[sdiy] Copy protection via errors

[David Halliday]

Very cool story Paul!!!

I was living in Boston back when arcade video games first became popular. I
am dating myself but this was back when people would line up to play PONG.
:-)

I was going to school and hanging out at the usual surplus places ( Delta,
Meshna's, B&F Enterprises, PolyPak's  ) and word was floated around asking
if people with electronics skills would be interested on working on a
hush-hush video game project.

I knew some people that got involved but didn't hear very much about it
until almost a year later when these wonderful brand-new surplus started
showing up on the market - brand new video  monitors, power supplies, TTL
chips, sockets, etc... Cheap!

Turns out that some goodfellows in the Boston area were wanting to get in on
this seemingly lucrative video game business so they bought one and had it
cloned.  Much to their surprise, it turns out that some of the chips in the
game they bought were not labeled correctly.  Nice job of protective
coloration.




-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
-> [mailto:owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl]On Behalf Of Paul Schreiber
-> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 7:50 PM
-> To: synthDIY
-> Subject: [sdiy] Copy protection via errors
->
->
-> Probably the most famous case of this was TI versus Mostek
-> in the calculator
-> chip wars of 1972-1976.
->
-> Mostek was a bunch of ex-TI'ers that reversed
-> engineered/copied TI designs.
-> All they did was re-layout the
-> gates, so when you looked at a chip photo they appeared different.
->
-> Mostek was really undercutting TI in the basic calculator
-> chips, and when
-> the SR-51 was planned, they REALLY
-> didn't want this 'flagship' design ripped off. So, they
-> added a little set
-> of about 60 random logic gates, spread out
-> all over the chip.
->
-> Of course, Mostek copied it, and TI sued.
->
-> In court, Mostek spent hours and hours pointing out to the
-> judge & jury how
-> 'different' the 2 chips were. Why,
-> they were different sizes, and see, they LOOKED different!
-> How could they be
-> the same?
->
-> The TI laywer stood up, pulled out a prototype and said,
-> "Your honor and
-> ladies and gentlemen of the jury. TI engineers added
-> undocumented circuitry
-> to this chip. Only 4 people know about this. The circuitry
-> is only activated
-> at power up when 3 certain keys are pressed when the
-> calculator is switched
-> on. The circuitry spells a certain message
-> in the display, when the calculator is held upside down. We
-> would like to
-> demonstrate!"
->
-> Mostek layers immediately jumped up and asked for a recess.
-> They settled out
-> of court, and 1 year later Mostek was sold to United
-> Technologies, out of
-> the calculator chip business forever.
->
-> Oh, the message in the display: "U ALL SUC".
->
-> Paul S.
->
->
->
->
->