isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ken Hancock) (07/28/90)
Since I've had over 100 replies to my posting about removing of copy protection, I decided to post my followup message: ----------------- Well, let's try this again. Some people reported that my last message was garbled. First, status. The program is coming along and preliminary version should be out this week or next week, depending on how much time we have outside of work. Second, general info. Some people, from the letters I've received, seem confused as to what this program will and will not do. This program will not miraculously deprotect any program that you have. There's no universal way to deprotect a program because every program is protected differently. What this program WILL allow you to do, is to receive "patches" from other netters and run them on your protected software to deprotect it. What's a patch, you say? A patch is a little script that our program will run. It will search through the programs on the COPY of your original disk, trying to find the piece of code it knows how to change. If it does find it, it will change the code, thereby deprotecting the software. If it doesn't find it, it may have partially patched your program, making it unusuable. That's why you always run patches on copies. Patches will also change depending on the version of the program you're trying to change. The patch for Leisure Suit Larry version 1.0 is different than version 1.05. How do I make a patch? It takes a knowledge of Mac programming and assembly language as well as the knowledge of how to use a debugger to step through the execution of a program and find out where and how to modify the program. If you're not familiar with any of these methods, you'll have to rely on others who have taken the time to deprotect their own copies and then make available the methods to you. UseNet seems like a good place for assistance. In my association with netters, they've always been very helpful. As of today, we've had 82 request to be on the mailing list. The main problem will be that there's very little to test, without having patches available. We have a couple patches that we've worked on, and one or two that people have sent to us. We need more, so that people will be able to try them out. If you've deprotected one of your programs, we'd like you to send us a short description of how you did it and we'll make it into a patch. What we're looking for is: "Search for 6007129FAA3B and replace it with 60074E714E71" or something similar. If you've deprotected a program that needs more explanation than that, send us more detail and we'll try to make our scripting routines be able to apply more elaborate patches. Any questions, comments, we're happy to hear 'em. -- Ken Hancock | This account needs a new home in MA... Isle Systems | Can you provide a link for it? isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu | It doesn't bite... :-)