You will be forgiven for thinking that I
am teaching you how to make illegal pirate copies of your software after
reading the title above. Well rest assured I won't be walking the plank as this
article is for information purposes only. As a programmer I understand how
software piracy can hurt companies so I do not recommend it. There is plenty of
good software that can be downloaded for free, especially if you don't need all
the fancy features of expensive software. This article explains how people used
to pirate software from retro computers such as the Spectrum and the Atari ST.
SPECTRUM AND COMMODORE 64
Spectrum and C64 software came
on cassette tapes which were inserted into data recorders (or tape recorders)
and could be loaded into memory by typing a command such as load"".
These computers relied on a series of sound signals which were never
pleasant to listen to as they were horrible screeching sounds. Quite often you
would have to wait up to ten minutes (for a Spectrum 128k game especially) to
load when it could crash, meaning you had to re-adjust the volume and start again. In case of a low
recording, the game cassette would usually have a separate copy on the other
side.
Most people could copy these
games by using a hi-fi system with twin cassette decks. By inserting the
original game cassette in the first deck and pressing "play", and
inserting a blank cassette in the second deck and pressing "play and
record" you could get a perfect copy. You could buy cassette tapes for
saving data such as a C15 which allows you to record up to fifteen minutes.
Some people would use a C90 which would allow them to store many games at once.
If you didn't have access to twin cassette
decks then you could use software. On the Spectrum you could use something like
"007Spy" which would allow you to load the entire game into memory
and then back up onto a blank cassette. Some games had different ways of
loading such as the pulsing (or clicking) loaders, a method used by many Ocean
Software games. This led to the release of other software capable of tackling
these loaders. The average Spectrum game would consist of a short piece of code
(the header), a loading screen and the main code. This is the standard loader,
easy to copy.
When the Spectrum 128k +3 was
released it came with a built in floppy disk drive. As there were only so many
games released on +3 disks, methods were used to transfer them from tape to
disk. The standard loader was easy. All you had to do was type
merge"" to get into the editor code and save that to a +3 disk
(save"a:program-name"). Next you would load the loading screen higher
into memory (load "screen-name" code 30000) and save that to a +3
disk. Finally you would do the same thing with the main code and add the load
commands to the main header code.
For the more complicated
loaders a suite of programs called "007 Trans-Master" was used to
convert the files into the standard format so they could be saved to +3 disks.
ATARI ST AND AMIGA
The great thing about the Atari
ST and Amiga computers was that you could lay your hands on hundreds of pieces
of free software, no need to pirate commercial software. There were many PDLs
(Public Domain Libraries) who would distribute free software for the price of a
disk and postage, and for their distribution work. The actual software is free
and covers anything from demos to games and pictures to music files. There was
also the shareware method where you pay a small subscription fee to receive
extras for full versions of the software and licenceware where the PDL would
offer a small commission to the original contributor.
Atari ST software was normally
copied using dedicated disk copiers such as "Fast Copy" while the
Amiga used the popular "X-Copy". However some disks were protected
and therefore other more powerful copying software had to be used.
PROTECTION METHODS
Software publishers have used
many forms of production to deter copying such as the more complicated loaders
on the Spectrum. Other methods would require the user entering a word or letter
from the manual before they could get into the game, or choosing a series of
colors or symbols from their book to match the ones on screen. Some games allow
you to think you have copied them until you have played them for so long and
notice some nasty surprise. The game "Shadow of the Beast" turns the
screen upside down on certain levels for example.
This lead to the rise of
Cracking Groups such as the famous "Pompey Pirates" on the Atari ST
who would hack into the game and remove the copy protection. They would then
release a number of games (hacked and packed) onto a single floppy disk which
were passed around to various users.
CONCLUSION
The battle between software
publishers and pirates is an on-going one and people will always want free
software if they can get it. Old retro software is freely available for
download on various websites for people who want to re-live the old days so
there is little need to copy them from originals. I am not going to tell you
how to copy the latest PC software. I only wrote this article to explain how
people used to back up their software for the older systems. I stated that
there is a lot of free and in-expensive software available for the PC and I
urge you to use that rather than resort to piracy.