburner_sega is Hackmat format: Hackmat: By Jeff Spangenberg, found on the US versions of After Burner and Thunder Blade.
forgotten_worlds appears to be an Arc Developments variant: Arc, Arc Developments: found on Forgotten Worlds.
fun_factory appears to be Synergy format: Synergy: Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Bonanza Bros
phantom_fighter is Emerald Software format: Emerald Software: on Running Man and Vigilante.
pinball_dreams is TSL format: TSL: Digital Illusions games like Pinball Dreams.
sales_curve is RPW format: Renamed SWIV to RPW variant as it really is and used by St Dragon as well. RPW, Sales Curve: Ninja Warriors
speedball is THBB format: THBB, The Bitmap Brothers: On various versions of Speedball
summer_games is Monkey DOS format: Monkey DOS: On Games - Summer Edition
super_stardust is Bloodhouse format: BS, Bloodhouse: On Super Stardust
supremacy_a / supremacy_b is Probe format: Probe: on Supremacy and various Sega conversions
x-out is Rainbow Arts format: Rainbow Arts: Another version on X-Out.

Note:
CHW is mentioned again in the wip but with this description:

Quote:

CHW: Loads of A-Lock variants, found on games GemX, Apidya, Turrican 3 (including highscore saves), Dugger, Rolling Ronny, Eliminator and many others. These are mostly by Germany oriented publishers, like Rainbow Arts, Starbyte, Magic Bytes, Linel, etc

Is A-Lock a variant of the CHW format or an actual format in itself? Disk-Utilities supports Dugger and Turrican 3, so are they CHW format?

Note 2: On some Gremlin protected games with the Protoscan longtrack there is also another long track dubbed 'tiertex_longtrack' in Disk-Utilities, it's on track 79.0, games like: Alien Storm, Fogotten Worlds, Strider II, The Games: Summer Edition plus others have this, so is it actually a 'tiertex' protection track or something else?

StingRay · 28 January 2020, 08:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

CHW = Christian Weber from SCA

Already mentioned in page 1 of this very thread!

Abaddon · 16 February 2023, 03:49

Can anyone give me a name for the following protection, which is used by Zoom!, Cyber World, Ganymed, Triple X, Emetic Skimmer (German Release) and one version of Grid Start:



000047e8  move.l d7,$00004760 [0000000e]

000047ee  move.l #$0003670c,$00dff020

000047f8  move.w #$7fff,$00dff09e

00004800  move.w #$9100,$00dff09e

00004808  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

00004810  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004818  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004820  btst.b #$0001,$00dff01f

00004828  beq.b #$f6 == $00004820 (F)

0000482a  move.w $00dff01e,$00dff09c

00004834  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

0000483c  movea.l #$0003670c,a0

00004842  adda.l #$00000100,a0

00004848  move.l #$000031f8,d1

0000484e  clr.l d0

00004850  clr.l d6

00004852  cmp.b #$88,(a0) [06]

00004856  beq.b #$14 == $0000486c (F)

00004858  cmp.b #$44,(a0) [06]

0000485c  beq.b #$0e == $0000486c (F)

0000485e  cmp.b #$22,(a0) [06]

00004862  beq.b #$08 == $0000486c (F)

00004864  cmp.b #$11,(a0) [06]

00004868  beq.b #$02 == $0000486c (F)

0000486a  addq.l #$01,d0

0000486c  move.b (a0) [06],d7

0000486e  cmp.b (a0,-$0001) == $000389f6 [20],d7

00004872  beq.b #$02 == $00004876 (F)

00004874  addq.l #$01,d6

00004876  adda.l #$00000001,a0

0000487c  dbf .w d1,#$ffd4 == $00004852 (F)

00004880  move.l d0,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004882  move.l d6,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004884  bclr.b #$0001,$00bfd100

0000488c  clr.l d7

0000488e  cmp.l $00004760 [0000000e],d7

00004894  beq.b #$26 == $000048bc (F)

