Sega Saturn game CD copy protection

[Drenholm]

Before his web page was shut down (I am assuming that's what happened, probably due to GiriGiri or Cassini?), Barnito posted this on the GiriGiri Hack page...

10/23/03: we are currently not able to get the emulator to see CD-R burns of games. The bios checks for the outer security ring that is only on Saturn disks and is impossible for CD Writers to reproduce. Anyone who has a Saturn BIOS that has been modded, please email me below.

I read this using the stored page from the Internet Archive, by the way.

Surely this proves that a PC CD-ROM drive can check for and thus, read, the Saturn copy protection code? I have verified this; with originals, GiriGiri or Cassini will 'boot', but with copies they will not.

How else could this be possible? If GiriGiri and Cassini (which practically is GiriGiri) can read the code to check if it's there or not, surely it can be read, and maybe even reproduced?

(is very confused)

Edit: Fixed a spelling mistake.

 

[dj898]

thought with commercial burner it's physically not possible to burn into that area...

who knows with specially modified burner or industrial grade... ???

 

[Drenholm]

Thanks for your reply.

Maybe! It could be hackable in some way.

But do you think this proves that it is readable? Because getting a dump of the code stored in the ring is the first step to understanding the protection more.

 

[Runik]

Originally posted by Drenholm@Wed, 2005-01-12 @ 12:43 PM

Before his web page was shut down (I am assuming that's what happened, probably due to GiriGiri or Cassini?), Barnito posted this on the GiriGiri Hack page...

I read this using the stored page from the Internet Archive, by the way.

Surely this proves that a PC CD-ROM drive can check for and thus, read, the Saturn copy protection code? I have verified this; with originals, GiriGiri or Cassini will 'boot', but with copies they will not.

How else could this be possible? If GiriGiri and Cassini (which practically is GiriGiri) can read the code to check if it's there or not, surely it can be read, and maybe even reproduced?

(is very confused)

Edit: Fixed a spelling mistake.

[post=127662]Quoted post[/post]​

This is just bullshit. That just add another thing to the fact that this guy (barnitos) hasn't the slightest idea of what he is talking about ...

Using backups with emulators is trivial. The command asking for the outer ring can easily be bypassed.

I had no problem using isos with GiriGiri mounted with Daemon Tools, explain me where is the outer ring there ?

All emulators that I know (SSF, Satourne, etc ...) can use backups without any problem.

10/23/03: we are currently not able to get the emulator to see CD-R burns of games. The bios checks for the outer security ring that is only on Saturn disks and is impossible for CD Writers to reproduce. Anyone who has a Saturn BIOS that has been modded, please email me below.

This is just nonsense ... does he want to write the outer ring (with a CD writer), or to read the outer ring ?

Do not take anything from this site seriously. Cassini is just a hack of GiriGiri, it has no legitimity ...

 

[madmalkav]

IIRC, I used backups with GiriGiri and had no problems running them.

 

[CyberWarriorX]

Barnitos posted a number of stupid conclusions in regards to GiriGiri. Other great ones included how GiriGiri was encrypted by Sega and then later by Gavionne.

The problem with GiriGiri was actually in regards to games with the audio tracks ripped out. Normally on a real saturn this isn't a problem, but for some reason somebody decided on a rather stupid scheme for generating the TOC data in GiriGiri.

Cyber Warrior X

 

[Borisz]

Originally posted by Runik@Wed, 2005-01-12 @ 08:01 AM

This is just bullshit. That just add another thing to the fact that this guy (barnitos) hasn't the slightest idea of what he is talking about ...

[post=127666]Quoted post[/post]​

Heck I've been saying that since cassini came out. Barnito is an attention whore. I mean he actually posted at some old abandoned saturn emu shrine forums saying how Cassini is a supa kickass improved girigiri, when all he did was adding the loader frontends to it. It doesn't even have the hidden multisampling menu enabled.

I also liked how the manual tells tons of useless and/or trivial info (the howtoripgames section was like "rip iso+mp3 then convert to bin/cue"), while it didn't mentioned stuff that was actually important - like what should be the Bios file named as.

 

[Borisz]

I also find this one rather hilarious:

http://web.archive.org/web/20031218002519/...abilitylist.txt

Playable Without Errors (all run a bit slow):

Cotton2 (J)

Unplayable:

Cotton 2 (J) - No graphic during game

And he listed Soukyugurentai as working, when it doesnt work at all. (IIRC, it resets to the bios)

Anyway, back on topic, so why do games in Daemon work when CDRs dont? Isn't that the same thing practically?

 

[Runik]

Originally posted by Borisz@Wed, 2005-01-12 @ 09:04 PM

Anyway, back on topic, so why do games in Daemon work when CDRs dont? Isn't that the same thing practically?

[post=127688]Quoted post[/post]​

Actually that's the point : there's no reason that one will work and not the other.

If the cdblock commands reading the protection were emulated, neither would work ...

 

[Curtis]

Hehe...I remember when "Barnito" showed up here with his amusing claims of legality (Sandy from Sega Tech Support said it would be OK), or "Snail's" leet coding skills (he could read and reprogram 10's of megs of raw assembly and produce amazing enhancements, despite not having or including any documentation). Man...I'm gonna read that thread again.

