The Sinclair QL Forum

As part of the process behind preserving QL software, we need to break the copy protection for some programs, some of which I have the rights to distribute.

I can supply a copy of the program if someone fancies delving into machine code to break the copy protection.

At the moment, the following software is causing problems:

Concept 3D by Tesseract Software
Psion Match Point (the German version is cracked, so maybe you could compare the German and English versions?)
Psion Q-Draw (probably uses the same routine as Match Point)
Sector Software Touch Typist (although I have now emailed David Batty of Sector Software).
Talent - TechniQL
Zitasoft - Lock

There are probably lots more when I get around to them....

If any of these can (legally) be made freely available for general download, I offer to 'unlock' them

Unfortunately, no they can't be made available for free download without the copyright holder's permission which I don't have.

I could ask Talent for the rights to make TechniQL freely available, as I think it has since been surpassed by other PCB design programs (PCB-CAD for one).

Beyond that, it is not going to be a quick process to trace the copyright holders of the other items (except Match Point and Q-Draw!).

RWAP wrote:I could ask Talent for the rights to make TechniQL freely available, as I think it has since been surpassed by other PCB design programs (PCB-CAD for one).

That would be great! If you get the permission from Talent, send me the binary and I'll disable the protection.

Hee hee - I have got the copy protection off Match Point now... (actually I had another copy which worked)

I now have non-copy protected QDraw and TechniQL thanks.

I also have another QL game: Farmer by J.K.

Not sure how this was published - it looks quite good, but has copy protection (I think) - at least it just resets as soon as you press F1 to play the game....

What do you do on Farmer, bar the obvious

vanpeebles wrote:What do you do on Farmer, bar the obvious

No idea - as it only flashes the screen once you get past the options screen for a second, before resetting..... Unfortunately, the only master cartridge I had was too corrupt to make a microdrive image.

I'm not sure what you need to do in the game, but I do seem to remember it got a devastating review in QL World. Maybe that makes it worth to explore.....
Will try and find the review tonight.

Tobias