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IPF support

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Reply 40 of 70, by NewRisingSun

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I would suggest that the version that adds pcjr. compatibility probably fixed the strength bug.

Impossible; as I mentioned before, the later version is identical to the earlier version, byte-for-byte, until the offset at which the protection code starts, and the protection is the last thing in the file. Therefore, any bugs present in one version will be in the other.

I will go ahead and look for the strength bug in the Sierra and Origin versions.

edit: just checked my Sierra On-Line version. Started game by creating a character normally, then hex-editing "PLAYER" offset 0x13=3 (time period 1990), offset 0x24=0x0e 0x1a (New San Antonio). offer 400 gold to hotel clerk, strength is increased from 40 to 54.

Checking Origin version...

edit: same thing with Origin version.

None of my Ultima II versions fail to raise Strength. So what does that mean?

Reply 41 of 70, by Great Hierophant

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NewRisingSun wrote:

None of my Ultima II versions fail to raise Strength. So what does that mean?

Congratulations, you can play the game as Sierra On-Line and Lord British intended! 😀 If the strength bug reared its unwelcome self at all on the IBM PC, it probably was limited to the early big-box release.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 42 of 70, by NewRisingSun

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Add the stand-alone version of "Boulder Dash II" to the list of games that can't be run from a Teledisk image. The reason: the game uses a weak bits protection scheme, meaning that repeated attempts at reading the same sector will yield different contents, which the game checks for. The Teledisk format can store that a sector has a bad CRC, but not that the content changes in subsequent attempts.

There is no string in track 40 from the duplication device that would allow identifying the name of the protection scheme, but the boot sector contains the string "MINDER03" and "(C) 1986 M. Sotoodeh", if that is any indication.

Reply 43 of 70, by coolhaken

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Found a very interesting situation.
The game "Rampage" has keydisk copy protection on track 9.
But if you dump it as a .img or .ima file, then you can use "IMGMOUNT" to mount it as A drive and play the game correctly in DOSBOX.
It funny, right ? 😉

Reply 44 of 70, by ripsaw8080

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DOSBox has loose out-of-bounds checking on INT 13h function 2 (read) and 4 (verify), so a game that uses a success result from those functions to test for the existence of unusual sectors might be satisfied. However, not all games are so simplistic with their disk checks.

Reply 45 of 70, by Great Hierophant

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Are you sure the game wasn't already precracked?

As far disk-based protections go, I think that if serious efforts to catalog all the disk based IBM PC protected games ever was attempted, the existing utilities like Anadisk, Teledisk, ImageDisk or even CopyIIPC + Snatchit will not be adequate to ensure all protection methods are supported. Too many unusual disks like Ultima II and Boulder Dash II likely exist. The Kyroflux raw stream interpreter is probably the best solution if someone ever implemented it.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 46 of 70, by coolhaken

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Great Hierophant wrote:

Are you sure the game wasn't already precracked?
As far disk-based protections go, I think that if serious efforts to catalog all the disk based IBM PC protected games ever was attempted, the existing utilities like Anadisk, Teledisk, ImageDisk or even CopyIIPC + Snatchit will not be adequate to ensure all protection methods are supported. Too many unusual disks like Ultima II and Boulder Dash II likely exist. The Kyroflux raw stream interpreter is probably the best solution if someone ever implemented it.

I am sure !
Because I dumped it as a .TD0 file and a .IMG file.
The .TD0 file works fine in PCE but the .IMG doesn't.
I have also tried to copy all files of that game to harddisk.
Unable to run it without the keydisk in drive A on a real machine.
RAMPAGE.EXE report "Key disk not found in drive a:"
IF you have this game, try it yourself ... 😉

Reply 47 of 70, by Zorix

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Thanks everyone for the replies. It was a very interesting read. I haven't checked back until now because I figured it's a lost cause. Neither side will budge from their position. What I have been dumping for SPS, I just create an img file along with it and I will just use those. Luckily, I only have a few games with copy protection so it doesn't bother me as much. And for the record, I think DosBox is right in only accepting GPL code. I just wish SPS would realize this.

