Garbage data generating algorithms, and then a hash checker to ensure it's the same.now make it compatible with gamecube games and i will love ya
btw, where does it get the data thats erased from scrubbing? like that "rare extra data" you mention
Hi all,
I've been sidetracked lately. I'm close to getting back to it and finishing a simple GUI. I'm not sure about GC support. I'd like to, it's just the time. I plan to publish the code so others can enhance or use it for other things.
Cheers,
Nanook
I've been sidetracked lately. I'm close to getting back to it and finishing a simple GUI. I'm not sure about GC support. I'd like to, it's just the time. I plan to publish the code so others can enhance or use it for other things.
Cheers,
Nanook
Allow me to understand what goes here (please correct me if I made a mistake with any of this)
There are three primary modes of scrubbing.
Conventional.
"safe"
Repacking.
The idea behind it all was that Wii discs are encrypted and files dotted randomly around the ISO. Between said files there was essentially random junk for most games (if I recall the early discussions with Dack it was a game that missed it and led to the idea of scrubbing).
Conventional scrubbing removed this random data. In and of itself it did nothing but it would then allow you to compress the isos and make them far far smaller in most cases, probably not as small as they could go but nicer than 4.something gigs.
Safe scrubbing was a minor variation on this that worked around a theoretical detection method by skipping a few sectors.
Both these would work on a simple DVD modded Wii. No need for CIOS or anything installed like that, just a modded drive or drive emulator.
Nothing ever actually checked this random data so far as I know and chances are nothing ever will now -- if Nintendo release some kind of Wii mini in the future that checks for it then that is about it, however as we had emulation good enough to work with Nintendo's online servers at the end there...
The third method took all the files, unpacked the iso, shoved all the files to the front of the iso and rebuilt/repacked it. This would not work with a DVD modded device by itself but if you stuck some CIOS (possibly also CIOScorp/darkcorp) then it would, and the compression gains would be the greatest here.
For added fun then USB loaders then got developed. They supported various formats in the end, many of which were very sliced up versions of the ISO. WBFS was one of the first (actual file system at that, though became a container in the end), but certainly not the only choice in the end. Compared to a nice pure iso format then these files are complete and utter butchery. Where the first two scrubbing methods were probably "good enough" for archival purposes this would be laughed at as there would be no way to construct anything vaguely resembling a legit iso for a simple DVD mod. I recall an earlier iso rebuild tool that mainly just pounded it hard enough to get a WBFS game back into a format that an ISO handling tool stood a chance of being able to manage.
This variability in formats, as well as encryption, and people distributing games in USB favouring formats at times made patching games for ROM hacking type purposes an interesting hobby as direct patching was tricky because of it and potentially legally dubious for isos. To that end most things either went at runtime or required you to manually extract files and insert them afterwards.
On top of this the tool also handles the games that might have been dumped poorly (should only be a few out there as the problem was caught fairly fast and at the time it was necessary to have a rare and hard to come by setup to dump things, however as a variation of once data is out there on the internet... and it presumably being easy to check for and sort it is all good) which became known as scrambled. If memory serves we used to have a list of sizes for single layer (because that was all that was known) isos which corresponded to whether this was done.
The brickblocked stuff if memory serves was when we were waiting for hacks to come out for a given firmware that the update part could be nerfed to allow games to play in the meantime. Long since rendered obsolete but again something might still be out there.
Anyway if I understand it your claim here is between what I guess are filename dumps in a database somewhere and what was thought to be encrypted/signed random data actually just being unencrypted pseudorandom and having its randomness generation method discovered that you can replicate isos that are either 1:1 to a properly dumped iso or as good as for that iso part. If that is true then nice. While I was not bothered about properly storing the random data that got scrubbed (instead going for DVD safe isos as baseline standard) the option to regenerate unscrubbed it welcome.
There are three primary modes of scrubbing.
Conventional.
"safe"
Repacking.
The idea behind it all was that Wii discs are encrypted and files dotted randomly around the ISO. Between said files there was essentially random junk for most games (if I recall the early discussions with Dack it was a game that missed it and led to the idea of scrubbing).
Conventional scrubbing removed this random data. In and of itself it did nothing but it would then allow you to compress the isos and make them far far smaller in most cases, probably not as small as they could go but nicer than 4.something gigs.
Safe scrubbing was a minor variation on this that worked around a theoretical detection method by skipping a few sectors.
Both these would work on a simple DVD modded Wii. No need for CIOS or anything installed like that, just a modded drive or drive emulator.
Nothing ever actually checked this random data so far as I know and chances are nothing ever will now -- if Nintendo release some kind of Wii mini in the future that checks for it then that is about it, however as we had emulation good enough to work with Nintendo's online servers at the end there...
The third method took all the files, unpacked the iso, shoved all the files to the front of the iso and rebuilt/repacked it. This would not work with a DVD modded device by itself but if you stuck some CIOS (possibly also CIOScorp/darkcorp) then it would, and the compression gains would be the greatest here.
For added fun then USB loaders then got developed. They supported various formats in the end, many of which were very sliced up versions of the ISO. WBFS was one of the first (actual file system at that, though became a container in the end), but certainly not the only choice in the end. Compared to a nice pure iso format then these files are complete and utter butchery. Where the first two scrubbing methods were probably "good enough" for archival purposes this would be laughed at as there would be no way to construct anything vaguely resembling a legit iso for a simple DVD mod. I recall an earlier iso rebuild tool that mainly just pounded it hard enough to get a WBFS game back into a format that an ISO handling tool stood a chance of being able to manage.