00004896  bclr.b #$0000,$00bfd100

0000489e  nop 

000048a0  nop 

000048a2  nop 

000048a4  bset.b #$0000,$00bfd100

000048ac  addq.l #$01,d7

000048ae  move.l #$00000780,d0

000048b4  nop 

000048b6  dbf .w d0,#$fffc == $000048b4 (F)

000048ba  bra.b #$d2 == $0000488e (T)

000048bc  bset.b #$0007,$00bfd100

000048c4  bclr.b #$0003,$00bfd100

000048cc  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d6

000048ce  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d0

000048d0  rts  == $00004766

I don't see anything the games have in common (coder, distributor, etc.) I currently have name as zoom_longtrack in disk-analyse only because it was the first game that I created the decoder for.

Galahad/FLT · 16 February 2023, 10:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abaddon

Can anyone give me a name for the following protection, which is used by Zoom!, Cyber World, Ganymed, Triple X, Emetic Skimmer (German Release) and one version of Grid Start:



000047e8  move.l d7,$00004760 [0000000e]

000047ee  move.l #$0003670c,$00dff020

000047f8  move.w #$7fff,$00dff09e

00004800  move.w #$9100,$00dff09e

00004808  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

00004810  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004818  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004820  btst.b #$0001,$00dff01f

00004828  beq.b #$f6 == $00004820 (F)

0000482a  move.w $00dff01e,$00dff09c

00004834  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

0000483c  movea.l #$0003670c,a0

00004842  adda.l #$00000100,a0

00004848  move.l #$000031f8,d1

0000484e  clr.l d0

00004850  clr.l d6

00004852  cmp.b #$88,(a0) [06]

00004856  beq.b #$14 == $0000486c (F)

00004858  cmp.b #$44,(a0) [06]

0000485c  beq.b #$0e == $0000486c (F)

0000485e  cmp.b #$22,(a0) [06]

00004862  beq.b #$08 == $0000486c (F)

00004864  cmp.b #$11,(a0) [06]

00004868  beq.b #$02 == $0000486c (F)

0000486a  addq.l #$01,d0

0000486c  move.b (a0) [06],d7

0000486e  cmp.b (a0,-$0001) == $000389f6 [20],d7

00004872  beq.b #$02 == $00004876 (F)

00004874  addq.l #$01,d6

00004876  adda.l #$00000001,a0

0000487c  dbf .w d1,#$ffd4 == $00004852 (F)

00004880  move.l d0,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004882  move.l d6,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004884  bclr.b #$0001,$00bfd100

0000488c  clr.l d7

0000488e  cmp.l $00004760 [0000000e],d7

00004894  beq.b #$26 == $000048bc (F)

00004896  bclr.b #$0000,$00bfd100

0000489e  nop 

000048a0  nop 

000048a2  nop 

000048a4  bset.b #$0000,$00bfd100

000048ac  addq.l #$01,d7

000048ae  move.l #$00000780,d0

000048b4  nop 

000048b6  dbf .w d0,#$fffc == $000048b4 (F)

000048ba  bra.b #$d2 == $0000488e (T)

000048bc  bset.b #$0007,$00bfd100

000048c4  bclr.b #$0003,$00bfd100

000048cc  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d6

000048ce  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d0

000048d0  rts  == $00004766

I don't see anything the games have in common (coder, distributor, etc.) I currently have name as zoom_longtrack in disk-analyse only because it was the first game that I created the decoder for.

It would be "Frank Neuhaus".

The reason is as you say, first spotted on Zoom! Which Frank wrote, secondly he definitely developed the disk format and protection track as he was the initial developer behind
X-Copy, so we can be sure he knows how disks work.