Reply 48 of 70, by vicvan

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Hi, everyone. I have a lot of Copy Protected IBM PC games.
(It is over 200 kinds of Copy Protected.)

I've dumped most of Copy Protected games by Central Point's Trans Copy Optionboard (I don't have Kryoflux)

I've found that Copylock type of games are the following.

Copylock:

Blockbuster (Second release)
Gato (version 1.0 ~ 1.3)
Hardball (1987) <-- disk 2
Paperboy (Second release)
Topgun
Ultima II (Sierra On-Line version)
Ultima III (1984/1985 version)
King's Quest (128K version for PC)
Pinball Wizard
Sierra Championship Boxing (PCbooter version, not DOS version)
BC's Quest for Tires (Sierra On-Line copyright)

Copy Protection by using weak-bit method (Type 1) <-- Most of Mindscape's package

After Burner
Block Buster (Original release)
Bop'N' Wresting
Gauntlet (Original release)
Harrier Combat
Outrun
Paperboy (Original release)
Shadow Gate
Shinobi

Copy Protection by using weak-bit method (Type 2)

Blood Money
Horror Zombines From The Crypt
Lemmings
Rick Dangerous II

Microprose's copy protection on Track 4 (Side 0) (1987-1988)

Gunship
Sid Meier's Pirates

Microprose's copy protection on Track 38-39 (Side 0) (1988-1989)

Airborne Ranger
Dr.Doom's Revenge
F-15 Strike Eagle II
F-19 Stealth Fighter
M1 Tank Platoon
Red Storm Rising
Rick Dangerous
Savage
Stunt Track Racer
Sword of the Samurai
X-Men

dito, version 3.0 (Taito)

Arkanoid (Original & Second release)
Arkanoid II : Revenge of DoH (Original & Second release)
Bubble Bobble
Operation Wolf
Puzznic
Qix (Original & Second release)
Rambo III (Original & Second release)
Rastan
Renegade
Sky Shark

Reply 49 of 70, by Thraka

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Just as a note, the SPS team have announced on their forum that they are going to come out with a "create your own IPF" tool. So you won't need to send raw files to them for conversion anymore. Support for their IPF decoder library would be something I would love to see in DOSBox. Once another emulation system gets this plus all the great sound and video capabilities DOSBox offers, I would probably stop using DOSBox.

Reply 50 of 70, by NewRisingSun

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Thraka wrote:

Just as a note, the SPS team have announced on their forum that they are going to come out with a "create your own IPF" tool. So you won't need to send raw files to them for conversion anymore.

In other words, now an IPF file is no longer a guarantee for a genuine dump from a pristine original disk; instead, any IPF file you now encounter may have been sullied with saved high scores, saved games and bad sectors.

Thraka wrote:

Support for their IPF decoder library would be something I would love to see in DOSBox.

As mentioned before, the IPF decoder library has a notoriously restrictive license.

Thraka wrote:

Once another emulation system gets this plus all the great sound and video capabilities DOSBox offers,

It remains to be seen how other PC-based emulators deal with that license. It was simple enough for WinUAE because the only other format there is ADF. But for the PC, there are several legacy image formats with varying levels of support for copy-protected disks, including TeleDisk, CopyIIPC with SnatchIt and TransCopy. These should be accomodated if possible, as users should not be required to spend money on a Kryoflux device when a standard drive with TeleDisk is entirely sufficient for producing working images for most types of protections. Adding the kludge for an external user-supplied IPF decoder DLL, which is what the IPF library license as I understand it calls for, could cause major headaches. Besides, SPS never justified their choice of license, so I agree that it should not be accomodated.

Besides, DosBox does not even emulate the floppy disk controller at the hardware level yet, and the IPF library does not include code for emulating the NEC µPD765 controller used in PCs. The latter might be solved by taking code from the GPL-licensed PCE emulator though, which would allow for TeleDisk and TransCopy file support as well. Of course, I don't know if PCE's NEC controller emulation would be compatible with the IPF library.

