Vic20 Copier software

[beamrider]

This is a follow on from a couple of posts about copying software on the VIC-20; one on Turbo loaders below (which also links to Mike's informative backup/cracking session with MINIMON).

viewtopic.php?p=116572#p116572

Two parts to this post:

1) I was thinking that I am unaware of any copying software available for the Vic. Software that will copy any cassette game (apart from fast-loaders). Many games used techniques to deter the novice user from copying them, such as auto-starting loaders etc that meant a standard BASIC LOAD/SAVE wouldn't work.

I seem to recall using something back in the day with partial success but I can't find anything like it still around . I wondered if anyone else has any further information or recollections?

2) It should be possible to write such software that can copy any (non-turbo) games by:
- loading the header
- adjusting the load address to force it to load at a different location (as in Mike's debugging session)
- loading the payload into Block 1
- saving the payload with the original header (I think this would require a modified copy of the kernel save routine) haven't looked into this yet...
- repeat for each segment in multi-loaders

Perhaps @Mike has some input/validation on this or a better approach?

As I've said creating a cassette copier will be on my to-do list at some point (maybe when I'm retired and have more time).

Edit: I suppose C64 software that falls into this category would also work for Vic games, but I'm not aware of any for the 64 either, probably people didn't invest the time because most C64 games were fast-loaders.

[doug_in_nc]

There was literally an entire book on how to pirate VIC 20 software, and fortunately it is on archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/software-pi ... c20-psidac

[beamrider]

Thanks for that link, looks very interesting - had a quick scan, but will be sure to read it all.

I think some of the duplication-masters were deliberately degraded in order to defeat audio tape-2-tape cloning. I remember some games would copy this way, but others were extremely challenging resulting in clones that wouldn't reliably load.