I noticed the other thread about a 50/60hz switch for the model 1 and was inspired to start this thread about a few Saturn mod related questions ive been thinking about... Someone here in a recent auction mentions they have a beta or review Shinobi title for the Saturn burnt onto a regular CDR that will boot on any machine, not just modded consoles. Is it possible to use this disc to somehow understand the layout of the data and find a way around the disc drives security system? I am aware of the 'swap trick' as discussed many times by users here and on other websites. There was also a very long thread here that offered up $1000 to anyone who could defeat it. Has there been any develoment since? Just a thought....but given how long this machine has been around - and still noone seems to have defeated it - why don't other manufacturers (sony/ms/nintendo) just use the same method on their respective systems? (or do they?)
cdfreaks.com ->optical storage discussions -->sega saturn copy protection it was asked some man from sega why they didn't use the same copy protection from saturn on the dreamcast and he stated something like that they didn't even consider the saturn discs to be protected and wanted to create a better one probably is the saturn was a success like the psx today we would have the solution.
That's insane...the Dreamcast was completely defeated. Yet, to this day, the Saturn is still holding strong. IIRC Sony used a series of intentionally placed 'error/false data' on their discs to stop them being copied so easily. I wonder if the Saturn was the same? In fairness, even though it also uses a regular(ish) cd drive - even the psx still requires some internal modifications (in this case soldering) to get it to boot homebrew code.
AFAIK, the Saturn uses some type of a ID tag on the inner ring of the disc... you have to have a special burner to burn one (ie, Sega burns it for you). It's like checking the serial number of the disc itself.
think the more accurate description would be the media check. Saturn used the system which hasn't been broken... So far I haven't heard anyone who have managed to replicate the so called "security ring" on the burned media... Who know maybe if someone(?) with enough money could run the pressing factory to churn 'em out... With DC it was one of the backdoor left in its firmware that opened the floodgate...
cracked? no... released? yes it's just that there's tiny problem - we have no way to burn it into the media at home... ^ ^;;
it took hobby developers 20+ years to create a cic-clone. unlicensed developers were using cic-clones or cic-defeating circuits a few years after the nes' launch. any protection can be cracked sooner or later. warez-scene aside, its mostly a question of how good a crack can be commercially exploited.
yeah, but I don't count them as they were some what unreliable.. and the tengen chip I don't count as we can't be 100% sure they used inside info to crack it.
Yep, Sega seems to have taken avantage of the fact that a CD recorder won't burn just any random data.
Well, Sony did the same by RS232-encoding data in the 'wobble' of the track - the funny thing is, it took the common crowd YEARS to figure that out; people thought it was the black colour, the ATIP, error codes etc. Seems like the HK people were a bit quicker, though.
The DC's copy protection wasnt defeated, you cant copy a GDROM,a MIL-Cd was more like a security hole. btw I think I read in a thread about Saturn's security ring that the GDROM's also have one between the Data/audio and the high-density GDROM tracks.. These copy protections havent been cracked because everyone of these systems has been modded for years.
Well, that probably isn't the proper name as RS-232 doesn't define a specific encoding standard per se, 'twas quite a long time ago.
