Jason Scott Recovers Lost Prince of Persia Source From Apple II Disks
Adrian Crenshaw
Archivist Jason Scott urges developers to take proprietary code from employers before institutional neglect and decaying magnetic media permanently erase computing history.
AI-assisted summary of 2 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time — original source. Check the original for full context.
Source published:
Key ideas
- Jordan Mechner's original master source code for Prince of Persia was recovered from a single 3.5-inch floppy disk discovered in his father's New York apartment decades after being presumed lost. (17:58)
- Digital archivist Jason Scott and Apple II hardware specialist Tony Diaz successfully dumped and restored the multi-disk archive using both native Apple II hardware and magnetic flux-sampling preservation controllers. (27:44)
- The recovered code included Roland Gustafsson's proprietary RW18 disk format, which spiraled 18 sectors per track to add 10% to 20% more storage, forcing vintage pirate groups to split the game across two disks. (36:02)
- During disk recovery, previously unreleased Mechner projects were discovered and preserved, including an unreleased Asteroids clone shelved over legal concerns and the prototype shooter Deathbounce. (31:00)
Detailed notes
## Background This presentation was uploaded to YouTube by Adrian Crenshaw on September 30, 2012. It features footage recorded at DerbyCon 2012, highlighting speaker Jason Scott and directing viewers to Irongeek.com for event video downloads.
## TL;DR Computer historian Jason Scott details the recovery of Jordan Mechner's long-lost original source code for the 1989 Apple II classic *Prince of Persia*, which had sat forgotten on a set of floppy disks in a New York City closet. Scott explains the fragility of magnetic storage media and describes partnering with vintage Apple II specialist Tony Diaz to extract data from Mechner's 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch disks using both period-accurate hardware and modern flux-imaging tools like the DiscFerret. Along the way, the team uncovered forgotten prototypes like an unreleased *Asteroids* clone and Roland Gustafsson's clever RW18 disk routines before uploading the complete 6502 assembly code to GitHub. Scott uses the rescue mission to urge engineers to actively preserve proprietary digital history and maintain continuous data migration rather than trusting fragile hardware.
## Atmosphere & style The talk carries an energetic, irreverent, and comedic tone driven by Scott's rapid-fire delivery as a raconteur who delights in poking fun at tech industry marketing myths, vintage hardware aesthetics, and open-source pedantry. While Scott keeps the audience laughing with absurd anecdotes about high school campaigns and upside-down Apple II disks, there is an underlying current of serious historical urgency regarding the rapid physical decay of magnetic media. The atmosphere feels like an intimate, passionate fireside chat for hardware hackers, balancing vintage computing nostalgia with practical preservation ethics.
## Bulletin - [17:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1078s) Jordan Mechner's original master source code for Prince of Persia was recovered from a single 3.5-inch floppy disk discovered in his father's New York apartment decades after being presumed lost. - [27:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1664s) Digital archivist Jason Scott and Apple II hardware specialist Tony Diaz successfully dumped and restored the multi-disk archive using both native Apple II hardware and magnetic flux-sampling preservation controllers. - [36:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2162s) The recovered code included Roland Gustafsson's proprietary RW18 disk format, which spiraled 18 sectors per track to add 10% to 20% more storage, forcing vintage pirate groups to split the game across two disks. - [31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1860s) During disk recovery, previously unreleased Mechner projects were discovered and preserved, including an unreleased Asteroids clone shelved over legal concerns and the prototype shooter Deathbounce.
## Key takeaways - [08:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=510s) Physical magnetic media like 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks are fundamentally fragile, with oxidation and mechanical decay rendering original storage unusable over multi-decade spans. - [13:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=788s) Prince of Persia pioneered fluid, lifelike animation on the Apple II through rotoscoping live-action reference footage of Mechner's brother and classic swashbuckler films directly onto monitors. - [14:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=888s) Motivated by poorly executed ports of Karateka, Mechner wrote exceptionally clean, heavily documented 6502 assembly code to allow external teams to accurately replicate Prince of Persia across platforms. - [19:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1144s) Mass-produced commercial software binaries survive through natural redundancy, but unique master developer code exists in single-copy isolation and faces permanent loss without direct preservation. - [22:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1356s) Modern hardware preservation devices like DiscFerret and KryoFlux bypass standard controller chips to sample raw magnetic flux transitions directly, expanding 360 KB disks into ~20 MB bitstream captures. - [25:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1502s) Vintage disk-flipping practices required hardware modifications, including adding secondary index-hole optical sensors to stock PC drives to read Apple II flippy disks. - [27:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1664s) Preservationist Tony Diaz demonstrated the forensic diagnostic power of native vintage hardware, reconstructing Mechner's hardware upgrade history solely by inspecting internal Apple II expansion slots. - [31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1860s) The unreleased Apple II Asteroids clone coded by Mechner was originally shelved by Brøderbund out of fear of copyright litigation following the Atari v. Philips legal precedent. - [34:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2079s) Early games like Roland Gustafsson's Quodtris embedded dedicated boss keys to instantly disguise game screens as fake office spreadsheets like AppleWorks or Lotus 1-2-3. - [37:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2257s) Publicly uploading the Prince of Persia source code to GitHub triggered friction with modern open-source advocates who failed to understand that historical game rights remained tied to corporate publishers. - [41:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2493s) Preserving corporate digital assets before corporate abandonment horizons is critical, as neglected proprietary software frequently converts into culturally significant history once companies lose interest. - [49:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2959s) Modifying single-sided floppy disks into 'flippy disks' with notch punchers gambled with data integrity because manufacturers often stamped single notches on media that failed dual-sided certification testing. - [51:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=3107s) Dependable long-term data preservation requires continuous data migration cycles every few years and multi-site redundancy rather than trust in any single 'permanent' archival drive.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=7s) Introduction and Setting the Stage
Jason Scott takes the stage at DerbyCon 2012, joking with the crowd about the room layout, audience energy, and how quickly conference recordings make it online. After marveling that the opening ceremony was already posted on YouTube within hours, he introduces himself as a computer historian, raconteur, and general troublemaker who is thrilled to return for his second DerbyCon—this time staying the entire weekend rather than rushing off.
