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OK, I've found two cracking programs which list this game as being one possible to De-protect. The first one is NEVERLOCK from Spring 96 and the second one is LOCKSMITH PC 7/94 edition. They both claim to have de-protects for Disciples of Steel.

HOWEVER, the problem is we now need a fully *uncracked* version of the STEEL.EXE file to test these programs out on! I tried it on the three versions of the program I've been able to find online (1. here, 2 HOTU and 3. STARE.GRY), the version of STEEL.EXE is 759,404 bytes in all three of these. The problem is the game has already been "cracked" (the RAZOR 1911 611 byte crack.com file is included in each of the three archives).

Both unprotect utilities fail because they can't find the bytes they need to modify in STEEL.EXE because it is already "cracked" (namely, our infamous 180-attribute limit bomb). As a hint, it appears NEVERLOCK attempts to modify two byte streams. The first one it actually successfully locates in the "cracked" STEEL.EXE file. It fails to find the 2nd set of bytes to modify, and aborts the crack... Unfortunately, it doesn't tell us *which* bytes it's modifying so we can't go in and do a manual hex-edit!!!

So, we need an uncracked version, *or* we need to know which bytres the CRACK.COM file included in the archive is modifying, and reverse those changes manually, *then* apply the cracks in NEVERLOCK and/or LOCKSMITH. I think we have a GREAT chance at getting this game playable if we can do this!!