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[OFFER] Banyan VINES 5.0

NCommanderNCommander
in Offers & Requests
I finally managed to dump these disks. They have a dongle based copy protect, and while you can install w/o the dongle, you can't boot. I have the dongles, and I'll be working to write a proper unprotect. Raw images and SuperCard Pro flux images provided.

https://archive.org/details/banyan-vines-5.0

I was able to get it to install in 86Box (PCem hung). It's very specific on what it will and won't work on; try with only one floppy disk drive as A:.

Comments

  • AJFAAJFA
    Thanks! Very interested in the unprotected version!
  • NCommanderNCommander
    The unprotect is a little weird because it's handled in ueserland, and not in kernelspace. Right now, I'm looking at writing support for emulating the dongles in 86Box, so an unprotect (per say) won't be needed. At a minimium, it will at least let me get into the system and futz with it.
  • AJFAAJFA
    Hi NCommander! I hope the dongle emulation project is going well!
  • NCommanderNCommander
    It's not. I think my dongles are dead, because why I can bitbang and get responses back, either the parallel port on my thinkpad is FUBARed, or something more seriously wrong is happening. It also turns out the dongles have an EEPROM, and get reprogrammed by VINES so this is just flat out messy. I'm working on and off this project but its going very slowly.
  • AJFAAJFA
    Sounds like Banyan made really good protection! Sorry to hear that.
  • DPlex64DPlex64
    Yeah that's a LOT of copy protection. Hope you can get it working!
  • NCommanderNCommander
    Right now, I'm seeing if I can just dump the file system. I found a way to get files in and out, but it's ... kinda fugly. The filesystem is called S10, but I found a way to potentially hack it to use a SysV filesystem *but*, it uses divvy which it looks like only SCO UNIX knows how to deal with?

    I'm trying to setup a OpenServer box to see if I can read the filesystem out that way and then work from there.
  • NCommanderNCommander
    edited November 2020
    So, status update here, I did actually manage to extract the filesystem and more, and I had a breakthrough towards an UNPROTECT. As I found out, the copy protection is rather complex (I haven't actually figured out how its handshake works, just that's there's a rather substainable API to it), but it's vulnerable to being side-stepped which is how I managed to launch the installer.



    It's still a bit iffy though, appartantly you need to set multiple control versions. Even though this is VINES 5, and I'm faking a VINES 5 key, it suddenly wants a VINES 4 one in addition.



    I can actually get the system up into multiuser mode, although it's still having some issues. The unprotect will likely take the form of a boot disk that will do the ugly bits after first stage installation.

    Ontop of that, I also found a non-Windows NT StreetTalk client! As it turns out, Banyan has one hidden in the Files service (I think its for some sorta remote update) but it seems complete. It may be some time before I actually get the unprotect published, and I want to have at least a write-up to go with it because it's pretty unique.
  • AJFAAJFA
    Congratulations on the breakthrough!
  • NCommanderNCommander
    edited November 2020
    So I'm making progress, although it's hard to say how closer. As it turns out, ther'es quite a few more revision checks I missed, and a file I needed to hexedit to patch out a check I can't otherwise bypass. I'm now getting stuck in some sorta loop trying to get StreetTalk going ...
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