Re: A86: Rom Central - Database interactivity with rom calls
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Re: A86: Rom Central - Database interactivity with rom calls
At 04:05 PM 2/22/98 -0500, Matt Johnson wrote:
>I see. I took it off my page for now. I have two ideas - one, a certain
>formula that gives a certain answer on a TI-86, or two, a simple hex
>program you enter in the calculator it gives an answer unique only if
>someone has A TI-86.
>
>any suggestions?
The best you could do would be to have the CGI come up with a random
string, and have the user input that string to an 86 asm program, which
would then output a string. The user would then be required to enter the
new string into the CGI to download the ROM. Strings generated by the CGI
script should expire after a certain short period of time, no more than a
few minutes.
For this to work, you'd need to implement a state machine in CGI. And the
86 asm program that does the encryption should be written in a highly
obfuscated manner, so that even a skilled hacker wouldn't be able to
understand it from reading a disassembled dump. It should also liberally
use references to the ROM, so that even someone who didn't understand it
couldn't write a simulator that could run it without a ROM dump, even if
they had a text file that described the ROM calls.
Even if you used this method, someone without a TI-86 could still get the
ROM dump by communicating in real-time with a person who either has a
TI-86, and/or already has a working ROM dump for the emulator. But that
could be considered to be just as easy as having the other person send you
an actual ROM dump.
As for the legality of this, I'd guess that TI would consider it to be just
as illegal as straight-out distribution. But feel free to ask them. :-)
---
David Ellsworth
davidell@earthling.net
IRC: eXocomp
ICQ: 2300673
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