how do people get Dreamcast backups?

[chrishicks]

I have been looking around ebay and am noticing alot of auctions with game backups included. how do they get these?

[joeybastard]

I think that's code for pirate CD-R versions of the games.

[goatdan]

Yup -- those are pirated DC warez... and the worst part is that eBay *doesn't* shut down those auctions, while they will be on top of you for selling tons of legal things...

 

I hate that company.

[Lemmi]

i dont see a problem with back up CDRs if the seller has the original disc along with it in the auction

[Atariman]

I think the way people copied them had something to do with either modding a NGPC > DC cable or by running some kind of software with the broadband adaptor to make a dump of the game on their PC. I never really read up on it *too* much as I take pretty good care of my DC stuff (thus removing the need for backups), but I think I remember reading that somewhere.

[Dones]

AFAIK the Dreamcast used a special kind of CD Sega called GDROM. It was basically a CDROM but with more storage capacity. If you put a GDROM in a normal CDROM drive, it would not know how to read it. Apparently Sega thought this would be enough as far as copy protection measures (dreamcast units don't have region lockout). In a way it was because you can't copy a GDROM with a cd burner. But as with everything technological these days, some very smart people found a way to get around this.

 

They started dumping CD data using a transfer cable between the DC and the PC (and probably some homebrewed software). Once on a hard drive, they burned the contents on a normal CDROM. Some games would fit on a CDR without tampering. The ones that were too big where shrinked by removing part of its soundtrack. If the audio was MP3 based then if was re-encoded to a lower bitrate. They also removed cutscenes or the extra online components of the game. To make the CDROM run they duplicated the boot structure needed for the CDROM to be accepted by the dreamcast. They even figured out how to enable VGA mode on games that didn't have it by default.

 

Again this is as far as I know, so don't take my every word as gospel :wink:

[KaineMaxwell]

http://dreamlover.tecbox.com/

 

Found this during my travels one time.

[JB]

The ones that were too big where shrinked by removing part of its soundtrack. If the audio was MP3 based then if was re-encoded to a lower bitrate. They also removed cutscenes or the extra online components of the game.

From what I've been told, this varies greatly from ripper to ripper. Some do everything in their power to preserve the game as close to original as possible, others don't even try and just hit it with the chainsaw.

[Dones]

I guess the transfer time between a DC and a PC must be so long that whoever was ripping got impatient. They probably put the most effort on the best games or personal favorites (eg, Soul Calibur or RE: Code Veronica) and went minimalistic on the crappier or less liked games.

[keilbaca]

How it works is you boot up the dc with a special disk. The screen is the sega logo, then there is a blue border that appears around the screen. Then you take out the disk, put in a real dc game, then you telnet into the dc using the serial cable. I do not have this cable, so I do not know how to rip it from there, but on my hard drive at home I have the full tutorial and disk image on my hard drive, a disk for the broadband adapter and a disk for the serial. I want to back up several games so I can preserve the originals, but I don't have the materials.

[KaineMaxwell]

Hmm, that's pretty impressive.

[dgo]

... and all the 'normal' dreamcast users without all this specific knowledge

just download the games in convenient ISO format ready to be burned with their favorite burner software

[goatdan]

Trust me -- backing up Dreamcast games isn't nearly as difficult as doing anything that was described here.

 

The problem is that the pirate scene for the Dreamcast does nothing to help anyone, and only hurts people. I have twice been burned by getting Dreamcast games that were "Complete!" from eBay only to get a wallet (and once a spindle) full of CD-Rs. And eBay won't do a thing about it.

 

If the seller on eBay has the originals too, I have no problem with it. But there are not many people who do. Considering the fact that I'm attempting to continue the production of Dreamcast games and even those have pirate copies now floating around (which, coincidentally eBay often times doesn't care to pull), I can state firsthand that they are damaging the potential future of full releases for the console.

[Flack]

Hmm, that's pretty impressive.

 

See, it's always impressive when the first guy does it. After that though, it's just piracy.

 

The idea of some kid sitting in his basement, reverse-engineering a console to create a mod chip or figuring out how the boot sequence of a Dreamcast work fascinates me. Those are the impresive people.

 

Once the hard work's been done, it makes way for the talentless pirates. There's nothing particularly impressive about downloading ISO's and burning them. If you look at something like the Gamecube BBA hack ... THAT'S impressive ... the fact that I can download the tools someone else made and get it to work, not so impressive.

 

As far as the Dreamcast goes ... I know lots of people personally who have pirated Dreamcast games, and not a single one of them ever dumped their own games. All their stuff has come from IRC, FTP, Newsgroups, and file sharing programs. As Goatdan inferred, we are long past the days where any skill is needed to obtain copied DC games.

[Classic Pac]

Heres what a good friend told me, he actually got nearly every Dreamcast ISO on Kazaa enough to fill 2 DVDs but if your going that way it is recomend that you use Kazaa lite ++ from oldversion.com

[goatdan]

Heres what a good friend told me, he actually got nearly every Dreamcast ISO on Kazaa enough to fill 2 DVDs but if your going that way it is recomend that you use Kazaa lite ++ from oldversion.com

 

And while you're at it, get a bottle of rum, matey! Arrrrrr!

[bergbros2]

I am one of those talentless burners who only need a bittorrent, Alcohol and a CD-R (Does a DVD-R work on the Dreamcast) to burn on Cd's. I'm afraid that once these images are in the public domain there really isn't anything you can do about it. I don't sell any if this stuff, I just like to play especially the imports that would cost me $40 or above to buy. I think that is the beauty if tthe DC. It can emulate and be modded to just about everything. It is too bad that it is discontinued because the Dc community had the potential to be even more vibrant than even XBox and Plyastation. The DC has got to be one of the most adaptable platforms ever.