Amiga Lightrave - what was inside?

[jandreas]

I wonder what specifically was inside of it.

It was basically just a PAL chip that stored a unique 8-12 byte encryption key.  The damn thing cost a fortune (~$40) at the time because of the urethane potting/encapsulation.  However because we were a "hardware" solution we no longer were constrained to selling at 40% of the retail price to the large software distributors that regular software was sold at.  We never had any illusions about it protecting the app.  It was there for marketing and to allow us to charge basically whatever we wanted.  The actual application was encrypted a bunch of times and I threw in some self-modifying code for extra fun.  There was a little application that programmed each dongle and encrypted the app.  The copy-protection was really only for show, there wasn't much to it!  I was kinda shocked that we managed to last almost 6 months before somebody cracked it.  The only thing I could attribute that to was Ben Fuller being a personal friend...

As soon as LightRave came out, NewTek started selling LightWave as a standalone software product.

If I remember correctly Newtek patched Lightwave/Modeler a few months after we delivered.  Which I then reverse-engineered/disassembled and produced a patch within days.   It wasn't until somewhere around Siggraph the following summer that the stand-alone appeared, giving us maybe 10 or 11 months of sales.

I found this old review on eab.

I had forgotten all about that.  The interview at the end was total BS (unknown to the reviewer).  I had spent a stupid amount of time disassembling ALL of the toaster software.  First to reverse-engineer the framestore file format (i had figured out 95% without touching their software the year prior when I was working at U.of.Lowell but couldn't get the color conversion matrices 100% correct), then the wipes (ToasterVision), directly writing to the frame-buffers from ImageFX, etc. etc.  Then it was only a tiny bit more work to debundle Lightwave & Modeler from the Toaster (I never intended to "crack" lightwave...)  The bigger deal was keeping the whole project quiet.  Newtek's distributors had quietly shipped out hundreds of copies of the VideoToaster Software upgrade to Europe and in the end, nearly every major Lightwave house was beta-testing for us.

[jandreas]

I've got to ask about this tomorrow at work to see what NewTek thought about it. (I wasn't there yet)

I vaguely remember Tim, Paul, Allen & Stuart being more than a little pissed off in Pasadena @WOCA and their lawyers trying to find a way to shut us down...    (A really good friend of mine that was also pretty close with Paul since the beginning of FAUG had let me know that opening morning)  And probably equally pissed off were the people at "Video Toaster User" magazine after realizing that we had snuck a full page color advertisement into that months "show" issue.  I think it was even the backpage too?  

What I don't think anybody realized at the time and not that it makes it right but, I was 19.  Had worked in booths demoing software I had written, at every Amiga and graphics tradeshow (Siggraph, NAB, CES) since I was 15 pretty much along side them.  And completely idolized Newtek and everything they  stood for!  (we won't even talk about Laura Longfellow & Kiki).

  The original development that went into what became LR was legitimate and it was just coincidence that along the way I found I could debundle LW.  I would've done anything to work in Topeka (despite it being Topeka) but they were never interested, especially after...

You've got to admit that selling LW stand alone seemed like a no brainer.

You would think but the profit on those Toasters was pretty major.  Not to mention that without the VideoToaster, Commodore and the Amiga would've died much earlier.  I really hope it (as I was told) helped Allen & Stuart during their next contract negotiations.

 

That's one heck of a feat, I applaud your ability to make it work reliably.

Getting it to work reliably was definitely the most important and (also) most difficult thing!

[jandreas]

Please feel free to do whatever you would like with the Lightrave binaries.  You can check the USA library of Congress to confirm my (Jason Andreas) copyright info.  I also have all sorts of other toaster related software that I wrote back in the day; ToasterVision, ToasterFx, parts of ImageFX, etc. etc.  Whatever I own the copyright on can be distributed.  When I am back in the USA sometime in the next few months, I will see if I can dig out the source code for everything.  I am really curious to compare the open source Newtek software with my completely disassembled versions.