Sega Saturn copy protection cracked after 22 years

[parallaxscroll]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1244953


Allows loading games from USB via the expansion card port, plans on making boards available for sale. Will open up doors to homebrew communities and preservation of the console's functionality for years beyond the CD drive croaking


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E

[ccovell]

Wasn't the copy protection already cracked, and that's what the Rhea SD Card device was?

[ReaXan]

This is actually pretty big news

I just know that back in the day most the swap disc guides for this system were incorrect in some way which prompted me to get a mod chip from Jangaman which is harder to find these days.

Seems like the key to the swap disc trick all along was the use of the reset button and having the backup copy of your game in first.
I just bought a Saturn this weekend and was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong all these years. The following guide helped alot which is from 2013 on a Model 2 Saturn which seems to be the hardest to swap with.


1. Insert CD-R and turn the system on, when the lens moves to the outer sector to read the copy protect sector place in a real game.

2. Let the Saturn read the disc, you will note the drive is spinning slowly, le the black sega logo come up.

3. Whilst the sega logo is being displayed re-boot your machine using the reset button.

4. As the saturn is rebooted you will notice that the disc is still spinning slowly, as it begins to speed up (on my PAL system just after the BIOS sound is played) swap the disc back to your CD-R

Your Saturn will boot as if a legit game was inserted. This method takes a little longer but I could not get the ‘single sweep’ method to work. This method IMO gives you a little more freedom in regards to timing the disc changes.

[Greg2600]

This project is several years old, I've been following it on Assembler Games (user jhl).

This is the original thread where jhl detailed his progress from dumping the CD block to eventually the CPU and more. He's also been helping the devs on the Yabause LLE emulator to improve it's compatibility and accuracy.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-cd-block-rom-dumped.52419/

This is his new thread detailing the project as it approaches some type of wide release.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-optical-drive-emulator.62274/

[parallaxscroll]

Awesome, thanks for the info and links ^

Also, this from Kotaku:



After 20 Years, Someone Cracked The Sega Saturn's DRM

Sega Saturn disc drives are beginning to die off. Until now, it meant your machine might be useless. Thanks to engineer James Laird-Wah, Sega’s 32-bit hardware has been cracked, allowing games to be loaded via USB.

Laird-Wah is known online as Dr Abrasive, and is responsible for a USB-powered ROM-reading cartridge for the Game Boy called the Drag ‘n Derp.

The news was revealed on the YouTube channel debuglive, which features an exhaustive interview with Laird-Wah, showcasing his multi-year process.

Laird-Wah started poking around the Saturn in 2013, attracted to the machine’s notoriously ambitious multi-channel sound chip. “Gee, it’d be nice to have one of those around,” he said. To take advantage of that chip, he wanted to write software for the Saturn.

What he found was that Saturn homebrew required a mod chip—which largely aren’t produced anymore—and burning CDs for the Saturn to read.

“We can probably do better,” he said.

Thus, he went down a rabbit hole requiring years of reverse engineering.

The reason it’s so notoriously hard to crack the Saturn is because of its hardware-based DRM, which required discs to have a physical mark—called a wobble—that was etched into the CD. Laird-Wah had to figure out a way for the Saturn to tell him out the disc drive worked, then come up with software that would allow him to emulate the disc drive over USB.


This isn’t something you can buy yet; Laird-Wah is working out the kinks. Still, it’s a promising move towards revitalizing the Saturn community and ensuring the native hardware can be used to play games for years to come.

http://kotaku.com/after-20-years-someone-cracked-the-sega-saturns-drm-1783480023

[MetalFRO]

I was very excited to see this video, and the in-depth research that he has done to get to this point. I would love to have this kind of thing, because naturally, as the CD drives begin to fail and parts become scarce, it will be harder to have working Saturn systems to read discs. Particularly in the US, where the Saturn pretty much bombed. I hope he can make this work, and is able to get a stable product one can buy and utilize.

[ReaXan]

I was very excited to see this video, and the in-depth research that he has done to get to this point. I would love to have this kind of thing, because naturally, as the CD drives begin to fail and parts become scarce, it will be harder to have working Saturn systems to read discs. Particularly in the US, where the Saturn pretty much bombed. I hope he can make this work, and is able to get a stable product one can buy and utilize.

I have heard reports that the Saturn CD Drive was pretty much built like a tank where the DreamCast GD-Rom was not.

CD Drives do go out but the Saturn CD Drive was better than even Playstation ones until they released the mini version. I remember having to turn my PSX over on its bottom to get it to read discs by year 3 of buying it new.

I just thought this kinda stuff was public domain after a certain point? I know Sony probably renews their patents but does Sega on this kinda stuff, especially on a system that failed overall sales wise in the US?