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Sega Saturn's DRM Cracked Almost 23 Years After Launch (gamasutra.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gamasutra: The Sega Saturn's DRM has finally been cracked after it hit store shelves nearly 23 years ago in November 1994. Engineer James Laird-Wah first set forth to break through the console's copy protection in an attempt to harness its chiptune capabilities. Laird-Wah has, however, developed a way to run games and other software from a USB stick in the process. Since disc drive failure is a common fault with the game console, his method circumvents the disc drive altogether, instead reworking the Video CD Slot so it can take games stored on a USB stick and run them directly through the Saturn's CD Block. "This is now at the point where, not only can it boot and run games, I've finished just recently putting in audio support, so it can play audio tracks," explained Laird-Wah, speaking to YouTuber debuglive. "For the time being, I possess the only Saturn in the world that's capable of writing files to a USB stick. There's actually, for developers of home-brew, the ability to read and write files on the USB stick that's attached to the device.
He did it without requiring a modchip. If I understood the interview right, he has built a card that can be put into the extension slot which simulates the CD-ROM controller chip. So it essentially fakes a CD-ROM to the OS.
And yes, those devices do have "DRM" of some sort: its a "wobbly" line at the outer border of the CD-ROM which the reader reads. All writeable CD-ROMs have non-wobbly lines. Without a modchip you'll have problems.
the Saturn is nowhere's near perfectly emulated. It is very, very well emulated by a program called SSF thanks to some chap in Japan, but there are significant limitations. It also doesn't upscale and needs a beefy processor to deinterlace. I don't want to make light of the achievement of SSF's author's. The Saturn is a nightmare featureing 7 or 8 different processors with cache ram all over the place. It's a minor miracle what's been achieved. It's still fantastic to see this. The Saturn had a vibrant and incredible library that's largely inaccessible, especially if you're not Japanese. The difficulty of emulation means almost nothing got ported (and many of the "Saturn" ports on Xbox Live/PSN are really Model 2 ports). I always thought it sad Sega couldn't monetize their Saturn back catalog (outside of a very short lived service in Japan for PCs based on a different emulator). I would kill to get Panzer Dragoon 1,2 & Saga on PSN/Steam.
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The "DRM" (anti-copy protection) was circumvented decades ago, and modchips to perform that function have existed since that time. This is nothing new.
What James figured out was how dump the internal ROM of the CD controller MCU. This in no way "breaks" the copy protection, though it provides useful information about how the MCU works. Keep in mind that he is hoarding *ALL* of this information and has *NO* intention to share it with the public, for example to improve Sega Saturn emulation.
He is selling a mass-produced product to play games on the Saturn over USB and withholding information so nobody else can compete in that market.. This is a Slashvertisement and nothing more.
"News for nerds".
I've had a CD-ROM Emulator on my Saturn with no modchip for quite some time now: There are a pair of devices called Rhea and Phoebe. You unplug the CD drive and plug this in it's place, insert an SD card loaded with disc images and that's it.
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