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From: ugthomas@sunybcs.UUCP ( Timothy Thomas)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: Re: Where is Thorn EMI?
Message-ID: <1165@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Feb-85 19:46:15 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.1165
Posted: Sat Feb 16 19:46:15 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Feb-85 06:16:09 EST
References: <2370@hplabsc.UUCP> <346@terak.UUCP> <2399@hplabsc.UUCP>
Organization: State University of New York @ Buffalo,NY
Lines: 34

> Yes, I've double checked.  As for ripping off, the software is in a
> cartridge, not on a disk, so how am I going to copy it? 

There are many ways to copy a cartridge (I thought everyone knew that, but
I will explain anyways).  The older cartridges (Thorn included I believe)
were easily copyable simply by putting the cartridge in, doing a binary save
 and adding a couple loader bytes.

Software companies got wise to this; so they add protection.  This protection
in a cartridge is done by having the program write to the ram where the
rom cart. goes.  If a rom cart. is in place, it will simply have no effect
because you cant overwrite rom.  If the program was 'loaded' into ram (i.e.
disk or cassette), the program will kill itself and not work.

A simply solution to this is to wire your last 16K of ram, so you can turn off
write to it when you want.  The program is loaded into ram, write is turned
off, and a warmstart is done (memory stays in place, but write to that portion
of memory is disabled).  This way, the program can try as hard as it likes
to kill itself but cant.

I have added this feature to my atari, but for backup purposes only :^}



-- 
...Tim Thomas

...{burdvax, rocksvax, bbncca, decvax, dual, rocksanne, watmath}!sunybcs!ugthomas


Remember......
	Only you can prevent software piracy.