Home	Forums	What's new	Resources

Official bootdisk useful?

dogbert - Aug 24, 2001

1

2

3

...

7

Next>

		dogbert		Aug 24, 2001
			I've 'inherited' an official Sega bootdisk from a defunct developer... Is it of any use? Can I use it to boot backups? Or, as I suspect, is it just another disk to sit in my game collection?

		RadSil		Aug 24, 2001
			I'd love to help, but like everyone else here (I assume), I have no clue. Coincidentally, could you scan this thing or something? I'd love to see it.

		dogbert		Aug 24, 2001
			Scan it? As in literally take a photo of it? I'll see what I can do.

		MasterAkumaMatata		Aug 24, 2001
			Yeah, scan both sides of the disc (if you see what I'm getting at). I'd love to see it too

		3rdman		Aug 24, 2001
			Yeah that would be cool! I wonder if I bypasses the search for the security code at the rim? Wasn't the boot disk made available to developers so that they can use their CD-R's to test their code? Or am I wrong?

		noob		Aug 25, 2001
			Here is about all the info you may need on this interesting CD....... (Note that it wasn't made by me... but by Adam.....): "From: gamescan@pacbell.net... Date: Sun Aug 19 18:12:21 EDT 2001 Subject: Re: Question: (Was Re: The best Saturn news...) Sega, unlike Sony, has never made special "debug" systems for testing betas. Debugging was done on the dev consoles and the testing was done on standard units with key discs. What you have is one of the key discs. The Saturn required a set of two key discs. One for third party games and one for first party games. What you have is the "Black" third party key disc. The first party key disc is the "Red" disc. In order to play a CDR on the Saturn you need to load the proper key disc and then load the CDR. The Black disc will boot any third party CDR while the red disc will boot any first party CDR. The system discs do not disable the county code check, they only disable the CDR security check. However, the system discs themselves are not country coded and will work in any system out there. Once the Saturn has been booted with the key disc, the CDR security check will remain disabled until the power is cycled. This was done to allow for multiple disc games as well as to allow for the swapping of different games without having to do the boot-disc cycle again. The Maker ID on the discs are unique to whomever originally licensed the discs, presumably to prevent them from being sold. Sega kept the same system with the Dreamcast, however only one system disc is used instead of two. Interestingly enough the Dreamcast system disc is labeled Dreamcast System Disc 2. I don't know if there ever was a System Disc 1 for the Dreamcast or if the 2 was to denote that System Disc 2 was for the DC while System Disc 1 was for the Saturn. What you have is quite rare and hard to find. However, most people don't know what the #### it is so when they do become available the discs tend to go cheap. I remember about a year or two back a Saturn system with a black disc popped up on eBay. Someone asked about it here on the list and I posted an explanation. I figured that it would go for a sum of money so didn't bother bidding on it myself. Heh, I was quite surprised when the package closed at around $75. Whoever got that (was it you Jason?) got one #### of a deal. Had I known it would have gone for so cheap I would have snagged it myself. Adam" Hopefully that is more than enough Info.... if not, you could always E-mail him =) TTFN Noob

		dogbert		Aug 25, 2001
			Thanks for the detailed explanation - that is EXACTLY what I needed to know. Thank you!

		whodailli		Aug 25, 2001
			hey how bout taking clonecd v3 and make a image of that boot disc an up it to an ftp

		RadSil		Aug 25, 2001
			Yes, but wouldn't the boot disc still require the protection ring? That would be rather pointless... unless this boot disc really does have the behavior of canceling the check while the power is on.

		ExCyber		Aug 25, 2001
			I think this would be interesting also. If there is indeed some "magic code" that can be sent to the CD controller to disable the need for the security check, it might be possible to put it into AR firmware... Considering how locked up the protection is overall, though., I doubt it's that easy - if it is indeed accomplished by sending a "magic code" to the CD controller, it probably won't accept it without already having the check successfully done (since the boot disc presumably has the security signature, otherwise it wouldn't boot), making the whole exercise fairly useless.

		megametalgreymon		Aug 26, 2001
			is there a security ring around the outside of this black disc? if so then you are going to have the same problem as with normal saturn discs, a normal cdrom/cdr drive cannot read anything on that area of the disc, so dumping it would be pretty useless on the other hand if there isnt one you could possibly make some use of a copy of it

		IceDigger		Aug 26, 2001
			well, technically, you could use it via the swap, and then use CDRs until you turn off the saturn next time... but that's only useful if you play several games in a row.

		megametalgreymon		Aug 26, 2001
			thats true however if the disc was dumped so more people could look at it maybe they could find a way to use this to the advantage of more people?

		mal		Aug 26, 2001
			Ripping this CD certainly can't hurt If you can say, which developer was it from? (Edited by mal at 3:12 am on Aug. 27, 2001)

		megametalgreymon		Aug 26, 2001
			it wouldn't make any difference which developer it was from as far as this disc goes, as any third party developer would have received the same disc it could get the developer in trouble possibly though (Edited by megametalgreymon at 11:14 pm on Aug. 26, 2001)

		dogbert		Aug 26, 2001
			"it could get the developer in trouble possibly though " Exactly, so I'd rather not say.

		RadSil		Aug 26, 2001
			It certainly couldn't hurt, so why not? I'm just really curious to see the way the image and IP are set up... and maybe disasm the 1st read program to see just what's going on...

		dogbert		Aug 28, 2001
			Sorry, work's been keeping me REAL busy. A quick guide to clonecd would be nice - never needed to use it before.

		whodailli		Aug 28, 2001
			put disc in drive, hit write to image file....check two boxes, set max speed, name it boot and you'll end up with somthin like this: boot.ccd boot.img boot.sub image will b largest, sub will be about 30megs, and ccd will be 3-10megs...should only take about 3minutes for a full disc, but sizes will be much smaller probably cause boot cd shouldnt have much data on it

		yasha		Aug 31, 2001
			any news ?

1

2

3

...

7

Next>