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After twenty long years of suffering caused by the Sega Saturn's infamous hardware-based DRM, James Laird-Wah, a computer engineer known as "Dr Abrasive", has finally cracked the twenty year-old console. This DRM was so unique due to its mechanic that required a special groove to be present in all its CDs, requiring a rare modchip for any kind of homebrew. This solution involves a USB emulation of the disc drive.

This is not a public release as of yet, but this represents major progress for the Saturn homebrew community as hardware testing will now be much more accessible. Post your thoughts below!

Interview with Dr Abrasive:
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[leon315]

i can finally watch my 1080p bluray mkv on my sega saturn cd XD

 

[Foxi4]

Upon watching the interview I can see what the hubbub is about - decoding the CD block is a big deal and as I expected, it required fiddling with the CPU. It's interesting that he managed to make it spew the ROM out without decapping it, well done. This will help out emulators more so than hardware users though, seeing that other ODDE's already exist. Having a plug & play solution is pretty sweet though - I can't wait to shove this into my currently unused VCD slot.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Am I the onlyone who has never geard of this console?

Segata Sanshiro for the sake of God!

 

[Foxi4]

Not having heard of the Saturn is criminal - I love that obsolete little thing. Here ya go, lads - one of my older pieces if you're interested:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/bfwwiwa-issue-1-sega-saturn.361538/

 

[chartube12]

The Sega Saturn was more powerful then Playstation. It's version of the games it had, featured better graphics and faster load times. The system suffered from being a pain in the ass to program for at the time however, leaving it's full potential unrealized. Ironically the same problem the playstation 3 would eventually have, years later. Without ease of programming, powerful amount of resources are useless.

 

[GuyInDogSuit]

YASSS!! Finally! I miss owning a modded Saturn, but to be honest, I only played a few games, and I kept hoping Sega would continue releasing PC versions of their games on Steam, but so far only Master System and Genesis games for the most part have made it to the west. I don't see why they did a PC release of Panzer Dragoon, but nothing of the sort for the rest of the series.

 

[kumikochan]

Lol i got a Phoebe so don't see the point of this.

 

[DinohScene]

I thought about getting a Saturn.
It's sweet news but ground breaking, not really.

 

[Xuman]

I was one of those unfortunate to have experienced the saturn (brother never let me play it) and ive been planning on getting one but heard about the disc issues and that halted me.

The fact that this guy is working on a plug n play solution makes me very excited!

 

[peroxidex]

Saturn: 20 years for crack. Unique DRM.
Dreamcast: Cracked instantly. Literally no DRM whatsoever.

...Well then!

If you read about it now or showed up late to the party, you may think that.

It was nearly two years after the JP release and in reality, we have the Action Replay CDX demo from Datel to thank for starting it by essentially releasing a MIL-CD. I'm also not sure how boot CDs and modified ISO constitutes no DRM either, but anyway.

 

[TeamScriptKiddies]

The DRM has been broken on the Sega Saturn in many different forms for years now. Still pretty neat for him to make a new ODDE nevertheless

 

[Foxi4]

It's not so much that the DRM was broken, rather that we finally have the complete image of the program that's responsible for the CD drive and AP, which admittedly we didn't have before. We knew more or less how it worked and found ways to trick or bypass it, but now we actually have the ROM, which helps a bunch. The DRM wasn't really "broken". There's no backdoor there, just an exploit - we still can't burn that ring and squiggle and likely we never will be able to actually break the protection, but just knowing the full CD protocol is a great help in emulation and future ODDE development.

 

[TeamScriptKiddies]

It's not so much that the DRM was broken, rather that we finally have the complete image of the program that's responsible for the CD drive and AP, which admittedly we didn't have before. We knew more or less how it worked and found ways to trick or bypass it, but now we actually have the ROM, which helps a bunch. The DRM wasn't really "broken". There's no backdoor there, just an exploit - we still can't burn that ring and squiggle and likely we never will be able to actually break the protection, but just knowing the full CD protocol is a great help in emulation and future ODDE development.

I was under the impression this was dumped eons ago and that's how the modchips worked. They were able to dump all the necessary info (the ROM) so they could get the code needed to inject on the fly for booting copies/homebrew etc. Now I'm talking about the actually modchips, not the swap trick and pseudosaturn those operate completely differently.

 

[Foxi4]

I was under the impression this was dumped eons ago and that's how the modchips worked. They were able to dump all the necessary info (the ROM) so they could get the code needed to inject on the fly for booting copies/homebrew etc. Now I'm talking about the actually modchips, not the swap trick and pseudosaturn those operate completely differently.

The modchip only sends ring data when the drive firmware requests it, the ROM hidden in the CPU was not dumped until now despite many attempts and the emulation of the drive was purely theoretical, based on hardware I/O sniffing and scarce documentation.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

Would this be better than Rhea and Phoebe since you could run backups and still have a free CD drive and RAM slot for games and accessories?

Assuming this ever becomes publicly sold.

 

[Foxi4]

Would this be better than Rhea and Phoebe since you could run backups and still have a free CD drive and RAM slot for games and accessories?

Assuming this ever becomes publicly sold.

Yes, because it's integrated into the CD drive firmware and only re-routes data streams rather than blindly emulating it. That said, for the end-user the only difference is the installation which is just more convenient here.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

I hope he will continue with the Sega CD and Dreamcast after this is complete.

You can burn CDs for the Sega CD but as far as I'm aware there is no discless solution and I was hoping there would be an everdrive that could play the Sega Genesis and all its add-ons.

I know the guy that made Rhea has something for Dreamcast. How is that?

 

[kingraa777]

i have a racket boy modchip in my saturn fully working still but doesnt play well with burning rangers :/
awsum news however

 

[DaFixer]

Great news!
Maybe I to buy a Saturn becase emulation is a bit buggy.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

Great news!
Maybe I to buy a Saturn becase emulation is a bit buggy.

I think Sega Saturn's emulation is the worst for any system I've ever seen. All the 5th generation consoles in particular were difficult.