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All Dreamcasts can read CDRs. The ones made after Oct. 2000 just refuse to boot the most popular format (in terms of CD sessions) for burned Dreamcast games. You can use another format that works fine on later-manufactured Dreamcasts. See the dreamcast articles at for more details.

By chance, you may want to try and figure out what kind of copyright protection they are using on the CD. I know I had a HELL of a time getting Civilization3 to work before I found out it was using copy protection algorithms on the CD to prevent you from booting without the CD in the drive. Problem is, in Win2k, Infogrames' 3rd-party copy protection software wasn't recognizing my CD-drive, and thus, not even booting up, even though I had paid the full $49.95 for the game.

I had to go to GameCopyWorld to find a ripped version of the main executable just to use my legally paid for game. What a crock!

It is not illegal to crack (as in "no-CD crack") software you own.

There's even a law that explicitly allows backups, at least in Switzerland. This is a rough translation of article no. 24 of the Swiss copyright law: "Whoever has the right to use a computer program may make one backup copy thereof. This right cannot be revoked by contract." Nice :)

And in order to make such a copy, you'll need the no-CD crack - otherwise the copy becomes worthless.

Patches for most games and to work around SafeDisc etc. can be found at GameCopyWorld, which is also rather legal. Unless you're in the US and someone tries to use the DMCA against you, maybe.

If you get the CVS version you have to use No-CD cracks for games that have SafeDisk or SecuRom.

You can find most No-CD cracks (legally!) from your local www.gamecopyworld.com mirror

I highly suggest paying the $5 a month though. I have been doing it since the first day Transgaming set it up - and I will continue to do so. It is a great community and a great project - and its benefits are direct (no more rebooting!).

Derek

There are various copy-protection attempts made to software, but the vast majority of them can by completely bypassed with software like CloneCD. You can read about what specific copy protections exist in this game here, as well as get patches that break cd-rom checks when starting up the game.

Its funny that we have to resort to these hacks even when we OWN the games.

Use a bit by bit copier such as Clone CD if you use Windows.....

Anything burning software that copies the cd bit by bit should be safe untill they build copy protection into the cd burners. (a la macrovision on VCR's and even thats useless if you get a signal booster)

Anyone having problems doing backups should visit game copy world

As for the Copy-Protection argument, its true that companies who adopt this model could no longer offer any copy-protection, but face it, copy protection is a joke. Been to GameCopyWorld recently? All it would take is a dev shop with enough balls to stand up to their publisher (very rare).

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Non-installable CD versions of software would also cut down on piracy. It's more desirable to pirate if you can have every pirated app all on your HD for easy access.

Great - so we have a situation were every CD-only application needs to be shipped with copy protection to prevent it even being copied to the hard disk. I just think of the leading copy protection mechanisms (SafeDisc), and I shudder.

BTW: For those of you who aren't aware, Generic Safedisc is a leading copy protection method for CDs. The only problem is that the technique it relies on to validate the CD is an original copy doesn't work on a significant percentage of existing CD-ROM drives. There's been numerous flamethreads against game companys on Usenet in the past, with people having to resort to sites like GameCopyWorld to get copy protection cracks just so they can play the d*mn game they bought.

Actually, it turns out that a lot of PC games have CD copyprotection, and it's not the kind where "Insert CD to continue." [Well, you need the CD in it to play the game... so much bloat...]

Basically, they do lots of standard fudging techniques (680 MB CDs, invalid TOC, etc), plus a few unique ones - unreadable tracks (tracks burned such that they don't conform to ISO spec, or tracks with bad checksums [similar to PlayStation]) that are checked at run time, or digital signatures/keys that checksum the entire CD in such a way that copies will always fail (how, I do not know).

Check out: GameCopyWorld (www.gamecopyworld.com) for more info.

Standard disclaimers apply. (BTW, making image copies of CDs, even your backup copy, can take ages because of these protections [CD-ROM drive just grinds to a halt reading errors on a CD]).