Hacking Discs that could be used without a modchip

[Lumstar]

Wrong or not in factual terms, it is my opinion. I honestly do believe Wii discs are exactly as described in the above post.

And opinions are not inherently right or wrong. They are simply opinions, nothing more.

 

[teq]

Wrong or not in factual terms, it is my opinion. I honestly do believe Wii discs are exactly as described in the above post.

And opinions are not inherently right or wrong. They are simply opinions, nothing more.

Opinions that can be disproved by factual evidence are no longer opinions.

 

[Lumstar]

Wrong or not in factual terms, it is my opinion. I honestly do believe Wii discs are exactly as described in the above post.

And opinions are not inherently right or wrong. They are simply opinions, nothing more.

I know people like that.... who stand by their beliefs even when they're proven wrong with hard facts.

They're called Christians.

Now that, I do agree with. Makes me feel better to hear something positive. Thanks.

 

[lolsjoel]

I know people like that.... who stand by their beliefs even when they're proven wrong with hard facts.

They're called Christians.Hey, you're such a hard assed rule follower:Forum RulesPlease show respect for all members at GBAtemp. Remarks towards others about racism, sexism, origin, creed and handicap will NOT be tolerated and will most likely be deleted by staff, and the poster will be warned, suspended or banned (see the Warnings section below for more information on warnings.).

Reported to moderation staff.

 

[BigX]

Wii Optical Discs have a different Data structure to normal Data Dvds and a dumping drive would need a certain read command.
Not all specified DVD commands are implemented on all the drives. Actually most LG BURNER can only keep open two RZones that's why they fail for me...but their Reader (or some of 'em at least) are able to RAW read the structure on optical discs and that's a good think.

Now If you want to burn a disc thats readable by an ordinary not chipped Wii, you would need a Burner writing in that mode AND a burner + media writable on ALL sectors (with some investigation you'll find normal consumer end or even authoring burner are not able to address all sectors of a disc and leaving some areas blank or implemented by the media manufacturer)
This is the way copy protection ought to work for DVDs the first place...

 

[teq]

Wii Optical Discs have a different Data structure to normal Data Dvds and a dumping drive would need a certain read command.
Not all specified DVD commands are implemented on all the drives. Actually most LG BURNER can only keep open two RZones that's why they fail for me...but their Reader (or some of 'em at least) are able to RAW read the structure on optical discs and that's a good think.

Now If you want to burn a disc thats readable by an ordinary not chipped Wii, you would need a Burner writing in that mode AND a burner + media writable on ALL sectors (with some investigation you'll find normal consumer end or even authoring burner are not able to address all sectors of a disc and leaving some areas blank or implemented by the media manufacturer)
This is the way copy protection ought to work for DVDs the first place...

All of that was already addressed in this thread.

There's only one "read command" and when paired with the I/O Debug Mode that got unlocked on the LG drives, the drive essentially reads everything without searching for a file system. Any drive can be forced to do this, it's just a matter of enabling it in the firmware.

From there, you reverse the process onto the write command, and it'll be one step closer to circumventing copy protection without modifying the system.

It might even be possible to do it without the BCA, considering I was able to force a retail game to load through GeckOS when the Wii menu kept denying it.

 

[BigX]

All of that was already addressed in this thread.
ok, I didn't want to blow this thread up but did not read the information put in that way and felt the urge to say it out loud....if its redundant....nevermind ;-)

QUOTEAny drive can be forced to do this, it's just a matter of enabling it in the firmware.

Well that's the point...it just a matter of firmware. But the firmware is one of the pieces that cannot be done/altered easily (I never tried to and am not in the area of fw implementation). So if you cannot do it it's impossible.

Simply its all possible...if we'd only had an open Wii Firmware ;-) but that's never gonna happen

 

[teq]

I think right now, Starlet is what should be worked on.

I mean, the best thing we could do would be to reroute the data path from the DVD drive to the USB ports and use an external DVDROM drive or even a hard drive.

 

[MikeyTaylorGaming]

hmm... if we're saying that an average laser cant possibly read some parts of a isk, is that the reason that wii's cant play backup iscs straight off?

i mean, if the laster was able to read the unreadable, then it should ump the whole thing, BCA and all, meaning that the wii could read it right?

just a thought XD its probably ben sad before in the topic but i stopped reading at page 3 lol

 

[teq]

hmm... if we're saying that an average laser cant possibly read some parts of a isk, is that the reason that wii's cant play backup iscs straight off?

i mean, if the laster was able to read the unreadable, then it should ump the whole thing, BCA and all, meaning that the wii could read it right?

just a thought XD its probably ben sad before in the topic but i stopped reading at page 3 lol

Well, it's not a hardware issue.... but rather a software one. Most DVD drives are limited to certain file systems to retain compatability and uphold a standardization.

