Vorpal Copy Protection for Commodore 64 disk

LordCrass 

Here's a cheat sheet on my experiences with making a copy/image various C64 protections as of v.99:



I always leave the option for "index sensor" set to "required" for both reads and writes.

Rapidlok: tracks 1-36 in SPLICE mode. Even though the disks are mastered to the index hole, the key track requires the SPLICE handling for writing back to a real disk. For a G64 image, tracks 1-36 INDEX mode works.

V-Max: tracks 1-40 INDEX mode should work for almost all of these. There are a few I've encountered that had the directory track unaligned and required SPLICE mode (Rastan and Renegade). After Burner requires SPLICE mode.

Vorpal 1: tracks 1-35 SPLICE mode.

Vorpal 2: currently requires reading in SPLICE mode, 2 revolutions and then writing back out manually from the analyzer after specifying start/end. Hopefully added to SPLICE handling in a future release.

EA track 2 PirateSlayer: Some of these disks are mastered to the index hole and can be copied in INDEX, but some (eg. Skate or Die!) are not. Use the SPLICE mode when in doubt, tracks 1-35.

EA fat track 34/35: tracks 1-33 INDEX mode. Tracks 34-35 in INDEX mode with half-tracks enabled. Have "wipe tracks" turned off when writing 34-35. Writing out the whole disk with half-tracks will generally result in a copy full of errors that won't load. You will need to image 1-35 with half-tracks and INDEX mode if you want to make a G64.

Xemag fat track 35/36: Same as EA fat track, but use SPLICE mode as all Xemag disks I've seen so far are aligned about 1/8 of a rotation off the index mark. There's at least one Xemag game that has the fat track on track 6/7 (F-15 Strike Eagle).

Bounty Bob Strikes Back: Copy tracks 1-11 with INDEX mode on and half-tracks on. Copy tracks 12-35 with INDEX mode on and half-tracks off. Make sure to write-protect the copy or it will fail to load. Currently, the byte count protection on track 12 will very likely fail if you write the copy on a drive that spins at a different rate than the one it was read from. If this happens, the title screen will appear but it will hang on the "Player 1" screen when you try to start.

Others: The majority of original disks can be mastered with the INDEX mode option enabled, but if you encounter difficulty, or are unsure, leave this option disabled and let the software determine where the data is. Always leave half-tracks off unless you know the protection uses them, and even then, only copy the half-tracks and surrounding full tracks with this option enabled.

I've noticed that some of my originals show up with errors when read from the PC HD drive; errors that don't appear when reading the same disks with the 1541. I'm not sure why, but it may have something to do with the smaller read/write head of the HD drive being a little more finicky about the data it reads.

Under Drive Settings, for Index Sensor, set both read and write to "required". This will result in a copy that is aligned exactly like the source. Not really required, but if you're going through all this trouble, might as well be exact, right?

Put your source disk in, and choose the option to read the disk to a flux image file, with 2 revolutions. Read the disk in.

Switch to the analyzer mode and put your blank disk in the drive. Change the Device to Image File and click the Read Image button to read in the image you just made. Take the check out of "re-seek track 0" to save some wear and tear on your drive.

Make sure you are at track 1 and the cursor in the data window is at the very top right (Position 0). In the "Find Pattern" box, put in "DADADADADADADADA" (8 x $DA). Now you'll be repeating the following steps for tracks 1-17 and 19-35:

1. Click "Find Pattern".

2. If nothing found, increase Bit Shift by 1, then goto step 1.

3. If pattern found, look at the position of the vertical scroll bar to the right of the data window. Since there's 2 revolutions, it's in the data set twice. You want to find the 2nd occurrence of this pattern, so it should be in the bottom half of the data. You can also look at the Length and compare to the Position it was found at for a more precise measurement. If you found the pattern in the first revolution, set the cursor in the data window to be after the block of DADADA that you found, goto step 1.

4. Once you've found the pattern in the 2nd revolution, the write splice can be seen right where this DADADA pattern changes to another pattern (repeating 5 nibble pattern of binary 10011010101001101010)

5. Click on the byte where this change takes place, then click "Set Flux End".

6. Click "Write Image" to write the track to the physical disk.

7. Increase track to the next whole integer, and repeat again at step 1.

For track 18, you're looking for a different pattern. Search for "FFFF52572529". Again, find it in the 2nd rotation of the image. Once you find it, scroll back about $65 bytes or so in the image to see where a block of $55 or $AA bytes ends and another pattern starts after. The write splice is where these two patterns join. Click on the transition byte in the data window, then click "Set Flux End" and click "Write Track".

Extra tracks were most prominently used by the GMA/SecuriSpeed loader, which appears on most Firebird, Domark, Hewson, and Electric Dreams releases. It was also used by some Sega, System 3, Mirrorsoft, and other titles in the form of "Para-Protect" which stored data on track 40. Many other protections also use extra tracks, Rapidlok (Accolade and others), V-Max (all versions), Pirate Slayer (all versions, which is EA), Keydos (Activision), Prodos (Also EA), Vorpal (Epyx), and many later protections in the European market of the 1990's (Hureka Sprint and Timex as well as more simple track/sector loaders). (Heureka Sprint is just a variation on Vorpal, which does superfast loading by having its own version of GCR encoding which can be decoded on the fly but wasting diskspace. Timex never used an extra track IMHO but always used a GCR-0-byte plus mark on track 18 sector 18 - Antitrack)