S2E13 Synapse SynChron

This episode features SynChron, originally released in 1983 by Synapse Software. It was developed by Harry Guiremand.

Podcast: Download

Box and Supplement Scans

Scan of the front of the box:

Scan of the back of the box:

SynChron in Action

Booting

Boot splash screen:

Once booted, insert your data disk:

If your disk is blank, or otherwise not formatted for SynChron use, it will be initialized. You have the option to start the initialization or try another disk. See, you should have used those disk labels:

Initialization in progress:

Defining the year for the disk. The year you input, and the subsequent year are defined and available for use:

Main Menu

Calendar

Empty calendar at start (year view), with selector on February. Days represented as SUN through SAT:

SynChron is Y2K compliant, and year view matches current calendars:

Full calendar (year view), selector on February:

Calendar (year view) filtered via Search (keyword HOLIDAY), selector on December:

Calendar month view for February (search tag in place for INVERSE):

Calendar day view for February 14. Note the small gray line in the upper right of the text area which denotes the relative position of the cursor within the maximum text size (similar to a modern scrollbar):

Calendar day view showing the various formatting available, including male and female symbols; bullets; margins; word wrap; and index pointer movement:

Keyword Menu

There are 3 options on the menu, 2 of which provide useful functions:

List Keywords

Listing the keywords. Note that only the first 6 positions are significant:

Sort Keywords

Sorting the keywords:

Listing the keywords again proves they were sorted:

Password Menu

The ugly password menu. Two functions, one to add or change, and one to remove:

Add Password

First confirm the addition:

Next, input the password. It can be 6 characters long. Make sure no one is looking over your shoulders as it is not masked:

Post input, it is displayed for a few seconds as confirmation:

Remove Password

Removing the password requires confirmation in the form of a simple yes or no. Unlike modern security, there is no re-authentication required:

Print Menu

The print menu has two primary functions. The first (Print Control) is Print. Print Format is for setting printer parameters:

Print Control

This is used for printing. Enter the criteria:

Turn the printer on:

Watch as the printing takes place. The current day being process is displayed I’m the middle of the screen. The entries for the day scroll in the 3rd grey section:

Print Format

Here you set printer parameters:

Replace Year

This removes the current year and adds the 2nd year following (since the next year is already included). Make a copy of your data disk if you want to preserve the current year entries. Confirmation is required:

First the current year is removed:

Then the next year is added. Note your yearly entries are not copied over:

Change Disk

This allows you to change years (or disks). You are first asked for confirmation:

Then you can remove the current disk and insert the want for the year you want:

If it is password protected, you will be prompted to enter the password. As with assigning the password, it is not masked during input, so make sure no one is looking at your screen:

If you don’t get the password correct, you will be denied access:

Files

The contents of the disk can be seen in this screenshot (nope sorry, copy protected disk):

Data Protection

Encryption

The data is protected using cryptography, a modified simple replacement algorithm. Clearly it does not meet modern encryption standards, but incredible for a consumer product in 1983. I deciphered portions of it.

Model Entry

The model record (entry) I used to decipher the contents. 1/1/2345:

Deciphering with Omnivore

Looking at the non passworded version of disk image with only the above entry:

Looking at the passworded version of disk image with only the above entry:

Crypto Key Map

Spreadsheet I put together showing the replacement algorithm:

http://1drv.ms/1RMbi3c

Disk Image Map

Data locations I discovered in the disk image:

x0000 : Sector 0 - Unknown
x0090 : Sector 1 - Keywords
(16 max?, encoded as 8 chars, 6 chars plain text, last 2?)

x0100 : Sector 2 - Unknown
first 16 bytes blank

x0110 : Number of entries?
00 = no data
03 = 1 record ?
07 = 30 records ?

x0180 : Sector 3 - 1st Data Entry Block
first 16 bytes blank

x0190 -> x01FF : Data
Data in each sector
... repeat, as 1st Data Entry Block

xB410 : Unknown
1F   (2 records)

xB43D : Unknown
FF 3F  (always the same)

xB46A : Signature
3E 5E 23 51 24 25   (always the same)
>  ^  #  Q  $  %

xB470 : Password
(all bytes change, last 6 are actual password)
69 B5 4F F4 2F D7 EB E8 E9 EE EF EC    123456
A9 80 3E 57 7B B9 93 94 8C 9F 88 89    INVERS
59 66 8E 93 49 E5 9B 9B 9B 9B 9B 9B    AAAAAA  (9B=155)
33 CF 45 9C 3C 7C 98 98 98 98 98 98    BBBBBB  (98=152)
54 C6 CF F3 37 02 99 99 99 99 99 99    CCCCCC  (99=153)

xB48A : Date
LSBMSBLSBMSB - Primary Year, Next Year
29 09 2A 09    2345 2346
2A 09 2B 09    2346 2347
E0 07 E1 07    2016 2017

xB490 : Calendar Day Map
Sector ID’s for days entry - 2 bytes each (LSB/MSB)

xB490/1 = 01/01 (First day mapping)

xB78C/D = 12/31 (Last day mapping - non leap)

xBAE0 : Number of entries?
50 00 00 00 01         0 and 1 records
50 00 00 00 02         2 records (0101,0102)
50 00 00 00 1F 00 0B   2 records (0101,1231)
50 00 00 00 0B 00 04   30 records

Printing

Printing the entire calendar. You could easily accomplish the same thing with a word processor or text editor:

https://inverseatascii.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/s2e13-prt-4-prt-04-full.pdf

Printing just holidays using the HOLIDAY keyword to filter the output:

https://inverseatascii.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/s2e13-prt-4-prt-04-holiday.pdf

Instructions

The manual is available on AtariMania and the Internet Archive.

Show Links:

Inverse ATASCII Season 1 Episode 6 Synapse SynFile+: https://inverseatascii.info/2014/12/16/s1e6-synapse-synfile/
Inverse ATASCII Season 2 Episode 8 Synapse SynCalc: https://inverseatascii.info/2016/02/23/s2e08-synapse-software-syncalc/
Atari Mania: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-synchron_14316.html
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/a8b_Synchron_1983_Synapse_Software_US
Synapse Software Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse_Software
Synapse Engineering: http://synapseengineering.com
Cryptography Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography
Encryption Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption
Player/Missile Podcast: http://playermissile.com
Player/Missile OmniVore page: http://playermissile.com/omnivore/
Atari 2600 Game by Game Podcast: http://2600gamebygamepodcast.blogspot.com
VCFSE (Vintage Computer Festival SouthEast): http://vcfse.org
AHCS (Atlanta Historical Computing Society): http://atlhcs.org
Edladdin: http://edladdin.com

Intro music is an excerpt from a chip tune by Wizwars named 8 Bit Raceway. It is used under Creative Common license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

S2E13 Synapse SynChron – Supplement

Box and Supplement Scans