Date   : Fri, 11 Aug 2000 15:40:21 +0100 (BST)
From   : Peter Hatton <bramley@...>
Subject: Re: More tape to disc transfer fun: Alien 8

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, F. Haroon wrote:

> > Not sure how I did it, but I think it involved the
> > use of the Watford 32k
> > shadow board.  I think the trick was to put the
> > loader program into the
> > shadow memory, and let it run.  This would stop the
> > protection routine
> > locking the break key up (As it was writting to the
> > shadow memory).  Once
> > it had decoded, hit break, and copy the code from
> > the shadow memory to the
> > main memory and save for later use.
> 
> OK, so will that enable transfer of Alien 8 to disk? 
> Is part of the decryption process, revealing the true
> load/exec addresses of the files?  Or are the files
> too big to have a start address of &1900+ ?

Yes.  Once I had the decrypted loader routine, I was able to modify it
so that it would load the program off tape, and then save it to disc.  A
lot of heavy use of a 6502 diasembler was certainly needed, in order to
exrtact to load and exec addresses!  Bare in mind, this was for Knight
Lore, and not Alien 8, but from what everyone has said, it sounds a very
identical protection method.

And anyway, you can load programs as low as &1100, providing you didn't do
any file handling with the DFS.

Peter Hatton
E-mail:  bramley@...
Webpage: http://www.termisoc.org/~bramley
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