1 Topic by do_0m

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

A forum I was a member of died. There was a thread on there for a GC / Wii compression tool called, I believe, nNASOS. The original tool was NASOS / Not Another Shrinker or Scrubber. I believe this was made by Redump moderator LedZeppelin68. Using that concept as a base, a user by the name of "edc" wrote their own implementation of the "not shrink" concept. Both tools implement a pseudo random-data generator that matches what Nintendo used for the GameCube and Wii. As such, a 1.3 GB GameCube game or a 4.5 GB Wii game (single layer) could be shrunk in size, with the random data filling up the disc regenerated whenever the user wants. These dumps could be regenerated into Redump-compliant dumps.

Any help tracking down these programs or the people who made them would be helpful. I suspect LedZeppelin68 will be easy to track down but I don't know if edc was a part of any other communities. LedZeppelin68 appears to have a new version of their program on GitHub.

Was there a third user in the nNASOS thread trying to implement their own version? I can't remember.

On GBAtemp there is a thread by nanook with another tool, SWiiT.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/new-wii-uns … it.511181/

It appears to support .dec files but I have not used it.

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2 Reply by do_0m

(29 replies, posted in General discussion)

Great tool. If there was a way to put a batch of ISOs through it, and after "compressing" each one, put each .dec file back through the program (in RAM) and verify the reformed ISO matches a certain (Redump) hash, it would be almost perfect. It doesn't have to follow that exact process, but I do want to be certain that the program doesn't distort any discs. There are enough strange GC and Wii ISOs that I can't be sure every single one of them complied with Nintendo's padding standard.

I'm not sure what causes it, but I can't seem to drag+drop on Windows 10 from the file explorer. I have to find an ISO with Everything search (third party program) and drag from there to NASOS.

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3 Reply by do_0m

(29 replies, posted in General discussion)

No ****ing way. How did you determine the algorithm? Do you plan on releasing the source code?

My go-to for testing was going to be Animal Crossing, but it seems like I don't have any untouched images lying around. I've already used them for various tests.

So I dug up this and went to work.

Here's the SHA256 for good measure. fa4362802e1ea0b891ce90377e0d122dcb8feae22463409e37488cf72335f9a5

When in the "dec" format the program creates:
Baten Kaitos - Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean - Special Experience Disc (Japan).iso.dec checksums:
MD5: 623de456a34c1ffeae743fe93d668502
SHA1: e6dd27a614e58bbe46a35d35f8b464c2d0f26858
SHA256: 13f0323a71ba3d4c580af277562b296603b825298e268a5dbc5c7d89675d868d

Now I turned off my PC and left it powered-off for 5 minutes, to ensure the padding / garbage data wasn't residing in memory somewhere. I verified the SHA256 hash once again with Hashcalc. It was still 13f0323a71ba3d4c580af277562b296603b825298e268a5dbc5c7d89675d868d.

Then I re-built the original ISO with the program. By the program's timer, it took 28 seconds. Sounds about right, but I wasn't keeping track.

Every hash matches. Even the SHA256. Unless you can generate SHA256 collisions, or the program is sneakily storing the padding data somewhere else on the PC, it seems like the real deal. (I'll of course test rebuilding the ISO on another PC.) smile

I'm dying to know how this works. One thing to know is that GPack (maybe) and WIT (definitely) have a neat trick to squeeze another ~1-5% out of a Wii disc. As I recall, there are built-in checksums on Wii discs (and maybe GameCube discs too). The checksum algorithm is known, so you can throw them out and simply re-calculate them when rebuilding the original ISO.

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4 Reply by do_0m

(1 replies, posted in General discussion)

GPack does / did something similar. It's open-source too.

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5 Reply by do_0m

(15 replies, posted in General discussion)

No clue how you can get it into the Redump DB, but the GameCube parent/clone dat is 95% done. Only thing missing is the multi-game demos.

I'm with Ecco. There should be a naming standard for the generic titles.

