DjayBee

Where/how did you find this message? I searched for it on the ATR, the ATX and in RAM while it was running. I want to search if other titles contain the same or a similar message because this copy protection is used by several games and publishers (i.e. Broderbund, Epyx and Accolade).

This is not possible because the game stops writing back the sector when the counter reaches $23 (35). The whole code segment is contained in the documentation file inside the crack's archive. 4E34: AD 00 2D LDA $2D00 4E37: C9 23 CMP #$23 # counter < $23 ? 4E39: B0 1B BCS $4E56 # no => go ahead 4E3B: A2 05 LDX #$05 # yes => modify code ... 4E3D: A9 00 LDA #$00 4E3F: 9D 52 62 STA $6252,X 4E42: 9D F8 63 STA $63F8,X 4E45: 9D 71 64 STA $6471,X 4E48: CA DEX 4E49: 10 F4 BPL $4E3F 4E4B: EE 00 2D INC $2D00 # ... increment load counter (1st byte in sector) ... 4E4E: A9 57 LDA #$57 4E50: 8D 02 03 STA DCOMND 4E53: 20 53 E4 JSR DSKINV # ... and write sector back 4E56: AD 5E E4 LDA SETVBV+2 # go ahead

I just noticed that I forgot to answer. If byte 00=00 is then you probably have the disk write-protected and the game has not incremented the counter on the disk yet. So either the washouts are random and not based on a certain value of the load-counter or it might be a result of failing copy protection. Could your disk start failing?

The Tail of Beta Lyrae also has identical "content" with several track formats. Look here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/158241-the-tail-of-beta-lyrae-washouts/page-5?do=findComment&comment=3776093 It might be worth to add the other dumps to your archive as well.

We now have four different ATX-dumps (Farb, Atarimania and two from Zarxx). They differ (only) in these aspects: The load-counter (1st byte of sector 365) The "serial number" (bytes $78-$7D of sector 365 - counting from $00) The format of the last track (duplicate / missing sectors) - This might be related to bad dumps. The bad-CRC sectors 9-15 (Single bytes with various values and ranges filled with either $00 or $FF) Various sectors are filled with either $00 or $FF The game's code is identical between all of them. If someone wants to go further in analyzing the game, I have attached everything I currently have. The archives always contain a plain sector-copy of the ATX to work on. The crack is based off Farb's dump and has the counter zeroed. One weird fact I found is that the track alignment protection is deactivated. The timing results are always overwritten with $00: 4DB7: AD 14 D0 LDA PAL ; seems to check for PAL 4DBA: 29 00 AND #$00 ; but ignores everything 4DBC: D0 06 BNE $4DC4 ; so will always be =$00 4DBE: 8D B5 2E STA $2EB5 ; and overwrites the result-bytes 4DC1: 8D D9 2E STA $2ED9 ; of the alignment check Tail of Beta Lyrae - Atarimania.zip Tail of Beta Lyrae - Farb.zip Tail of Beta Lyrae - Zarxx-post77.zip Tail of Beta Lyrae - Zarxx-post88.zip Tail of Beta Lyrae - Crack.zip

In part this shipping problem is US-home-made by greedy shipping services. I sent a few floppies from Germany to Farb for dumping and paid some 6-7 US$ for registered mail. Shipping them back to me cost twice as much. And I doubt that Germany is a class-3 country. When Bryan sent me an UAV Video Upgrade he had to send it as a boxed package and paid some 10 US$ for it. The UAV is so small it could easily have been mailed in a small jiffy bag for probably a fraction of the price but he was not allowed to.

I did not post the "donor" of my patch yesterday because the file crashed. Meanwhile I found out that it is a Polish version and jumped directly into the XL-OS for no obvious reason. Compared side-by-side to your version it shows some more slight differences. Colony (1987)(Bulldog Software)(GB)(a).xex is the unmodified file I found on atarionline.pl Colony (1987)(Bulldog Software)(GB)(p).xex is patched so it a) loads on 400/800 and b) can be compared side-by-side with your version. Colony (1987)(Bulldog Software)(GB)(a).xex Colony (1987)(Bulldog Software)(GB)(p).xex

I found another different version of Colony and blindly replaced the sourcecode-area which loads to RAM $8600-$87ff with the data from that dump. Since I have no clue of the game I cannot try if this patch makes sense. colonyp.zip

You only need a JRE for WUDSN-IDE to work. And it works fine with the latest JRE 8 Update 131. The easiest way to install it in Windows is using JAC!'s "ready-to-run" version which can be found here: http://www.wudsn.com/index.php/ide/installation You only have to accept that it can only live in C:\jac.

