Worst copy protection?

[jotd]

Xenon 2 used Rob Northen copylock and the kixx rerelease used Rob Northen PDOS.

The failure is probably a badly duplicated batch. Because RN copylock is reliable. It's been used in 500+ games.

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by Minuous

According to Computer Trade Weekly, Xenon 2 had a failure rate of 80%. That's pretty atrocious copy protection when 4 out of 5 of your legitimate users are locked out :-(

I remember an early Bamiga sector one cracked 2 disk version, VERY PICKY in loading (only the first load, to be clear), despite no errors in tracks
possibly made from that original?

[Minuous]

Here's the news item in full, from the Jan/Feb 1990 issue (#4) of Megacomp:

Xenon flotches [sic] on Amiga. UK trade weekly CTW says that the big-time Xenon II (Mirrorsoft) has produced loading problems for some Amiga owners. Virgin's Megastore reports a failure rate of 80%, although product distributor, Gem, claims only 10-15%. Nobody's perfect.

[BarryB]

Guess some of those dodgy Psygnosis formats count as well then!!

[jotd]

Deliverance disk format was also horrible

Psygnosis used one particular format for a lot of games and that one worked properly (Lemmings, Red Zone, Leander, probably a lot of others. This format was also nibble copiable, unless there was an extra protection track)
Other "rogue" MFM formats were used. Those were probably less reliable.

[BarryB]

Then my copy of Deliverance has either gone bad or it's faulty duplication, a CT Raw sticks on track 6 when loading!!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Then my copy of Deliverance has either gone bad or it's faulty duplication, a CT Raw sticks on track 6 when loading!!

Sent it to me for checking.

[sneckburger]

Originally Posted by Agilent

Did you remember to crack all the ckecksums in Soccer Kid..

I don't even know what that means!

It was a bunch of symbols, I think you had to get it right 3 times.
Can't remember how I did it, but every time I got I played it i kept adding to the code.

[sparhawk]

Don't remember the game, but I remember that it had color codes in the booklet. I'm colorblind, so you can guess how happy I was with that...

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by sneckburger

I don't even know what that means!

It was a bunch of symbols, I think you had to get it right 3 times.
Can't remember how I did it, but every time I got I played it i kept adding to the code.

He was making a joke. The joke was that you didn't crack the game, you made a replacement codesheet that left the copy protection intact.



A checksum is a simple kind of hash algorithm -- basically a way to turn a whole bunch of data into a small number for purposes of telling that it's the same. For instance a checksum in its most basic form is adding every number together and then taking the last digit. e.g. if I have the numbers 4, 6, 3. Add them all together and you get 13, so with a modulo 10 checksum (last digit of a decimal number) your checksum would be "3". So if instead you had the numbers 5, 6, 3 you'd get 14, checksum 4, and you'd know something had changed.

Finding the part of the machine code that checks codebook/codewheel copy protections is relatively trivial, so it's easy to patch the copy protection screen to always succeed, so programmers would put in code that checksummed the program to see if a cracker had changed it at all. If the checksum didn't match they could then put in less-obvious things to cause the crack to fail. e.g. make it so you can't progress past a certain level, making all the enemies extra difficult, randomly crashing, etc.

[acidbottle]

Rocket Ranger.

Think I was too stoopid to figure it all out as a kid. Never got far into the game because of that guff.

[amiga1260]

I bought Clickboom's Quake for my Amiga.

I got the serial key code, but doesn't work. Imailed to Clickboom for the serial key code.

I know it was six numbers and I tried 123456 as code and it worked without issue.

[sparhawk]

Originally Posted by amiga1260

I know it was six numbers and I tried 123456 as code and it worked without issue.

3771 Haxor!

[roondar]

The Windows 95 serial number checker accepts 111-1111111 as a valid serial number. But that's not Amiga so it doesn't really count I guess. Still funny though.
[ Show youtube player ]

On the topic of the Amiga, my personal 'favourite' still has to be Alien Breed 3D II. That code booklet was pure evil.

[mr.vince]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Which version of Xenon 2 ?

I don't think the first version was the culprit. There was a second, single disk release that was so densely packed, it'll technically destroy itself because the platter can't hold that much information. Also, it uses a Speedlock protection, which even for me fails on my original hardware from time to time...

[dirkies]

I do remember having a copy of carrier command (as it had an inbuilt copier for the game disk!) and at the novela protection I tried purely random to enter as an answer ISLAND and it worked! But that was a lucky guess as I never succeeded again. But since afterwards I had the manual, not an issue later on

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by mr.vince

I don't think the first version was the culprit. There was a second, single disk release that was so densely packed, it'll technically destroy itself because the platter can't hold that much information. Also, it uses a Speedlock protection, which even for me fails on my original hardware from time to time...

Indeed it's the second version on one disk. It uses longtracks, and a speedlock as you said.

What i learn all these years, is that you need to have the disks proper and clean or cleaned. Then it should work

[modrobert]

Any kind of protection which benefits a few who only cares about profit while hurting legit users, that's the "worst" in my opinion.

[mr.vince]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

What i learn all these years, is that you need to have the disks proper and clean or cleaned. Then it should work

This might help, but the real issue is the amount of data written to the disk. It's simply so much, well over a megabyte if I remember correctly. Too much for a DD disk. The frequency is so high, it's technically dampened by the coating.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by mr.vince

This might help, but the real issue is the amount of data written to the disk. It's simply so much, well over a megabyte if I remember correctly. Too much for a DD disk. The frequency is so high, it's technically dampened by the coating.

Well i'm sure that if i buy even today an original of Xenon 2 Kixx release, i will get a good heavy dump with either the Kryoflux or the GreasleWeasle in Kryoflux heavy dump format

Apart giving a hand to the community regarding the checking and also the creation of IPFs, i have enforced and optimized my cleaning method, getting a result of 99% of disks salvaged.

In fact, i know today that many disks where showed as unreadable or not working when they simply needed a good cleanup.

With disks cleaned, they can have a much higher life span that thought before. At the moment we speak, i have in my actual collection no defective amiga disks. My originals are all in working order