I wouldn't doubt for a second that some factory equipment went "missing" and showed up for sale somewhere.

The existence of modchips and de-css make the discussion academic though. Why would you spend ages looking for some black market hardware and media that's likely to cost you significantly when existing, inexpensive solutions have been working perfectly for so many years?

One of the protections for the PS2 is the laser signal intensity. The filter used for the PS2 drives could easily detect a CDR/DVD vs. a geninue 'dark disc'.

I for one am enjoying this thread.....


Anyone else have some popcorn?


Later,
dabone

As am I , I am learning quite a bit about console protection schemes, though I do not see the benefit of the knowledge other than the knowledge.

I enjoy learning for the sake of learning, why I would ever want to know this I have yet to learn.

Lite
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Every company that made any unlicensed product boot on the PS2 simply copied the protection info from an existing game when they mastered it.

APparently the protection mechanisms are different for CD and for DVD.

Some of the consoles perform an ATIP check. If they see any ATIP info, they know it's a copy. And you can't get rid of the ATIP on recordable media, so it's a pretty good protection check.

I'm pretty sure the fat track loader only used the virtual machine for the loader itself. This was simply to obscure the protection check from prying eyes.

They did, however, tend to integrity check the loader after the game was started. The result is if you hacked the loader to remove the protection check, the game would break in mysterious ways.

Sorta related, since we're going full circle:

Copy Protection Wars: Analyzing Retro and Modern Schemes (2007) (pdf) by Nate Lawson; Co-designer of the Blu-ray disc content protection layer.

The black disc was indeed a red herring on ps1, because the laser used just goes right through it.

It is know exactly how ps1 protection works.

I suspect in the case of a ps2 CD, that the blue color might matter, because the action replay ALSO happens to be blue, and i've never seen any unlicensed ps2 CD that wasn't also blue.

yeah, libcrypt was a simple signature check, not a decryption key.

in every case libcrypt checks could be bypassed using gameshark codes, which would be rather difficult if it were actually used as a decryption key.

...and I would say, that I am far from an age of a receding hairlines and memory loss, so lets review your statements:

a) elliptical alignment tracks don't exist

Elliptical alignment tracks did not exist for the CBM drives, per CBM (who I worked for as their technical support rep for Oregon), commercial disk duplicators (who duplicated a few hundred thousand disks for the companies I was involved with), and quietly acknowledged by companies making disk drive alignment programs. Have you seen an alignment disk on a scope? Have you compared it to any other commercially produced disk? I can guarantee you that they are the same.


b) you can make infinite generations of copies with a floppy-to-floppy copier

How could you not make copies of copies with a hardware copier that reliably duplicates the timing of 0's and 1's and has no responsibility of creating the actual magnetic flux signal? The concept of degenerative copies to me is ridiculous. It's really quite simple - data in = data out. Unless you have a drive or media failure (or inadequate copying hardware), there is absolutely no reason for invalid data, and there are no exceptions. I could duplicate copies of copies forever with SuperCard Ami II. Since the data is sent digitally (not via analog) from drive to drive, there is no possible signal degradation between copies... period. However, if you used hardware that did not fix the waveform edges, you would definitely skew the bit cell timing. How do I know? I went through this with SuperCard Ami I. SuperCard Ami I and other hardware copiers simply tied the read line to the write line without cleaning up the signal and that definitely could skew the bit cell timing. But even then, I never saw copies of copies fail. However, a scope revealed that the data was definitely skewed more and more each copy. Keep in mind that even with these copiers there would be no signal degradation because the hardware copiers are not responsible for placing the magnetic flux on the surface. So, with SuperCard Ami II, I used custom logic and ST buffers to eliminate the skewing. After which, there were more variations to the bit cell timing due to drive speed than anything else.


c) you can definitely buy CDR drives that burn any protection on normal disks

You need to re-read what I stated. You can definitely buy drives used for low scale commercial duplication of DVDs and CDRs. These are the same drives used by companies for producing games, movies, etc. You can purchase these from companies in Shenzhen, China. They are something that anyone can purchase.


d) DVD-Rs can store CSS codes

I never stated DVD-R. Again, re-read what I stated. I stated that you can buy the media to make copies, they are not "special".


