Dumping GDR's with only a $20 SD Adapter

So I put together this quick video of me dumping a Sonic Adventure E3 GDR BETA disc using only DC SD Ripper v1.1, DC SD adapter, one retail disc. If does not matter how many tracks it has nor what SDK it was developed with. You just need one retail disc to unlock the GD-ROM drive once. So long as you don't trigger the lid sensor you can just continually rip disc after disc. It takes 30-40 minutes a disc so I gave the abridged version of the video. I will come back with more details later but I am sure the video will answer most questions The SD adapters can be had for unde r$20 shipped off eBay or CC users can go do http://www.DC-SD.com to order for a little higher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=03mon4Iyzvk

 

Can you point us to the location of that DC SD Ripper 1.1? I bought a disk from another member here and he claimed it should be blank but isn't sure since he has no way of testing it. I know how to check it out on my retail console. I figured if there was anything on it, I could dump it. Never know, it could be a rare, never-before-seen-by-anyone prototype. Only copy in existence. Yeah, I'm being overly positive right now...

 

Found it
http://jj1odm.qp.land.to/dcserial_ft232bm.php#dcsdrip
It's an LZH file, which 7zip can open.

Edit: Direct link to both versions of the .lzh file -> http://jj1odm.qp.land.to/dcpprip/dcsdrip.lzh (1.0), http://jj1odm.qp.land.to/dcpprip/dcsdrip11.lzh (1.1)

 

There is a mediafire link to the ready to burn cdi of DC SD and BIOS ripper v1.1 in the youtube description.

 

^ And I downloaded it. Now I'm gonna check the GD ROM out when it shows up. may go ahead with the region free BIOS swap just for that. Burn a new copy of Dreamshell off and flash it to the new BIOS chip. Otherwise I'll have to use the disk swap method...

 

Nice that it works BTW (even for 5+track?)

What happens if you try a disc with a different number of tracks or session length to the trap disc? Data errors? I'd test it myself but I snapped my SD adapter in half (don't ask!)

FYI, that Sonic Adventure E3 GD-R Beta is a raylyd replica / fake. He was a nice guy but didn't understand or appreciate the difference between a developer's burn or one done by an unathorised and unaffiliated person in their own time at home.

It is probably a 1:1 copy of the original data as he had a GD-X duplicator, but he also had a GD Writer and blank GD-R and was selling clones until he was banned. The handwriting on the disc also matches his. I hope you didn't pay too much for it.

 

Paid $0.00 for that disc (was donated for the sake of testing), and I dumped a 12 track Katana CDDA disc (Dave Mirra) right after dumping that disc. I didn't trigger the lid sensor just inserted the new GD-R and dumped just fine even with the trap disc being the three track Sonic Adventure. You only need one official disc to unlock the drive, once this has been done you and rip away so long as the lid switch hadn't been triggered. It even still pulls up the correct info from the GDR not the info from the trigger disc.

 

Hmm that sounds like doing the wombat swop trick without a custom trap disc. Didn't not using a custom trap disc normally lead to errors? I've been fortunate enough to never had the need to bother making one.

Also, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX has an awesome soundtrack, you should play it regularly I bought a 59 times the pain album, Dropkick Murphys Do or Die and Social Distortion's White light, white heat , white trash off the back of that. I think I had 2-3 different GD-R of it at one point too.

 

IMO it works without a trap disc because of how jj1odm coded his ripper. His previous rippers for the parallel port cable (DCPPRIP) let you rip specific LBA range in the mode you wanted, no matter what the TOC of the disc was. So my guess is that in this latest versions he gets the TOC by simply ripping the first few sectors of track03 then extracting it, and when then rips tracks "brute force" according to the TOC read from the disc.

In a nutshell => My technique using BBA and based on Yursof/Wombat swap tricks use software that "ask" the dc: "Dump track number X according to its type defined in the TOC you got in memory after loading the disc" while jj1odm with atreyu's findings asks "Dump sector X to Y in Z mode" and figures out the X, Y and Z itself in the TOC read from the media when it ask to "press A".

Nice stuff! Makes it really easier and cheaper to rip beta games! I knew it'd be feasible to dump gd-r using the sd-cable (saving money vs BBA), but I didn't have a guess at how easy it would be (saving hassle vs Trap Disc)!

Now if drx could dump that god damn ecco2 beta, my wishlist would be completed!

FG

 

Well just the guy I wanted to chime in on this topic!!! I know you talked the dev into re-developing this app. Do you think you could get him to code in a spin down for the disc? Or quicker I should say because it must be like 5 minutes at least before the disc spins down.

 

I sent him a mail, I'll update when/if he responds.

 

Thanks for the speedy response and as always your help is greatly appreciated.

 

I saw these SD adapters when they first came out, and dumping games like this seems like a fun thing to mess with, even if I have no real use for dumping the discs most of the time. I see a a few brands out there and a generic one or two, some are cables others are dongles/sticks. Any particular difference and/or best version out there? Do not want to get one that lacks features the some others may have. Also I had the "Coders Cable" a long time ago that attached to a serial port, its rate was 128kbs, is this any faster? Or was this 128kbs a limitation of the serial port, or the Dreamcast's link port itself?

 

The coder's cable takes ~24h to rip a game (depends on compressible size)... While sd-cable rips in under 2hours no matter what. You might be better of builting it yourself if you have the skills, but else any source should be ok. Keep in mind you might have to open you dreamcast anyway to remove some smd capacitors. It seems this mainly is a concern with ntsc-u consoles though!

 

I got one of those cheapo Chinese adapters and it wasn't worth shit-on-a-stick. Could the capacitors be my issue since mine is a NTSC-U model?

Here's a picture of label. The label got cut off so here's the missing numbers from the top and bottom part.

Top: HKT-3020

Bottom: 670-14081H

 

It takes me no more then 35 minutes to rip a disc with a class 10 sd card and a stock dc and sd adapter.

 

It might. Try it out and you'll see. The capacitors are C605/C606/C607/C608/C609. Anyway removing them shouldn't be a problem as I don't think you use vs cables or coder's cable. And even then, maybe it wouldn't be a problem!

@atreyu I didn't remember the exact time, 35 mins seems fast, but most cheapo card should do it in approx 45 mins.

 

Last question: Do I bridge the points or leave them open?

 

Leave open. The problem is probably that at high frequency, some signal gets through the caps. If you short them, all signal will get through. Data here is digital, yet sharp slopes in signal require higher frequencies, and "close" (in time) transitions require even higher frequencies, if these frequencies are filtered by the caps (which "sees" only frequencies higher than a certain amount related to their capacitance), you loose definition between 0 and 1 => the cable doesn't works. The DCs that works without removing the caps must have capacitors with higher capacitance than those that require the removal.

Bottom line, leave open.

 

Thanks man. I now have a project for the evening.