The Wii can't play backup discs because it contains physical copy protection methods, such as the BCA. There's also a specific structure with a custom header that the system requires.

 

[bubbleboy]

Bring me documentation proving that you are an employee of Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Only then will I listen.

I tried to end the conversation. But it keeps being brought up. And as long others respond to me, I'll respond back. My opinion on the Wii disc format will not change. Quit trying to persuade me, it's a futile waste of everyone's time.

This guy is cracking me up!!!

But to the point: it will never be possible, no CD or DVD burner has ever been altered to burn console based CD or DVD games which run without a modchip. There's simply too many areas on a DVD where they can physically stamp anything, where a standard DVD burner simply can't go. Otherwise we would have seen PS1 CD's with the 'errors' inserted by burning software. And PS2, same thing. Unfortunately, it's just not possible (in my opinion!).

 

[Allamahed El-Pol]

Hey,

what is about the good old Dreamcast? You can play backups on the Dreamcast without a modchip.
The Dreamcast doesnt use CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, it uses GD-ROM which need a GD-ROM Drive.

So how is this possible? How can the Dreamcast read backups on CD-Rs? And why do you need
a special App to burn backups? (I think it was CDRWin or something, tried it with Nero but it
didnt work)

Greets,
Allamahed El-Polster Islam

 

[trent_fox]

The dreamcast had a GD-ROM drive that could also read CDs. Sega had developed a multimedia format for the Dreamcast called Mil-CD that they planned to release in the Japanese market. Unfortunately for them, hackers reverse engineered the Mil-CD format and figured out how to exploit it to boot copied games from normal CDs.

 

[Jacobeian]

Because the dreamcast had native audio-cd support (ie, you can play audio cd in the interface menu) and there was a flaw in audio CD support which allowed Utopia to make a bootdisc

regarding WIi& gamecube, a drivechp is needed to put the drives in some kind of debug mode and allow reads even if the DVD hasn't been manufactured by Nintendo

EDIT: thanks trentfox for the precision, I didn't know about this special CD format

I think it was discovered thanks to a demo disc coming from a UK magazine

 

[bailli]

Teq you always point out to other people not to post useless threads.
Congratulations you just (or yesterday for that matter) did it yourself!

If you would have thought this through you would have come to the same conclusion as bubbleboy:

But to the point: it will never be possible, no CD or DVD burner has ever been altered to burn console based CD or DVD games which run without a modchip. There's simply too many areas on a DVD where they can physically stamp anything, where a standard DVD burner simply can't go. Otherwise we would have seen PS1 CD's with the 'errors' inserted by burning software. And PS2, same thing. Unfortunately, it's just not possible (in my opinion!).

Finally someone with the right idea.
This is not a Wii specific problem but one for all console game discs. So by now someone would have burnt a perfect copy don't you think?

The "copy protection" as you call it is nothing more than the check wheather the inserted discs is a pressed one or a burnt one.
The simple check wheather or not the discs intendifies itselfs as DVD-/+R is all the drive needs to do.
(The drive could for example read the ATIP Information)
And since this information resides in every single blank disc you can buy and is physically not rewriteable you have no chance to burn a disc that will not be recognized as a burnt one.
What a drivechip does is simply changing the RAM value of the recognised disc type. (The drive needs to be put in debug mode first to get access to its RAM)

EDIT: BTW Without the ATIP information no burner could write a CD-R/DVD-R. It wouldn't know where to start and how to wind the spiral over the media's surface (Sorry if the description is unclear - I wasn't sure how to formulate it in English).
So let's just think for only one second you could get rid of the ATIP information you had to manually adept your firmware/software/whatever for every new batch of blank media...

 

[Lumstar]

Yes. Wii discs have some minor differences in either formatting or physical properties (doesn't really matter which), that make them not normally readable or writable by the majority of unmodified DVD drives and burners.

Unlike PS2. While most DVD burners can't write a game disc that'll work on an unmodified PS2, they're much easier to read because they use a file system which adheres to the official DVD-ROM standard.

 

[zant]

heres and idea, STEAL THE DISC MACHINE AND MAKE YOUR OWN DISCS!!!!!!!!!!!

in all honesty, this is impossible for the average consumer.

 

[teq]

Teq you always point out to other people not to post useless threads.
Congratulations you just (or yesterday for that matter) did it yourself!

Okay, first of all, stfu.

Unlike the people I supposedly get down on, I've contributed my share of information. This thread was meant to be the discussion of theoretical copy protection circumvention.

