[Coco] Shamus... copy protected?

Arthur Flexser flexser at fiu.edu
Tue Dec 25 20:22:49 EST 2007


I wonder what is involved in "clobbering" the single sector?  Is it sufficient
to change the sector number in the sector header to some illegal value, for
example?  Mess up the checksum bytes?  Were there any commercial CoCo disk
zappers that had access to the header information in order to do this?

Art

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007, John Donaldson wrote:

> I remember back right after Sands of Egypt came out, someone wrote a 
> utility that not only copyied Sands of Egypt to another disk, then 
> clobered the single sector so the copy would play..
> 
> 
> Neil Morrison wrote:
> 
> >Sands of Egypt works the same way IIRC, it has one bad sector and looks for
> >that. If it finds a good sector it bombs out. I copied it on a Model III
> >with Trakcess.
> >
> >Neil
> >
> >On Dec 25, 2007 3:05 PM, Rogelio Perea <os9dude at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>Just unearthed this Radio Shack game for the CoCo: Shamus. Before running
> >>the program in my CoCo 3 I tried to back up the original disk and BACKUP
> >>bombed in the middle of the process, I heard the drives spin and the head
> >>positioning mechanism go through its motions until the familiar "multiple
> >>attempts to read" sound gave a warning of trouble... soon after came the
> >>I/O
> >>Error report.
> >>
> >>The game loads and plays with no problem so I assume copy protection is at
> >>work here. When running the Basic loader, right after the binary begins to
> >>LOADM there are a few repetitious reads from the drive that sound almost
> >>as
> >>a failed load but then the game starts; final check to see if game is
> >>pirated or not?
> >>
> >>Just curious... my disk zapper also fails to read one sector at the
> >>directory track...
> >>
> >>
> >>-=[ Rogelio ]=-
> >>
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> >>    
> >>
> >
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> >  
> >
> 
> 
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