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Copy Protection & Image Formats

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Reply 60 of 81, by collector

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How long did it take for your KryoFlux to arrive? I am still waiting for it. I figured that it would take a little longer since it ships overseas.

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Reply 61 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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collector wrote:

How long did it take for your KryoFlux to arrive? I am still waiting for it. I figured that it would take a little longer since it ships overseas.

I honestly don't remember 🙁 I've had it for years. What I didn't have was a flippy modified 5.25" drive. I got that just before I was forced to move.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 63 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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collector: Did you get your Kryoflux in?

Well, I managed to get PCE up and running 😀 Also converted the RAW flux files and tested the images... Except for one game, they work just fine. Going to do a bit more testing on that game (Ultima IV) and see if I can figure out what is going wrong (eventually.) It results in a "packed file is corrupt" error message. Also, it seems that, like DOSBox, PCE has a problem "auto" detecting composite mode with Ultima II & III. Right now I'm digging to see if I can find that program I "used" to use to force composite mode triggering back when DOSBox didn't have "auto", "on", & "off" mode available.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 64 of 81, by NewRisingSun

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FeedingDragon wrote:

Going to do a bit more testing on that game (Ultima IV) and see if I can figure out what is going wrong (eventually.) It results in a "packed file is corrupt" error message.

That is the result of Origin applying an older version of Microsoft EXEPACK to AVATAR.EXE. Normally, the ideal solution would be to unpack the executable file with the UNP utility, but this is not an option because Origin's OSI-1 keydisk check prevents UNP from detecting the EXEPACK compression. The solution is to invoke the game with loadfix, e.g. "loadfix ultima".

FeedingDragon wrote:

PCE has a problem "auto" detecting composite mode with Ultima II & III. Right now I'm digging to see if I can find that program I "used" to use to force composite mode triggering back when DOSBox didn't have "auto", "on", & "off" mode available.

PCE does not support 320x200 based composite mode at all, as far as I know.

Reply 65 of 81, by collector

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FeedingDragon wrote:

collector: Did you get your Kryoflux in?

Yes, I got it. I am having trouble with it working with my 5.25" drive with some disks that I know are good. Seems to work well with my old 3.5" drive. I probably just need to track down a good 5.25" drive, but have not had the time.

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Reply 66 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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NewRisingSun wrote:
FeedingDragon wrote:

PCE has a problem "auto" detecting composite mode with Ultima II & III. Right now I'm digging to see if I can find that program I "used" to use to force composite mode triggering back when DOSBox didn't have "auto", "on", & "off" mode available.

PCE does not support 320x200 based composite mode at all, as far as I know.

According to the web site, it does support it. Maybe it didn't last time you checked? They definitely have screenshots of CGA Composite mode in action. I asked the author about it, and was told it was auto-detected (a problem that has faced Ultima in the past.)

collector wrote:
FeedingDragon wrote:

collector: Did you get your Kryoflux in?

Yes, I got it. I am having trouble with it working with my 5.25" drive with some disks that I know are good. Seems to work well with my old 3.5" drive. I probably just need to track down a good 5.25" drive, but have not had the time.

Do you have disks to image from flippy HW? Just in case.... Flippy refers to disks that you physically turn over to access side two. Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 8-Bit, etc... use this method. If so, there is a guy on the Kryoflux support forum that can sell you a modified floppy drive (cleaned, aligned, ready to go out of the box,) for reading those. To read most flippy disks, the Kryoflux has to step the head down to track -8 (the heads are offset from each other,) then reverse the stream data when converting to an image format. PC drives "require" the index mark to function. Most flippy disks still only had a single index hole. So, if you physically flip the disk over, the index hole is on the wrong side for the sensor to work.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 67 of 81, by collector

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I am aware of the flippy disks, but so far I am just dealing with plain old FAT12 disks. I have had suspicions that there are issues with this drive that have been developing for a while now. What 5.25" drive are you using?

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Reply 68 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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collector wrote:

I am aware of the flippy disks, but so far I am just dealing with plain old FAT12 disks. I have had suspicions that there are issues with this drive that have been developing for a while now. What 5.25" drive are you using?

Just making sure 😀 I'm using one I bought from the guy I mentioned from the Kryoflux forum. It's a Panasonic JU-475-3. There is also a stamped code just past that "AGJ" or maybe "A6J" it's a little blurry.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 70 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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collector wrote:

No issues with that model? How many tracks?

