Saturn unmodded homebrew a REALITY!

http://forums.segaxtreme.net/showthread.php?t=32605

RockinB managed to build a Saturn cartridge to boot his homebrew Saturn game Police Officer Smith!

This could mean a boot cartridge might become a reality! Great news imo!

 

wonderful effort!

on a side note: there was another very old (5 or 6 years, but still active) thread on a cd cracking forum which dealt with cracking the sega saturn protection ring, they got very far, maybe they get that working too in a couple of months!

 

Tracing a pinout and cracking the protection are two very different things

 

x

 

the topic mentioned was on cdfreaks "optical storage" discussions. a really nice and healty read

 

that's the one, thanks!

 

That is true, but it will currently only work for homebrew (and only 1 specific homebrew game as of now).

This is cool because it may open up the homebrew scene to more people, without the stigma of a device used for bootlegs.

 

Not at all. A Modchip would let you play "backup" games. Now if you found some way to trigger the Saturn to disable the security check like the System Disc does but via software running from the cartridge port, then you would have a external modchip.

 

the program on the system disc is not exactly big, is it? like in, it would fit on a small rom, right? :dance:

 

So let me get this right... The Saturn has a memory card slot thing, which can be used to boot the saturn? And then you can load whatever from the CD drive?

I'm going to have to look into this. :icon_bigg

 

Yes, but you have to put a "Trademark SEGA" header in it and that was meant to allow them to sue Datel if they made Action Replay for it... (rofl)

Seriously, things like ST-KEY, Action Replay, some chinese 4 in 1 carts all exploit that mechanism to boot their programs.

 

Yes, but to my knowledge it has never been done before to boot a CDR (homebrew). This cartridge device would allow people to play a homebrew CDR without requiring a modchip.

 

Think a little bit and you will remember that the MPEG card is capable of unlocking the CD drive for reading CD-ROM discs. I don't know how it does that and I aways thought it had some sort of hardware key as it connects right to the CD-ROM drive DSP chip. But if it's software and the authors of the software figured it out, then it's exactly how things are on the Dreamcast. You send a certain undocumented command to it and it disables all security.

Game security is aways an fascinating subject even in defunct systems... :dance:

 

Well, if you think more you can think of a misinterpretation (not sure if that word exists) from you. I don't think the mpeg discs are "locked". They need an "application". They're not locked. It's like the audio discs, but the application for them are built in. Same with the graphics discs.
The game discs need to be unlocked in order to run. Every game disc. These are locked.

I mean, maybe the mpeg application is just a "non-disc" application, because the disc drive must be used. Different from "usual applications" (disc applications like games, browsers, photo operator and other things released).

Just a thought. Maybe you're right.

 

The VCD (MPEG-1 player) application itself however *is* locked.

The VCD player may be on a cartridge, but it is still region coded. For example, a US Saturn can use a JPN VCD cart but only if a region mod switch is installed. In US mode a Saturn will refuse to play a VCD even if the cart is installed.

-hl718

 

hmm... alright, but, talking about the discs, it can play any vcd disc, no? I mean, copies, there's no way to refuse a disc, or there is it? Just like audio discs. So, if plays any disc, it's not really unlocking anything. (The region side looks like a dvd. It plays any disc (copies), but not of different regions.)

Also, was the vcd card released in USA? I remember seeing japanese (from many brands) and the european one.

 

The Saturn drive will never let a program which is running on the CPU have access to the disc sectors in CD-ROM mode without being unlocked, be it by the means of reading the barcode to proof the disc is a GAME application disc or being unlocked through commands (to allow reading of CD-XA sectors on A VCD disc). It's the actual protection, hardware/firmware based.

On the Playstation 2 such lock exist as well but clever hackers put an "Bait" UDF filesystem on hacked game discs that makes the PS2 DVD drive think it's a DVD video disc. The result is that the PS2 drive allow the disc to have sectors read from it. Even so the designers expected hackers would try it so the drive is designed to behave differently on DVD video mode. So patches are applied to the DVD drive driver (CDVDMAN) which then make the PS2 CPU think it's running an game while the DVD drive think it's running a movie. Sony never thought hackers would exploit it's drivers/"dashboard" update mechanism. Also it tried to protect the hardware registers information on DVD Video mode by having the DVD player software be magic gate encrypted. It got decrypted, reversed, analyzed and finally cracked.

So my point is, the Saturn drive is designed to make it impossible to read raw sectors from a non audio CD unless it's unlocked by the barcode or maybe some undocumented "magical" CD-Rom drive register writes (which could be done by the VCD player software). We know such "commands" to unlock the drive exist on the Dreamcast so why not it could exist too on the Saturn ?

 

Like what's been said, if you don't issue an authentication to the SS CD-ROM drive first, you'll just read back random garbage from the drive.

 

i wonder if sometimes we'll finally manage to burn selfbooting saturn games...

also i think that it's really high time for SS fans to get a cartridge modchip. it's been so long since saturn is out that nobody would care.

 

Has anybody tried dumping the VCD card firmware? If I'm not mistaken it should be somewhere in the SH2's address space, meaning the PAR software could access it.