Cracked games with ERROR protections - Page 2

StingRay · 17 January 2009, 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supamax

QUESTION:
Since these "protected" crack did circulate back in the years, how did the many BBS's archive them? Did they use some type of primitive warper? I don't think they were only spreaded by user to user...

Things like that definitely existed back in the day and they were spread on the boards as warped files. See this one f.e., they even write in the scroller that is has to be copied using a nibble copy.

TCD · 17 January 2009, 18:49

Maybe IFW can tell from the extended ADF what's the difference. If not you coudl make a dump with the SPS tool and send it to him to be sure Supamax

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 18:50

i have done a disk image with powercopy from barbarian IPF 1011 which i continue to say
that it's carbon copy of IPF 1011, same track length, same disk layout !

And my disk image can be written back on a standard drive, so once again you've proved
wrong !

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 18:55

Ok,

I found Fright Night on one of my hard drives.
I put it in The Zone.
This has hackers credits and has protections.
Hope this can help,
Massimo

P.S. I will not answer about Barbarian any more, until someone "real" expert (and not only an expert user of Powercopy) can say something about it

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Maybe IFW can tell from the extended ADF what's the difference. If not you coudl make a dump with the SPS tool and send it to him to be sure Supamax

I have no A1200

However, perhaps Barbarian is not a good example. But I have more of them somewhere.
You should be happy

. You can add some new releases to TOSEC, hopefully

Quote:

Originally Posted by StingRay

Things like that definitely existed back in the day and they were spread on the boards as warped files. See this one f.e., they even write in the scroller that is has to be copied using a nibble copy.

Thanks!
Finally someone who knows something about nibble-protected copies!

Do you know which warpers did they use in the '80/'90 ?

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 18:56

Fright night has no protections.

It uses an atari ST MFM format with no protection tracks.

I have created an extended ADF of it a long while ago.

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 18:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Fright night has no protections.

It uses an atari ST MFM format with no protection tracks.

I have created an extended ADF of it a long while ago.

If you had to make an extended adf, instead of a normal adf, then it has protection tracks. They are simple, but they are protection tracks.

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 19:11

ok, i see it's a word problem here.

A protection track is made in order to avoid that YOU end user copy your disk.

an MFM encoding scheme is not a protection in itself. I can copy fright night with x-copy
and even powercopy on a standard drive.

Everything depends on the track length uses, the tricks used, etc....

a normal ADF is using standard DOS tracks. MFM encoded track can't be done
with a standard ADF dos creator = not the same system.

BTW : I'm actually playing on my a500+ with the disk image created from IPF 1011. Isn't it funny ?

Here is the Disk format layout from barbarian IPF 1011 :

it uses MFM encoded tracks, with a standard sync of $4489, and a STANDARD length of $1762 per sides.

Any standard drive amiga drive can cope with those values ($2EC4 is normal track length).

A game with long MFM encoded tracks is using length of $18C1 per side (in the case of Snowbros) which makes $3182 to write back.

You can't write back these tracks without a hardware solution or a modified drive.

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 19:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

ok, i see it's a word problem here

You're right. read below... you'll se it's your problem understanding what I'm writing.

Quote:

A protection track is made in order to avoid that YOU end user copy your disk.

You're right

Quote:

an MFM encoding scheme is not a protection in itself. I can copy fright night with x-copy and even powercopy on a standard drive.

You're wrong. It's a protection, since you can't copy it with a standard DOS copier. If you need X-Copy and Powercopy or any nibbler other than a simple DOS copier, every track non-DOS is a protection.

Quote:

a normal ADF is using standard DOS tracks. MFM encoded track can't be done with a standard ADF dos creator = not the same system

Come on, please don't underestimate me any more, do you make me this favor?
And the phrase above is exactly what I wrote: DOS track = unprotected track. Non-DOS track = protected track. Of course they are not the same "system".

Quote:

BTW : I'm actually playing on my a500+ with the disk image created from IPF 1011. Isn't it funny ?

You copied it with Powercopy. It's not funny neither difficult.
Try to copy it with X-Copy, as I proposed you from the start. Copy it AND copy my dump. You'll see differences

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 19:34

i have also made a disk format check on barbarian IPF 1643.