I haven't had any issues, and it reads 84 tracks (0 - 83.) It can also be modded to read down to track -8.

I bit of warning about that. If you do mod the drive, and have a 3.5" attached as well, pin 33 on the 3.5" drive needs to be disconnected somehow. What I did was just remove that pin from my 3.5" floppy drive. I have a pile of them here, so it wasn't that big a risk. Pin 33 is a GND connection anyways, and there are plenty of other grounds that are used as well. If you leave Pin 33 connected on the 3.5" drive, then the signal to the bypass circuit gets grounded out, so the bypass never gets activated.

**EDIT**
Also of importance if using a modified drive. Never end a process while the drive is below track 0. It will put the drive in a track 0 seek loop 🙁 The only way to stop it is to manually push the head past track 0 again during one such seek. This can throw off the alignment. There may be a way of manually moving it by taking the drive apart and putting it back together, but I don't have the skill for that. So, I don't know how to do it.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 71 of 81, by collector

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Outside of a raw dump, do you know of a way to image a booter disk with the KryoFlux? I haven't explored doing raw dumps yet, which is something I'll need to do for my CPC protected disks. NRS mentioned the ease of conversion to other image formats, but I did not see much of such utilities on the KryoFlux site. I suppose that Teledisk would be the obvious choice for CPC disks.

I want to get the PC stuff worked out before I start to hunt down some non-PC games to add to my collection.

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Reply 72 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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Kryoflux, so far, can only convert copy protected dumps to usable image formats for the Amiga & the Commodore 64/128. Maybe the Atari ST as well, don't know for sure. For the others you will need 3rd party converters. For booters, some will work just using the img format that DTC can produce. For the more advanced copy protections, you'll need to convert to something else. For the PC, I've only tested one format that emulators can use.

PSI format:
This works with PCE (any maybe others, I don't know.) I have tested this one. First you will need the PFI inclusive package available HERE. Look for the latest PCE-<yyyy><mm><dd>-?????????-pfi-<sys>.zip Where yyyy = year, mm = month, dd = day, and sys = system. I don't know what the ??'s represent. The latest Windows 32-bit at this moment is pce-20141230-60c6844-pfi-win32.zip. Then use the following method to convert the RAW stream files.

pfi <game>00.0.raw <game>.pfi
Converts stream files to PFI (flux) file
pfi <game>.pfi -p analyse
Analyses PFI to get needed values:
<frequency> xxx Khz -> xxx000
Double-step or not
MFM or FM
pfi <game>.pfi <-p double-step> -R 1 -r <frequency> -p decode pri <game>.pri
Converts to PRI file
Use "-p double-step" only if analyses indicates it.
pri <game>.pri -p decode <mfm/fm> <game>.psi
Chose "mfm" or "fm" based on analyses.

A handy tool for converting formats, (and it includes Kryoflux RAW files as an input source,) is SAMdisk. But I haven't done any testing with it so far. It only works with MFM/FM encoded disk dumps. There is supposed to be a way to convert them to TD0 (another format I'm told some emulators support,) but I haven't been able to find it 🙁

Feeding Dragon

Reply 73 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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NewRisingSun wrote:
FeedingDragon wrote:

Going to do a bit more testing on that game (Ultima IV) and see if I can figure out what is going wrong (eventually.) It results in a "packed file is corrupt" error message.

That is the result of Origin applying an older version of Microsoft EXEPACK to AVATAR.EXE. Normally, the ideal solution would be to unpack the executable file with the UNP utility, but this is not an option because Origin's OSI-1 keydisk check prevents UNP from detecting the EXEPACK compression. The solution is to invoke the game with loadfix, e.g. "loadfix ultima".

Yep, Loadfix fixed the problem. So, all my copy protected disks worked in PCE with the PSI format. Strange, though, on my P3 system, with 614k conventional memory free, it worked just fine.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 74 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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A bit of an update on image format conversion & Kryoflux:

I can say with assurance now that some booters will definitely work just fine with the IMG file that Kryoflux will create. I just used it to image my "7 Cities of Gold" booter and it boots and loads just fine in DOSBox. Of course, it's protection is just a non-standard format. It's the only booter I have access to, though. I had forgotten that I had it here 🙁

Second, another set of tools for converting between formats is found in the LibDsk package. DSKTrans can convert between some formats, quite an extensive list. There is even a Windows GUI available, though I haven't done a lot of work with it.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 75 of 81, by collector

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Thanks, I'll have to play around with all of this when I get some more time. I can still do 3.5" until I can get a new 5.25".

