601 Reply by Jackal

(12 replies, posted in General discussion)

Hi, what does unscramble do? does it do the same as Truong's descramble_cdda tool?

Also, I was wondering if you could help us by writing a small tool/script to process scrambled gdrom dumps?.. Dremora is always busy (he's the only other coder that I know of), so maybe you can help us (such a tool could simplify the gdrom dumping process drastically) big_smile.

The input would be a scrambled 45000-549150 dump file. I guess the tool/script would have to begin by asking for the combined offset value (or maybe the tool can just correct it automatically.. after all, the write offset value is already obtained when dumping track2 so the offset isn't really used elsewhere). By entering this value, the tool can correct the offset (because all the data is in audio mode, the offset is only at the beginning of the file) and begin descrambling the first data track. When that process is ready and there is still data left, it will use the TOC (or a .sub file if you want it really fancy) from the data track to cut the audio tracks to the proper sizes. Then finally the last data track is left and is also unscrambled.

There are 2 problems that I can think of so far: I don't know if the first scrambled sectors always contain all the data (maybe if the combined offset is negative some of the data is moved to sector 44999 or earlier). Also, I don't know how the TOC should be read (gdlister by yursoft does this, but there's no source available of it afaik).

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602 Reply by Jackal

(8 replies, posted in General discussion)

Nobody afaik, but if anyone's going to do it properly then it's us wink

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603 Reply by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

Nologic wrote:

Well the ring couldn't that be compensated by an overly large pregap?...well I'm no storage media wiz thats for sure...but it would be nice to archive my dumps as single images with a cue sheet.

I guess this is possible, but I'm not sure if the .gdi format supports this.

And good luck testing your drives.

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604 Reply by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

Nologic wrote:

Well I could take a look at your guys method of dumping and if I can manage doing it with the hardware I have hear I'll see about doing up some dumps. (USA 200+, JAP 5+, EUR 1 or 2)
However a few questions up front.
1. Can the dumps be used by NullDC & Makaron?
2. How perfect must the disc's be for dumping? (mint, good, okay, trash)
3. Past the manual disc swap can I automate the rest of it with AutoIt...or is there more human interaction required?
4. Can I verify my own dumps with other disc's I own...or am I treated as a liar just like with TOSEC?
5. Are dumps actively accepted and verified...the lag TOSEC has is unacceptable...100 dumps & only like 10 check in three weeks.
6. You guys going to have issues with the fact I have issues with TOSEC?
Mildly off topic...but has anyone figured out a way to create a more standard image of these dumps? Ideally I'd like to turn all my dumps into compressed MDS\MDF images with DaemonTools.

1. If the .gdi's that the site generates are still correct then they should work (Dremora should know this).
2. Same as with any other system I guess.. To be sure that there's no corruption you can detect errors by extracting the c2 data and checking the .c2 file for non-zero bytes (if it's all zeroes then there's no corruption).
3. This is only possible if there's only a data track in the high density area, but then still I don't really see the advantage of using such tool.
4. Sure. If you verified yourself with 2 discs then we accept that.
5. It shouldn't take longer than a day for the dump to be added. Usually it's added within a couple hours.
6. I don't know if I should comment on this one hehe. We have a bit of a history with TOSEC. Nowadays we try to respect/ignore them, although some members still love to criticize them. Personally I'm impressed with how much they've accomplished already with their gdrom set. However, we still consider our dumps to be more correct, so we think it's good to give people the opportunity to preserve these discs the best possible way.

Not sure what you mean with 'a more standard image'. Of course it's possible to merge all 3 low density tracks into a single binary (by just doing 'copy /b track1+track2+track3') or merging the high density tracks (in case there are audio tracks) just like it's possible for any cd dump, but we choose to store our dumps with splitted tracks because this has certain advantages and provides us with more information (it allows us to compare the checksums of each audio track etc).

It wouldn't make sense to make a single image (like .mdf) out of all tracks (both low and high density), because there's a ring in between both area's which isn't preserved. Therefore it's better to dump both area's to separate images.

