Reproduction of PSX/Saturn Games as a Disc Rot Counter Measure?

There are a lot of reproduction carts out there for cartridge based systems, but I don't hear much about reproduction of cd based games. This makes more sense to me than making reproduction carts because of the looming threat of disc rot. I'm not talking about burned discs, we all know it's impossible to play a burned Saturn or PSX game on the original hardware without a modchip. I'm talking about pressed discs that are able to reproduce the "wobble" copy protection on PSX games and the Saturn security ring. These days you can get 1000 discs pressed for a little over $800. I am not talking about the legal argument here, of course it's illegal, but so are repro carts and people make those anyways so why not reproduction discs? Is it just that there is more of a chance of getting caught or something? How did the people making HK silvers back in the day get away with it? People say it can't be done, but how the hell does Datel put out unlicensed stuff that runs without a modchip. Forgive me if I sound stupid, I don't know about all of the technical issues involved with this, but why hasn't it been done yet?

 

Because of the security problems with the Saturn and PSX and burnt games. About the Datel statement, they don't use CDs for their devices, they use carts. Other than installing a mod chip or AR, there is no way around the security check.

 

Yes but datel also put out stuff for the ps2 that did use optical media, and again I'm not talking about burned copies I'm talking about pressed copies. And even if they did license there stuff for ps2, which I didn't check if they did, there is still the swap discs that came out for the psx and ps2, those couldn't have been licensed.

 

Pretty sure those were done legally? I'd need someone more knowledgeably to say that for sure.

 

Sorry i edited my post after you replied, what about the swap discs for psx and ps2. I have one sitting on my shelf right now, it's called swap magic. No way it's legal, it has a silver back.

 

http://psx-scene.com/forums/f20/ps2-disc-security-explanations-50245/

Possibly this has an answer to your question?

 

Sorry I didn't read all of the info in your link given that it talks about the security differences between psx and ps2, but that's irrelevant because there was a boot disc for the psx as well, it was called PS-X-Change, that couldn't have been legal. How did they get it pressed?

Edit:
like many things in life that can't be cited, wikipedia has the anwser

"Swap Magic and most other non-Sony-made PlayStation 2 bootable discs use a method of "growing" and "splicing" stampers from original PlayStation 2 discs, a method of growing a stamper from an original game disc and joining a new stamper with the program data on to it; in essence, the resulting discs contain a portion of an original disc."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swap_Magic

How complex is this process and how much more money does it cost when compared to just having a small number of discs pressed normally?

Edit 2:

I'm sorry it appears that some of this info was posted in your link.

Edit 3:
A thought occurs, the copy protected area of the disc is unreadable by a normal cd drive, but the psx and saturn has to be able to read the copy protection. Has someone with the technical knowledge been able to make a homebrew program that could be used on a modded console to dump a game images bootsector via the respective consoles serial ports?


I mean a program that you boot in a console via modchip, it loads up a screen that says to swap to original disc now, you swap with original disc, hit a button , and dump the bootsector through a cable connected through the console's serial port.


I wonder if this has been tried? It seems like it would be the most logical approach. But again I don't know about a lot of the technical stuff so, it probably isn't that easy, or doable at all. Can someone with the technical knowledge let me know if this is theoretically possible?


Another thing the thread that supersega posted says


"There was once a website up with images of the gameshark disc as it was worn down, showing the splicing of the boot sector area and the normal disc. This website disappeared quickly, and I've never seen it since."


Has anyone ever found this?

 

For the PlayStation, both Datel and Future Console Devices (I.E. Fire International / Blaze) produced discs that would boot on unmodified retail hardware - and they both did it the same way, which was by buying a glass mastering machine and modifying it to record the wobbles. On the PlayStation this was pretty simple, since the wobble was common on every disc mastered for the same territory. The console has a little piece of circuitry in that takes the tracking error signal, filters it and then slices it into an NRZ datastream, which is fed into the mechacon MCU.