The guy was so full of shit, he probably blames the community that nobody took him seriously and "his" project failed.

 

[Runik]

Originally posted by Curtis@Thu, 2005-01-13 @ 01:15 PM

Hehe...I remember when "Barnito" showed up here with his amusing claims of legality (Sandy from Sega Tech Support said it would be OK), or "Snail's" leet coding skills (he could read and reprogram 10's of megs of raw assembly and produce amazing enhancements, despite not having or including any documentation). Man...I'm gonna read that thread again.

The guy was so full of shit, he probably blames the community that nobody took him seriously and "his" project failed.

[post=127731]Quoted post[/post]​

Yeah ... I think it's the first time I lost my temper

Too bad we are part of the downfall of this "great emulator"

 

[Borisz]

Originally posted by Runik@Thu, 2005-01-13 @ 03:07 AM

Actually that's the point : there's no reason that one will work and not the other.

If the cdblock commands reading the protection were emulated, neither would work ...

[post=127725]Quoted post[/post]​

OK, that puzzles me. But if they aren't emulated, then CDRs would work too, but they dont.

 

[Drenholm]

Yeah; I'm sure that CD-Rs have never worked for me, but virtual drives have.

What could be causing this? I'm guessing that it's not the fact that PC CD-ROM drives can read the outer ring?

Thanks for your (heated!) replies.

 

[Knight0fDragon]

Originally posted by Drenholm@Thu, 2005-01-13 @ 11:15 AM

Yeah; I'm sure that CD-Rs have never worked for me, but virtual drives have.

What could be causing this? I'm guessing that it's not the fact that PC CD-ROM drives can read the outer ring?

Thanks for your (heated!) replies.

[post=127741]Quoted post[/post]​

If you are referring to cassini or giri giri then I have had CDRs work for me without a problem, I just updated my atapi drivers and used force aspi so that cassini can recognize my drives, then games worked fine

 

[Drenholm]

Oh, right. It must have been something else that was causing it. Knowing my computer, it could have been any number of things.

So I guess it seems that GiriGiri/Cassini can't really read the ring?

 

[ExCyber]

It's not even a question of the emulator being able to read it; your CD-ROM drive won't even try to read it because the TOC says that area doesn't exist.

 

[Drenholm]

Are there not just general commands which say "move here", "read whatever"..? Although given that you are likely to know a lot more than me about stuff like this, I guess you're right - it isn't possible.

Sega obviously made THE copy protection scheme! I'd really love to figure it out, but I am sure that if it was possible, it would have already been done, as there are many people out there who would have done it first!

Thanks for all the replies. This is interesting, though. I must look at the outer ring under a microscope for some time - I don't believe for a minute that it is empty, as someone said before.

You could always look over this interesting (and quite long) topic from CDFreaks in a similar vein: Copy Protections SEGA SATURN. It's all very interesting, but it just makes me even more eager to figure it out..!

Thanks again, and please post any findings or comments which you have - I'd love to read them.

Daniel

 

[ExCyber]

Are there not just general commands which say "move here", "read whatever"..?

Sure, but if you tell it to read an area that isn't supposed to exist, it just throws an error back at you rather than actually trying to read it. Likewise the command set is structured around reading "user data" from the disc sectors, there aren't any commands that allow you to get a raw dump of the channel or anything.

I'd really love to figure it out, but I am sure that if it was possible, it would have already been done, as there are many people out there who would have done it first!

Don't count on it. Nobody produced proper PSX discs until it was nearly dead, because the pirate manufacturers did well enough with modchips.

Thanks for all the replies. This is interesting, though. I must look at the outer ring under a microscope for some time - I don't believe for a minute that it is empty, as someone said before.

I don't think it is either. My current hypothesis is that after the "end" of the disc there is just a bunch of empty padding sectors (like a huge postgap) until the location of the ring, and then the ring text is encoded right in the channel similar to what some burners can do now to print images on the recordable area (although it's highly unlikely that the scheme used by burners is compatible with the scheme Sega used). Some people have said that it is an OCR-type scheme with a separate optical sensor, but I think this is contrary to the actual behavior of the Saturn and is based on a misreading of the protection patents.

 

[Quakester2000]

Read this.

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/bnsviewe...+++0671730A1+I+

 

[antime]

Originally posted by ExCyber@Thu, 2005-01-13 @ 11:09 PM

Some people have said that it is an OCR-type scheme with a separate optical sensor, but I think this is contrary to the actual behavior of the Saturn and is based on a misreading of the protection patents.

The patent describes two "embodiments of the invention", and one of them uses a separate pickup to read the top side of the disc. It also says that in the "second embodiment" (which is the one the Saturn uses) the data area and the logo area are "spaced apart from each other" which I read as there being no continuous spiral. I also believe the logo area lacks the even the normal P and Q subchannels, meaning most CD controllers would have severe problems reading anything from there.

As a sidenote, another Sega patent describes embedding an optical verification unit in cartridge ports to check logos on the cartridge surface.