If you're serious about dumping gdrom then I highly recommend you to look for a lite-on drive which can extract the whole contents (I have a SOHD-167T which does that).. if you have a dreamcast console with bba then maybe it's also possible to correct these dumps (I believe this is what pnkiller78 did), but unfortunately we don't have a guide on that yet.

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605 Reply by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

lol It only took me a couple hours

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606 Reply by Jackal

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

ssjkakaroto wrote:

Now that I think about it, maybe No-Intro formatting should be the default one.
What do you guys think?

Each naming has its advantages and disadvantages.. when we last discussed it I think most people still preferred the current PSX naming because it also included serial.. also, imho I think having the languages in the filename is superfluous..

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607 Reply by Jackal

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

Hi,

feel free to submit the dump info for those discs in the Dumps forum smile

About your other question: Dremora would have to write a tool for this. We've asked him for a similar tool in the past, but it seems he has too little time. We also wanted to add .sub files to the database before but that also hasn't happened yet.

For now I think the only solution is to mount the redump image in daemon tools, rip the .sub using clonecd and then inject the libcrypt data manually using a hex editor.

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608 Reply by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

F1ReB4LL wrote:
Jackal wrote:

@F1ReB4LL, you told me before that Yuki was already dumping for tosec/dumpcast.. if that's the case, then she must be crazy to switch to a method which takes so much more effort. I suppose the only reason she would consider this at all is because you are pressing her to do this

We've decided that dumping for both projects can't be regarded as a crime

I hope TOSEC thinks the same about that smile I happened to have bought one of their unverified ones last week and I intend to post it on both places, so I hope they'll accept it hehe (I wanna post it here because I think the audio checksums will match the PSX version, so it would be nice to show once more that our dumping method makes sense).

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609 Reply by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

Come on guys.. we all know that this method is far from practical.. it's only for experienced dumpers and I only recommend it for people with a Plextor drive (something recent like the PX760A).. I'm not surprised why nobody except pnkiller and me have been succesful at this so far (also because it's too difficult to write an easy guide for it).

IMHO this has turned into a silly 'race', except the winner is already known (23 dumps vs 610 verified and many more unverified on their forums)..

@F1ReB4LL, you told me before that Yuki was already dumping for tosec/dumpcast.. if that's the case, then she must be crazy to switch to a method which takes so much more effort. I suppose the only reason she would consider this at all is because you are pressing her to do this tongue

I don't mind if people prefer to use our method (I still think the dumps are superior), but I posted this thread because there's just no progress anymore with this system. Blaming me for this is really funny. Without my help we wouldn't even have a dumping method or a guide (maybe they're not user friendly, but I don't mind that big_smile).

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610 Topic by Jackal

(23 replies, posted in General discussion)

edit: Never mind

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611 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

Languages added.. but let's not add any comments because it's irrelevant info (the exe's don't even contain securom)

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612 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

Thanks. Protection ID also can't find anything in that .exe, so let's just conclude that there's no active SecuROM protection.

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613 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

The data track is mode1.. and your tool doesn't work.. I suppose the compression is part of the protection.. so unless someone can unpack it manually, we'll just have to assume that it doesn't have an active protection.

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614 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

It's with 4 languages.. anyway, if your Turok 2 disc also has a securom folder, then shouldn't it also have a corrupt sector? (the dump entry says it doesn't)

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615 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

iR0b0t wrote:

Except for CD-Check, Turok 2 should be unprotected, although it seems to have SecuROM -> SECUROM folder
Plextor PX-760A (+30), LG GSA-H42L (+667), LG GDR-8164B (+102), Samsung SH-D162D (+6)

It also has 1 corrupt sector.. how do you explain that? tongue

The weird thing also is, the exe won't launch on xp unless I rename it from Turok2English.exe to Turok2.exe..

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616 Topic by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

I dumped Turok 2, but I'm unable to determine which SecuROM version is used, because the exe is apparently packed with Petite v1.3 and I'm unable to unpack it (I tried several tools).

