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Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#41

Post by jonhohle »

chungy wrote: post #9
jonhohle wrote: post #3

It’s worth getting the Quake shareware disc for the NIN soundtrack. Official track names are now available following the vinyl release a few years ago. This is the only CD release of the soundtrack. Just don’t forget to skip track 1.

Mind that every Quake release includes the same soundtrack, it's not just the shareware version ;) There's millions of such CDs in the wild, both shareware and fully purchased copies.

Oops, I can see how that reads like only the shareware version is this way. It’s often cheaper if you’re just going for the music.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#43

Post by fabiensanglard »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #23

Okay, I haunted CompUSA in my teen years and I purchased my first 386 system there. So the photograph included in this blog seems bona fide . Except their logo or name was never "Compu USA". Where in the world did they get a store hung with signs that all say "Compu USA"? Is this some Mandela Effect that has me in its clutches? The business was definitely never named or branded that way. I did my Wikipedia and Bing I…

I made a mistake when I researched photos for it and found "one" without sources. You are right this photo looks shady. I have replaced it (with source).

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#44

Post by jasongill »

As soon as I saw "Quake Shareware" in the title of this post, I thought "Pray to the one you will pay!" which was what appeared on the screen when you ran QCRACK.

I always wondered why Final Doom didn't unlock with QCRACK - I always assumed it was a bug with the keygen, never realized it wasn't possible to purchase it from the disk at all!

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#46

Post by fabiensanglard »

jasongill wrote: post #44

As soon as I saw "Quake Shareware" in the title of this post, I thought "Pray to the one you will pay!" which was what appeared on the screen when you ran QCRACK. I always wondered why Final Doom didn't unlock with QCRACK - I always assumed it was a bug with the keygen, never realized it wasn't possible to purchase it from the disk at all!

You can actually unlock Final DOOM from qcrack. But you need to use `-g` to give the codename of the game[1] because sku.17 won't give it away.

1. https://rmolina-co.blogspot.com/2016/08/qcrack-y-la-belleza-...

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#48

Post by jhy »

netsharc wrote: post #6

Man, if I were id, I'd sue the hell out of Testdrive for selling me that broken security system...

But it sounds like it wasn't Testdrive's fault; iD implemented it incorrectly. Their phone support weren't issuing the decrypt code, just a simple checksum:

> Described as is, there is no flaw in this process. The secret seed comes from the unlock server, tied to a CHALLENGE/SERIAL that could not be reused. But the hacker team GNOMON found a way.

> The QUAKE unlock program FLOW.EXE that ships on the CD is capable of generating the SERIAL from the CHALLENGE on its own. All it does is check that its own locally-generated SERIAL and the SERIAL entered by the user match! The entire protection mechanism relies on security by obscurity.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#49

Post by ekelsen »

fluoridation wrote: post #31
ekelsen wrote: post #11

Was there anyway to make this work unless every CD was burned with a different key used to do the encryption?

A reminder that CD-ROMs are pressed from glass masters, not burned like CD-Rs. I wonder if anyone has tried something like this with burned discs, though.

Yes, my point, if the answer is that there is no way this works without every disc being different.

It was not possible to manufacture at the time at scale.

Re: Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full

#50

Post by vunderba »

fabiensanglard wrote: post #42
logicallee wrote: post #20

[comment withdrawn]

That was an image I found in Google Image search. I should have done a better job to research the provenance and I appreciate being called on it. I have updated the photo.

Kind of sounds like the low‑background steel [1] problem all over again.

I have a rather badly written tool [2] I made about 5–6 years ago. If you connect it to your Google Custom Search Engine (along with the appropriate CSE keys), you can quickly search, copy, and download images from before 2022. It also has a ban list so you can filter out Shutterstock, Alamy, and other heavily watermarked sources.

The app is a hot circle of garbage code, but it might still be useful as a starting point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

[2] https://github.com/scpedicini/truman-show

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