Addressing attendees who may not know his style, he sets expectations for his presentation, titled "Rescuing Prince of Persia from the Sands of Time." He emphasizes that his presentation is firmly rooted in computing history rather than current zero-days or cutting-edge technical exploits, noting that anyone seeking modern security topics should look elsewhere. Scott describes his role plainly: “I'm merely the guy telling you about what once was and how I have helped to make it live again.”
[02:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=120s) The High School Campaign and the Mechner Standard
Scott recounts a humbling formative memory from approximately twenty-five years earlier, when he had his "ass totally kicked in public speaking." Back in high school, he would run for school president primarily because the campaign assemblies forced the entire student body to sit and listen to him. Scott had prepared what he considered a funny speech focused on absurd promises, like installing digital clocks in every classroom and changing the school mascot to a ferret.
His plans were upstaged when another candidate, David Mechner, delivered a satirical speech that Scott likens to the Gettysburg Address. Mechner argued that returning alumni never want to see their high school transformed into something unrecognizable; instead, they want the school to remain exactly as they left it. Mechner’s platform was a pledge to do absolutely nothing all year so the school would remain completely unchanged. Watching Mechner's effortless delivery made Scott realize he had brought junior-varsity effort to an NBA-level stage. The experience left a permanent impression on how Scott prepares and approaches talks: “I still remember it because it was such a powerful sense of maybe you should take what you do seriously.”
[04:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=288s) Jordan Mechner, *Karateka*, and Brøderbund
David Mechner’s older brother, Jordan Mechner, had already graduated and moved on to college, pursuing a career as a video game programmer while nurturing ambitions to become a screenwriter. Jordan had developed *Karateka*, a martial arts action game released for the Apple II. The game placed the player at the bottom of a mountain, fighting an escalating ladder of increasingly tough opponents until finally reaching the princess—who would knock the player out if approached in a fighting stance.
*Karateka* became an enormous commercial hit, later ported to platforms including the Commodore 64, Atari computers, Japanese home consoles, and the IBM PC. Scott highlights the stark graphical constraints of the era, displaying the IBM PC CGA version with its limited 320×200 resolution and a three-color palette of cyan, white, and blue. Despite the hardware limitations, Jordan applied a cinematic sensibility that made the game feel vast and dramatic. The game was published by Brøderbund, an influential consumer software company founded by the Carlston siblings (two brothers and a sister) known for titles such as *Lode Runner* and the early word processor *Bank Street Writer*. Crucially for future preservation efforts, Jordan was an obsessive record-keeper. He retained notebooks full of ideas, transcribed thoughts, sketches, photocopied receipts, and complete source code printouts, ensuring that the historical context of his creations remained intact.
[08:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=510s) The Fragility of Floppy Disks and Extinct Media
Although Jordan kept meticulous physical documentation, the digital code and master data resided on 5.25-inch magnetic floppy disks. Scott points out that floppy disks have survived the passage of time very poorly. For many younger audience members, magnetic floppies have faded into historical abstraction—much like flappers, radio personality Wolfman Jack, or Gutenberg Bibles—known as a concept or cultural shorthand rather than through hands-on experience.
Scott explains the mechanics of the floppy disk format, demonstrating the center spindle hole used by the drive mechanism to rotate the magnetic sheet, the read/write window where the drive head touches the medium, and the small index hole. By shining a sensor light through the index hole as the disk spun, the drive determined track position and timing: “So without this little index thing it would have no idea where to read or what to do.” Scott notes that billions of disks flooded the market from major brands like Maxell and BASF, alongside obscure, dead-end storage experiments like the compact floppy cartridge that failed to gain adoption and vanished completely, leaving any data stored on them essentially stranded forever.