If any of you knows how to unpack this piece of shit exe, plz do: http://vigi.dremora.com/Turok2.rar ..  or if there's a  different way of determining the SecuROM version, plz lemme know.

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617 Topic by Jackal

(32 replies, posted in General discussion)

Some info on 2064 bytes/sector RAW DVD dumping:

Apparently, what LG drives do is, they read the buffer of the drive in order to get the RAW contents of a DVD. There are 2 tools for LG drives that can do this and one tool that works on Plextor drives (and also on several other drives?)!

Here's a tool by Truong that you can use to test the command on Plextor (and other?) drives. First, you have to read a sector the normal way (e.g. with isobuster), and then you can use this tool to save the buffer: http://vigi.dremora.com/rawdvd/readbuf_dump.zip.

If you have an LG drive, try one of the following tools instead (and use the different program name in the example):
Newer drives: http://vigi.dremora.com/rawdvd/ren_hit_lg_dump.zip
Older drives: http://vigi.dremora.com/rawdvd/hit_dump.zip

Usage:

readbuf_dump <drive letter> <output file> <start offset> <len>

Examples:

'readbuf_dump d mem.bin 0 235200' dumps the first 100 CD (2352-byte) sectors from the D: drive buffer
'readbuf_dump d mem.bin 0 206400' dumps the first 100 DVD (2064-byte) sectors from the D: drive buffer

Unfortunately you can't use this tool to dump complete cd's, so we're working on a solution for that!

Many thanks again to Truong for the tools..

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618 Reply by Jackal

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

Hi,

+2 seems correct.. +8 is the value that you use for dumping smile

You can combine the tracks using the command link: if you have all the .bin files named in the right order in a folder you can do 'copy /b *.bin game.bin' to create a single binary with all the tracks. You'd still need a proper .cue then though. I don't remember how this is done for single binary files, so I hope someone else can help you with that.

For games without audio tracks you can use a generic .cue.. for psx (which is mode2) you can use the following:

FILE "game.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

About converting previous one binary dumps: you could try mounting this dump with Daemon tools and then dump it again in EAC, but you'd have to know the correct offset values.. also, the .cue would have to contain the correct gaps.

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619 Reply by Jackal

(21 replies, posted in General discussion)

The PX760A works with the trap disc method and it can dump everything (gdrom, xbox, etc.. except for gc and wii hehe) cool

Some Lite-On models are also capable of gdroms (for instance I have a SOHD-167T which supports it), but they're nowhere near reliable and foolproof as the Plextor (the swapping often doesn't work or it doesn't read well.. the plextor has no such problems: just close the tray and it works).

With that said, the PX760A is propably the best drive for dumping out there (it supports overreading and you can use px_d8 to detect any write offset), but finding one can be difficult these days.

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620 Reply by Jackal

(10 replies, posted in News)

Yeah.. thanks for all the long nights.. hope this won't happen again.

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621 Reply by Jackal

(76 replies, posted in General discussion)

I'm glad you're investigating this. As far as I can guess there are still plenty of other unneccesary dupes in the db that should be identical if dumped properly.

I hope Dremora can make you a moderator so that you can add the dumps and fixes yourself, because I don't know if anyone else is doing it. Just make sure you remove the dump comments from the comments field smile

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622 Reply by Jackal

(11 replies, posted in General discussion)

Dunno about Quake II (your disc may be scratched), but Unreal could be a different version.. there are already 3 versions in the db, are you sure it didn't match any of them?

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623 Reply by Jackal

(7 replies, posted in General discussion)

I was able to find this on ebay.co.uk for cheap, so it's dumped and verified now cool

And here's a scan of the CD:

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/6164/mkcdec0.jpg

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624 Reply by Jackal

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

Remove isn't working either... port 81 was neccesary because Dremora's ISP (where the site is hosted on) is blocking port 80 :X

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625 Reply by Jackal

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

Short answer: No

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