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dBASE III Copy Protection Revisited
One of the earliest tasks I remember tackling on an IBM PC was a basically a favor for my father-in-law, Tom Estelita. In 1984, he had purchased a copy of dBASE III and had become frustrated by its copy-protection. The previous version, dBASE II, had no such protection, which probably added to his frustration. At the time, he was running his own tiny software company, Radix 2 Software, and he certainly wasn’t interested in redistributing dBASE III – he just wanted to be able to back-up his software and switch between a handful of machines without the hassle or worry of relying on a single fragile copy-protected diskette.
At that time, my day job was writing PDP-11 application software, but I really wanted to learn more about the IBM PC, and I had done work for Tom in the past (writing BASIC accounting software on CP/M-based machines), so he made me a deal: he would loan me a floppy-based IBM PC and some IBM reference manuals, in exchange for attempting to crack dBASE III’s copy-protection.
I have no recollection of how feasible I thought this challenge was, but I’m sure I jumped at the opportunity. Perhaps my thinking was that, after all, it’s just software, so how hard could it be. In any case, I apparently took the challenge very seriously, because I also made a lot of notes.
I recently found those notes, along with copies of the
dBASE III disks used. Unfortunately, all the disks contained was my patched
(unlocked) version of DBASE.EXE, and for the sake of a complete archive, I wanted the unpatched (locked) version as
well. Fortunately, my patching notes also show all the original bytes, so I reproduced the original file by reversing
the patching process, using PCjs:
Loading /software/pcx86/app/other/dbase3/1.0/DBIII-100-UNLOCKED.json.......
FDC: Mounted diskette "dBASE III 1.0 (Unlocked)" in drive A
A>dir
Volume in drive A has no label
Directory of A:\
DBASE EXE 112720 9-28-84 3:46p
DBASE OVL 147456 6-26-84 5:36p
HELP DBS 53760 6-26-84 5:36p
ASSIST HLP 15223 6-26-84 5:37p
READ ME 4224 6-26-84 5:37p
CONFIG SYS 22 6-26-84 5:37p
6 File(s) 15360 bytes free
A>ren dbase.exe dbase.tmp
A>b:debug dbase.tmp
-d 5f4 l4
08FF:05F4 25 39 4F 45 %9OE
-e 5f4
08FF:05F4 25. 39.e3 4F.c4 45.eb
-d a44
08FF:0A44 2D 26 AB 36-38 06 9C 17 1A 54 A5 4B -&+68....T%K
08FF:0A50 E8 41 4C E0 AF 68 0B 07-6E 07 80 16 1B B6 BF B7 hAL`/h..n....6?7
08FF:0A60 4C 6B C2 39 26 DC 97 BF-3B CE C0 EB 4F BB B3 C2 LkB9&\.?;N@kO;3B
08FF:0A70 27 A6 90 75 F4 AF 68 93-DF 62 43 CD B7 65 AD 34 '&.ut/h._bCM7e-4
08FF:0A80 11 B0 85 93 29 A2 9B A4-42 74 A6 84 24 7C 17 4C .0..)".$Bt&.$|.L
08FF:0A90 7B 5E F9 2C 66 0E 4E 27-B4 2F 50 4E 9C 76 CE D6 {^y,f.N'4/PN.vNV
08FF:0AA0 DB 51 21 D1 2C 4B 3B 73-48 EE 8E 6A 9C D7 E2 4F [Q!Q,K;sHn.j.WbO
08FF:0AB0 FA B6 10 24 28 A0 45 C8-50 36 9A 5E 9F C4 A1 EC z6.$( EHP6.^.D!l
08FF:0AC0 A2 51 AA B8 "Q*8
-e a44
08FF:0A44 2D.b0 26.5e AB.e6 36.af
08FF:0A48 38.1e 06.f1 9C.41 17.31 1A.73 54.59 A5.c1 4B.a4
08FF:0A50 E8.0e 41.cd 4C.63 E0.fe AF.c1 68.39 0B.0b 07.62
08FF:0A58 6E.60 07.93 80.be 16.cf 1B.08 B6.f8 BF.4e B7.56
08FF:0A60 4C.53 6B.d3 C2.5d 39.4f 26.a3 DC.9a 97.ae BF.14
08FF:0A68 3B.c4 CE.7b C0.dc EB.e4 4F.ee BB.45 B3.f9 C2.ab
08FF:0A70 27.3f A6.15 90.56 75.3d F4.5b AF.a3 68.a1 93.20
08FF:0A78 DF.ad 62.98 43.be CD.02 B7.c8 65.63 AD.df 34.c3
08FF:0A80 11.e0 B0.2f 85.26 93.af 29.31 A2.29 9B.40 A4.4f
08FF:0A88 42.86 74.98 A6.90 84.fc 24.d6 7C.76 17.e3 4C.e5
08FF:0A90 7B.f1 5E.61 F9.08 2C.8a 66.20 0E.f7 4E.37 27.64
08FF:0A98 B4.4f 2F.e2
-w
Writing 1B850 bytes
-q
A>ren dbase.tmp dbase.exe
A>dir
Volume in drive A has no label
Directory of A:\
DBASE EXE 112720 8-11-17 9:51a
DBASE OVL 147456 6-26-84 5:36p
HELP DBS 53760 6-26-84 5:36p
ASSIST HLP 15223 6-26-84 5:37p
READ ME 4224 6-26-84 5:37p
CONFIG SYS 22 6-26-84 5:37p
6 File(s) 15360 bytes free
saving diskette /software/pcx86/app/other/dbase3/1.0/DBIII-100-UNLOCKED.json...
I haven’t examined this patch again (yet), but I will admit that it seems rather lengthy. Usually one strives for a very small, surgically precise patch that’s more on the order of 3 or 4 bytes, but we have to remember that I wasn’t very familiar with either the IBM PC or the 8088 instruction set at this point – this was also a learning exercise.
And who knows, maybe Vault Corporation (the company that Ashton-Tate used to provide the copy-protection logic for dBASE III) wrote such sophisticated code that it was impossible to defeat so simply. However, experience suggests that’s unlikely.
Jeff Parsons
Aug 11, 2017