Re: PET WordCraft tape port dongle

On Sun 20 Apr 2025 at 09:57:23 -0400, Craig Taylor wrote:
> See: http://bitbarn.co.uk/dryfire/dcpe.php#pets for how to emulate.

Interesting find! Especially the link near the end
http://bitbarn.co.uk/dryfire/dcpe.zip which contains some code to run on
the hardware from the page. It doesn't seem to be 100% complete
though, since the implementation of "dongle = shiftIn(dataIn, clockIn,
LSBFIRST);" seems to be missing.

An interesting discrepancy is that the text mentions an 8-bit shift
register, and the WordCraft code shifts 15 bits in (and MSB, not LSB
first). This would fit better with the serial numbers, for instance one
instance of WordCraft claims it is serial number 16105.

WordCraft also reads from both tape ports in parallel. I'm not sure if 2
dongles are required, or if it simply accepts a dongle in either
position.

So I have made an emulation of something, but it doesn't convince
WordCraft yet.

> 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
> >>
> >