Run for the Money (1986)(Thunder Mountain)(US) neither does match it's own copyright message, nor it's entry in Atarimania. Both say that it was published 1983 by "Scarborough Systems". The images from the torrent and Atarimania are identical - with the exception of the removed protection in Atarimania's version. So the question is if this is a typo in the filename or a re-release by a different company which according to its list of titles on Atarimania made re-releases of different educational titles, including one other from Scarborough Systems. http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft.awp?system=8&type=G&publisher=1653&step=25

I doubt that I will be able to supply anything new because I do not have a large collection from BITD and therefore am only acting on stuff which is public available. Btw.: Check the Wiki's HTTPS-configuration / certificates. Current browsers deny to open the site.

I wouldn't guess so but then it makes sense from a preservation perspective. But maybe he can jump in and knows something about these $1A-sectors. This value puzzles me for a long time because there are many images which have all "empty" sectors filled with $1A instead of a plain $00. My guess is that it either depends on the disk duplication machine or the dumping equipment. Which would also make sense in relation to the different sector interleaves of Space Eggs.

A short message from "dump QA" (I attached what I have to fix these.). Atarischreiber (1983)(Atari)(DE)(NTSC) FIle name is nonsense there is no relation to NTSC Atari Vereinsverwaltung (19xx)(Atari)(DE)(NTSC)(Disk 1 of 2 Side A)[bASIC] You put the bad dumps into the torrent and there is also no relation to NTSC Print Shop Companion, The (198x)(Broderbund Software)(US)(Side A) Year: 1985, needs 64K, is version 1.1 Drelbs (1983)(Synapse Software)(US)[OS-B] Might be 810-only (you have to select 1050 in Altirra to make it run). Perhaps somebody can verify this on hardware Square Pairs (1983)(Scholastic)(US)[OS-B] Needs BASIC Wargame Construction Set (1986)(SSI)(US)(Disk 1 of 2 Side A)(Editor) is version 1.0 Space Eggs (1981)(Sirius Software)(US)[a] The only difference to the non-[a] version is the filler byte for unused sectors ($1A instead of $00) Lasermania + Robbo Konstruktor (1990)(L.K. Avalon)(PL)(Side A)(Lasermania) Lasermania + Robbo Konstruktor (1990)(L.K. Avalon)(PL)(Side B)(Robbo Konstruktor) both are PAL-only and need 64K All these L.K. Avalon titles need 64K: Wladcy Ciemnosci (1993-05)(L.K. Avalon)(PL)(Side A)[!] Klatwa (1992-06)(L.K. Avalon)(PL)(Side A) Kampania wrzesniowa (1993-04)(L.K. Avalon)(PL) Smus (1993-09)(L.K. Avalon)(PL) ? A.D. 2044 (1991-12)(L.K. Avalon)(PL)(Side A) (only true for .cas - .atr works with 48K) Zybex (1992)(L.K. Avalon)(PL) Constellation (1992)(L.K. Avalon)(PL) Hellcat Ace (1982)(MicroProse Software)(US)[bASIC] Hellcat Ace (1982)(MicroProse Software)(US)[bASIC][a][p] NTSC-only - In PAL you can not type a number to select mission Conversational German (1981)(Atari)(US)(Tape 4 of 5 Side B)(Unit 8 - I Like...)[a fixed][CLOAD+RUN][bASIC].ogg Conversational German (1981)(Atari)(US)(Tape 5 of 5 Side B)(Unit 10 - Actions)[a fixed][CLOAD+RUN][bASIC].ogg Both files are exactly identical which seems unlikely U.S.A.A.F. v1.1 (1985)(SSI)(US) game disk is missing (Side B) Mech Brigade v1.0 (1985)(SSI)(US)(Side A)(Scenario) Bad dump (missing sector in file FULDA) Super Hangman (198x)(Main Street Publishing)(US)[bASIC] Superman - The Game (1986)(Main Street Publishing)(US) Probably bad dumps because these titles make no check for protection and have several bad sectors in unused areas of the disk Atari Vereinsverwaltung (19xx)(Atari)(DE).atx.zip Mech Brigade v1.0 (1985)(SSI)(US)(Side A)(Scenario)(p).atx.zip U.S.A.A.F. v1.1 (1985)(SSI)(US)(Side B).atr

Slight correction: It's actually two tables to diffenrentiate between PAL and NTSC.

