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From: treesh@darwin.helios.nd.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Super Snap Shot Cart Detection??
Message-ID: <449@news.nd.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 90 20:31:39 GMT
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Yes, the Final Cart can be detected via software even in invisable mode.
Its really not that hard to do, as a matter of fact it can be done in basic
if you want to.   What I do is set up a loop to read one byte of the
i/o addresing up there in the high areas of the memory map.  Then I check the
value that was 'peeked' from that address over 200 times, if it does not 
change, then you can be sure someone has a cart in the cart port.
 
However, the SuperSnapShot in invisable mode does not fall victim to this
protection scheem at all!  The only hope I have had is this:

I have been able to write code that 'confuses' the snapshot cart even in 
invisable mode.  What happens is that when you press the buttom, instead of 
freezing the software, its crashes the computer.  This is kinda nice for a 
cheep protections aginst SuperSnapShot, but doing a full computer reset
recovers from the crash, with SuperSnapShot enabled, AND your ram is still
intact, so it really did not acomplish much at all.

I have heard rumors of really killer copy protection routines thaat use
the video chip as a sync rigistar.  If a program is Snapshotted and then
loaded, the video chip's timming will be off from the programs internal
time keeping routines, and thus the copy is detected.  I have never seen
code that could really pull this off, but I have heard about it being done.
 
Any comments welcome!
 
ctfm