VOGONS


First post, by FabulousFurlough

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I'm an old school DOS games cracker, and throughout my career one thing that I always heard was "But did you ever crack Pirates!"? And the answer was always "No". Well, the time has come. I have an image of the original boot disk (Booter as you guys call it), and it runs under DOSBox. So, I need to debug it. Being a booter like it is, that means that the boot sector is loaded into 0000:7C00, and jumped to. I would like to add an option to the BOOT command (-D maybe?), that would break at 0000:7C00. I've found the "boot.com" code in dos_programs.cpp, and I've found the debugger stuff in debug.cpp. I added a DEBUG_AddBreakpoint function:

void DEBUG_AddBreakpoint(Bit16u seg, Bit32u off, bool once)
{
CBreakpoint::AddBreakpoint(seg, off, once);
}

And I added a call to it from boot:
/* set up stack at a safe place */
SegSet16(ss, 0x7000);
reg_esp = 0x100;
reg_esi = 0;
reg_ecx = 1;
reg_ebp = 0;
reg_eax = 0;
reg_edx = 0; //Head 0 drive 0
reg_ebx= 0x7c00; //Real code probably uses bx to load the image

DEBUG_AddBreakpoint(0, 0x7C00, true);

But when I run the boot command, it doesn't stop. Is the debugger not initialized yet? Did I miss something stupid? (Like the breakpoint is added disabled?)

Thanks guys, and keep up the great work!

Reply 1 of 17, by VileR

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Hah, I remember that handle from quite a few releases, I think. 😉

With the debug build of DOSBox you shouldn't need to add any fucntions - just go "DEBUG <executable>" or in this case, "DEBUG BOOT <image>", then you can add a breakpoint with e.g. "BP 0000:7C00" from the debugger console.

[ WEB ] - [ BLOG ] - [ TUBE ] - [ CODE ]

Reply 2 of 17, by FabulousFurlough

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Yes, thanks. We (THG) released A LOT of stuff during our "reign of terror". So you probably saw us around. 😀

That works fine, thanks for the pointer! (Even though I had already gotten my code to work).

If you need DOS cracks, let me know. I have some free time, and could look at them. 😁

Reply 3 of 17, by mothergoose729

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I haven't found a cracked version yet of Microsoft flight simulator 1 and 2. I also haven't been able to get them to boot into DOSBox either, so that might be why 🤣

Also Micro League Baseball (1984)
Congo Bongo (1984)
Pole Position (1982?)

Reply 4 of 17, by keropi

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Hey THG! I remember the group great stuff! Welcome aboard! 😀

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 5 of 17, by FabulousFurlough

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Thanks! Good to be here!

WRT Flight Simulator 1 & 2. Just grabbed 1. Having a look at it now. I only get a garbled screen. I saw something about this ONLY running in CGA mode. Googling how to "lock" DOSBox to CGA now, so that I can tell if I get something GOOD on the screen, vs. something bad.

Reply 6 of 17, by mothergoose729

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FabulousFurlough wrote:

Thanks! Good to be here!

WRT Flight Simulator 1 & 2. Just grabbed 1. Having a look at it now. I only get a garbled screen. I saw something about this ONLY running in CGA mode. Googling how to "lock" DOSBox to CGA now, so that I can tell if I get something GOOD on the screen, vs. something bad.

It's in the DOSBOX conf under machine.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf

Set the value to CGA and the the Dosbox cycles to fixed and 315 to emulate an XT.

Reply 7 of 17, by FabulousFurlough

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mothergoose729 wrote:

It's in the DOSBOX conf under machine.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf

Set the value to CGA and the the Dosbox cycles to fixed and 315 to emulate an XT.

THANKS! Found it RIGHT after I posted that. If you know about Flight Sim I, please help. I boot it, I get to choose monitor type, and game mode (I tried Demo, and regular play), and I get the bottom half of the screen is an instrument cluster, but the top half is garbled. But! It's not crashed. Some of the keys change things on the cluster. So, if you know how to PLAY it. Please give it a try. If it works, "how can I crack it?" 😁

Reply 8 of 17, by Qbix

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Isn't that the div by zero/overflow implementation of the game ? (which assumes an old style div, while newer versions of flight sim want the new style...)

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 9 of 17, by Scali

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VileRancour wrote:

Hah, I remember that handle from quite a few releases, I think. 😉

Yea, The Humble Guys, and the nick Fabulous Furlough sound very familiar 😀

There's a bunch of THG cracktros on pouet: http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1673
Check out the NFO here:
http://www.pouet.net/prod_nfo.php?which=75164
"Fabulous Furlough Hates the game "Pirates""

😀

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 10 of 17, by FabulousFurlough

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Qbix wrote:

Isn't that the div by zero/overflow implementation of the game ? (which assumes an old style div, while newer versions of flight sim want the new style...)

I have no idea about this. I'm just a protection bloodhound. 😀 Are you saying that it's WORKING? Or that this is what it's going to do regardless?

Reply 11 of 17, by VileR

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mothergoose729 wrote:
I haven't found a cracked version yet of Microsoft flight simulator 1 and 2. I also haven't been able to get them to boot into D […]
Show full quote

I haven't found a cracked version yet of Microsoft flight simulator 1 and 2. I also haven't been able to get them to boot into DOSBox either, so that might be why 🤣

Also Micro League Baseball (1984)
Congo Bongo (1984)
Pole Position (1982?)

Pretty sure that all of the above have already been rendered playable outside of their original media. 😉

[ WEB ] - [ BLOG ] - [ TUBE ] - [ CODE ]

Reply 12 of 17, by mothergoose729

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VileRancour wrote:
mothergoose729 wrote:
I haven't found a cracked version yet of Microsoft flight simulator 1 and 2. I also haven't been able to get them to boot into D […]
Show full quote

I haven't found a cracked version yet of Microsoft flight simulator 1 and 2. I also haven't been able to get them to boot into DOSBox either, so that might be why 🤣

Also Micro League Baseball (1984)
Congo Bongo (1984)
Pole Position (1982?)

Pretty sure that all of the above have already been rendered playable outside of their original media. 😉

Probably, I just haven't been able to find them. The images I have are all 160k or 360k booters.

Reply 15 of 17, by mothergoose729

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The mods are squirrelly about that. It's some unspecified number, and maybe also a combination of days logged in or something like that. Apparently the boards got hit hard by spammers at one point.

Reply 17 of 17, by krcroft

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FF, I just noticed this in the About screen while doing some play testing. Thought it might bring back some memories...

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