Sega Saturn copy protection cracked after well over 20 years

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Originally Posted by gamevet

He's not the 1st to crack it. You can use a hacked Action Replay to play backups.

https://m.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/co...rts_on_saturn/

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Isn't that basically like a bypass a la mod chip. Cracking to me would be more like cracking a nut and finding out what's inside.

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Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

He didn't know how to do it initially. He learned it all as he went along. He had some of his own hardware and software knowledge, but then scoured online for all the info he could. The rest he went through trial and error to try and get, eventually building that little rig to insert the CD controller CPU onto and eventually manage to reconstruct what it was doing.
It took him a long time and a hell of a lot of work to do. Even if it was a lot of part time and off and on work, it's still impressive he stuck to it for so long and eventually succeeded. Even cooler that he's sharing the fruits of that work with others.

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Thanks for the explanation, but that's not what I meant. I was referring to his knowledge of hardware/software in general, rather than his specific knowledge of the 'Siega' Saturn. His detective work with the console is very impressive. But as I rarely meet anyone with similar knowledge of tech, I wondered how people acquire the knowledge in the first place.

Well, he said he just finished his PhD. It was probably in electrical engineering or something, this is what they do.

Without formal education, this project would've been impossible IMO.

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Originally Posted by Blades

Well, he said he just finished his PhD. It was probably in electrical engineering or something, this is what they do.

Without formal education, this project would've been impossible IMO.

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Not always. I've met some people (in real life) who are amazingly gifted in terms of what they are able to teach themselves. There's so much information out there now online, and such inexpensive materials to learn with, that someone with the interest and drive can absolutely teach themselves.

If they had formal training it would likely help, and maybe go faster to be sure, but it's not impossible.

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Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Not always. I've met some people (in real life) who are amazingly gifted in terms of what they are able to teach themselves. There's so much information out there now online, and such inexpensive materials to learn with, that someone with the interest and drive can absolutely teach themselves.

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This has been my experience too. I often encounter hobbyists with more knowledge than the average professional within the industry I work in, hence my question about how to acquire tech knowledge. Sometimes formal training is of little use to certain applications, whereas sometimes its the only way to learn.

Whenever I see someone that's hacked a phone or a console or whatever, it seems to rarely be someone that works within the respective industry, it tends to be a hobbyist. But I would hope that there's some kind of formal education that would give someone at least a basic skill set that can be applied to hacking hardware (even if the course obviously isn't going to teach that specific skill).

I am surprise that in all these years there wasn't a leak of information from someone at Sega with regard to the copy protection though. There's usually at least one disgruntled employee that can't keep his mouth shut

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Originally Posted by Thief

Isn't that basically like a bypass a la mod chip. Cracking to me would be more like cracking a nut and finding out what's inside.

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I think it's more like a program that tricks the Saturn into thinking it has an official disc in the console.

It's not as cool as this crack, that allows you to use a USB stick instead of your CD drive.

I'm glad he did this. All we need now is some open source emulation work.

The longshot result here is that this might ultimately end up getting Sega to release Saturn games on new platforms.

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Originally Posted by Mad Moham

This has been my experience too. I often encounter hobbyists with more knowledge than the average professional within the industry I work in, hence my question about how to acquire tech knowledge. Sometimes formal training is of little use to certain applications, whereas sometimes its the only way to learn.

Whenever I see someone that's hacked a phone or a console or whatever, it seems to rarely be someone that works within the respective industry, it tends to be a hobbyist. But I would hope that there's some kind of formal education that would give someone at least a basic skill set that can be applied to hacking hardware (even if the course obviously isn't going to teach that specific skill).

I am surprise that in all these years there wasn't a leak of information from someone at Sega with regard to the copy protection though. There's usually at least one disgruntled employee that can't keep his mouth shut

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Well the copy protection on the Saturn was relatively well understood for the discs. Like he mentions on the video there is a specific wobble on the outside ring of manufactured discs that is basically impossibly to replicate with a CD burner unless you're working with special blank discs that already have the wobble/read code on the outside ring already.

Current modchips know about that wobble and basically intercept the read signal from the CD drive and say "every inserted disc has the auth code on the outer ring, go ahead and execute the code". His work is amazing because (from what I understand) he basically he found a way to connect to the CD-drive's data bus from the back expansion port and authorize code to be written and read to what would normally be the CD-to-motherboard interface.

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Originally Posted by xelement5x

Current modchips

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According to this guy, there is no such thing.

RHEA is an alternate solution that bypasses the optical drive, but good luck buying one.

I'll definitely be anticipating the release of this as what is essentially the only means of keeping a Saturn alive for decades.

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Originally Posted by Raijin Z

RHEA is an alternate solution that bypasses the optical drive, but good luck buying one.

I'll definitely be anticipating the release of this as what is essentially the only means of keeping a Saturn alive for decades.

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I've been looking to get that myself. But if this works as well/better it's a much more elegant solution. Meaning I'd only need to get the GDemu for my DC... and hope that someone somewhere comes up for soemthing for my Sega CD some day.

Looking at the video and seeing Daytona running with full audio and all makes me think this is the superior option for the Saturn at least.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

He's not the 1st to crack it. You can use a hacked Action Replay to play backups.

https://m.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/co...rts_on_saturn/

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Which is also partially his work.

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/...-dumped.52419/

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

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/...mulator.62274/

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Originally Posted by zyrobs

Which is also partially his work.

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Well then. I guess he cracked it 19 years later, not 22.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/...19/#post757370

The Rhea works very well, but as stated earlier very hard to get hold of. I'll have one of these if they're easy to come by. Kudos to the guy, he's well clever.

EDIT: Just watched the whole thing, it's great! He's a good bloke too. It'll be interesting to see if this improves emulation for Android devices now as well.