The Sinclair QL Forum

t0nyt wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 9:29 am Have just tried creating a cart from the zkul image that uses header checks and it fails the protection check the same as West

So there must be something else going on here, especially as when I image it back from the new cart to mdv image it works fine in q-emulator

If it's as tofro describes it would mean having to work out what sector(s) it's checking on, no idea how to do that though yet

How good is your 68000 reverse engineering, I think I still have a log of Zkul running its copy protection on sqlay3

Another copy protection method was to generate a checksum of the map sector. So any copy would have to have all it's sectors in the same place as the original. Including bad sectors.

Sometimes they have dummy(deleted) files in the directory that they look for.

How do you copy the image file back to a microdrive, Is it some kind of sector copier, or does it copy the files separately?

XorA wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:53 am

t0nyt wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 9:29 am Have just tried creating a cart from the zkul image that uses header checks and it fails the protection check the same as West

So there must be something else going on here, especially as when I image it back from the new cart to mdv image it works fine in q-emulator

If it's as tofro describes it would mean having to work out what sector(s) it's checking on, no idea how to do that though yet

How good is your 68000 reverse engineering, I think I still have a log of Zkul running its copy protection on sqlay3

Not great yet, probably beyond me at the moment

Martin_Head wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 11:19 am Another copy protection method was to generate a checksum of the map sector. So any copy would have to have all it's sectors in the same place as the original. Including bad sectors.

Sometimes they have dummy(deleted) files in the directory that they look for.

How do you copy the image file back to a microdrive, Is it some kind of sector copier, or does it copy the files separately?

Thanks for the info

Tried Mcopy and qlone+ so far (and copycat but won’t work with vdrive)

I think I can rule out a checksum of the sector map, at the moment, because when I re-imaged the cart I made that still worked in q-emulator which would of bought across the different sector layout

I decided, rather than trying to run from the cartridge I created, to run the backup program, from the cart, and run from that (with my new original in MDV2). It still failed the protection check BUT it didn't even access the 'master' in MDV2 as far as I noticed

The odd things are that on a BBQL it formats the cartridge when the check fails

And in q-emulator, although it works, the q-emulator drives are constantly lit up thru out the game play. If I make it fail in q-emulator it doesn't format the mdv image either. Maybe there's a clue there somewhere

Everything about this seems odd

Am going to put West on hold for now, and think what else I can try, and for now concentrate on repairing 3D Slime cartridge (again doesn't pass checks, but does the same in q-emulator so easier for me to spend time on testing)

Many thanks

Thought I'd give Zitasoft LockSmithe a try with West, but same result - it fails check and wipes cartridge

Everything you are posting here is what I see with sqlay3 too!

XorA wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 2:58 pm Everything you are posting here is what I see with sqlay3 too!

Am wondering if the check is a spawned/seperate process that's failing to complete (or gets stuck) under q-emulator (for whatever reason) which could explain the Q-emuLator device drives being constantly lit but the game working ok?

My original West carts are useless now, so will have to keep an eye on eBay/sellmyretro for another to work with

t0nyt wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 3:13 pm explain the Q-emuLator device drives being constantly lit but the game working ok?

I've seen this in Qemulator when trying to break copy protections. Don't know why, but it seems to be connected with microdrive direct sector access, where the motors have to be started by writing the microdrive control register.

If you've still got my email address, send me a copy of West that works in Qemulator, and I will see if I can work out and bypass the copy protection.
PM me if you don't have my email address.

Martin_Head wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 11:29 am

t0nyt wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 3:13 pm explain the Q-emuLator device drives being constantly lit but the game working ok?

I've seen this in Qemulator when trying to break copy protections. Don't know why, but it seems to be connected with microdrive direct sector access, where the motors have to be started by writing the microdrive control register.

If you've still got my email address, send me a copy of West that works in Qemulator, and I will see if I can work out and bypass the copy protection.
PM me if you don't have my email address.

Hi Martin, thanks for the offer but I already have an unprotected version. What I’m trying to do is restore West onto original carts with the copy protection intact & working

Many thanks
Tony