[DECtalk] new to the list

Jayson Smith ratguy at bellsouth.net
Mon Feb 27 03:52:19 EST 2006


Hi,
Let's not start World War III about this, but here are a few more thoughts
on this.
First, if you've ever seen the darker side of the net, you doubtless know
there are people out there who just love to take popular commercial software
packages and crack them.  Copy protection mechanisms are disabled,
registration key systems are bypassed or, if not bypassed, a key generator
program is included so you can make up your own key out of thin air.  In
some cases, the crackers may even have to disable sanity checks built into
the programs designed to prevent just this sort of happening.  Also there
are programs on the market designed to encrypt executables so they can't be
cracked so easily.  E.G. you write a program that's going to bring in
millions, run it through an encrypter program before putting it on the
market so crackers either can't crack it at all or have to do lots of extra
work to get the job done.
Also, I'm not saying that by disassembling a program you get the original
source.  You don't.  What you'd get is the machine code, probably something
like assembly language for whatever microprocesser the program was designed
for.  Let's say you took the Apple II Textalker program and disassembled it.
You'd most likely get 6502 machine code.  Now Textalker may well have been
written in Assembly, but the original source would probably have meaningful
label names if not comments, and the developers of the original program
would know, or would have known, how to make changes to their version.  With
a disassembled program you wouldn't get the meaningful label names, comments
or anything, and you wouldn't have the knowledge of the program's internal
structure that the original developer had.  But still, if you knew what you
were doing you could probably modify the software, and you could certainly
find out how certain things were done.  In fact, the author of Cider Press
did disassemble some copy protection code on some old Apple II cassette
tapes to find out how it worked and how to circumvent it.
As for the DECtalk software itself, I seem to recall that the DECtalk PC
uses an 80186 processor and the Express uses an 80386.  Both have some type
of digital to analog convertor.  So it might not have been that difficult
for Digital to modify the software to run under Windows, since I don't
assume they're emulating an old board.
Jayson.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony at baechler.net>
To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 3:22 AM
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] new to the list


> Hi.  I'm sorry, but I'll have to disagree with you here.  First, the
> point of compiling a program in the first place is so that the source
> isn't easily apparent.  If it was possible to just randomly
> disassemble software, we wouldn't need the GPL, BSD, Linux or any
> other open source project.  I could just take the Windows kernel,
> crack it, invent my own version and release it as the free kernel or
> something.  It obviously doesn't work that way.  Also, remember a
> previous discussion about emulating the Echo on the Apple II?  The
> problem is the same in both cases.  The Echo is a chip on a card that
> goes into the computer.  The DEC-Talk is a separate
> computer.  According to the manual, it has its own
> microprocessor.  So, even if they had the firmware, it wouldn't do
> them much good.  It's a nice thought though.  Considering that it
> keeps getting sold, it's no surprise to me that they don't have the
> 4.40 source, or won't release it if they do.  Personally I would like
> to see a good, high quality open source synthesizer, either using
> already existing hardware such as the DEC-Talk or easily programmable
> software with good speech quality.  I'm not interested in what's
> already out there for free, it all sounds like crap and won't sing
> very well if at all.
>
> At 08:12 PM 2/26/2006, you wrote:
> >I also don't understand how Fonix could have lost the code.  If the only
> >copy is on a dead hard drive obviously they could send the drive in to a
> >data recovery company if they still have it, but those places are
expensive.
> >I mean, with the move from Digital to Force and then from Force to Fonix,
> >you'd think somebody somewhere would have something laying around.  I
have
> >the firmware version 4.2CD for the Express as well as the DECtalk PC
drivers
> >which as I understand it actually contain the DECtalk code which is
loaded
> >onto the board at startup.  And of course the 4.3 demo is available at
the
> >archive.  I don't know how to disassemble the software, but bet the right
> >person who knew what they were doing could do it and create machine code
> >from which new equivalent source code for the lost versions could be
> >recreated.
>
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