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, mainly bundled into Hercule and Hercule II 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:
- receive the new CPC games that could not be copied
- crack the game and understand its physical protection on the floppy
- conceive a way to copy it
- improve the code of Hercule to reproduce this copy
- 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 had programming activities from 15 to 18 years old in parallel with high school, and unfortunately had to stop beginning of 1988 (to concentrate on his bachelor's degree) when protections like Hexagon came.