Here are the differences from IPF 1011 :

It still uses standard sync $4489 BUT NOW it uses longtracks with a length of $18XX
this means you can't copy that back on a standard drive.

And the cherry on the cake, it uses 3 MFM encoded protection tracks with no SYNC
and that have a size of $186A.

Your original copy doesn't have this disk layout, but the one of the IPF 1011.

Galahad/FLT · 17 January 2009, 20:04

Was quite common in the very early days, with the exception of stuff like Dragons Breath, most of the warped archives of the game were leaked from WHQ members section of the particular group that had the game, someone who was bored obviously figured that some of the warpers could correctly copy and write back certain originals, but it would have been a small amount, and later copy protections using proper longtracks could be read, but not written down without hardware, such as Sybil.

Generally this practice is incredibly lame and pointless as warpers are very slow, and the archived files are generally much bigger than a normal dos disk can store (which back in the day most people never had a hard drive so transferring 1mb+ size files was a pain).

I did however do one version like that, but I wrote my own software to write back down Championship Manager 2 from Eidos to create perfect copies of the original game, as it was so big and complicated, I didn't want the chance of a cracking error to occur, and seeing as it was Fairlights final official release on Amiga, and a game I came back out of retirement for, I didn't want to screw it up.

You could copy my disk with the installer on, but not the gamedisks it generated, but then again, it was a lot quicker at writing the disk images out in comparison to a warper

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 20:21

Quote:

You copied it with Powercopy. It's not funny neither difficult.
Try to copy it with X-Copy, as I proposed you from the start. Copy it AND copy my dump. You'll see differences

I have copied your version with x-copy and it works.

I have copied version IPF 1011 with x-copy and it works.

Conclusion ?

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Was quite common in the very early days

Thanks Galahad, that confirms why I have some copies which requires to be nibble-copied.
I remember I saw (in some old BBS archive) some files with an extension .wrp or .w"something", so I was wondering if they distributed dumps with protected tracks

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 20:27

it's copies of original and not cracked copies.

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

it's copies of original and not cracked copies.

Fright Night is cracked (see credits) and it has non-DOS tracks (which are not errors on my disk).
So?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I have copied your version with x-copy and it works.

I have copied version IPF 1011 with x-copy and it works.

Conclusion ?

Which version of X-Copy?
Which value did you use for the longtrack parameter? (I need it for testing!)

Thanks

dlfrsilver · 17 January 2009, 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supamax

Which version of X-Copy?
Which value did you use for the longtrack parameter?

Thanks

Incredible !!!

I have 2 questions :

1) Why are you not able to do a simple nibble copy with x-copy of a game that is using standard MFM tracks ?

2) This game DOES NOT use LONGTRACKS !

Your copy is $1762 per side and $2EC4 per track ! My standard disk drive can write up to $3180 per track !

You're completely lost about those values, the way to handle them as i see.....

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Incredible !!!

I have 2 questions :

1) Why are you not able to do a simple nibble copy with x-copy of a game that is using standard MFM tracks ?

2) This game DOES NOT use LONGTRACKS !

Mmm... perhaps one of us has inverted numbers of Barbarian SPS releases.
I'm not saying you are. Perhaps it's me.
What I found (I wrote it in one of the previous posts) is:
I cannot copy 1011, but I can copy 1643.
You're telling that you can copy 1011 but not 1643... I found the opposite.
Could you give me your 1011 and 1643 checksums (CRC32) ?

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 20:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Your copy is $1762 per side and $2EC4 per track ! My standard disk drive can write up to $3180 per track !

You're completely lost about those values, the way to handle them as i see.....

Oh, you're right, I forgot you're the Lord of the Dumps.
Excuse me

demoniac · 17 January 2009, 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by StingRay

Things like that definitely existed back in the day and they were spread on the boards as warped files. See this one f.e., they even write in the scroller that is has to be copied using a nibble copy.

The Accumulators' Silkworm had copy protection. Even the scroller said that it was "pseudo-cracked". I didn't transfer my disk to ADF properly and ended up ripping the boot track and nibble copied the IPF for the rest. I should properly transfer this properly as I have an A1200 now. I was able to create an unverified MFM image with the A500 though.