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Reply 76 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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FeedingDragon wrote:
NewRisingSun wrote:
FeedingDragon wrote:

PCE has a problem "auto" detecting composite mode with Ultima II & III. Right now I'm digging to see if I can find that program I "used" to use to force composite mode triggering back when DOSBox didn't have "auto", "on", & "off" mode available.

PCE does not support 320x200 based composite mode at all, as far as I know.

According to the web site, it does support it. Maybe it didn't last time you checked? They definitely have screenshots of CGA Composite mode in action. I asked the author about it, and was told it was auto-detected (a problem that has faced Ultima in the past.)

I have to correct myself... You were right, it doesn't support 320x200x4, it only supports 640x200x2... My bad. I didn't discover that until after I had done more research 🙁 So, it's back to trying to get them to work in DOSBox again. Actually, Ultima III is fairly easy, just copy to a 3.5" disk first 😀 Though, I'm currently looking for a way to do so from the RAW dumps directly. Mainly because it's an interesting project.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 77 of 81, by NewRisingSun

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It should be mentioned that PFI performs rather poorly for disks using "weak bits" protection methods, and PCE is easily fooled by Formaster Copylock's false sector IDs even when directly feeding it with verified good TransCopy (.TC) format files that were created with the Central Point Option Board.

By the way: you were right in that there seems to be at least one PC-based protection scheme (Link Data's Cops Copylock II) that reportedly does measure the precise timing at which sectors start on a disk.

Reply 78 of 81, by FeedingDragon

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NewRisingSun wrote:

It should be mentioned that PFI performs rather poorly for disks using "weak bits" protection methods, and PCE is easily fooled by Formaster Copylock's false sector IDs even when directly feeding it with verified good TransCopy (.TC) format files that were created with the Central Point Option Board.

By the way: you were right in that there seems to be at least one PC-based protection scheme (Link Data's Cops Copylock II) that reportedly does measure the precise timing at which sectors start on a disk.

Ok, I'll add that back into the list, bringing the total methods up to 11. I still haven't found that page 🙁 I'll do a search again, (later - about to go fix dinner,) using "Copylock II" to maybe find that code I mentioned. In all honesty, I haven't done much searches lately. I haven't actually done much work at all on this lately 🙁 I've been busy with RL & other projects. I have a minor procedure to undergo on Monday, for example, that is going to make me pretty useless for accomplishing anything that day (and maybe the next.) The updated copy protection list is:

Errors:

  • Specific Error place on the disk. May contain data in the Sector as well.

Damage:

  • Disk is physically damaged in some manner. May not contain data, and cannot be "repaired"

Non Standard Track Size:

  • Tracks with more or fewer sectors than the others on the disk.

Non Standard Sector Size:

  • Sectors that are larger or smaller than the others on the disk

Overlaping Sectors:

  • Sectors that also contain all or part of the data from an adjoining sector

Gap Data:

  • Data stored in the gap between sectors

Altered ID:

  • Sector ID has incorrect data, or is otherwise altered.

Extra Tracks:

  • Disk is formated with extra tracks above 39/79 (count starts at 0.) Can usually only have 1 or 2

Altered Gap:

  • Gap size is changed.

Weak Bits:

  • Every bit is surrounded by bit patterns because if a "flux" read has no changes the results are random. This makes the surrounding bits all the same to intentionally generate a random result

Track Offset:

  • One or more tracks are shifted so that the first sector (may not be 0/1 with altered ID) does not begin after the index pulse, but is delayed a specific amount of time before writing begins by the mastering HW. This is checked by the code measuring the timing at which sectors start on the disk.

I've also replaced the TXT file in the second post to include this list as well as the list of known to be protected games. Again, feel free to message me if you know of any that aren't included, or can confirm methodology. Thanks 😀

Feeding Dragon

Reply 79 of 81, by Myloch

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DiskExplorer can read a floppy and it creates a .disk file, even if this isn't its main purpose. Is this comparable to standard .img? What infos of the source diskette are actually preserved?

"Gamer & collector for passion, I firmly believe in the preservation and the diffusion of old/rare software, against all personal egoisms"