Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#21

Post by 83457 » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

If only the Dreamcast protection had been that good. Was really disappointed when it died :(

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#22

Post by _qbjt » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

As a Sega fanboy, this makes me happy. That copy protection scheme (outer ring spiral) is quite something. I find it amusing that Sega went with yet another proprietary disc format for the Dreamcast (GD-ROM) and that system is able to load homebrew code from any CD-R / CD-RW without any modifications to the hardware.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#23

Post by grawlinson » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

Bromskloss wrote: post #20

grawlinson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's zero benefit in doing anything like this. Not to mention that all the relevant information may not exist anymore, or is in a storage facility somewhere growing mold.

> There's zero benefit in doing anything like this. I don't know. Winning people's hearts? For the fun of it?

>I don't know. Winning people's hearts? For the fun of it?

That's true, but as long as they can still make money from their IP they won't (i.e. repackaging old source + game(s) into a VM for sale on Steam or next-gen consoles)

Some of the source code/etc may be licensed from a third party, which means that releasing it is treading through a legal minefield.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#24

Post by tsao » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

One of the YT comments is about how he is not releasing the "ROM dump". Any idea of why he isn't doing this?

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#25

Post by nacs » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #4

Holy hell what an amazing hack. This guy must have spent hundreds of hours on this.

He mentions at one point that he's been working on it off and on for a few years so definitely at least 100s if not thousands of hours.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#26

Post by anonymfus » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #3

TLDR (or TLDW*)?

He dumped ROM of Saturn's CD-ROM module's CPU, reverse engineered OS in it, discovered a developer mode which allows Saturn to read non-protected CDs but requires a special protected CD which nobody has, then he turned attention to the slot for Video CD decoder card, discovered that this card can send additional encrypted code to CD-ROM module's CPU, then created replacement for CD-ROM module as a card for Video CD decoder slot, which allows to load CD images from USB mass storage devices connected to it's USB port.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#27

Post by jrockway » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:24 PM UTC

tsao wrote: post #24

One of the YT comments is about how he is not releasing the "ROM dump". Any idea of why he isn't doing this?

Copyright? Although Sega Saturn is a dead system with zero commercial value, the ROM remains copyrighted.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#28

Post by 0x0 » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:24 PM UTC

tsao wrote: post #24

One of the YT comments is about how he is not releasing the "ROM dump". Any idea of why he isn't doing this?

The ROM is probably under copyright?

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#29

Post by ben174 » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:25 PM UTC

tsao wrote: post #24

One of the YT comments is about how he is not releasing the "ROM dump". Any idea of why he isn't doing this?

Just a guess: might get some serious attention from Sega's Lawyers if he releases that.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#30

Post by donpdonp » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

Here I thought the title was describing how plastic CD media became brittle after 20 years. The hack is way more interesting.