So, I don't know if this is AI generated or whether the author is actually unaware, but Atari cartridges and floppies commonly had copy protections. My uncle was active in the scene at the time, and as an electrical engineer came up with a solution. When I inherited his Atari 800 in the 90s there was a physical button wired into the floppy drive which would force a bad sector onto the disk as it was being written. He had notebooks about the timing for these bad sectors per game.<p>So, yeah. The "article" is incorrect from nearly the get-go about the "wild west" Atari age.
Thanks for the comment.<p>No, it is not AI generated. It was based on my research.<p>I think there is a mix-up here between Atari home consoles and Atari home computers.<p>In that section I was talking about early console platforms such as the Atari 2600, where the cartridge interface itself had no lockout/authentication mechanism comparable to what Nintendo later did with the 10NES. That is why third-party cartridges could exist and Atari’s main response was legal rather than technical.<p>What you describe for the Atari 800 is real, but it belongs to a different context: the Atari 8-bit computer line, especially floppy-disk software, where copy-protection tricks such as intentional bad sectors and timing-based checks were indeed common.<p>So I agree that Atari computer software often used copy protection, but that does not contradict the point I was making about the early console era.
I find it interesting that all the way back in 1985, in Atari vs NES, we had proof that consumers preferred walled gardens. The walled garden exploded from a completely dead market, while the already-existing open system killed itself. Apple proceeded to make a killing of their own on this reality, Microsoft invented a pseudo-walled garden that has become a technical dead end, while FOSS communities are still in denial about how things shouldn't be that way rather than accepting reality and inventing their own curated experience with enforced rules.
> Microsoft invented a pseudo-walled garden that has become a technical dead end<p>If you're referring to Windows, this is not very walled at all. You barely need a <i>computer</i> to write and release windows apps, let alone money.<p>Office, perhaps? Or a variety of other products.
Windows is an open platform for developers... if you ignore all of the security checks and Windows Defender and the stagnant platform which is about 2 decades behind everyone else, across the board, in terms of native tooling (e.g. which UI framework should I use and is it good?).<p>However, Windows also has many, many, walled garden things bolted onto it. You aren't distributing your own drivers without Microsoft's approval. You aren't running Microsoft Office on Wine. You aren't connecting to Active Directory without Microsoft's blessing. You aren't making group policies that work on Linux for MDM. You aren't manufacturing Windows devices, at all, unless they meet Microsoft's system requirements and mandates (e.g. a Windows icon on the keyboard). Your BIOS must follow strict rules about where the activation key is fused. Etc.<p>In that respect, Windows is only open from an <i>end user</i> perspective. In all other respects, it is closed, and it is closed <i>tightly</i>.
After some time without posting on my blog, I decided to get back to it — and my first post after the break is about the history of video game security! There are also some great stories along the way, like Atari reverse-engineering Nintendo’s lockout system, or how simply changing the name of Link's horse became an attack vector on the Nintendo Wii. I had a lot of fun researching and writing this article, and I learned a lot in the process. I hope you enjoy it too!
Back in the day I remember my brother got his hands on a PS1 modchip, but it didn't require any soldering- you just plugged it into the "parallel I/O" port in back of the console and it let us run games on burned CDs. We really got our moneys worth at blockbuster after that
The modern consoles are pretty close to perfect with how they use PKI and certificates. Even if you clone the cryptographic identity of a valid console, the vendor can quickly detect this impossible access scenario.
The cat and mouse between console makers and hackers is one of the more honest stories in tech. Both sides kept making each other better.
interesting video I was seeing the other day: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U</a>
Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story — Tony Chen, Microsoft:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo</a><p>I like this video too, Tony Chen explains the overview of Xbox security system.
Thanks for such an interesting read. Would be awesome to get sort of a "follow up" about modern sophisticated digital solutions we have now (denuvo and so on)