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INC Loader (6) (INCLogo) by International Network of Crackers
From the Computer of
Null Set
Saturday, October 6th, 1990
Greetings one and all! Sitting before you now is my latest and greatest
programming project, INCLogo. There are several aspects of INCLogo I would
like to share with you, so let me get right to it!
HISTORY:
As long as I can remember, cracking groups have always competed in every aspect
of the business. From the quickest releases to the best docs to the biggest
home board to the coolest logos and slogans, someone is always coming out with
something just a little bit better than the competition. This is the very
spirit that has pushed our country to be number one in the world. However, in
some cases, the ultimate purpose of the group is put aside in order to gain
this edge over the competitors. Case in point:
Not too long ago, a sysop friend of mine got a large WORM drive. He quickly
began putting all of his software onto optical disks creating a permanent
archive library. Midway through the process, he discovered that a particular
cracking group had placed a logo of theirs in EVERY zip of certain games that
they had released (and it wasn't a particularly good logo, either). The logo
was approximately 60k (in various files) unzipped, and a "mere" 30k when
zipped. Thus for every 12 files, a whole 360k (a single floppy disk) was lost.
The sysop, needless to say, was infuriated at the group when he had realized
what had happened. Since he was using a WORM, he could not remove the
offending files from the zips. This group was deliberatly abusing the sysop's
resources (and optical disks aren't cheap). Not only was their logo rather
large, but placing it in EVERY zip file of a release is simply overkill!
The moral of this story: the group choose to advertise first and think about
their users second. This is exactly backwards! All cracking groups exist, in
whole or in part, to serve their users. Cracking groups should never abuse
their position by creating overly large, slow, or otherwise cumbersome logos.
They should be simple, small, and easily bypassed, but still good.
Being a rather dormant in the business of INC lately, I decided that I should
figure out a way to write a good logo. Being an amateur assembler programmer,
I feilded a few ideas and then finally saw what I wanted. Someone in IBM had
created an excellent IBM logo using VGA/MCGA graphics. It was written in Turbo
Pascal and compiled to about 16k. That was nice, but still too big for what I
wanted. So I undertook a huge task: convert the pascal to assembler and add
several few improvements.
Initial attempts at doing this weren't too successful. I could get the outside
framework of the program down, but I was having trouble with the meat of the
program, ie; the drawing and the palette cycling (version 1.0 was basically a
bomb). At this point, I went on vacation and didn't really touch it again
until recently. One night, with the help of Bit-Manipulator, my brain just
kicked into high gear and we did almost all of the program: version 2.0 was
born. Over the next few days I refined it and brought it to it's current size
of under 1024 bytes.
It was soon found that version 2.0 produced snow on 386 machines. I think this
was largely due to the instruction caching that produced odd effects on the
palette cycling. I rewrote the entire palette cycling procedure and changed
the dependence on "fast" or "slow" cycling to only "medium" cycling. I prefer
fast cycling, but I will sacrifice it to reduce the chance of a user getting
some snow. Version 2.1 now stands at 986 bytes.
PURPOSE:
The purpose is two-fold. First I wanted to do something for the group to which
I am a part (I have been fairly dormant for quite some time now). Second, I
wanted to explore several aspects of assembler programming, especially high
resolution graphics. Both were achieved.
It is my hope that not only will this zip file be distributed around the globe,
but that my fellow INC brothers will use this in their new releases to come.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM ITSELF:
INCLogo is small (less than 1k) and only requires about 4k of memory to run.
It will only work on a MCGA or VGA system becuase of it's intense graphics and
palette cycling. If INCLogo cannot find MCGA/VGA graphics or cannot allocate
enough memory to run itself, it will tell you so and gracefully exit.
Once running, INCLogo will continue to run until a key is pressed (any key that
will unpause your computer will terminate INCLogo). Upon termination, all
previous video status will be restored (unlike a recent logo by anoTHer Group)
and you will be returned to DOS. Since INCLogo was written 100% in assembler,
it is lightning fast to load, run, and termiante.
PROBLEMS WITH INCLOGO:
I have had some problems with computers getting snow due to the palette
cycling. I think I have eliminated this, but please inform me if you do
experience any snow (please include type and speed of computer, operating
system, type of VGA, and what kind of snow was experienced (and where)).
I don't know of any bugs or other problems with INCLogo. If you do find any,
please try and contact me about them. I am willing to support this program
within reason.
Since my HST got fried by lightning, the best way to contact me is through
Bit-Manipulator or Jenetic Bytemare. Just tell them you want to get in touch
with me and they can find me. (I may also be on some boards from time to
time, if you can find a board that I'm on!).
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE:
David A. Kerr wrote the original IBMLogo program for the 8514/A display in C.
Adapted to VGA / MCGA and to Turbo Pascal 4.0 by Christian Michel.
Palette cycling routines provided by Daniel Butterfield (author of DAZZLE).
Painstakingly converted to 100% Turbo Assembler v2.0 by Null Set.
I must also acknowledge the help of Bit-Manipulator. He helped me form ideas
and generally debug INCLogo. (Someday he'll REALLY learn assembler!)
Thanks for your attention! See you soon in my next INC release!
Null Set
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