Paymaan Jafari’s brain overflow!

This human brain is really something, I think. It always makes me surprised, you see people think about things you can’t believe, you see you can’t remember things when you need them, but at the same time, you remember or find things using the same brain which makes even yourself surprised.

Yesterday, I got nostalgic (again, I know) and tried to remember a song from W.A.S.P I used to listen back in early 90′s. Anyway, I got a copy an hour ago and it was “The Idol” from “The Crimson Idol” album. The song or even lyrics are not that important, it was the acoustic nature of the song which grabbed me. Ok so you say why in the hell you liked heavy metal, when you liked their acoustics?! Don’t ask me, my brain is as complex as yours, I just listen to what I feel I like.

Then listening to that song, made me remember something else, I don’t know how, again

I normally don’t believe I have done enough back in my life to be proud of, but sometimes even small things makes you happy. I remembered I designed a hardware dongle for a friend (and money of course), which nobody could unlock, it helped him sell some hundreds of his “IRANA” persian/farsi writing program for Amiga computers, and that made me very happy. The friend was “Ali Aarefi”, in case you or himself are curious

I have not revealed the design in more than a decade, but you’ll be amazed for sure, if you know what it was. I even prevented telling friends and competitors that I was the designer, taking any chance from them to even try to guess the design based on my style.

I talked to people about how that dongle was, and people continued to tell me yes that is a simple dongle and I can unlock it if I want etc. etc., but nobody did, and in that market full of pirates, it was a good thing I did, I feel. I myself have always been a victim of software piracy and I almost lost a full luxury life to it, so I know I did something good to a friend.

ok, so what was the dongle?! I am revealing this secret here:

Amiga computers’ hardware is something amazing, I can never forget it and I still have my A1200 and I love it. The joystick ports of Amiga, also have an analog input, unlike other computers of those times. My dongle idea was simply this, I used a high tolerance resistor on that port, inside a joystick connector, software would read the analog port, and if the proper voltage exists it worked, it was that simple!!!

A piece of code, would read the ports, about 3 or 4 lines of C, because it was Amiga and programming was a pleasure rather than a torture. Ali Aarefi would embed the code somewhere in his program, and I also filled the connectors with epoxy, so nobody could reverse engineer it.

An small success, still something you feel good when you remember it, it even made today a good day to me

Paymaan.