- 5.25-inch disks relied on physical contact with the drive head, exposing the magnetic substrate to wear, decay, and environmental degradation. - Early drive systems depended on the index hole timing sensor to establish the starting sector of a track. - Proprietary or niche physical disk form factors (such as early compact cartridge floppies) lacked standard drive ecosystems, creating severe preservation challenges when equipment vanished.
[10:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=654s) The Aesthetics of Vintage Floppy Storage
Jason Scott highlights the bizarre and charming world of vintage magnetic media storage, noting that anyone uninterested in the unusual capacities and oddities of Apple II disks is definitely at the wrong presentation. In the early 1980s, computer owners were treated to an eccentric range of bespoke accessories designed to organize their floppy disks, cassettes, and ROM cartridges. Showing contemporary product advertisements, Scott singles out items like the mini easel binder, which offered a dedicated space to write a narrative explaining the contents of a single 360 KB floppy disk—at the steep price of $5.50 in 1982 dollars.
Other cases were marketed to organize Atari 2600 cartridges or audio cassettes for a night of home entertainment, designed so users could open them up like an evening media buffet. Scott pokes fun at the narrow, drab aesthetic palette of the home computer era, calling out the three standard finishes manufacturers forced on consumers: chocolate, tan, and simulated wood grain.
- In 1982, custom mini easel binders for 360 KB floppies retailed for around $5.50 each. - Cartridge and cassette storage solutions were sold with the promise of transforming living-room gaming on consoles like the Atari 2600 into an orderly media collection. - Color options for media organizers were overwhelmingly limited to chocolate, tan, and faux wood grain.
---
[13:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=788s) Jordan Mechner and the Genesis of *Prince of Persia*
Turning to physical media obsolescence, Scott notes that 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and 3.5-inch floppies cannot simply be read by contemporary computers off the shelf. He built a custom enclosure to read 5.25-inch drives, pointing out that hardware must now be sourced on eBay or through wholesale liquidators because it is impossible to buy such drives locally. He then introduces game creator Jordan Mechner, who had relocated to Hollywood as a successful screenwriter and game developer after creating the landmark title *Karateka*.
Following *Karateka*, Mechner set to work on *Prince of Persia*, which was released in 1989 for the Apple II. The game was celebrated for its fluid, lifelike animation, achieved through rotoscoping. Mechner projected live-action film directly onto his Apple II monitor to trace the frames into digital graphics. While some sword-fighting reference footage came from classic Errol Flynn swashbucklers, the majority of the running, jumping, and climbing was acted out by Mechner’s younger brother, David. Scott jokes that anyone frustrated by the prince's acrobatic deaths in the game can take solace in knowing they are watching Mechner's brother take the hits. Released in full color at the twilight of the Apple II’s commercial dominance, *Prince of Persia* completely surpassed *Karateka* in visual fluidity and level design.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Prince of Persia Animation and Porting Workflow accDescr: Diagram showing how live-action reference footage was rotoscoped and then turned into clean source code for multiple platform ports.
subgraph MotionCapture["Animation Reference"] A["David Mechner (running/jumping)"] B["Errol Flynn films (swordplay)"] end
subgraph AppleIIDev["Apple II Production (1989)"] C["Rotoscoping via Projector"] D["Ultra-Clean, Documented 6502 Assembly"] end
subgraph TargetPlatforms["Downstream Ports"] E["IBM PC / MS-DOS"] F["Commodore Amiga"] G["Consoles & Other Systems"] end
A --> C B --> C C --> D D --> E D --> F D --> G ```
---
[14:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=888s) Clean Code, *The Making of Prince of Persia*, and the Lost Source
When Broderbund originally licensed and ported Mechner's earlier hit *Karateka* to other platforms, third-party developers could not decipher his undocumented, ad-hoc codebase. Rather than untangling it, they simply rewrote the entire game from scratch. This resulted in sloppy ports that ruined the exacting jump timings, physics, and gameplay mechanics Mechner had spent months calibrating.
Determined never to repeat that frustration with *Prince of Persia*, Mechner approached the project with software engineering rigor. He spent immense effort documenting, commenting, and structuring the code from top to bottom so that external porters could replicate the exact mechanics across IBM, Commodore, and arcade-level ports. Mechner documented this process in real-time, maintaining a comprehensive journal that spans his transition from an aspiring college coder to an established industry professional, later published as the 300-page book *The Making of Prince of Persia*.
The franchise was eventually sold to Ubisoft, spawning a blockbuster modern franchise starting with *The Sands of Time* and a big-budget Hollywood feature film starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Mechner had achieved his lifelong creative dream of being a Hollywood screenwriter, but when he went to look back at his digital archive, he discovered a devastating gap. While he possessed his childhood code and *Karateka* 5.25-inch disks, his original master source code for *Prince of Persia* was nowhere to be found. Inquiries to former Broderbund executives and fellow programmers turned up empty; the code was presumed lost to history.
---
[17:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1078s) The Father's Closet and Calling Jason Scott
The breakthrough occurred years later when Mechner’s father was cleaning out his apartment in New York City. Among old boxes being packed up to mail to Jordan was a single 3.5-inch floppy disk labeled with the *Prince of Persia* source code. The irreplaceable artifact had sat forgotten for decades in a closet.
