From: Marko Mäkelä (Marko.Makela_at_HUT.FI)
Date: 2002-07-17 13:19:56
Andras, I can't directly answer your question, but here is an idea: > I would like to get a runnable version, as I've found a heap of > ASCII files (apparently the archive of such a BBS) and I'd like to > try some of the programs. Bit Machinator itself is also in the > collection... but of course it is encoded with Bit Machinator :-( The encoding cannot be that difficult, can it? First compose a table of the characters that appear in the encoding. I'd bet that it uses 64 different characters, which yields a 4:3 expansion ratio. Take the source code of uudecode or a BASE64 decoder as a starting point, and replace the character table. You need an encoded file and a piece of known plaintext. The Bit Machinator program serves both purposes: you already have the encoded file, and the plaintext probably starts with the bytes 01 08 xx 08, the beginning of a BASIC program. If you provided a link to the encoded representation of the program, you could get some reverse engineering assistance from me and others on this list. Marko Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list
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