Issues dumping PC disc with "Code Lock" copy protection (Page 1 of 2)

This seems like another ring protection similar to Laserlock and CD Ring Protect. Jackal or Reentrant will have to chime in here if they have ever dealt with that particular protection, and if there is a method of dumping it. I gave up trying to dump discs with these protections as the results are inconsistent and we have no way of knowing if the dump is good or not.

I've only dealt with CodeLock once, and I can tell you it's a weird one: it's a mixture of both LaserLock (due of the rings) and SafeDisc (due of the errors being in a pattern instead of all bunched up together like your everyday ring protection).
Your best bet to dump a CodeLock protected game is to use CloneCD with a non-Plextor drive.

I think Jackal will be able to assist you even better.

http://forum.redump.org/post/54050/#p54050
be opcode replaces the original data to 0x55. I think it's not correct.

I got hold of an Optiarc drive, and I'm currently dumping the disc with that. Right now I'm using Alcohol, but I plan to try CloneCD and probably CD Manipulator as well.

Right now it looks there's...kind of a pattern? Maybe multiple patterns separated by larger groups of good sectors? It starts off with 3 bad sectors, 8 good sectors, 3 bad sectors.

But then there're 23 good sectors and a pattern starts with 3 good, 3 bad, 3 good.

Then 23 good sectors and a pattern of 3 bad, 13 good, 3 bad, 8 good, 3 bad, 3 good...

There's definitely some kinda pattern. I'll look at it in more detail once it's done and post an update. And, as I said, I'll dump in other software as well.

Edit: The Alcohol read got done. Errors look like they're always groups of three, and lots of sectors that were reported as "bad" by my Asus weren't reported bad here. Based on the description here, though, it sounds like maybe the Asus rip is good? At initial glance, it looks like all the Asus errors are in groups of 5, 10, or 15 sectors. So, if they're meant to be a multiple of 5, that sounds right. But then the Optiarc has substantially fewer errors...all groups of 3 with varying distances between them.

Edit 2: Here is the list of bad sectors from CDMage for both the Asus and the Optiarc: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8eu918bz0jg07 … 20.7z?dl=0. The Asus has 3779 bad sectors, in groups of 5, 10, or 15. The Optiarc has 2281 bad sectors, in groups of 3.

Edit 3: If I look at one of the sectors that the Asus errors on but the Optiarc doesn't, like sector 2464 for example, the data section is all 0. If I look at one near there that they both read successfully, like 2466, it's all 0 also.

Edit 4: Using CD Manipulator, I got 2,274 errors. I think each error is a three sector block. 2,274 / 3 = 758, which is the number of errors for one of the European releases of Tropico: http://redump.org/disc/53929/. Is that just a coincidence, though?

I may pick up a copy of the European version just to verify that my setup will dump the Europe copy with identical results to what's in the database. Unfortunately, if anyone in Europe wants to try their hand at the US copy, it looks like it'll be expensive. The game itself can be bought for ~$5 US, but the sellers I saw all wanted huge amounts ($20+ US) to ship anywhere outside of North America.

I'm so used to seeing the US ratings on discs I didn't think about it!

Thanks for that information about the lack of a ring on the Europe version -- that makes it sound like maybe I should expect different behavior on my US copy. The ring itself is also visible (slightly, mostly to the left and right of the center hole) in the scan of the disc I attached above, for anyone curious about its appearance. Am I curious, though, do you happen to still have the log of the error locations? I dunno if it would be useful information, but if they happen to "line up" it might provide some insight.

The way the disc acts is as if there are just bad spots on it. Not even just intentionally bad sectors -- just bad spots. It reports a wild number of C2 errors if dumped with a Plextor, different drives can read different sectors, and sometimes retrying enables a drive to read more sectors. It's as if they just damaged the data layer such that there's not even anything to track, and the drives just don't know what to do. Some drives find 5 sectors of errors, or 10, or 15, and some drives find 2 or 3. None of them I've tried, and I this point I've tried I think 6-7 drives, find single errors at any of the error positions on the disc.

The "best" rip I've been able to get so far is from a TSST drive, where it only had 1516 errors. I made that rip with Aaru, and I had the drive dump all night retrying forward and backward over and over. Unlike the Optiarc, it was not able to read any more sectors on the re-reading passes.

I think I agree with Nexy's post earlier in the thread -- it sounds like dumping these discs, unfortunately, isn't worth the effort. It's very time consuming, and it's impossible to tell if a rip is "good."

There's one last thing I'm debating trying, just to see what happens. I'm thinking I might throw together a program to just try reading sectors over and over using 0xd8 on one of my Plextor drives, and just see if, ignoring C2, the ECC/EDC ever matches on any of the reads of a given sector. I'm curious if, since the error locations vary between rips on the Plextor, maybe the Plextor could narrow down the "true" error location this way after enough reading passes. I haven't actually tried to put this program together at all yet, though, but I think it should theoretically be possible with a mix of various descrambling / ECC/EDC checking code that's available out there (even without me knowing all the technical details about the checksums or scrambling).

