2 Dec
2005
2 Dec
'05
9:25 a.m.
On 12/2/2005 at 3:37 AM Jim Leonard wrote:
No, I think what Chuck was remembering was how the copy
protection library
used
in the 1.0-era early versions of Lotus had code that would not function
properly on the faster AT (probably due to extremely tight FDC timing
routines). As a result, the copy protection check failed every single
time :-)
That feels about right. I recall that there was a bit of embarrassment on
the part of the IBM that they had to recommend this route. And let's not
forget that Lotus wasn't the only one to use very hardware-dependent copy
protection schemes--Harvard Graphics was another widely-used package--and
games were infamous for it. Oddly, many copy protection schemes could be
defeated by simply patching the code to dummy up the subroutine that
reported that the copy protection was intact. Such schemes actually worked
since the WWW hadn't really gotten going and distribution of code and
knowledge was a little slower, although BBS dissemination was taking its
toll.
This feels to be contemporary with the IBM PC/AT "You're not going to
overclock your CPU" BIOS patch.
Cheers,
Chuck