Wedding 'save the date' disk with hidden message

Step 8: Reception

Overall the disks went over quite well. At first, we told no one that they contained anything, hoping that someone would foolishly try to boot it as I probably would :). After a few weeks of suspense (and a few broken disks in the mail) we let people know that the disk was bootable. After that, several people dusted off their old computers, booted up the disks and were quite pleased to find the secret message.

I then proposed a challenge to a few of the more technically inclined invitees and I will pose the same challenge to you. There is a secret within the secret. There is some way to trigger the display of a second secret message (which you can easily find in the code). If you figure out the trigger, please post it in the comments along with a brief description of how you figured it out.

I've attached a zip file containing all the files related to parts 1 and 2 of the 'Writing Your Own Toy OS' tutorial and the final disk image with the 2 secret messages. Happy hunting!

Comments

[zandaa]

I figured out one of the secrets. It's a variation on the Konami code. In sequence you enter the following:

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Return

I figured it out by reading and altering gen_asm.py. I took out most of the key compares in the keyloop, then ran a new version of the image and pressed buttons. (I know I could've looked up key constants and whatnot) When I hit UP, I figured that there were some repeats in the sequence that seemed familiar.

Gives you the nice little message "Grow Up! :-)"

[zandaa]

Also, on a small note. You hardcoded the text attributes in some lines, so if you're changing the attr value, not all of the screen would be (in my case) blue and white, for example. All it takes is look where text is written and substitute 0xdf or 0x00df for 0x"""+attr+"""

that pretty much fixed up the attribute things.

[braingram]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Nice work :)

[braingram]

Good catch. I'll make the code changes and hopefully spare a few viewers from pink screens.

[zandaa]

I was just playing around a bit, I wanted to thank you for this instructable. This is actually the first assembler code I've looked at in ages. (I'm not even famliar with x86 assembler to begin with).

You've sparked my interest to keep looking into these things and experiment away .

[braingram]

This is wonderful to hear!

It gave me a certain sense of glee to move registers around and see results. I'm just glad that I could pass along a little bit of the enjoyment.

Maybe I'll see if I can get a version of tetris working... :)

[zandaa]

I'd love to see something alike tetris, it'd be awesome if you could log the development process and maybe post it as an instructable?

[The Lightning Stalker]

A few years ago, I made a CD version of this using fasm. It's buried somewhere on the fasm forums. I can dig it up of anyone is interested.

[XspiracyX]

The idea is fantastic of what you have created, and very geek. i know most geeks no other geek's and would be easy to get them to use a floppy drive but i think for most people out there today it would be easier for them to have this on cd but i do love the throw back to the floppy

[braingram]

Thanks :)