Re: PET WordCraft tape port dongle

From: Craig Taylor <ctalkobt_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2025 09:57:23 -0400
Message-ID: <CAE6OHdXUKY64ey6dq0GixzNPQgP4XFQRqCNWcMxurCsLsCh-jA_at_mail.gmail.com>
See: http://bitbarn.co.uk/dryfire/dcpe.php#pets for how to emulate.

On Sun, Apr 20, 2025 at 9:35 AM David Roberts <daver21145_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>
Received on 2025-04-20 15:00:10

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