This variability in formats, as well as encryption, and people distributing games in USB favouring formats at times made patching games for ROM hacking type purposes an interesting hobby as direct patching was tricky because of it and potentially legally dubious for isos. To that end most things either went at runtime or required you to manually extract files and insert them afterwards.
On top of this the tool also handles the games that might have been dumped poorly (should only be a few out there as the problem was caught fairly fast and at the time it was necessary to have a rare and hard to come by setup to dump things, however as a variation of once data is out there on the internet... and it presumably being easy to check for and sort it is all good) which became known as scrambled. If memory serves we used to have a list of sizes for single layer (because that was all that was known) isos which corresponded to whether this was done.
The brickblocked stuff if memory serves was when we were waiting for hacks to come out for a given firmware that the update part could be nerfed to allow games to play in the meantime. Long since rendered obsolete but again something might still be out there.
Anyway if I understand it your claim here is between what I guess are filename dumps in a database somewhere and what was thought to be encrypted/signed random data actually just being unencrypted pseudorandom and having its randomness generation method discovered that you can replicate isos that are either 1:1 to a properly dumped iso or as good as for that iso part. If that is true then nice. While I was not bothered about properly storing the random data that got scrubbed (instead going for DVD safe isos as baseline standard) the option to regenerate unscrubbed it welcome.
That was meant more in reference to the scrambled thing but I could have phrased it better.
That said depending upon how it was scrubbed I don't know that I would call it a bad release -- if I could burn it and shove it into a simple DVD modded Wii without issue then by most Scene standards in history it would be OK.
Hi FAST6191.
Yes these tools can restore the scrubbed/removed junk. If you were to back up your discs and store them digitally and wanted to have them in a smaller format (wbfs/scrubbed iso). These tools would be able to restore them back to the original state.
You can create a dat from your backups with the tools too or get a verified one from redump.
Do you have any contact with Dack? I'd like to get back in touch, but it's been almost 10 years.
Yes these tools can restore the scrubbed/removed junk. If you were to back up your discs and store them digitally and wanted to have them in a smaller format (wbfs/scrubbed iso). These tools would be able to restore them back to the original state.
You can create a dat from your backups with the tools too or get a verified one from redump.
Do you have any contact with Dack? I'd like to get back in touch, but it's been almost 10 years.
Thank you for the clarification.
I had some conversations with him in passing a few times over the years, no contact methods beyond what is on a profile/readmes though (which is nothing) and nothing since before his last login.
It seems that link the link to the repository has been deleted because piracy. Some clue to find it in google?
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Thanks for your tool nanook. Could it be possible to compile it to work in Windows XP?. I use and old computer to unscrubbing isos and it does not work there...
Hello,
I've run almost all of the Wii discs through the tool and and works wonderfully, with one exception: The Movie-Ch Install Disc Ver. A (USA) (En,Fr,Es).iso
The tool cannot unscrub the .wbfs (it looks for a partition that I can't seem to find online). The SWAT and SWIPE teams also don't work on the full .iso, I get the following error:
File 1 of 1 : Processing 1 of 1 Movie-Ch Install Disc Ver. A (USA) (En,Fr,Es).iso Extracting Update Partition:
Unhandled Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionHeaderSection.ParseFst(Byte[] fst)
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionSection.parseFst(PartitionGroupSection grp)
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionSection.<get_Sections>d__29.MoveNext()
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.WiiDisc.ExtractNonDataPartitions()
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiPartitionExtractor.Program.Main(String[] args)
I've run almost all of the Wii discs through the tool and and works wonderfully, with one exception: The Movie-Ch Install Disc Ver. A (USA) (En,Fr,Es).iso
The tool cannot unscrub the .wbfs (it looks for a partition that I can't seem to find online). The SWAT and SWIPE teams also don't work on the full .iso, I get the following error:
File 1 of 1 : Processing 1 of 1 Movie-Ch Install Disc Ver. A (USA) (En,Fr,Es).iso Extracting Update Partition:
Unhandled Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionHeaderSection.ParseFst(Byte[] fst)
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionSection.parseFst(PartitionGroupSection grp)
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.PartitionSection.<get_Sections>d__29.MoveNext()
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiDiscLibrary.WiiDisc.ExtractNonDataPartitions()
at Nanook.Swiit.SuperWiiPartitionExtractor.Program.Main(String[] args)
The disc converts okay, but I can't uncrub it back to the redump.org CRC (it says I'm missing a known update partition...even when I leave the .wbfs with all partitions intact). I can't scrape the partition from the disk and I can't find it online. It's a strange case.
Yeah there's a bug that prevents an image being restored if the update partition is missing from the folder even though it's present in the image. I've fixed it, just not released it yet. Sorry.
I've started looking at GC restoration now. It looks problematic due to some scrubber/shrinkers moving and rearranging the files within the image. It's hopefully still possible though. Stay tuned...
I've started looking at GC restoration now. It looks problematic due to some scrubber/shrinkers moving and rearranging the files within the image. It's hopefully still possible though. Stay tuned...
Can someone please tell me where to find the update partitions, other than extract them from original, complete iso's?
