> This sounds very much like the protection on Paraoh (right name?) - where > you had to navigate through a purple(ish) maze with egyptian style music in > the background, avoiding naties like snakes. A bit of code was loaded from > a hidden file (the directory had to be changed before it could be loaded, > and changed again afterwards to rehide it) into the base of the screen > memory ($20000) where upon it was called. This sounds like the system used in the old Sinclair Production Kit, protected fast load basic programs, with some code held in hidden files. In older versions, the file was called no name (i.e. FLP1_) but when subdirectories were 'invented' this got changed to a single space "FLP1_ " which you often couldn't see as it was the last file on the cartridge so you didn't notice the filename.
Some software didn't have copy protection as such and was simple written to run from specific addresses. OK on a 128KB QL then on expanded memory systems the code wasn't where it expected to be and BANG! when you tried to call or execute it. If you can find copies of 4Matter and Locksmithe from Zitasoft, these had facilities to remove protection on some of these types of protection. Sadly, they also would only work on certain QL systems (I used to have a copy in DJC days which would not run on a Gold Card system). Several people have over the years managed to bypass this copy protection method and create disk based copies and so on. Not wanting to be a killjoy, remember that many old QL programs are still copyrighted and shouldn't be copied without permission. As far as I know, there's no harm though in producing programs which patch the originals to run on modern systems though. -- Dilwyn Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.soft.net.uk/dj/index.html
