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Sounds like a coded message in the rom dump

That's where but not how.

"This trap consists of a particular data pattern. Only with the help of special code is it possible to read this pattern."

This is the key part of the story & it's totally unexplained. The blogger "Tony" just dropped it in there with no vetting at all, as if the method was self evident. Such is news in the new millennia.

The claim could just be bullcrap. Atari would have known that courts are tech-illiterate and the defendant might not have shown up for the hearings.

Well to be fair, all there is to go on at this point is that document. The blog is pitched at a wide audience and is meant to be a "light" entertaining read, rather than something in depth and technical. But agreed, it would be interesting to know the exact process of "extracting" the coded message. The point of the article is that it was there (or to your point, it was claimed in court that it was there!), rather than how it got there. Bottom line - it did the trick.

Ed Logg is alive today according to his Wikipedia entry, so there's more to go on if someone wants to do write something more detailed about this incident.

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