Actually, such a feature might be useful in general. I've had multiple rips in the past where the Plextor didn't report any C2 errors when reading via 0xd8, but it had not correctly read data on 3-4 sectors. If ECC/EDC was checked while ripping, it would be possible to re-read not just based on C2 information, but also based on whether the sector appears to be in error. I think this should be possible, right? I haven't really started looking into it, but I don't think I'm talking crazy with an idea like this. But I remember there was one disc in particular where my PX-760 always had 3 error sectors despite no C2 errors, and I finally used my old beaten up (barely working) PX-716 and it reported C2 errors in those locations and the sectors worked on re-reads.

Edit: I managed to find some details about the European version elsewhere on the internet. It looks like probably the errors are in the same location on the US copy. For example, on my copy, my Optiarc has errors at 2461, 2462, and 2463. The European copy has one error at 2462. My Optiarc has errors at 8741, 8742, and 8743. The European copy has one error at 8742.

I wonder if this all has something to do with Sarami's observation that there appears to actually be valid data in some of sectors that are marked bad and replaced with 0x55. I didn't see anything obvious glancing through the descrambled data from my disc, but he noticed that one CodeLock disc has a line from Jabberwocky when you unscramble the data. Thus, some of these sectors might actually have data in them, but they may be corrupted in various ways so they appear to be invalid.

I was doing some tidying and found this Tropico disc from when I'd set it aside a year ago. I've done some additional experiments expanding on what I mentioned in my last post, and I think I know a way to identify where the bad sectors are using a Plextor drive. I'll have to play around some more to see if we can actually read the good sectors this way, though.

First, a little background. I never bothered to get a European copy of Tropico in order to test my setup. I'll probably look into it now that I'm looking into this again. However, I did find (via Internet Archive) an image of the European disc that matches the CodeLock version in the database (CRC-32 of 72AAB3E6). That image has 758 errors. The best I've been able to get dumping this American disc is 1516 errors, or exactly twice the number of errors in the European release. I've lost track of exactly which drives I've tried to read this disc, but it's at least 12+ drives across 3-4 different computers at this point. The best performer is an HP-badged TS-H653 drive -- that's the drive that gave the image with 1516 errors. I've also tried an Optiarc, various LG / Hitachi-LG, at least one TSST, a LiteOn, various Plextors, a Pioneer, etc. I can get the model numbers for most of the drives if anyone wants to know.

Anyway, the fact that the European image has exactly half as many errors as my image leads me to believe that, probably, the actual number of errors on the American disc is the same as the European version. In fact, loading up the European image in CDMage shows me that its first few errors are at sectors 2462, 2472, 2482, and 2507. In contrast, my image's first errors are 2461, 2462, 2471, 2472, 2481, 2482, 2506, 2507. Thus, both images have errors at 2462, 2472, 2482, and 2507, but my image also has errors on the preceding sector for each of those. Sure, it's possible that the US release has errors in groups of two, but that just doesn't sit right with me. It seems like it should be single errors.

But, if they are single errors, where are they? Is the error in sector 2461 or 2462? After all, there's no reason the error couldn't have moved from 2462 on the European release to 2461 on the American release. So, how can we get any insight into whether the error is at 2461 or 2462?

Well, here's what I found out. If we convert CDMage's sector numbers to sector numbers compatible with the px_d8 utility (i.e., subtract 150 from the CDMage sector numbers because px_d8 maps MSF 00:02:00 to sector number 0 instead of 150), we see some interesting results.

For example, here's what happens if we try to read sector 2311 via px_d8 (equivalent to 2461 in CDMage):

Interestingly, the Plextor can read that sector (or, more specifically, it sees that it exists -- it actually can't read it, at least not via CloneCD), so it doesn't seem like there's an error there. What about 2312 (equivalent to 2462 in CDMage):

That sector definitely seems to be in error -- not even a sync. How about 2313?

The Plextor at least finds the sync for sectors 2313, but notice that all the sudden the offset is completely different. I think for every sector that's not adjacent to a bad sector, the offset is 18 samples on the Premium. For sectors that are adjacent to errors, though, the offset goes crazy. But, the sync is there, so that seems to imply that the error should be just at 2462, like in the European image.

I haven't checked every single sector, but we see a similar pattern everywhere I've looked. For example, here's trying to read the last error and its neighbors:

So, it looks like the last error should be at CDMage sector number 10167. In fact, that's where the last error is in the European image.

Anyway, long story short, I'm pretty sure that the American release is supposed to have exactly 758 errors in the exact same places as the European release that's already in the database. However, I've yet to find a drive capable of reading this disc with only 758 error sectors (despite having tried a ton of drives on various computers).

I reported this protection before. http://forum.redump.org/post/54050/#p54050
0xd8 dumping can get the string that is recorded in the disc. But redump db adopts the result of the 0xbe dumping less error count.

Logs. https://www.mediafire.com/file/js0a6rkd … 29.7z/file
C2 errors: 1445. vs your dump http://redump.org/disc/31708/ is 722