Well, in a programming language like Java, I might use a subroutine like this:

public void test() {

System.out.println("Blah blah");

}

The System.out.println piece says, hey, go use some code written elsewhere.

JSR in Assembly is sort of the same thing. You're saying that you want to go run some code in a different location. That's all.

I would imagine that looking for JSR commands is a big part of hacking those old games because it is unlikely that the copy protection was added right from the start. They probably wrote it later in a game's development. You want the copy protection to check .... something at the start of the game, thus you'd jump to a subroutine that would start checking to see if the disk was legit.

I understood that as well as I understood the book.

Well, JSR is Jump to Subroutine in Assembly. The addresses like this: $C000 are (someone correct me if I am wrong) memory addresses, and those are easy to comprehend because they are just using base sixteen to represent locations.

When my friend Klatuu* and I formed the OK Krackers in the late 1980s, each of us had a role. I like to think that I was the Jobs to his Wozniak. I was the loud teenager with a figurative megaphone and a million connections. Klatuu was 30 years older than me and had a job, which meant he had money. He could afford to do things like buy games and call long distance. Neither one of us were any good at cracking games, but we had fun pretending.

Then we met a guy named Bran Mak Morn, a guy who actually [i]could[/i] crack games. I went over to his house once and watched him trying to crack Defender of the Crown. He was using a program and was scrolling through machine code and I just remember thinking it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. He wasn't using some program like I used to crack games. He was literally manually going through the code, finding the copy protection, and removing it. Bran quickly became member number three of the OK Krackers. I think Klatuu occasionally gave him boxes of blank disks and supplied him with original programs to keep him happy.

Anyway, one time I asked Bran (I don't even remember his real name) how he learned how to do what he did and he gave me his copy of Kracker Jax Revealed. I'm pretty sure it was a photocopy of the book that someone else purchased, or maybe not, but either way it was like a book of magic to me. Each chapter would give you specific examples of copy protection in different games and tell you where to look for the copy protection. I too k the book home and read it a million times and none of it ever made sense to me -- not then, and not now.

They released three different editions of Kracker Jax Revealed before combining them into The Kracker Jax Revealed Trilogy.

http://www.jamtronix.com/files/c64_docs/the_kracker_jax_revealed_trilogy.pdf

I just skimmed through it and like I said, while the concepts make sense to me, the actual commands might as well be written in Martian.

(*BBS Handles had to be at least six characters long, which is why he was Klatuu and not Klatu, and why I was always Jack Flack and not just Flack.)

Did you hear about that new CRPG someone is making against Apple ii hardware?

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Bruce, were you an Apple guy growing up for the most part, then?[/quote]

Yep.

Still am, for the most part.

6502 forever!

I grew up on this though:

http://jope.fi/xcopy/

By the time I got a PC, CD-ROMs were out.

I enjoy these conversations about old piracy!

Bruce, were you an Apple guy growing up for the most part, then?

Copy II Plus was one of the three things to try when you were copying Apple ][ games.

First was Disk Muncher 1.0. Super fast and worked with most things.

If that failed, you'd try Copy II+, and if that couldn't do it, you'd get out Locksmith 5.0, which required a lot more thought about what options to try.

If Locksmith couldn't do it you pretty much had to wait until cracked versions with hilarious splash screens started showing up on the BBSes.

Should the need arise...

[img]http://imgur.com/Wds8Tw6.jpg[/img]

I *think* the first version of Copy II was released for Apple II computers (thus the name). Along with Copy II PC there was also Copy II 64/128, although I don't know anyone who used it (Fast Hack'em was the go to copying software on the 64, until Maverick was released).

My dad had the Copy II PC hardware board, which made bit-for-bit copies and would even allow you to copy Apple II diskettes on a PC. When I said in Commodork that I came by my habits honestly, I wasn't kidding. ;)

Fast Hack'em also had what you were describing for Copy II PC. On Fast Hack'em they were called parameters (which I embarrassingly pronounced as "pair-uh-meters" for a while) that you would apply. So if you wanted to copy Summer Games you would select the Summer Games parameter, copy the disk, and then it would apply whatever patch or alteration needed to make the copy work. Pretty cool stuff for that long ago.

I have a copy of that[url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/i1xlvup6no11ig9/COPYIIPC.EXE?dl=0] someplace.[/url] I used to use it at work for backing up CNC programs when we used floppies. Cant believe it's still being used anymore.

Oh. Wikipedia says that copyiipc.exe was first released in 1983. Wow.

Also, I found this page and it's not the version I am thinking of. This just tried to copy floppies, I guess:

http://www.danielsays.com/ss-gallery-dos-copy-ii-pc-10.html

I can't find a screenshot of this program, but I may try to run it and take one. We used to make copies of games on the PC by running this program. It would prompt you for the source floppy disk, and you'd insert it in the drive... it would read the contents and then break the protection and copy it to a blank floppy disk inserted later.

I recall that there was a menu in the program where you'd select the game you wanted. It seemed like it had everything, but there weren't that many choices. Which I guess is right, this would have been maybe 1987, 1988 I guess? The number of:

- Desirable
- Copy-protected
- Floppy diskette games

On the PC, well... there weren't that many, to be honest.