Relieved but facing a format he could no longer read, Mechner published a post on his personal blog asking his readers how on earth one extracts data off a decades-old Apple 3.5-inch floppy. As Scott recounts with evident delight, the second comment left on the blog post read simply: "You have to call Jason Scott." Scott explains that because he actively tracks mentions of his name across the web via RSS feeds, finding people requesting his digital extraction expertise is one of the great joys of modern connectivity. He immediately reached out to Mechner to step into the role of recovery engineer.
---
[19:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1144s) The Myth of the Lifetime Guarantee and Hardware Preservation
Scott reflects on the fundamental unreliability of magnetic storage media, warning the audience against believing original marketing claims regarding disk longevity:
> “The computer industry is 50 years of overpromise and underdeliver and continues to be to this day with beautiful graphics that lie to you, and lie to you, and lie to you, and you go, ‘You're lying to me,’ and it goes, ‘No, I'm not lying to you,’ therefore lying to you more.”
Floppies are not permanent archives; they are thin plastic wafers coated in an extremely delicate layer of magnetic substrate that oxidizes and flakes away over time. Scott references an essay he published two years earlier titled "Floppy Discs: It's Too Late," in which he urged everyone with historical data to pull it off magnetic disks immediately before physical decay renders the media unreadable.
Mass-market commercial games like *Doom* or *Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?* are in no danger of disappearing because thousands of copies circulate in the wild, complemented by extensive literature like David Kushner’s book *Masters of Doom* (which Scott sidetracks to note includes the grim trivia of John Carmack having an excessively noisy pet cat euthanized). Unique, unreleased developer source code like Mechner's, however, exists in single-copy isolation. Scott also points out the political minefield inside the retrocomputing space, observing:
> “Preservationism is infested with tiny kingdoms and tiny kings sending little text slings and arrows in their little kingdoms and their fiefdoms going, ‘Oh, no, not the king.’”
Brushing past community infighting, Scott discusses the hardware devices used to pull raw bitstreams off vintage floppies, introducing the DiscFerret—a prototype open-source USB-to-floppy controller board designed to capture magnetic flux transitions directly from standard drives.
- Floppy disk "lifetime guarantees" ignored the physical decay of magnetic substrates over 20- to 30-year spans. - Mass-produced binaries are functionally secure through redundancy, whereas master source code typically exists on only one or two decaying disks. - The DiscFerret interface connects classic floppy disk drives directly over USB to sample raw magnetic flux, bypassing format-restricted disk controller chips.
[22:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1356s) Preserving Magnetic Flux: KryoFlux, DiscFerret, and Hardware Preservation Tools
Jason Scott explains that modern preservation boards are capable of completely taking over the low-level functionality of standard 5.25-inch PC floppy drives, such as TEAC mechanisms. By directly controlling the drive, an off-the-shelf unit can be forced to read Apple II disks, Atari disks, synthesizer data disks, or virtually anything recorded on 5.25-inch magnetic media. This capability includes performing massive raw magnetic flux reads so researchers can analyze the physical encoding long after the physical media has been imaged. Scott points out prominent preservation tools in the community, notably the KryoFlux created by the Software Preservation Society. Because the KryoFlux samples the raw magnetic flux transitions on the physical magnetic surface, a basic 360 KB floppy disk can expand into a 20 MB bitstream image file. That raw flux data preserves not just user files, but disk duplication artifacts, copy-protection schemes, and odd metadata left on the outer tracks by commercial duplication houses.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Floppy Disk Preservation Approaches accDescr: Flow diagram showing two methods for extracting raw floppy data into digital disk images.
subgraph DirectFlux["Magnetic Flux Imaging"] A["5.25 Inch Floppy Disk"] --> B["TEAC Drive + Controller Board<br/>(KryoFlux / DiscFerret)"] B --> C["Raw Flux Read<br/>(~20 MB per 360 KB Disk)"] C --> D["Magnetic Flux Analysis<br/>& Image Recreation"] end
subgraph NativeHw["Original Hardware Transfer"] A --> E["Original Apple II & Floppy Drive"] E --> F["Native Transfer Utility<br/>(Apple Disk Transfer)"] F --> G["Standard Disk Image File"] end ```
Beyond the KryoFlux—whose developers are particularly well known for their dedication to Commodore Amiga archiving—Scott highlights alternative devices like the FC5025 and the DiscFerret. He praises the competitive tension between independent preservation teams, arguing that friction between rival projects ultimately benefits the end user: “I like it when there's multiple groups even when they hate each other and they do, because I think we really benefit on the outside because we say, ‘Okay, well, you know, they have this and you don't,’ they go, ‘Well, fuck you, we'll put it in tonight,’ whereas before you might say, ‘Well, look, we're your best solution, stick with us.’”