I spent from about 1979 through early 2001 developing disk reading/writing software and/or hardware for many different platforms (DEC, Seiko, CBM, Apple, Atari, IBM PC, Tandy, Sinclair, etc.) . I do not know of anyone that has spent as much time as myself doing this type of work. Today I develop weapon/flight control systems for UAVs, UASs, ROVs, etc. That work also involves data storage, backup, etc. So, it seems that whatever I end up doing there is some type of data being archived.

I have to tell you, I deal with Chinese companies just about daily. I am absolutely amazed at the amount of 'copying' that companies still do there. There is no DMCA in China. In fact, the big 'crack down' that occurred on exported copies of games, software, DVDs, CDs, etc. has faded away. I get offers all of the time for things that I would never dream anyone would blindly copy. The problem for society is that back in the day, the copies were pretty obvious - but now that companies are using sources in China to produce their goods, those copies aren't really copies anymore - its the exact same product being shipped out the back door!

Stamped original discs are just that, and you are not going to be making discs like that out of your home. However, not unlike DVD-RW and the Blue-Ray equiv. drives, you can get drives that are designed for "disc mastering and low production runs" (yeah, right!). They obviously are more expensive than your run of the mill burner, but they are not "thousands" either.

SO you are telling me these things can actually burn a selfbooting psx game onto recordable cd media? Or do you need special media without the ATIP as well? It's known that the ATIP survives burning, so that would conflict with the psx protection. Until i actually see it done, i will not believe psx protection can be made on anything but a glass master.

The media is not CD-/+R or DVD -/+R, it is different. It was explained to me it is much like a DVD-RW, but apparently it is an OTP (one time programmable) media though. I really don't have need to duplicate games, although I do like the WODE's ability to dump games to SD media and external hard drives for way faster loading. I heard there is a WODE for the PS3 in testing, so that would be the route I would go for sure. For those not familiar with the WODE, it is a hardware based CD/DVD drive emulator. It plugs between the drive and the console, emulating the datastream. With this device you can rip the disc to a folder on either an external USB device (memory stick, hard drive, etc.) or the internal SD media card slot. Once ripped, you can play the game (protection in tact) without the original disc. Loading is much faster coming off of an external device.

WEll the psx, for example has a special circuit that reads the wobble. S a WODE for the psx would have to also supply this special signal that normal drives do not pass on.

Oh, and i think i understand how CSS is duped now.

Qflix DVD-R is how it's done.

These special DVD-R media have the CSS area unburned, and are not recognized by normal readers until after the burning is done.

This is almost certainly what the wal mart duplicator is doing. you have to pay extra for the special media, which will go to the movie studios.

Wal-Mart is not duplicating DVD's, I assure you. They are just giving you a license for the online stream.
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This was driving me crazy, so I searched and found this:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...n-service/

...and this:

http://hometheater.about.com/b...unning.htm

What is interesting is that there are many different programs that will record the contents of your PC display (and audio as well), saving the data to your hard drive. So, you could make a copy of a DVD by playing the Walmart streaming version (UltraViolet protected) and recording that stream right to your hard drive, bypassing the DRM for future playback. I could see this being done by a lot of people, not realizing that it was potentially violating copyright laws.

ACtually i suspect those programs would fail, unless it were under XP.

There a 'protected path" specification involved in vista and newer drivers that could be used to lock these out.

Additionally usually if you try to capture the overlay you just end up with the chroma key color.

I thought the walmart service was digital only too, but people are swearing that DVDs are getting duped. and the only thing in the usa that does that with CSS intact is a qflix burner onto qflix dvd-r media (which is probably much more expensive).