Re: PET WordCraft tape port dongle

From: Didier Derny <didier_at_aida.org>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2025 21:04:15 +0200
Message-ID: <05e43409-b03b-4cab-891c-548a7e59d32f_at_aida.org>
no way to find a working workcraft with it's dongle ?

and put a logic analyser to analyse the transfers ?


then eventually reproduce the dongle with a small fpga to understand how 
the system works ?



Le 20/04/2025 à 20:22, Rhialto a écrit :
> 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
>>>>
Received on 2025-04-20 21:00:01

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