- Off-the-shelf TEAC floppy drives can be controlled at the hardware level to read arbitrary formats (Apple II, Atari, synthesizer disks). - A raw flux capture of an ordinary 360 KB floppy disk yields approximately 20 MB of magnetic timing data. - Flux captures expose hidden duplication-house signatures and physical track anomalies outside the standardized file system. - Competing hardware preservation devices discussed include the KryoFlux, DiscFerret, and the FC5025 USB adapter.
---
[25:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1502s) Flipping Floppies and the *Karateka* Upside-Down Easter Egg
Scott displays a modified TEAC 5.25-inch floppy drive (recommending people look for "GFR" models on eBay and buy ten at a time since many arrive broken). He highlights a custom blue component retrofitted into the drive mechanism: an auxiliary index hole reader. Standard vintage floppy mechanisms often lacked a second sensor on the opposite side of the drive jacket. When users created "flippy disks" by notching the opposite edge and inserting the disk upside down to use the reverse side, standard single-sensor PC drives could not detect the index hole on that flipped track. The developers behind the DiscFerret sent Scott a hand-modified drive with a secondary index sensor specifically so it could read double-sided Apple II disks.
``` Flip-Disk Alignment Problem:
[ Normal Insertion ] [ Flipped Insertion ] +-------------------------+ +-------------------------+ | [O] Index Hole (Sens A) | | | | | | | | ( Magnetic) | == FLIP ==> | ( Magnetic) | | ( Media) | | ( Media) | | | | | | | | [O] Index Hole (Sens B) | +-------------------------+ +-------------------------+ (Stock drive reads Sens A) (Requires 2nd sensor mod) ```
Flipping disks over was ubiquitous on the Apple II, leading Scott to describe one of Jordan Mechner's most famous practical jokes: the *Karateka* Easter egg. When *Karateka* was shipped by Brøderbund, Mechner convinced the company to duplicate the disk so that if the user inserted it upside down, the game still booted and ran—except the entire screen rendered upside down. As Scott recounts: “Jordan tells the story, you know, in a very effective way about, ‘Wow, you know, it's amazing that Brøderbund was so open to doubling the cost of their duplication just to mess with people,’ but they loved that they would get a tech support call of, ‘It's playing upside down,’ and they would say, ‘Well, just flip the disk over and put it back in, it'll work fine,’ because it would, and then they were ruined for games forever.”
---
[27:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1664s) Enter Tony Diaz: Original Hardware and Reading the Apple II
While Scott possessed modern flux-imaging equipment, the optimal solution for recovering the *Prince of Persia* source code arrived in the person of Tony Diaz. Diaz, an authority on Apple II hardware maintenance and preservation, happened to live within 100 miles of Jordan Mechner. When told of the project, Diaz loaded a vehicle full of vintage hardware, diagnostic equipment, and drives to make the trek to Mechner's location. Diaz's philosophy centered on reading the disks using maintained original Apple hardware running utilities like Apple Disk Transfer (ADT), ensuring the disks were handled precisely by the analog systems they were designed for.
Scott explains that the modular design of the Apple II meant opening the chassis was trivial compared to sealed modern devices, exposing internal expansion slots that held critical peripheral cards—such as the Disk II floppy controller interface or aftermarket lower-case character display adapters. When Mechner expressed nervous apprehension about strangers handling his old machine, Diaz immediately won his trust through sheer hardware forensic skill: “Tony opened up Jordan's computer and he was like, ‘Well, it looks like you put in 16K, you bought this thing between August and September of this year, you then put in a second one here, and then you tried to modify this aspect, and then you pulled it out again,’ and Jordan just looked at him and he was like, ‘Yeah, I remember in that summer I went down to New York City and I bought that part, and then I went over here and I bought that part, and we were going to do this and we decided against it.’”
---
[31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=1860s) Recovering the Lost Archives: *Asteroids*, *Deathbounce*, and *Quadris*
The disk recovery operation went smoothly. Mechner had originally created the archive by backing up a small 5 MB hard drive across five 5.25-inch floppy disks, capturing the complete development environment and source code for *Prince of Persia*. While Scott ran preservation tests with the DiscFerret to capture raw flux data, Diaz quickly booted up a period-accurate Apple II backup restoration utility from his library, effortlessly expanding the archive directly on native hardware.
Before daring to touch the *Prince of Persia* floppies, the team practiced their procedure on Mechner's other archive disks, uncovering forgotten programming history:
```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Unreleased Jordan Mechner Games Recovered from Floppy Disks accDescr: Three games found during the preservation session: Asteroids clone, Deathbounce, and Quadris.