The wobble was recorded in the disc lead-in, which is always the first thing the drive reads after the door is closed, since that's also where the disc TOC is located. If the MCU received the right wobble string for the territory ("SCEI", "SCEA" or "SCEE" depending on the console you have) then it set the disc flags to "licensed" and enabled the read command. Without it, the drive will play audio, but most of the "read data" functionality is disabled (no sector completion interrupt, no EDC/ECC checking, etc.).

They probably could have done the Saturn, too - but there wasn't any point, since the Saturn had a cartridge slot and they could just use that. The Saturn had a wobble, too, but it was much lower frequency, was only in the logo check area (the "SEGA" text you can read on a Saturn disc) and just toggled between each sector. In addition to the wobble, there was some checking on the actual logo data, too.

 

Thanks for the information. Unless some sort of millionaire decides to invest money into making reproduction discs and finds a way to cover his a**, I guess it will never be done. Sad to think about how in just a few short years all of our Saturn and PSX games will become useless due to disc rot.

 

You sure about that? I thought disc rot didn't occur until at least 30-40 years after manufacturing. It's only been 21 years since the PS1 and Saturn came out in Japan.

 

Normally it's something along those lines. Some discs turn useless faster than others.

While speaking of repro discs, pressed dreamcast repros are a much more realistic project.

 

My understanding was that it was something like 10-15 years, but for some reason it hasn't happened on a mass scale yet. either way it's going to happen and if I understand TriMesh correctly, a reproduction can't be pressed with a normal CD press, the CD press must be modified. My hope was that one of these online CD pressing companies, that press cd's in small amounts, would be able to do it if we could somehow extract the licensing data off of a retail disc, but I guess not.

As far as dreamcast reproduction disc goes, yeah that can be done. But wouldn't data be missing from most games? Dreamcast rips that I've played usually have something missing, or something downsampled in order to fit the games on a 80 min cd.

 

I always enjoy reading @TriMesh 's posts.

 

Most of the time nothing's missing but something's downsampled. Imo it's not a big deal, even less so when the idea is preservation of original discs.
However I think this is more interesting for games that were originally pressed on cds to begin with. Like every russian dc localisation ever made.

 

isn't there on disc boot loader style exploits for both saturn and PS1?

I was talking about this a little in chat the other week. As far as being repos, I'd personally have something printed on disc stating this to avoid but-hurt fanboys coming with pitch forks... Like how classics have that banner on the top section of the label

I have a bootleg PS2 game here if thats any help, is there a way to tell how it's booting (above method or some exploit voodoo?)
Also has anyone ever seen bootleg wii games? I have a bootleg copy of spyro here, wiiu doesn't like it. Haven't treied on wii or with a modded PC drive yet)

 

Yes I definitely think that they label should be different, a repro should have different artwork, it should not be made with the propose of fooling collectors. To bad there is no way for these self booting repros to actually be made, unless someone finds a legal loophole that would allow them to make a kickstarter to raise the funds to buy one of these and modify it

http://www.kitmondo.com/optical-media-manufacturing

All this being said there is a homebrew saturn game in development who's developers said they are exploring methods of recreating the saturn security ring.

https://segaxtreme.net/threads/ameba-a-new-saturn-game.23973/

 

If you knew somebody that could press CDs of copyrighted materials you didn't own, I don't think the discs lacking the security features would be a big issue. It's not like it's difficult to boot a PS1 or Saturn CD-R. While it would be handy if you could boot them on a unmodded console it really isn't a deal breaker. Finding somewhere willing to commit copyright infringement for you on a large scale might be the bigger problem.

 

For me it is a deal breaker, because at that point you could just use a burner, burn a copy and print out a label, or lightscribe one, or use emulation. The purpose of having the discs pressed is not to fool people, what I was hoping for was a non invasive way to play the games on the original consoles after disc rot destroys all the original copies. I agree though the copyright issue is a bigger issue. This wouldn't be as big of a deal if PSN could release the complete library of psone classics, and Sega would get off their asses and make a decent Saturn emulator to release all of their Saturn games on PSN and XBLA, but that will never happen. But even then if by some miracle that could happen the titles always run the risk of being removed from the market place, like the Marvel vs Capcom games.