Well you'd have to start with an original floppy or cassette, wouldn't you? Some still enjoy cracking on the real hardware, but most make a low level floppy or

Well you'd have to start with an original floppy or cassette, wouldn't you? Some still enjoy cracking on the real hardware, but most make a low level floppy or tape image and work from that. I've only cracked relatively simple stuff, but working in an emulator is a LOT easier than working on real hardware. In an emulator you can freeze the system and inspect both the computer and the disk drive, set breakpoints, modify memory, and so on, and it's totally undetectable to the protection code.