Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Roberts
I love that your "tips and tricks" involves sector editing the disks! I guess that would be the 80's equivalent of downloading a mod?
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Not quite - it's much more "patch the code by hand typing"...
If you had the very best sector editors, you could apply large chunks of patch.
It was a nightmare if you got an address wrong. And some of the protection schemes prevented suitable backups before sector editing around the protection code. (And that was often just a JMP __ __ and maybe a MOV __ __ __ to set the result flag to a valid result if the program stored the check state to prevent just a simple JMP).
It was unlawful, but extremely common, to apply cracks to stuff you'd bought - including autoduel - just to defeat the copy protection. But there were many neat things a skilled coder could add, and simply post as bytecode in Hexidecimal, telling you, "Type this in sector X, starting at location Y: __ __ __ __"
A typpical hack might have a dozen such items with anywhere from 5 to 50 characters per location.
Thinking ASM makes my head hurt.