Cartridge keys and emulation

[DoG]

That is not mine, I've just found it on AF

Yes, of course. I shouldn't have quoted you. The question is for everyone on the forum. :D

I tried a bit of googling, eBay and checking in XgPro (TL866 programmer) if it could handle it. Not much to be found but I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

[UnnamedVillain]

Use for example ALL-07, Labtool-48, Chipmaster6000, AllPro-88 or similar programmer from the past :)

[troed]

How do you program an Altera EP600 or an Intel 5C060?

I spent some time researching that this evening. You either buy used original equipment - around 100€ should do it - or you buy a modern programmer that's able to. That option seems to run you 1000-2000€.

Will look at UV's suggestion tomorrow - hopefully a bit easier to swallow.

(decompiled .jed posted over on the other forum for no obvious reason)

[Dave345]

(decompiled .jed posted over on the other forum for no obvious reason)

There's a patch been created, it appears to work in software so next step hopefully is to write to hardware.

[troed]

Steinberg Masterscore. Blue dongle, but it's exactly the same (PCB, IC) as black dongle Avalon, for example.

masterscore.JPG

masterscore_open.JPG

masterscore_top.JPG

masterscore_bottom.JPG

[troed]

I've now implemented two pieces of software: "dumper" and "dongle emulator". The first will extract, by running on an ST with the original Masterscore dongle inserted, a bunch of data. Note that this is not the "equations" that would allow anybody to make a clone of the dongle. It's more like the results of doing challenge-response queries to the dongle.

The emulator then patches the Masterscore program, and any files it in turn loads, to talk to itself rather than a dongle. The emulator makes use of the data grabbed by the dumper to present exactly the same responses to the original program as a dongle would've.

And as far as I can see this is working perfectly. I can click on anything in Masterscore while running it in Hatari and it all works.

"My" challenge is now to generalize these so that I won't need to create one new set of programs for every original program/dongle pair. I still have some work to do there.

However, I consider the original thesis - inspired by the works of beel1 - to have been proven. It's fully possible to preserve working "black/blue" dongles so that the owners of original programs can keep using them, whether it's on original hardware or in ST emulators with midi support (like Hatari).

/Troed

[JezC]

@troed That's fabulous progress!

I have a number of original Steinberg & C-Lab dongles for use on my real Ataris...but having the option to run the protected s/w under emulation will be a great help when trying some ideas out!

:thumbup:

[troed]

Unfortunately I think I only have one working dongle of suitable version - Masterscore. Just sent off a beta version of the app intended for Masterscore to someone for test. I should be able to make a version of the app for any other software, I think, but can't test it myself. Since I have the Avalon sw I could try with that if you have that dongle?

Cubase 3, Cubase Audio, C-Lab Creator are 'new version'. Those need decapping by Talented Polish Hackers ;)

/Troed

[JezC]

Unfortunately I think I only have one working dongle of suitable version - Masterscore. Just sent off a beta version of the app intended for Masterscore to someone for test. I should be able to make a version of the app for any other software, I think, but can't test it myself. Since I have the Avalon sw I could try with that if you have that dongle?

Cubase 3, Cubase Audio, C-Lab Creator are 'new version'. Those need decapping by Talented Polish Hackers ;)

/Troed

Yes, I have an Avalon dongle (along with Steinberg Syntworks M1 & DX/TX-7, 24 & possibly one Cubase 2), so happy to try it out.
Probably best to let me know how you are running the emulation on PC...or I can just run it on my ST without the dongle connected.

[troed]

Current status (app is in beta test, not generally available):

*) Masterscore - the one I have a dongle for myself. Works well.
*) Avalon - I don't have a dongle. It talks to the dongle emu, but someone with a dongle needed to verify/get further.
*) Cubase 2 - I don't have a dongle. It talks to the dongle emu, but someone with a dongle needed to verify/get further.

While the actual protection routines are so similar between the apps above that I use the exact same code to interact with the dongle/app, they are quite different in how they work otherwise. Cubase 2 had a lot more effort put into its protection. It's still my opinion that once I've enabled a few apps and they're working fine the rest should just follow without needing to do anything separately for them.

/Troed