Difference between revisions of "Hercule"

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Hercule is the (French) conceptor and developer of the following CPC software (disc utilities mainly about floppy and its protections):
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Hercule is the (French) conceptor and developer of the following CPC software (disc utilities about floppy and its protections):
  
 
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* Hercule
 
* Hercule
 
* '''Hercule II&nbsp;'''(famous disk copier that could copy any CPC protected game until 1988)
 
* '''Hercule II&nbsp;'''(famous disk copier that could copy any CPC protected game until 1988)
* Phoenix
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* Phoenix (could store 230 Kb of files on a floppy instead of standard 178 Kb;&nbsp; commands like LOAD were intercepted to automatically handle this special format)
 
* '''Ulysse'''
 
* '''Ulysse'''
 
* Floppy
 
* Floppy

Revision as of 19:45, 1 May 2008

Hercule is the (French) conceptor and developer of the following CPC software (disc utilities about floppy and its protections):


Software developed

  • Copylock
  • Hercule
  • Hercule II (famous disk copier that could copy any CPC protected game until 1988)
  • Phoenix (could store 230 Kb of files on a floppy instead of standard 178 Kb;  commands like LOAD were intercepted to automatically handle this special format)
  • Ulysse
  • Floppy
  • Display
  • Sector
  • Copyfich
  • LATIS protection

All these software were published by Esat Software, in France.


Activities

The main job of Hercule was to ensure that Copylock / Hercule / Hercule II was always capable to copy/backup any protected floppy:

  1. receive the new CPC games that could not be copied
  2. crack the game and understand its physical protection on the floppy
  3. conceive a way to copy it
  4. improve the code of Hercule to reproduce this copy
  5. test then integrate the new code into a new master copy of Hercule to be sent to the editor


A second activity was to conceive physical and logical protection for all the software of the editor (Esat Software): the LATIS protection.

Hercule stopped CPC programming and activities in 1988.