Thirdly, the majority of the games you list are German, or written by Germans and in the German software development community, they had no issues letting other teams use the same disk formats, in the same way that ZZKJ's format in the UK were used by several UK dev teams that had no connection to him.

dlfrsilver · 16 February 2023, 14:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abaddon

Can anyone give me a name for the following protection, which is used by Zoom!, Cyber World, Ganymed, Triple X, Emetic Skimmer (German Release) and one version of Grid Start:



000047e8  move.l d7,$00004760 [0000000e]

000047ee  move.l #$0003670c,$00dff020

000047f8  move.w #$7fff,$00dff09e

00004800  move.w #$9100,$00dff09e

00004808  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

00004810  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004818  move.w #$a000,$00dff024

00004820  btst.b #$0001,$00dff01f

00004828  beq.b #$f6 == $00004820 (F)

0000482a  move.w $00dff01e,$00dff09c

00004834  move.w #$4000,$00dff024

0000483c  movea.l #$0003670c,a0

00004842  adda.l #$00000100,a0

00004848  move.l #$000031f8,d1

0000484e  clr.l d0

00004850  clr.l d6

00004852  cmp.b #$88,(a0) [06]

00004856  beq.b #$14 == $0000486c (F)

00004858  cmp.b #$44,(a0) [06]

0000485c  beq.b #$0e == $0000486c (F)

0000485e  cmp.b #$22,(a0) [06]

00004862  beq.b #$08 == $0000486c (F)

00004864  cmp.b #$11,(a0) [06]

00004868  beq.b #$02 == $0000486c (F)

0000486a  addq.l #$01,d0

0000486c  move.b (a0) [06],d7

0000486e  cmp.b (a0,-$0001) == $000389f6 [20],d7

00004872  beq.b #$02 == $00004876 (F)

00004874  addq.l #$01,d6

00004876  adda.l #$00000001,a0

0000487c  dbf .w d1,#$ffd4 == $00004852 (F)

00004880  move.l d0,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004882  move.l d6,-(a7) [0000485e]

00004884  bclr.b #$0001,$00bfd100

0000488c  clr.l d7

0000488e  cmp.l $00004760 [0000000e],d7

00004894  beq.b #$26 == $000048bc (F)

00004896  bclr.b #$0000,$00bfd100

0000489e  nop 

000048a0  nop 

000048a2  nop 

000048a4  bset.b #$0000,$00bfd100

000048ac  addq.l #$01,d7

000048ae  move.l #$00000780,d0

000048b4  nop 

000048b6  dbf .w d0,#$fffc == $000048b4 (F)

000048ba  bra.b #$d2 == $0000488e (T)

000048bc  bset.b #$0007,$00bfd100

000048c4  bclr.b #$0003,$00bfd100

000048cc  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d6

000048ce  move.l (a7)+ [00004766],d0

000048d0  rts  == $00004766

I don't see anything the games have in common (coder, distributor, etc.) I currently have name as zoom_longtrack in disk-analyse only because it was the first game that I created the decoder for.

It's named 'GAP track aa' protection in the SPS encoder.

Abaddon · 17 February 2023, 01:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

It would be "Frank Neuhaus".

The reason is as you say, first spotted on Zoom! Which Frank wrote, secondly he definitely developed the disk format and protection track as he was the initial developer behind
X-Copy, so we can be sure he knows how disks work.

Thirdly, the majority of the games you list are German, or written by Germans and in the German software development community, they had no issues letting other teams use the same disk formats, in the same way that ZZKJ's format in the UK were used by several UK dev teams that had no connection to him.

Thanks for the info. I will be renaming the protection to frank_neuhaus_protection

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
What the hell were those names?	nzo	request.Demos	4	26 September 2013 14:50
Where did your users names come from?	Freakyweakywoo	Nostalgia & memories	300	22 December 2012 05:54
Partition Names?	Tempest 2084	support.Hardware	7	15 May 2009 08:16
Screenmode names disappeared	ancalimon	support.WinUAE	3	19 July 2007 23:31
Computers and their names	Amiga1992	Nostalgia & memories	55	03 October 2001 00:40

24 January 2020, 00:14	#66
BarryB Amigaholic Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: UK Posts: 4,676	Not a very 'catchy' name is it, but it's all we have I guess! Going back to Hotshot and Manhattan Dealers, here's the protection tracks in HxC, Hotshot top & Manhattan Dealers bottom: Just wondering if that means anything regards the 12 sector / 11 sector thing Denis was explaining regards those two protections?

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)