[Coco] Question about disk images & copy protection.

Bob Devries devries.bob at gmail.com
Sun Jul 2 01:53:59 EDT 2006 

Carey,
I have the Deft Pascal documentation as PDF files here, if you're 
interested. Of course, they're my version, but most should be the same.

--
Regards, Bob Devries, Dalby, Queensland, Australia

Isaiah 50:4 The sovereign Lord has given me
the capacity to be his spokesman,
so that I know how to help the weary.

website: http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bdevasl
my blog: http://bdevries.invigorated.org/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carey Eugene" <carey at cebridge.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Question about disk images & copy protection.


Bob;


> One of the things that I found lacking was that it was not Coco3 
> compatible,
> at least my version was not. The programmes worked fine, and compiled etc,
> but the resultant code did not run on the Coco3.
>
> My version is 3.X. Does V4.X have the same problem?


No, it was fully CC3 compatable.  I think that was the big change between v3 
and v4.  And v4.1 was some extra's, but I can't remember what.  (I've got 
the nice printed manual out in the garage but I haven't dug it out yet. 
It's got a list of changes.  Plus, somewhere or other, I have a copy of a 
couple extra toolboxes that were available for DP v4.  I didn't use them 
because by the time they were given to me, I had already stopped using 
rs-dos and switched to OS9.  If I remember right, I think they added some 
graphics and some other stuff.  Until recently I still had the company's 
catalog...  I found it stuck in an old box.  I'm pretty sure I threw it away 
while cleaning.)

v4.1 used the full 64k on the CC2/3 where as the earlier versions were 
somewhat limited because they used the ROM routines.  (If I remember 
right...)

Although there weren't any routines available to use the extra features of 
the CC3, it wasn't too hard to write your own, since it gave you the ability 
to read & write arbitrary addresses and call any location.  So it was a 
simple matter to write a couple of small wrappers

It had a nice library package.  Lots of useful functions.  It didn't use the 
5 byte floating point in the ROMs but used its own BCD math package.

And, of course, Deft Pascal came with a somewhat decent macro assembler, so 
you could always go that route.  And it had a fairly decent editor.  (All 
things considered, anyway.  One of the patches I did for it was to make it 
lower case instead of reverse text.)

As I said in the previous message, at the time I got a bit irritated with 
Deft Pascal sometimes, but that was more due to some of the limitations of 
the Pascal language itself.  Deft Pascal v4.1 was a nice package and I got 
several years good use out of it.  It was well worth the money I spent 
buying it.

I've wished a few times over the years that I had had a PC version of Deft 
Pascal to use.  To me, the old Turbo Pascal was just a pale imiation of what 
Deft Pascal could do.  Of course, I was somewhat biased...[grin]

Carey


>
> --
> Regards, Bob Devries, Dalby, Queensland, Australia
>
> Isaiah 50:4 The sovereign Lord has given me
> the capacity to be his spokesman,
> so that I know how to help the weary.
>
> website: http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bdevasl
> my blog: http://bdevries.invigorated.org/
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Carey Eugene" <carey at cebridge.net>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 2:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Question about disk images & copy protection.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Bob Devries" <devries.bob at gmail.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 11:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Question about disk images & copy protection.
>
>
>> HUH? My copy of Deft Pascal has no copy protection. Was that on a later
>> version perhaps?
>
> Bob;
>
> It's in the linker.
>
> I don't think the earlier ones did, but the later ones did.  Mine is v4.1
>
> I remember reading somewhere on the web some time back a comment from the
> author about that he didn't want the copy protection but they insisted. 
> He
> managed to keep it limited to just the linker.  (No, I have no idea where 
> I
> read that...  Who knows, maybe I dreamed it.  It's been within the past 
> year
> or so, though.)
>
> I don't remember what the copy protection was.  The linker checked for
> something specific on the disk, but I can't remember what.  Some little
> quirk in the disk structure.  I think around the directory area, but don't
> hold me to that.
>
> But it was easily patched around.
>
> Let me see... the post-it on it says to patch the linker locations $e6a,
> $e6b, $e6c from $17, $21, $9a to $12, $12, $12.  In other words, NOP the
> subroutine call that checks the copy protection.
>
>
> That was one of my earliest efforts at cracking copy protection.  After 
> that
> I did a few games and ROM packs.  Can't remember what they were, but I
> remember printing out pages and pages of source code looking for key 
> areas.
>
>
> I gotta admit, I had a few unpleasent experiences with Deft Pascal, mostly
> due to limitations in the Pascal language, but after experiencing other
> versions of Pascal for other systems, I have to say that I was wrong. 
> Deft
> Pascal was an impressive version of Pascal.
>
> Carey
>
>
>>
>> --
>> Regards, Bob Devries, Dalby, Queensland, Australia
>>
>> Isaiah 50:4 The sovereign Lord has given me
>> the capacity to be his spokesman,
>> so that I know how to help the weary.
>>
>> website: http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bdevasl
>> my blog: http://bdevries.invigorated.org/
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Carey Eugene" <carey at cebridge.net>
>> To: <Coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 1:18 PM
>> Subject: [Coco] Question about disk images & copy protection.
>>
>>
>> I was just reading an email from somebody about disk images and the 
>> effort
>> they went through to make backups etc.
>>
>> That got me curious...
>>
>> How do I deal with copy protected disks?  I know I have some.  I've got
>> post-it notes on the floppy jacket about using Spit-N-Image to make
>> backups
>> of it.
>>
>> And I remember several games that had copy protection.  And Deft Pascal
>> (although that's easily bypassed.)
>>
>> So, do disk image programs deal with that?  I know with some other
>> emulators, people have developed special disk image formats that store 
>> the
>> whole track info and all of it's oddities.  That way it can be read
>> properly
>> by the emulator.
>>
>>
>> Carey
>>
>>
>> -- 
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>>
>>
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