subgraph Recovered["Recovered Mechner Archives"] direction TB G1["Asteroids Clone<br/>(Shelved due to Atari v. Philips lawsuit)"] G2["Deathbounce<br/>(Shooter prototype, now ported to JS)"] G3["Quadris<br/>(Early Tetris-related development for Brøderbund)"] end ```
- **Unreleased *Asteroids* Clone**: Before *Karateka*, Brøderbund asked Mechner to code an Apple II clone of Atari's arcade hit *Asteroids*. However, around the time Mechner finished it, Atari successfully sued Philips in *Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp.* over *K.C. Munchkin!*, establishing early copyright precedent over visual "look and feel" similarities to *Pac-Man*. Fearing a lawsuit, Brøderbund got cold feet and killed Mechner's pixel-perfect *Asteroids* port; the game sat unseen for 20 years until Scott and Diaz recovered and uploaded it. - ***Deathbounce***: Another early arcade-style shooter Mechner coded while publishers were demanding fast-paced action rather than cinematic games. Mechner and the publishers shelved it, but upon its extraction from the floppies, an enthusiast wrote a dedicated Apple II JavaScript emulator specifically to host it online, making *Deathbounce* playable in modern web browsers. - ***Quadris***: A disk containing Mechner's work related to *Tetris*. Brøderbund had originally been offered publishing rights to *Tetris*, but turned it down—partly due to the convoluted and legally murky licensing negotiations surrounding Soviet software at the time—leading to their rejection and return of the property.
[34:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2079s) Roland Gustafsson's "Quodtris" and the Relic of the Boss Key
Jason Scott recounts an anecdote about the developers at Brøderbund who were instructed to delete their local copies of *Tetris* and return all materials. One of their programmers, Roland Gustafsson, loved the game so much that around 1983 or 1984 he quietly rewrote a version entirely from scratch so they could continue playing it. He titled his four-block creation *Quodtris*. While Jason and his collaborators were testing the salvaged floppy disk and marveling at how well Gustafsson had replicated the game, they hit a button trying to figure out the controls and suddenly a full screen of text popped up.
They realized they had stumbled upon a genuine artifact of computing antiquity: the boss key. In the early days of personal computing and arcade-style games, developers built in a dedicated key that instantly replaced the game display with a fake spreadsheet, mimicking applications like AppleWorks or Lotus 1-2-3. If a supervisor walked down the hallway, the player could instantly toggle the screen to look like productive office work, complete with a tiny joke warning at the bottom about wrist fatigue. Gustafsson had secretly embedded a boss key directly into *Quodtris* so no one at Brøderbund would catch him running his unauthorized, home-brewed clone.
[36:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2162s) The Genius of the RW18 Disk Protection Scheme
Scott highlights Roland Gustafsson's eccentric brilliance, pointing to a photograph on MetaFilter of Gustafsson holding a floppy disk he had taken from Brøderbund back in 1982 right up against his computer monitor. Contained on that disk was the secret payload behind the entire *Prince of Persia* preservation effort: the low-level RW18 disk routines. Standard Apple II floppy disks formatted data using 16 sectors per track. Gustafsson managed to engineer a massive data-spiraling routine that squeezed 18 sectors per track onto standard magnetic media, extracting an extra 10% to 20% of storage capacity out of an Apple II floppy disk.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Standard Apple II Disk vs Roland Gustafsson RW18 accDescr: Diagram contrasting standard 16-sector Apple II disk capacity with Gustafsson's 18-sector RW18 spiraled layout and its impact on crackers.
subgraph Standard["Standard Apple II Format"] S1["16 Sectors per Track"] S2["Fits Standard Disk Size"] S1 --> S2 end
subgraph RW18["Gustafsson RW18 Format"] R1["18 Sectors per Track via Data Spiraling"] R2["Yields +10% to +20% Capacity"] R1 --> R2 end
subgraph Piracy["Cracking & Warez Consequence"] P1["Data Exceeds Single Standard Floppy"] P2["Code Fully Packed, No Slack Space"] P3["Pirates Forced to Split into 2 Disks with Fake Breaks"] P1 --> P3 P2 --> P3 end
RW18 --> Piracy ```
This format severely complicated life for contemporary software crackers. Whenever pirate groups tried to duplicate the disk, the dumped payload was physically too large to write back out to a standard single Apple II floppy. Scouring the binary revealed no empty filler or slack space to prune, as every byte was valid, packed game data. Crackers had no alternative but to split the game across two floppies, inserting dummy transition screens that instructed players to swap to disk two. The entire warez scene grumbled about the sloppy two-disk cracks, entirely unaware that the culprit was Gustafsson's proprietary RW18 low-level encoding.
[37:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2257s) GitHub Release, Culture Clashes, and Licensing Complaints
After recovering the source code from the original magnetic media, the team uploaded the entirety of *Prince of Persia*, alongside the RW18 disk protection routines, directly to GitHub. The code received immediate critical acclaim from industry veterans like John Romero, who wrote to Scott expressing amazement and noting he learned ten new things just by reviewing the vintage, heavily commented code. However, the modern open-source community reacted with vocal outrage over the legal terms. Rather than appreciating the recovery, commenters flooded the repository demanding to know why the game was not licensed under the GPL or another permissive open-source license.
