World Series Baseball 2K2 [WSB2K2] - Dumping from HKT-0120

Good news! I've finally got some data off the Dreamcast HKT-0120 hard drive which had a Sega of America, Inc asset tag on it, unfortunately the hard drive is clicking-and-a-clunking while spewing I/O errors... even still, I've managed to get some of the data off.

Here's an image of the folder / file structure. Once I get a good clean dump (or as good as possible due to I/O errors) I'll compress the dd image and upload it to my Google Drive. Anyway, I should have that done sometime in the next 24 hours. Then all the fun can begin of scanning the image for deleted data and other such goodies!

Edit: Done! Here is the disk image (~1GB compressed, 4.5GB decompressed)

 

Did you at least get the OS off of it so you can clone it and put it on another drive? Looks awesome though!

 

Put the hdd in the freezer overnight, try to get the data again

 

Is there an OS on the Dreamcast Dev Box or is it all controlled by the SDK when SCSIed up to the PC?

What about my chicken nuggets? I have done this with varying success on 2.5" hard drives, so there's no reason it shouldn't work here - I guess Good suggestion!

 

Eat them for dinner Yeah same here but maybe worth a shot

 

Then it shall be! Chicken nuggets for EVERYONE!
With a side of frozen hard drive. Hahaha!

 

Well I've managed to get dd_rescue (not ddrescue) running under Knoppix 7.2.0 and it's churning the data into an image file. Once that has completed, I'll throw it in the freezer with one of those silca gel packets to keep it as moisture free as possible. We're up to a massive 160MB! Only a solid 4GB to go. Hold onto your seats!

 

The dump is done and the upload complete!
Download here
If you find anything way past cool, please report it back here!

Edit: I'll also dump the BIOS off the EPROM sometime soon.

 

My favorite kind of dinner!
Best of luck on dumping as much of the HDD as possible.

 

thanks for dumping and sharing this.
as I see game contents is same as release game, except game binary WSB2K2.bin, there is 2 of them
one from 22 May 2001 (written at HDD 3 Oct), this one included in .HCD image file list.
and other 05 Aug 2001 (written 3 Aug 2001), which is pretty close to retail game release date, however binary is quite different.

from .HCD I've builded image in .CIM format (using CimUtility from Katana SDK) which is looking more like common image formats.

so... is there any known tools to convert CIM to GDI ? or I suspect will be needed to create it by myself ?

 

No problems - I love to share!
Thank you for having a look at the contents
I have no idea regarding all the converting - what on earth is CIM? I'm new to all this... I'm sure one of the others will pipe up with some help

 

FamilyGuy might know something about converting it to GDI.

 

Oh you mean @-=FamilyGuy=- Come hither dear @-=FamilyGuy=- you have been summoned

 

I came hither as I was summoned.

Can you give me the files-size of the cim files, as well as the content of the small text file that should come alongside them!
IIRC it's pretty much ISO files with some kind of descriptor. If that's the case it should be very straightforward.

Edit:
So I found this: https://github.com/RedRingRico/cim2gdi
From @RedRingRico.
It should work fine for you needs, although I'm not a big fan of Windows-only software.

I could probably cook something half-decent in python in the next week if I got free time and example files, or add support for cim into gditools, I'm just not sure I'll have the time so don't hold you breath and use cim2gdi.

 

Is that image going to be <700MB for CD-R/Hardware? I tried compiling one, downsampled the intro SFD. But I need to downsample the .STR audio file for commentaries (300mb)

If someone shaves 20-30mb off of the files you can fit this on a CD though. Just get an ip.bin, run binhack32.exe (thanks FG ) on 1st_read.bin, set the bootsector as ip.bin, msinfo to 11702 and follow the "recompiling" steps here
http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=8045

I do not feel like figuring out how to downsample those STR files

 

Don't use bootdream/bin2boot for retail games! It's 2016, not 1999!
Use my Selfboot pack, SiZiOUS' cdi4dc or burn the disc directly to CDR(w) and make a cdi with discjuggler...

You're welcome for binhack32

 

yep, it quite simple, understood it's structure in a minutes. but before writing own converter wanted make sure I'm not wasting my time and inviting bicycle

thanks, that's I was looking for.
it doesn't work correctly for this game, since supported 3-track images only, but it can be fixed easy enough.

 

You'll be my hero if you fix it up, thank you both for helping!

 

You mean to reinvent the wheel? Or am I completely lost in double-translation, as neither of us is a native English speaker?

Please release your modified source code and documentation once you're done adding support for 5+ tracks games.

Cheers!

 

yes, this what I wanted to say )

sure. but unexpected problem appeared - it is parsing TOC fine now, but extracting last track doesn't works as expected.
tack5 offset calculated by code is bigger than real start of it in CIM file, moreover difference is not multiple of sector size (2352), so all this looks strange.
its possible this format is not that simple as it looks on first sight, or I have bad/wrong CIM image (i.e. this is result of some bugs in CimUtility from Katana R11b)

so... I'm thinking about making something like "HCD2GDI" )

is there any other HKT-120 HDDs was dumped and shared ?