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6 Reply by do_0m

(54 replies, posted in General discussion)

Some of these may be from Wii games. Check if the disc code matches a GC game.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ho5b10cbobk18



*locking this topic until issue with spambots is resolved*
themabus @2011.12.10

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7 Topic by do_0m

(0 replies, posted in General discussion)

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title= … SA_Missing

These stupid Ultimate Codes discs are rare, but some are cheap ($10 or less). Zelda Twilight Princess is $30 used from Amazon. Freeloader discs are $10 new from Datel. Action Replay is $30 new and SD Media Launcher is $20 new. Not impossible, but annoying that these discs exist.

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8 Reply by do_0m

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

Once again, the idea that Redump.org would switch from 1:1 dumps to something else is absurd. It would create much more trouble than it is worth, even from the point of view that nothing is lost when scrubbing.

This thread was not created to sway Redump.org policy to something else. I was wondering what individual members thought and why they think that way.

What I'm most interested in is the idea of scrubbing with 100% compatibility vs. a 1:1 dump. If you had a collection of 50 discs, and you wanted to back them up to prevent disc rot or whatever, would you even entertain the thought of scrubbing in this scenario?

In this scenario, it is similar to preserving 100 pages of classic literature vs. preserving the same 100 pages and another 50 pages of random text.

I never mentioned GameCube or Xbox because those scrubs are problematic. I only know the facts surrounding Wii scrubs, and that is the only console I mentioned.

It is not accurate to say MP3 compression preserves music - it is a lossy format. It is like preserving the songs on a LP rip vs. preserving the entire lead-in to lead-out, including spaces at the end of a side with no music at all.

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9 Reply by do_0m

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

Oh really? Redump.org has no intentions of scrubbing anything? Never would have thought of that. >_>

I have no intentions of changing redump.org policy. It would be nice, but it would have several downsides. I'm guessing "no scrubbing" is a subset of "disc preservation". I thought it'd be interesting to see what individual members think.

Currently as I see it, the strict preservation policy is like preserving historical letters and documents through scans of the documents. Sure, preserving the documents themselves is nice, but no text is lost by transcribing them.

Where redump comes into that, I suppose, is that somebody must preserve the original documents so accuracy of the descendants can be verified.

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10 Reply by do_0m

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

Where should I have posted this? I posted in "General discussion: Dumping, soft, emulation etc. ". Isn't this related to "dumping" and "emulation"?

edit: I see the error of my ways.

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11 Topic by do_0m

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

For the purpose of this discussion, "scrubbing" refers to removing garbage or empty data from a game dump. Also assume the process does not change the game data in any way; the game would still have full compatibility.

I don't see the point of not scrubbing games. Wii games in particular I am quite well versed in; these keep full compatibility even when scrubbed.

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12 Reply by do_0m

(54 replies, posted in General discussion)

I started writing this, then I lost interest because of how easy CleanRip is to use. Feel free to take this and use it.

Tools
Getting Started

Your first steps will be hacking your Wii. See the "tools" section for information on how to do so.

Start CleanRip. Read the disclaimer and press A. If you do not have IOS58 installed, CR will warn you. If you plan on dumping to USB, install IOS58. If you will dump to SD, performance will not be effected. (You will be bugged to install every time you start the app without IOS58, so it may be a good idea anyway.) Select your dumping medium. Press A when your dumping device is inserted into the Wii. Press A to download the newest DAT from Redump.org (Internet connection required). Press A when your disc to be dumped is in the Wii.

Wii discs
Dual layer: No*
Chunk size: [Largest size that will fit on your SD card]**
New device per chunk: Yes.***

*99% of the time. Check online to see if your game is larger than 4.3 GB.
**Max only works on NTFS formatted devices.
***Only use [no] if your device can hold a full game dump (1.3 GB for GC, 4.3 GB for Wii).

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13 Reply by do_0m

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

Thanks for the info. I don't want it, but someone on the Internet does, and the request is from 2006-October-01.

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14 Topic by do_0m

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

"MGS Twin Snakes Bonus Disc
the bonus disc for twin snakes, released for jp gamecube"

Anyone have any more details? Scene release?

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