Scott points out the absurdity of demanding open licenses for a game whose rights Jordan Mechner had completely surrendered to Ubisoft back in 1991. Mechner possessed no legal right to relicense the brand or engine under open-source terms; his release was simply an invitation for developers to study the historical source code under the condition that they not sell it or commercially misuse the *Prince of Persia* trademark. Scott compares these internet complaints to someone approaching the Gutenberg Bible and whining about its copyright notice. He mocks a commenter who claimed that dropping non-corporate-cleared code onto GitHub endangered professional software careers: “And this guy explained about how we were putting his career at risk by having this non-Chinese firewalled corporate source code released into the wild without an open license, and I was like, I'll take that rap.”
- The recovered GitHub release contained the primary 6502 assembler source for the game as well as Gustafsson's raw disk protection source routines. - Modern developers routinely posted confusing queries in the issues, baffled by raw assembly and asking where to input the files to compile a running binary. - The project generated widespread mainstream tech press coverage, running in publications such as *Wired* and Gawker roughly five months prior to DerbyCon.
[41:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2493s) The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Steal from Work for Posterity
Scott reflects on the lessons learned from rescuing historical artifacts, emphasizing that contemporary developers and engineers are creating history every day without recognizing its significance. Important code is frequently left behind on forgotten corporate hard drives or discarded altogether unless someone takes the initiative to preserve it before it vanishes. He argues that the timeline between active commercial relevance and total institutional neglect is much shorter than people think.
Scott openly advocates preserving proprietary work from employers so it survives for future generations: “Yes, I am literally telling you to steal from work for later generations—they will thank you.” He observes that an eventual "nobody gives a shit" horizon arrives when corporate owners abandon an intellectual property, at which point archived materials transition from proprietary secrets into vital cultural artifacts.
[42:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2562s) The Ultimate Three-Step Cracking Process
Examining the repository metrics, Scott notes that 2,891 users were watching the *Prince of Persia* GitHub project. While only a handful of developers actually tried modifying the complex assembly code, one particular fork caught his eye. A user analyzed the original anti-tamper logic—which featured multi-layered protection routines such as `LDA red_herring` and nested checks designed to verify whether the integrity-checking code itself had been modified—and successfully purged every single copy-protection check from the source tree.
Scott humorously framed this modification as the ultimate holy grail of software piracy, laying out a foolproof three-step cracking roadmap: - **Step 1:** Game is released. - **Step 2:** Wait 22 years. - **Step 3:** Patch now-released source code. - **Victory.**
[44:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2641s) Hardware History and the Apple II at DerbyCon
Closing out this portion of the presentation, Scott touches on the unique community atmosphere of DerbyCon. He notes that while attendees could easily spend their time at specialized corporate computer security sessions to advance their careers, conventions like this serve a higher social and philosophical purpose. Preserving and studying retro computing illustrates that code is effectively eternal: “There's no such thing as out of date, merely out of reference.”
To make computing history tangible, Scott brought a working Apple II system to display in the vendor hall for attendees to touch and explore. He emphasizes the historical industrial design decisions made by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs—contrasting Wozniak’s circuit layout with Jobs’s requirement for a sleek, fanless plastic enclosure, an engineering choice Apple subsequently regretted when heat issues forced them to reconsider active cooling. Finally, Scott gives credit to a local organization, Louisville Arcade, for loaning the actual Apple II hardware for the conference floor, sparing him the logistical nightmare of attempting to transport an ancient, unshielded computer through TSA airport security screening.
[46:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2800s) KansasFest and the Apple II Community
Jason Scott concludes his presentation by highlighting the retrocomputing scene, noting that Louisville itself possesses a remarkably vibrant retro community that is always welcoming. After sharing his contact details and mentioning his involvement in various archiving projects, Jason reveals that he intentionally embargoed the Prince of Persia source code story for about five months. He did this so that Tony Diaz would have the opportunity to break the story and present his own perspective first at KansasFest (KFest), an annual five-day Apple II festival held in Kansas.
The audience reacts with mixed surprise—half stunned by the continued existence of an Apple II convention and the other half bewildered by a five-day duration. Jason explains that the event is truly extraordinary because attendees hold immense passion and genuine love for the vintage hardware. New hardware and software projects are unveiled daily by members of the community, ranging from the CFFA (CompactFlash for Apple) adapter—which allows a user to plug in a CompactFlash card and immediately access thousands of disk images—to modern expansions like Apple II Ethernet and Apple II Twitter clients. Tony Diaz delivered his presentation at KansasFest earlier that year, and Jason expresses immense gratitude toward him. Pointing to a Wired photo of them together, Jason jokes that while Tony looked completely composed, Jason himself looked horrified, quipping: “I look like they've fucked up my plan... It's like halfway through *The Producers*, right? It's just like, ‘Oh no, I was shorting the source code extraction!’”
- **Embargo timeline**: Jason Scott held the Prince of Persia preservation story secret for five months to let Tony Diaz debut it at KansasFest. - **Hardware highlighted**: Modern community-built adapters like the CFFA (CompactFlash for Apple II), Ethernet interfaces, and modern microblogging clients running natively on 8-bit Apple hardware. - **Wired coverage**: A widely circulated photo captured Tony looking completely calm while Jason sported an expression of comedic despair.