Supamax · 17 January 2009, 20:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by demoniac

The Accumulators' Silkworm had copy protection. Even the scroller said that it was "pseudo-cracked". I didn't transfer my disk to ADF properly and ended up ripping the boot track and nibble copied the IPF for the rest. I should properly transfer this properly as I have an A1200 now. I was able to create an unverified MFM image with the A500 though.

I have a Silkworm copy which is probably the same as yours.
Upped to The Zone.

IFW · 17 January 2009, 20:51

As for Barbarian: it can be copied without any hw, but it will be still protected.
However you can change a few things in the loader, and it would surely work from a standard disk as the protection is very simple.

17 January 2009, 19:11	#27
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,421	ok, i see it's a word problem here. A protection track is made in order to avoid that YOU end user copy your disk. an MFM encoding scheme is not a protection in itself. I can copy fright night with x-copy and even powercopy on a standard drive. Everything depends on the track length uses, the tricks used, etc.... a normal ADF is using standard DOS tracks. MFM encoded track can't be done with a standard ADF dos creator = not the same system. BTW : I'm actually playing on my a500+ with the disk image created from IPF 1011. Isn't it funny ? Here is the Disk format layout from barbarian IPF 1011 : it uses MFM encoded tracks, with a standard sync of $4489, and a STANDARD length of $1762 per sides. Any standard drive amiga drive can cope with those values ($2EC4 is normal track length). A game with long MFM encoded tracks is using length of $18C1 per side (in the case of Snowbros) which makes $3182 to write back. You can't write back these tracks without a hardware solution or a modified drive. Last edited by dlfrsilver; 17 January 2009 at 19:21.

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17 January 2009, 18:49	#22
TCD HOL/FTP busy bee Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Germany Age: 46 Posts: 31,607	Maybe IFW can tell from the extended ADF what's the difference. If not you coudl make a dump with the SPS tool and send it to him to be sure Supamax

17 January 2009, 18:50	#23
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,421	i have done a disk image with powercopy from barbarian IPF 1011 which i continue to say that it's carbon copy of IPF 1011, same track length, same disk layout ! And my disk image can be written back on a standard drive, so once again you've proved wrong !

17 January 2009, 18:56	#25
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,421	Fright night has no protections. It uses an atari ST MFM format with no protection tracks. I have created an extended ADF of it a long while ago.

17 January 2009, 19:34	#29
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,421	i have also made a disk format check on barbarian IPF 1643. Here are the differences from IPF 1011 : It still uses standard sync $4489 BUT NOW it uses longtracks with a length of $18XX this means you can't copy that back on a standard drive. And the cherry on the cake, it uses 3 MFM encoded protection tracks with no SYNC and that have a size of $186A. Your original copy doesn't have this disk layout, but the one of the IPF 1011.

17 January 2009, 20:04	#30
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,994	Was quite common in the very early days, with the exception of stuff like Dragons Breath, most of the warped archives of the game were leaked from WHQ members section of the particular group that had the game, someone who was bored obviously figured that some of the warpers could correctly copy and write back certain originals, but it would have been a small amount, and later copy protections using proper longtracks could be read, but not written down without hardware, such as Sybil. Generally this practice is incredibly lame and pointless as warpers are very slow, and the archived files are generally much bigger than a normal dos disk can store (which back in the day most people never had a hard drive so transferring 1mb+ size files was a pain). I did however do one version like that, but I wrote my own software to write back down Championship Manager 2 from Eidos to create perfect copies of the original game, as it was so big and complicated, I didn't want the chance of a cracking error to occur, and seeing as it was Fairlights final official release on Amiga, and a game I came back out of retirement for, I didn't want to screw it up. You could copy my disk with the installer on, but not the gamedisks it generated, but then again, it was a lot quicker at writing the disk images out in comparison to a warper

17 January 2009, 20:27	#33
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,421	it's copies of original and not cracked copies.

17 January 2009, 20:51	#40
IFW Moderator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: ... Age: 52 Posts: 1,838	As for Barbarian: it can be copied without any hw, but it will be still protected. However you can change a few things in the loader, and it would surely work from a standard disk as the protection is very simple.

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