czietz wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 9:56 am
@beel1: BTW, considering what you wrote in the AF thread...
1. The PAL is clocked by the UDS signal, which toggles even if there is no activity on the cartridge port, inputing address bus data to the PAL
[...]
But what I found during my experiments with Synthworks dongle almost 2 years ago is that because of 1., the software has to be very specific to access to the dongle using always the same pattern:
... it makes sense that the Avalon handbook notes that on the MegaSTE it only runs when the cache is disabled. With enabled cache, there are fewer bus accesses (asserting /UDS) and, therefore, the dongle behaves differently.
Absolutely
A LUT-based dongle like I did in Steem should work with cache enabled (Steem doesn't reproduce cycle-exact bus signals). But maybe the cache will break something else in Avalon which is not dongle-related
JezC wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 10:14 am
This is all sounding very positive!
If it would help - I have Synthworks dongles for the Yamaha DX & Korg M1 (as well as Cubase 3 & Avalon) so I might be able to set them up with my synths & compare operation with & without a dongle?
It may take a period of time to get the results but happy to help where/when time allows.
The floppies would be interesting: running the softwares in a modified Steem which logs ROM port accesses along with the number of CPU cycles between them is a first clue about how the protection works
beel1 wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 4:18 pm
The floppies would be interesting: running the softwares in a modified Steem which logs ROM port accesses along with the number of CPU cycles between them is a first clue about how the protection works
I think I've got the originals in the folder along with the manual...will try to check in the next day or two.
Failing that, one of the Atari ST music groups on FB is often able to supply disc images (or manuals) for most software so I will ask there later as well (that may be much quicker than me finding them )
value at $42a54 is written to d4
value at $42a56 is added to $fb0000 and stored in a4
$17 words are copied from $42a1c to $8 (using a5 as pointer - the resulting value of is then used by the actual tst code later)
then jsr $8
then they're restored
d0 is written to $42a58 - this is a test result
42a1c:
$00042a1c : 4a39 00fb 00b4 tst.b $fb00b4
$00042a22 : 4a1d tst.b (a5)+
$00042a24 : 3014 move.w (a4),d0
$00042a26 : 6700 0002 beq $42a2a
$00042a2a : 51cc fff6 dbra d4,$42a22
$00042a2e : 4e75 rts
Initial values:
42a54: 001b
42a56: 0002
42a58: ffff
The attached little software should gather enough data to make a virtual dongle that will pass initial Avalon dongle check, according to what does this version of Avalon: https://atarimusic.exxosforum.co.uk/foru ... f=23&t=807
Run it with the dongle connected, this will produce a ~1kB .txt log file. It may be a bit slow on a floppy, I haven't tested it on real hardware, and for my work on Synthworks I used M-Disk
beel1 wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 3:19 pm
The attached little software should gather enough data to make a virtual dongle that will pass initial Avalon dongle check, according to what does this version of Avalon: https://atarimusic.exxosforum.co.uk/foru ... f=23&t=807
Run it with the dongle connected, this will produce a ~1kB .txt log file. It may be a bit slow on a floppy, I haven't tested it on real hardware, and for my work on Synthworks I used M-Disk
Cool! I have my own cloning code running but I'm not certain I'm getting the right data. Now I can compare I'm passing it in by hand in Avalon running under the Hatari debugger and it's not passing (yet).
beel1 wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 3:19 pm
Run it with the dongle connected, this will produce a ~1kB .txt log file. It may be a bit slow on a floppy, I haven't tested it on real hardware, and for my work on Synthworks I used M-Disk
I know nothing about Omikron, it's complaining about being unable to load "baslib_3". Tried copying gemlib.bas from Omikron 3 but that wasn't it
troed wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 6:00 pm
I know nothing about Omikron, it's complaining about being unable to load "baslib_3". Tried copying gemlib.bas from Omikron 3 but that wasn't it
/Troed
Sorry!
Yes it needs a library, I forgot about that after all those years!
Here it is!
)
)
I'm passing it in by hand in Avalon running under the Hatari debugger and it's not passing (yet).