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From: hooverb@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Bruce Hoover)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: M.U.L.E. Sorrow!
Message-ID: <1300@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 91 09:34:42 GMT
References: <1991Feb25.022602.10895@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
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From article <1991Feb25.022602.10895@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>, by norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin):
> 
> This is, again, only my hypothesis, after playing around with a few Electronic
> Arts games.  I'm sure that few people would be concerned at this point about
> keeping such archaic copy protection schemes secret, so can anyone shed any
> light on exactly how it was done?  I've always wanted to know.

 If I remember (from long ago) Electronic Arts disk relied on a variety
of techniques for their protection. I beleive that timing was one of
them, but the disks were also heavily skewed; that is, data from various
sectors was originally "lined up" phyically on the disk, and the program
would check for this physical allignment. Therefore, and normal copy
program would transfer data but make no effort to maintain the physical
allignment. I installed a board in my 1050 called a 1050 Duplicator (or
some such) that cost about $150. It claimed that it would copy all EOA
disks without additional hardware or software modification. Three years
later and two hardware upgrades and four software versions later (all at
eatra cost) they finally announced that the new program would simply
patch Electronic Arts games. Strange to say, after three years of
rhetoric about the evils of copy protection, this patch program was, you
guessed it, copy protected, and the hardware-modified drive would not
copy it! Give me a break...
Bruce Hoover>