^^ RIPPING PICS FROM NFA SLIDESHOWS by SKiDZ / A51 If anyone has a copy of the AGA EXPERIENCE CD Vol.1 from Amiga Format, you will no doubt know that there are quite a lot of NFA slideshows on it. Pretty good ones at that with Pam Anderson in the nude. etc. :^) Some of the NFA slideshows have been protected from lamers to stop them ripping the pics from the disks. Booo :( Well my friends, I'm here to tell you how you can have your own copies of them by simply ripping them direct from the disk(s). I'll talk you through three ways of doing this, so at least one will work for you and it's easy to do (apart from the AMOS one!). NFA have simply removed the file header from each of the pics and if you are any good with AMOS, then you should have no probs re-writing the header (GIF87a) back to the start of the file. (Use a method similar to this) ' ' F$="picfilename" : Rem *** Path of file. Open In 1,F$ : Rem *** Open in the file. L=LOF(1) : Rem *** Get size of file. Close 1 : Rem *** Close the file channel. ' Reserve as Chip Data 10,L : Rem *** Reserve mem to load file. Bload F$,10 : Rem *** Duh! Err! Load file into mem pos. ' ST=Start(10) : Rem *** Get start of mem pos. ' ' *** Poke The GIF87a header back. I've left this code in simple ' *** format for the new AMOS users, but it could be made a lot ' *** smaller using a small - For ... Next loop instead! ' Poke ST,71 : Rem *** G Add ST,1 : Rem *** Update mem pos by 1 Poke ST,73 : Rem *** I Add ST,1 Poke ST,70 : Rem *** F Add ST,1 Poke ST,56 : Rem *** 8 Add ST,1 Poke ST,55 : Rem *** 7 Add ST,1 Poke ST,97 : Rem *** a ' ' *** Save the file back to any disk/path now from mem... ' Save "newfile",Start(10) to Start(10)+Length(10) ' ' ' That's the GIF87a header restored and the whole thing saved out as a GIF file, but NFA have removed more than the header and only a couple of pics turned out fine!!! There are other pokes you need to add, but it's not worth all the effort coz here are another couple of ways to rip 'em without using AMOS at all :) Before I go any further, let me explain how NFA display the pics... They simply load the file (with missing header) into RAM and poke the values back to it (as in the above example) and use ZGIF to display the pics. Simple and effective method to stop lamers ripping files from disk, but we're not that stupid that we can't restore these pics - are we? Here's a couple of ways in which to get the pics easily. This first example is a bit of a pain, but it does work and at least the pic is saved as a normal GIF file complete with it's original header and colour values. etc. Here goes... Edit the Startup-Sequence on any of the slideshows and enter this at the very start: (PS - Use your own path obviously, I simply use my Work: Partition, but you could always use DF1: or HD0: or whatever!) Assign Ram: Dismount ; Get rid of ram right now! Assign Ram: Work: ; Assign Ram to another device instead! Now copy the ASSIGN command to the C directory of the disk and load up the slideshow by booting the disk in DF0: You will probably have worked out what this is doing by now, but for the ones who haven't.... When the slideshow is copying the file to RAM (where the header is poked back), it will be copied to the path mentioned above (eg. Work:) instead of RAM: This way, the pic is there on your HD in all its glory, but not for long!!! Why? Well, the next pic will also be saved to your HD, so to keep the pic you want, simply reset your Amiga before the next pic loads and voila! Ya see, NFA only save one file to RAM at a time (temp pic) and it is deleted before the next pic is loaded to save memory. So to keep the pic you want, listen to your HD and when it stops being written to, reset your Amiga. Be careful though, coz if you reset it while it's being written to, then chances are that you will have a read/write error - or worse! So please be careful. Basically the file is loaded from floppy, saved to RAM (or your HD in this case), the header values poked back and then displayed with ZGif. Easy :) But you couldn't get the pic from RAM obviously, so the above solution is great coz the file is stored on HD instead :) Hope you all understand that and happy ripping, but what if you don't wanna attempt that method! Well, why not try this one out, it's piss easy and no need for re-setting and all that shit.... Simply get yourself a copy of QuickGrab (or similar pic ripper). Load it up from HD and run the slideshow. When the pic you want is on-screen, simply press the hotkey (to start QuickGrab) and the piccy will be saved to the path specified in the QuickGrab prefs. It's as simple as that and is so easy to do that I dunno why I even bothered to write the other two methods down! Word of warning though! Copy all fonts and libs etc. from the NFA disk to your Workbench partition first. Then the slideshow will run smoothly :) So there you have it folks, three ways in which to rip pics from NFA slideshows. (Well two coz the Amos tip isn't 100% yet. I can't be bothered wasting more time to fix it due to the other easy methods.) I really don't know why NFA decided to protect the pics anyway, coz it's easy to bypass, so they are doing it all for nothing! Sorry for giving your secrets away NFA, but you'll have to do better than that if you wanna stop me from hacking about your files! Oh yeah, I wonder if I'm the only one to even attempt the Amos hack above or has anyone managed to complete the GIF header 100% yet? I'd really love to know more about the GIF header, such as where do I poke the colour and size values back to? If anyone knows the mem positions, lemme know. And to keep this legal, I (Andy Gibson) or any member of BTF cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage to software/hardware etc. It's up to you now.....