


                  Virtual SuperMagicom '97.03.A Registered!

                         courtesy of Chris Hickman.
                     http://archaic-ruins.parodius.com

        Begun in April of 1996, Chris George, aka The Brain, began
  the first *REAL* Super Nintendo emulator!  A short while after the
  beginning of the project, Super PasoFami was released for $60 by
  Nobuaki Andou.  Virtual SuperMagicom paled in comparison due to its
  infancy and slow progress, however, due to a heavily optimized and
  well coded engine, Virtual SuperMagicom was the fastest Super Nintendo
  emulator out of the two, and the only *FREE* emulator.

        Damaged Cybernetics's Super Nintendo Emulator, VSMC.  Free.
  Pretty cool eh?  In October of 1996, Virtual SuperMagicom was playing
  Super Mario World, and several other games.  It was also restricted
  to 'registered users' which was based by e-mailing The Brain.  Pretty
  easy... the guy just wants to keep track of his users -- right?  Wrong.
  Virtual SuperMagicom suddenly is able to run Chrono Trigger, Final
  Fantasy V, Final Fantasy III/VI, and other great games... guess what
  happens?  Virtual SuperMagicom becomes a $35 product.

        VSMC lost over 70% of its support, emulators like ESNES and
  SNES '96 took mainstage, and Chris George quit the emulation scene
  because he couldn't make money.  Right?  Well... that's not what some
  of us think =)

        Chris George spent a good month and a half creating the perfect
  way for copy protection to be served.  Check out the following IRC
  logfile from Decemeber of 1996:


--

<Infe> TB:  I have to ask, do you think that the vsmc os disks can't be
   pirated?  I see no use for vsmc having its own os
<Samoan> tb: the dmf format of microsoft disks was supposed to be uncopiable,
   what makes you think that people won't figure out how to copy vsmc?
<The_Brain> infe: FOR THE LAST TIME.. the VSMC O/S disks CANNOT be copied..
   No RAW copier works, no hardware-based $10,000 duplicator works.
<IceWizard> The: i bet i can copy them
<The_Brain> samoan: Because I've _TRIED_ myself. I've had my friends try.
   I've had ppl with hardware duplicators try.
<IceWizard> TB: i *KNOW* i can
<IceWizard> TB: everyone has the right to make *1* copy of any software they
   buy for backup (archival) purposes
<The_Brain> icewizard: <GRIN> ... You go ahead and try, then.
<IceWizard> TB: =-0
<Davey79> tb : exactly, how can you keep a disk from being copied?  I don't
   understand why a raw copy of sectors wouldn't work.
<The_Brain> icewizard: ... No, they don't have that right.

        
--

        Because of this reason and the price tag, only a few people were
  able to try VSMC.  Orders made after March of 1997 were refunded and
  sent back.  Many disks went bad, and The Brain had a headache making
  fixes and worrying about how to keep his commercialization in tact.

        VSMC failed.  It's been 9 months.  Chris never returned or updated
  his emulator.  He doesn't answer e-mail anymore... looks like it's time
  to take the liberty to release VSMC, right?

  (grin)...

        So how did we copy this?  Easy!@#  I lied through my teeth after
  it had been done -- but here goes =)

        1) Stick in your Virtual SuperMagicom disk and run the emulator
           through an MS-DOS window under Win95.  I'd suggest using
           'Stealth' Mode.
        2) While VSMC is loaded, open another MS-DOS prompt window and
           go to your A:.
        3) Type DIR
        4) Notice something new?  VSMC.DAT with the same approximate
           filesize as the old versions of VSMC!  Copy it to your harddrive
           and rename it VSMC.EXE.
        5) If you are a hacker, which I'm not, remove the disk check.

        Congrats, you just copied VSMC =)... now, why was VSMC uncopyable?
  Chris George went through the tedious process of making his own file
  system, then partitioned each disk, one with an MS-DOS partition, one
  with his other system.  A small program on the MS-DOS partition retrieved
  VSMC from the 'special' partition, temporarily copied it to the MS-DOS
  partition, ran it, then deleted it =)... stupid, right?

        So... here it is!  Lost Soul of the United Cracking Force was able
  to take the copied VSMC.EXE and take off the disk checking, and VSMC is
  now yours!  =)... have fun!

---

Troubleshooting:

  1) You need EMS memory.
  2) You need to edit config.sys
  3) You need to place 'device=C:\windows\emm386.exe ram' in there.
  4) I've included CONFIG.AR in this archive as an example of how I take
     care of that with a 'multi-boot' that allows me to select whether I
     want EMS or XMS.  Figure it out.

---

Greet'z:

All thanks go to Lost Soul of United Cracking Force for the disk hack.
Me, Chris Hickman of Archaic Ruins (who wrote this TXT in November, 1997).

Boo'z:

Vertigo 2099 for promising that they'd distribute this and instead using it
as a hoax without cleaning it up and redistributing it like this as they
had promised.

---

Shameless Plug:

I run Archaic Ruins.  I have since April 1996.  I spent a lot of time and
effort on it.  It's somewhat of an emulator graveyard.  Everything gets
filed and organized there.  It's a great resource on emulation.  There are
also rare game reviews, archives of Damaged Cybernetics fully preserved,
and other extremely interesting things.

http://bpwl.com/ar/
http://archaic-ruins.parodius.com/

e-mail: chris@bpwl.com
