Cracking 101 - 1990 edition: Introduction
by Buckaroo Banzai
A long time a go, in a galaxy far far away, a great adventure took ... What, oh sorry, wrong textfile.
Hello my children. Let me introduce myself, I am the great cracking guru BUCKAROO BANZAI (the original) and I'm back after a couple of years of hiding (from the Feds? from the IRS? No, from this girl MaryLou. Let me tell you, she could ... oh well let's get back to the textfile).
Let me tell you a little history about cracking on the IBMpc. It all started about 11 years ago with an apple IIe. See, I owned one and always wanted to learn how to crack (I was already a good pirate). Unfortunately, I just never could get the hang of it.
Well anyway, then I got my PC, and right away started to learn to program. Soon, I had pick up oh 4 languages one of which was assemble language. So I started down the long road to becoming a crackist.
But the road was hard since unlike the apple, there were NO textfiles on cracking the PC. Several unprotects, but nothing that really told you what to do. But thanks to some of the better known crackists of the day (Thanks SPI for the help) I got through.
It was at that point I decided to give something back. And thus, after a long (and I mean long) night of sex, drugs and rock and roll I started on my first cracking textfile. (Ok, so there really wasn't any drugs)
Since then, I have written about 10 different textfiles, 4 utilities and cracked several dozen programs. So, why the long pause, well I never really stopped cracking. I just basicly stuck to myself. I never released any of my cracks cause I was never first but several of my cracking programs (most known is SECTOR-C) reached the pirate world.
So, why am I back. 3 reasons. First is because now DOC CHECKS have taken over the scene and nobody has really written about them (plus I'm tired of seeing my old textfiles butchered in "CRACKING" mags). Second is because I have some free time, and third, because it was there.
It feels kinda funny. I have written this intro file several times, and the whole series has been rewritten. What started off as 4 simple textfiles has grown. I have givin up trying to write a book. What I'm doing is as a new game reaches me, I will crack it, and then tell how it was done, highlight the odd quirks about the crack.
I have also compiled a preaty good reference on INT 13h. I have included it with this series. And in the near future, I hope to release several utilities that I use to help me crack.
As of this writing, I have 2 actual lessons done, and 2 ready to be written. For the first 2 lessons I touch on both types on copy protection (On disk copy protection with I.B.M.'s DRAWING ASSISTANT and dos checks with EOA's ESCAPE FROM HELL). I still have to compose 2 more files, 1 more on each type (using STAR CONTROL and CHAMBER OF THE SCI-MUNTANT PREISTEST). From there, who the hells knows.
So anyway, sit back, watch, listen, learn and if that doesn't work, kick a small kid in the head...
-Buckaroo Banzai
-the cracking guru
