Re: Basic compilers on PET?

From: William Levak (wlevak_at_cyberspace.org)
Date: 2000-10-20 05:41:29

On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, ken ross wrote:

> speaking as a user of petspeed on a real 8000  who's catching up on emails
> after a HD disaster I'm not sure if this point's been made before .
> petspeed needs a dongle to compile but can run on any machine  ( hurrah ! )
> however DTL needs a dongle to create & run which makes it useless from my
> point of view , i've got a DTL dongle or two lurking in my collection (
> including one i'm sure for the 700 )
> 
> the petspeed dongle is impervious to x- rays  ( don't ask ) so i can't
> verify whats inside the potted block to reproduce it ....

I have a dongle (not PETSPEED) that I have chipped away the epoxy covering
the circuit.  I consists of resistors, transistors, and a capacitor.
A signal is output, and the transistors and capacitor cause a signal to
be returned on another line after a slight delay.  The delay is short
enough that the signal MUST be read in machine language. 

I have not myself broken the PET PETSPEED compiler, but I knew someone who
did, years ago.  If I recall correctly, the PETSPEED compiler is itself
PETSPEED compiled Basic.  At some point in the program, it calls a machine
language routine that sends the pulse to the dongle and reads the result
and sets the return accordingly. To remove the protection, it is only
necessary to alter the machine language routine.  Alternatively, you could
alter the compiled program to bypass the machine language routine.  There
are supposedly PETSPEED decompilers, but I have not seen one.



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