---
[49:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2959s) Q&A: Flippy Disks and Practical Data Preservation
Jason opens the floor for questions from the audience, coordinating with the room monitors to ensure he doesn't cut into the next speaker's presentation slot. The first question concerns "flippy disks"—the practice of using a hole puncher on single-sided 5.25-inch floppy disks so the reverse side could be written to. Jason explains the historical reality behind the hardware manufacturing process: floppy disks were tested at the factory, and if the reverse magnetic surface had flaws or failed certification, the manufacturer stamped only one write-enable notch, selling it at a lower price as a certified single-sided disk. Budget-conscious computer users purchased special "flippy disk" notch punches to force drives into writing to the unverified side. Jason criticizes this corner-cutting habit as a gamble with important data, remarking, “That's like waiting for the meat to go into the bargain bin; I just don't think that's a really smart idea.”
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Single-Sided Disk Downgrading and Punching Flow accDescr: Diagram showing how disk manufacturers classified failed double-sided media and how users bypassed it with disk notchers.
subgraph Manufacturing ["Factory Production & Testing"] A["Manufacture 5.25-inch Floppy Disk"] --> B{"Test Media Surface Integrity"} B -->|"Both sides pass"| C["Dual-sided disk packaging"] B -->|"Reverse side fails or has flaws"| D["Cut single notch (Sold as single-sided)"] end
subgraph UserHacks ["Consumer Modification"] D --> E["User buys square notch punch tool"] E --> F["Punch write notch on opposite edge ('Flippy disk')"] F --> G["Write data to uncertified magnetic surface"] end ```
The next question tackles long-term personal digital archiving strategy. Jason outlines a realistic, iterative maintenance approach rather than searching for an elusive permanent storage medium. Archiving, he emphasizes, requires regular migration: “Best way to do that is to realize that it is an ongoing process that's probably once every two to three years... it's like doing your smoke [alarm] batteries, it's just there's nothing you can do, but every two or three years try to get it over to another location.” He advocates adhering to the Google-style standard of maintaining at least five copies across three distinct physical locations.
For organizing files across decades of hardware upgrades, he endorses the "Russian doll" method: when purchasing a replacement drive, simply drag the entire previous hard drive into a single top-level folder on the new one. He reassures the crowd that advancing compute power makes search and retrieval effortless over time; while opening a single JPEG in 1995 could take ninety seconds, modern file managers and photo utilities generate thousands of thumbnails and detect facial features instantly.
---
[51:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=3107s) The Reality of Hard Drives and Final Thoughts
An audience member asks about the best durable hard drives for permanent archival storage. Jason bluntly dismisses the notion that any mechanical drive can serve as dependable, long-term archival storage. Hard drives, he points out, are fragile electromechanical machines subject to catastrophic physical failure at any second: “None. There is no good long-term hard drive storage. You are writing on a thing spinning at the speed of fucking light... someone described the situation with a hard drive head is like taking a 747 and plugging it into a field of grass to extract one piece of grass.”
Given this reality, the only viable defense against hardware decay is widespread redundancy: duplicate data onto multiple storage drives, anticipate that individual media will inevitably fail over time, and replace them continuously as they die.
In his closing remarks, Jason encourages DerbyCon attendees to approach him throughout the conference weekend to chat. He asks attendees to share substantive experiences rather than empty stories, concluding: “If you're trying to—we're trying to learn something together to make things better in the world, I would love to speak to you. Thanks a lot.”
- **The nature of HDD storage**: Mechanical drive tolerance margins are microscopically thin, making unmonitored passive storage a guaranteed path to data loss. - **Redundancy imperative**: Relying on single "archival" drives is futile; survival depends on keeping multiple active duplicates across separate locations. - **Community call**: Scott closes with an open invitation for constructive discussions around computing preservation and practical problem-solving.
## Notable quotes > [41:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2493s) Yes, I am literally telling you to steal from work for later generations—they will thank you. — Jason Scott
> [44:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8&t=2641s) There's no such thing as out of date, merely out of reference. — Jason Scott
## Mentioned Jason Scott, David Mechner, Jordan Mechner, Brøderbund, Karateka, Prince of Persia, Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari, IBM PC, Lode Runner, Bank Street Writer, Carlston siblings, Wolfman Jack, Maxell, BASF, Atari 2600, Errol Flynn, Ubisoft, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Jake Gyllenhaal, The Making of Prince of Persia, Doom, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, John Carmack, David Kushner, Masters of Doom, DiscFerret, TEAC, KryoFlux, Software Preservation Society, FC5025, Tony Diaz, Apple Disk Transfer, Asteroids, Deathbounce, Quadris, Tetris, K.C. Munchkin!, Philips, Roland Gustafsson, Quodtris, AppleWorks, Lotus 1-2-3, RW18, GitHub, John Romero, Wired, Gawker, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Louisville Arcade, KansasFest, CompactFlash for Apple (CFFA)
## Video description Video from Derbycon 2012. All videos, with downloads, can be found at this link shortly: http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/derbycon2/mainlist
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8)