Re: PET WordCraft tape port dongle

Do we need to warm up the cracking tools again?!

Dave

On Sun, 20 Apr 2025, 13:46 Rhialto, <rhialto_at_falu.nl> wrote:

> Hi all. I was looking into the PET version of WordCraft. It is one of
> the fairly few programs that uses the 8096 memory expansion. But it is
> protected with a dongle on the tape port, and I did not come across any
> cracked versions.
>
> Does anybody know how to emulate the dongle? Or have one? Or have a
> cracked version of WordCraft?
>
> After startup, WordCraft appears to work, and you get into command mode.
> However no command actually works, and when trying to get into editing
> mode (STOP key), it executes a JAM instruction.
>
> So far I found out that you get to the "interesting" part of the code if
> you set a read breakpoint on E811. The code being executed is
> "encrypted" in the file as loaded from disk. It gets decrypted before it
> is run, and re-encrypted afterwards. I haven't found a trivial way to
> disarm it yet.
>
> There is a ROM on zimmers.net that suggests it is for use with
> WordCraft, but if so, it's not the protection part, since installing it
> does't seem to make a difference (although according to Vice, it does
> read from the $9xxx area several times).
>
> -Olaf.
> --
> ___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert                            <rhialto/at/falu.nl>
> \X/ There is no AI. There is just someone else's work.           --I. Rose
>