Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 232 posts

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#201

Post by shmerl »

apecat wrote: post #197
shmerl wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To fix it, people should stop using DRM. Or as a first step to repeal crooked corrupted laws which declared breaking DRM illegal even for legitimate purposes. http://www.fixthedmca.org

Yeah, well, I agree that people should stop using DRM, but it's not like it seems to be happening. And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case. Anyway, the world looks really bleak for open platforms right now. The main example is Android. If you have like one toe dipped into a role related to infosec at the moment, you can't serioulsy recommend that people you work with or care for eve…

> And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case.

Not really. DRM usage has nothing to do with (honest) business cases. They are all crooked or Lysenkoist in nature (i.e. based on completely wrong / ignorant reasoning).

Also, I think you are mixing up DRM with security. DRM is the opposite of it. DRM can employ encryption, but its purpose is not to secure your system, but to police you, and because of that it actually compromises your security.

> apps and games increasingly rely on server backends to work properly.

Many multiplayer games surely do. That's why it's good then the server is open source. This way it indeed can be preserved. Otherwise, it will be lost as soon as the servers will go bust. Another option is to provide the server component with the game, to allow running it as server instance. Lot's of older games did that, allowing running LAN / WAN multiplayer without using dedicated servers. It's less common these days. Either developers cut corners with implementing it, or server components got too heavy, not sure.

Making single-player games rely on some remote services as a hard requirement is a very poor taste. Same if they have multiplayer component. It should be optional and single-player part should function without it.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#202

Post by [deleted] »

shmerl wrote: post #201
apecat wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well, I agree that people should stop using DRM, but it's not like it seems to be happening. And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case. Anyway, the world looks really bleak for open platforms right now. The main example is Android. If you have like one toe dipped into a role related to infosec at the moment, you can't serioulsy recommend that people you work with or care for eve…

> And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case. Not really. DRM usage has nothing to do with (honest) business cases. They are all crooked or Lysenkoist in nature (i.e. based on completely wrong / ignorant reasoning). Also, I think you are mixing up DRM with security. DRM is the opposite of it. DRM can employ encryption, but its purpose is not to secure your system, but to police you, an…

[deleted]

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#203

Post by estebank »

ekianjo wrote: post #43
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Aussie he's going to be subject to the TPPs DMCA-lite restrictions on circumvention devices once it's ratified.

Is this retroactive though ? Does it apply to everything that was created before?

Continued publication could be construed as an ongoing matter. IANAL.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#204

Post by voltagex_ »

mavendependency wrote: post #190
voltagex_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for Heimdall. Samsung really don't seem to like developers that much, and Heimdall was a godsend when I had an S3.

What's wrong with odin? Other than the moral aspects of using leaked software?

I think Odin was Windows only, there were multiple old versions floating around and how do you know what you're really running? (as Administrator, too)

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#205

Post by voltagex_ »

rasz_pl wrote: post #159
lucb1e wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That copy protection scheme (outer ring spiral) is quite something. Yeah about that, I don't get it. Is there data hidden in that spiral that acts as a checksum for the CD or something? Or is it of special material that lights up differently under certain light (like money)? To me it doesn't look that hard to duplicate a simple spiral, but then I know nothing about it.

original Playstation used similar copy protection trick - ASCII string SCE(I/E/A) was stored in pregap pre-groove wobble between the leadin and the first track. PSX used Three-beam pickup and was able to track this wobble and extract code from radial tracking error signals. Modchips simply injected same error signal for couple of seconds after closing CD lid, enough for the CD controller to recognize it as "original"…

Any idea why PS modchips used to kill the drive laser pretty quickly?

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#206

Post by voltagex_ »

rasz_pl wrote: post #128

Same project for original Playstation http://ps-io.com/features/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbWW1VzeRgI . Started in ~2010 Playstation also had a trapdoor Parallel I/O port exposing raw address/data bus, it was meant for network interface, debugging(PSY-Q) and stuff(ActionReplay/GameShark). Great thing about that port is you can hang your own ROM there and console will execute it while booting, no code signing/d…

The problem with a lot of the modchips is that the companies behind them are secretive (leading to loss of knowledge when they close) and they're just so damn expensive.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#207

Post by bluesign »

DigitalJack wrote: post #176
bluesign wrote: post #152

I am not good with electronics tbh but why it is not possible to mitm the connection between CD drive and motherboard? As far as I see from 'swap disk' technique outer protection track is not changing depending on game

you can, but the drives are starting to fail now.

I meant mitm on CD rom side, as the protection track unique, could be simpler approach (which later you can remove optic drive with SD or usb)

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#208

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

abrasive wrote: post #156
JoshTriplett wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never had a Saturn, so I don't know what this wobble edge looks like in person. Am I missing something? The video shows it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E#t=2m13s

The video's graphic is a bit of an approximation. In practice it appears that every second disc sector is displaced, IIRC. And they've got particular bit patterns written into them to produce a visual logo; these patterns (but not the actual logos) are checked too. The protection ring is visible to the naked eye for this reason. I can't find a picture, sorry!

I tried to figure out how to reproduce the logo at one point (10+ years ago, when people were less worried about dying drives). IIRC, it's that the EFM patterns used to make the pixels don't make valid Red/Yellow Book sector contents, which causes some weird behavior if you try to read them as such.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#209

Post by zouhair »

voltagex_ wrote: post #36
zouhair wrote: post #31

Only 20 years to go and Denuvo is done for.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/denuvo-drm-c... These days my interest in game cracking is mainly for archival purposes. (are you going to be able to play this game in 50 years?)

I follow /r/crackstatus but it is far from being really done. This said I think all things equal piracy is a good thing for the gaming industry and without it I would not have been a gamer who now have more than 300 games in Steam and many more in GoG and Blizzard games too Back in the day I wasn't rich and even if I had money I couldn't buy games because I had no access to them living in a third World Country, but piracy made me a gamer.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#210

Post by EvanAnderson »

skoczymroczny wrote: post #144
jonhohle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going through this as a relatively new PS Vita owner. Sony decided to go with proprietary game cartridges, proprietary memory cards, and DRM'd digital distribution. Despite the quality of the games and hardware, the system didn't do well commercially and it appears Sony has lost interest in the system and it's sibling PS TV/Vita TV. There are a lot of great games (including PS1 and PSP games) for the system, but…

Players overwhelmingly vote with their wallets in favour of DRM. Just wait until some day Steam servers get shut off, the backlash will be massive.

People don't know any better and don't understand the issues. They're not voting with their wallets. They just want to access the "protected" items. I tend to think most people are just going to accept when they lose access to "protected" items they've already purchased (or just have to re-purchase them). I don't like any of this, but I don't expect it will happen differently either.
Post reply on HN