Hercule
From CPCWiki - THE Amstrad CPC encyclopedia!
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:
- 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 stopped CPC programming and activities in 1988.
