Disk analyzing and writing tools for bypassing copy protection?

[fstarred]

What tools of the past and present can be used to analyze disk sectors of original games in order to be crashed? I have read that many protections write sectors in particular way so the software can recognize if it's the original or a copied one.
Just by using asm one I have realized that I cannot write to some sectors at all, maybe because they are not recognized as good sectors (maybe sync mark missing, custom or oddly placed). So the question is, how developers had full control on disk write?

[derSammler]

Copy-protected disks were normally created based on a template by professional disk duplication systems. If you could just write some software to write the same data yourself to a disk using standard hardware, the whole copy protection would be rather pointless.

You need to use flux-based disk controllers.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by derSammler

Copy-protected disks were normally created based on a template by professional disk duplication systems. If you could just write some software to write the same data yourself to a disk using standard hardware, the whole copy protection would be rather pointless.

You need to use flux-based disk controllers.

Well, not entirely true. Some custom formats can be copied using XCopy nibble copy, or RNCopy (Rob Northen 12 sector format, with a gap shortening)

but forget about this for longtracks or RNcopylock/single protected tracks like speedlock or Herdnon, although Cyclone hardware dongle did wonders for some disks.

The question was: how developers created the disks, it was with a special hardware trace machine. But you could technically duplicate MFM non-long-track wirh an amiga too.

That said I think I remember some PD games or demos being MFM, so only physically shared or MFMWarp

I think the trace machines were better for everything even unprotected disks because copies were much more reliable and it was faster to mass produce too.

[derSammler]

Hint: "normally" (=not always), "could". Or do I use these words wrongly?

Those protections you could duplicate using X-Copy were pointless, just like I wrote.

[jotd]

not completely pointless, as they were often coupled with manual/password/codewheel protection, and cracking the game was harder because you could not rewrite tracks with changed data easily.

I remember "cracking" Zool codewheel from a copy of my original. The crack was in the bootblock and the MFM data was untouched. But such cracks weren't very popular as people would generally prefer full DOS-track crack (and Zool was cracked that way, probably using a powerful packer to be able to pack 2 160-track $1800 length disks to 160 $1600 length!)

[phx]

Originally Posted by fstarred

What tools of the past and present can be used to analyze disk sectors of original games in order to be crashed?

"cracked" - you probably wanted to say.
Any combination of monitor/disassembler and assembler works. Analyzing the code starts with the boot block, which is always readable. Then you would usually use the already analyzed code to write your own programs for reading the protected parts of the disk, which you have to analyze and crack. The final step is to put all the data you have extracted into standard format on a new disk - and adapt the disk routines accordingly.

Having to write tracks in a protected format usually doesn't happen. At least I never did that.

[alexh]

The tools that were developed for Kryoflux / SuperCopy Pro / GreaseWeazel hardware flux level disk imagers can analyse flux level disk images and (sometimes) identify the type of copy protection. But you will need to own one of the three hardware devices to produce your own flux level images. GreaseWeazel v4.1 is relatively cheap from AmigaKit.

With these devices you can duplicate copy protected disks as well as make flux images compatible with most emulators.

[fstarred]

Originally Posted by phx

"cracked" - you probably wanted to say.

Indeed

Well I just formed my question not very well, mostly I wish to know how crackers found how to get rid of the copy protection, so I wonder how and what tools used.
Did those hardware tools cited by alexh (or hardware devices in general) were necessary to uncrack disk in that era?

[TCD]

h0ffman has posted some very recent videos on the topic: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=116023

(and it's 'crack' a disk )

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by fstarred

mostly I wish to know how crackers found how to get rid of the copy protection, so I wonder how and what tools used.

A decent disassembler is enough. And general 68000/Amiga knowledge helps too, of course.

[DanScott]

While I was learning and coding, I was always in awe of the crackers. Cracking encrypted code, rearranging disk Content to find space for a cracktro, one filing games, squeezing 2 disk games onto 1 disk etc.. Seemed like voodoo to me