Reply 51 of 70, by Stiletto

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NewRisingSun wrote:

As mentioned before, the IPF decoder library has a notoriously restrictive license.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, this is why Olivier Galibert of the MESS team "black-box" reverse-engineered it as a work-around.
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.c
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.

Until I hear otherwise, though, it's "MAME license" and still non-GPL though.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 52 of 70, by NewRisingSun

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Do I understand correctly that the problem with MAME's license is that it does not allow sale as part of a commercial product, which is bad because DosBox is the emulator of choice for Good Old Games and other commercial vendors of classic games?

Reply 53 of 70, by Stiletto

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NewRisingSun wrote:

Do I understand correctly that the problem with MAME's license is that it does not allow sale as part of a commercial product, which is bad because DosBox is the emulator of choice for Good Old Games and other commercial vendors of classic games?

For better or for worse, that's the case.

In certain cases (ex. if asked nicely), a few developers on the team will multi-license their code GPL, or BSD, or whatever, in external projects and MAME-license when distributed as part of MAME/MESS. Usually this is only possible with code historically contributed by a single author.

This is what became of the Voodoo emulation code in MAME, it was relicensed pure BSD, which enabled kekko to legally use it "wholecloth" within his DOSBox patch, though it seems he rewrote a bit.

I understand the licensing issues rather deeply these days. (I can't really say that of my 2002 self, eh Qbix?)

However, this is all somewhat off-topic, so in honor of the fine work Qbix, Harekiet and the team has done over the years, let's end the discussion on MAME/MESS here for now. PM me if you want to discuss this further, NewRisingSun.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 54 of 70, by Lord Nightmare

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Stiletto wrote:
As mentioned earlier in the thread, this is why Olivier Galibert of the MESS team "black-box" reverse-engineered it as a work-ar […]
Show full quote
NewRisingSun wrote:

As mentioned before, the IPF decoder library has a notoriously restrictive license.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, this is why Olivier Galibert of the MESS team "black-box" reverse-engineered it as a work-around.
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.c
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.h

Until I hear otherwise, though, it's "MAME license" and still non-GPL though.

As of earlier this year, those files are now 3-clause BSD licensed, which is GPL-compatible. Have fun, I guess.

LN

"When life gives you zombies... *CHA-CHIK* ...you make zombie-ade!"

Reply 55 of 70, by Kirben

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Would support for SCP format used by similar device (SuperCard Pro) be possible in future too? the SCP format specifications are available at http://www.cbmstuff.com/downloads.htm

Reply 56 of 70, by Stiletto

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Lord Nightmare wrote:
Stiletto wrote:
As mentioned earlier in the thread, this is why Olivier Galibert of the MESS team "black-box" reverse-engineered it as a work-ar […]
Show full quote
NewRisingSun wrote:

As mentioned before, the IPF decoder library has a notoriously restrictive license.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, this is why Olivier Galibert of the MESS team "black-box" reverse-engineered it as a work-around.
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.c
http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/lib/formats/ipf_dsk.h

Until I hear otherwise, though, it's "MAME license" and still non-GPL though.

As of earlier this year, those files are now 3-clause BSD licensed, which is GPL-compatible. Have fun, I guess.

Also, we're now on Github too:
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/s … rmats/ipf_dsk.c
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/s … rmats/ipf_dsk.h

😁

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 57 of 70, by NewRisingSun

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One still needs copy-protection-compatible Int25, Int13 and Floppy Disk Controller hardware emulation. My DOSBox-TC already does that with Transcopy images from Option Board and converted Kryoflux sources, and a few on this forum have graciously, and with one possible-bad-dump exception successfully, tested it. Maybe I'll get to adding IPF support later this year, unless someone tells me that this three-license thing is not compatible with DOSBox' license after all.

Of course, I don't actually have any IPF files from PC games, since I haven't heard anything back from SPS since I submitted a dozen or so games to them in early 2013...

Reply 58 of 70, by Dominus

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Soo, now that I have a kryoflux.. Anything new on adding ipf support? 😉

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