Works for me. /me is happy to not have a dictator. SCNR

It runs with my 600XL and in Altirra. Did you test it on real hardware? I intentionally only remove the disk protections but not checks for enhanced drives etc. Some Broderbund titles crash if they find any. This might not have been one of my best ideas and maybe I will eventually return and remove these checks as well. This is correct and the reason why I asked to extract the archives in sequence on top of each other. A few titles have been published exactly the same by more than one publisher. This also leads to duplicates like for Hacker. As a rule I follow Farb's file naming and therefore have to rename files from time to time. DUe to this the following files are actually obsolete: Arcade Machine, The (1982)(Broderbund Software)(US)(Side A).atr Counting (1983)(MECC)(US)[bASIC].atr Filemanager 800+.atr Formula 1 Racing.atr Rescue on Fractalus! (1985)(Activision)(GB).atr S.A.G.A. 06 - Strange Odyssey (1982)(Adventure International)(US)(Side B).atr Farb is about to release a new version of his torrent. After incorporating the needed changes I will release an archive with the full set. Stay tuned.

Farb's latest torrent can be found in this post: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/page-13?do=findComment&comment=3553365 But he soon will be releasing an updated one. And as it happens I forgot some images in the archive - see attachment. ATXcracks04-update.zip

The reason for the different number of entries: Farb's torrent contains software which was not protected at all. The full list contains every image I looked at and the archives only software which was protected or had to be modified in any way.

It has been seven months since my last release but now it is time to release my fourth batch of cracks which brings the whole set to some 420 images. A full list with all titles' names is also attached to this post. New publishers: Access, Accolade, AMC Verlag, Datamost, L.K. Avalon, Mindscape, Spinnaker Lots of stuff I found elsewhere and many redone Datasoft titles (most notable Lost Tomb and Mr. Do). Also some additional Smash Hits, but there are still many missing. Anybody out there with original disks of Atari Smash Hits? If you want the complete set then you need to fetch all four archives. Unpack all into one directory but start with the first one because several images have been replaced over time. Have fun ATXcracks04.zip CSS-Full-List.txt CSS-All-Publishers.txt

Try the attached one. Pole Position (1984)(Datasoft)(US)!.atr

Try these. The !-version is a crack of Farb's ATX, the a-version is a modified version of Atarimania's. I would also like to know the difference between these two versions except that you have to push the button at the copyright screen of the a-version. Summer Games (1984)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)!m.atr Summer Games (1984)(Epyx)(US)(Side B)!.atr Summer Games (1984)(Epyx)(US)(Side A)ap.atr Summer Games (1984)(Epyx)(US)(Side B)a.atr

If someone wants protected images for Tusker or the "C:" Emulator ... Disclaimer: They are DYI and not real dumps. L.D.S. C Emulator (1991)(Liberal Dreams Software)(DE)(p).pro.zip Tusker (1993)(Mirage)(PL)(p).atx.zip

It contains one of these BASIC-autoloaders which crash if BASIC is not active. Enable BASIC and be happy.

Further investigation brought this up: After a successful check of the copy protection Print Star II sets memory location $9F00 to $4F. This can be (ab-)used for a more elegant crack: Let DOS do the dirty work and add a binary load segment to AUTORUN.SYS which loads only this single byte to $9F00. Unfortunately Print Star I still has to be tricked by the above mentioned non-incrementing of the disk buffer for the 2nd read and a changed 1st byte of sector 729. @Fred_M: Your dump is bad. Sector 324 does not contain the copy protection but real code. Your dump has a DOS boot sector in this place and therefore crashes after reading this sector. I am keeping my fingers crossed to have found everything needed. The B-sides are unchanged and attached only for completeness. Print Star (1988)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side A).atr Print Star (1988)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side B).atr Print Star II (1989)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side A).atr Print Star II (1989)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side B).atr Print Star II-24 (1991)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side A).atr Print Star II-24 (1991)(AMC Verlag)(DE)(Side B).atr

The attached version runs fine for me ... ... except the Special Tapecover which loops on sector 28 of side B. This is true both for original and cracked version. Similar to Print Star the protection reads sector 1039 twice and expects the first byte to be different in both copies. The buffer gets incremented only by 1 for the 2nd read. The crack is to increment by 0 and have the 2nd byte of the sector to differ from the 1st byte. PSTAR24A-hopefully-cracked.atr