If you would have thought this through you would have come to the same conclusion as bubbleboy:

QUOTE(bubbleboy @ Jun 30 2008, 04:17 PM) But to the point: it will never be possible, no CD or DVD burner has ever been altered to burn console based CD or DVD games which run without a modchip. There's simply too many areas on a DVD where they can physically stamp anything, where a standard DVD burner simply can't go. Otherwise we would have seen PS1 CD's with the 'errors' inserted by burning software. And PS2, same thing. Unfortunately, it's just not possible (in my opinion!).

Finally someone with the right idea.
This is not a Wii specific problem but one for all console game discs. So by now someone would have burnt a perfect copy don't you think?

The "copy protection" as you call it is nothing more than the check wheather the inserted discs is a pressed one or a burnt one.
The simple check wheather or not the discs intendifies itselfs as DVD-/+R is all the drive needs to do.
(The drive could for example read the ATIP Information)
And since this information resides in every single blank disc you can buy and is physically not rewriteable you have no chance to burn a disc that will not be recognized as a burnt one.
What a drivechip does is simply changing the RAM value of the recognised disc type. (The drive needs to be put in debug mode first to get access to its RAM)

EDIT: BTW Without the ATIP information no burner could write a CD-R/DVD-R. It wouldn't know where to start and how to wind the spiral over the media's surface (Sorry if the description is unclear - I wasn't sure how to formulate it in English).
So let's just think for only one second you could get rid of the ATIP information you had to manually adept your firmware/software/whatever for every new batch of blank media...

Did you actually read through this thread, or did you just decide to skip it all and troll?

Since you quoted bubbleboy, I guess I won't have to, but this will answer his post, too:

The only limitation on where a lens can travel and where data can be written to is software based. I posted a few pages back that there was a guy working on drawing pictures in the dye of a CD-R, using nothing but coordinates in MATLAB. MATLAB is very versatile in what it's capable of, so while I'm not suggesting it would be the tool to use for such an endeavor, it would definitely help.

So, let's take those LG drives that have I/O Debug Mode enabled on them(which is how they're able to stream the Wii DVD structure). Imagine if, instead of reading the discs, they wrote to them in the same mode. You could essentially write to the disc where ever you please and in a RAW, non-ISO9660, format. The reason for the modchip is that writing discs in ISO9660/Joliet destroys the original header of the disc, in addition to forcing the drive to ignore the lack of a BCA.


Luckily, I've discovered that the BCA is not necessary to read the disc. I did this by taping some black electrical tape over it. The disc read perfectly and had no problem playing.

So, if the Wii were to find an intact header on the disc, we just need to block out the ATIP.

 

[bailli]

Did you actually read through this thread, or did you just decide to skip it all and troll?

Nah, what's reading?
Did you notice that my post adressed most problems picked up in this thread? So yeah I did read it.
And to be honest: I was really suprised you of all people would start a thread like this.
I usually have to agree with you when you point useless posts/threads/whatever out to other people.
(although I don't agree with your wordings!)

The only limitation on where a lens can travel and where data can be written to is software based. I posted a few pages back that there was a guy working on drawing pictures in the dye of a CD-R, using nothing but coordinates in MATLAB. MATLAB is very versatile in what it's capable of, so while I'm not suggesting it would be the tool to use for such an endeavor, it would definitely help.

You may have posted that link to the picture drawing on the dye surface but it seems to me haven't read your own link.
This guy does not use matlab to burn single points on the disc. He uses some code written in matlab to convert a picture
to a data file that you need to burn in Mode2 with any burning software. But to get a clear picture he has to calibrate his
program for each batch of blank media. That's because the data spiral is different everytime and so the calculations
have to be adepted. His program basically calculates the data blocks that need to be "1" and "0" in the file to create the
different reflection on the surface.
So no, he cannot just burn anywhere on the disc.

QUOTE(teq @ Jul 1 2008, 04:27 AM)

So, let's take those LG drives that have I/O Debug Mode enabled on them(which is how they're able to stream the Wii DVD structure). Imagine if, instead of reading the discs, they wrote to them in the same mode. You could essentially write to the disc where ever you please and in a RAW, non-ISO9660, format. The reason for the modchip is that writing discs in ISO9660/Joliet destroys the original header of the disc, in addition to forcing the drive to ignore the lack of a BCA.

As bubbleboy and I already said: The main concern is not a Wii-specific problem.
If you have the possibility to burn a perfect copy you can worry about the the small changes in the Wii disc layout...

 

[BigX]

If you have the possibility to burn a perfect copy

and thats just impossible, as there are no completely blank media.
What about the lead in and lead out area? (which are not completey writable and partly pre written)