Settlers III Mission CD copy protected by Sysiphus

[sarami]

I'm at a loss. Using the Optiarc with CDM and I'm getting different number of errors every time I run it again.

edit: Got the same number of errors on two different dumps, but different errors and mismatch on CRC.

So... I got tired of running it over and over and I decided to run it with DIC with c2 checking.
DiscImageCreator.exe data I "Settlers III - Disc 1" 4 0 228319 /c2 9999 40960 4

For the time being, you should not use your precious time until they(Jackal, reentrant) release the detailed dumping instruction of the ring protect. If this keeps up, we can't verify that their dumps is good or bad.

[escarlata]

I bought the Spanish version (or European with Spanish language, not sure)
It is also copy protected.
Did you get good results comradesean?

I have a Sony AD-7200A

[Jackal]

I'm at a loss. Using the Optiarc with CDM and I'm getting different number of errors every time I run it again.

edit: Got the same number of errors on two different dumps, but different errors and mismatch on CRC.

So... I got tired of running it over and over and I decided to run it with DIC with c2 checking.
DiscImageCreator.exe data I "Settlers III - Disc 1" 4 0 228319 /c2 9999 40960 4

For the time being, you should not use your precious time until they(Jackal, reentrant) release the detailed dumping instruction of the ring protect. If this keeps up, we can't verify that their dumps is good or bad.

I'm not gonna invest any time in this issue until comradesean replies to some pm's that I sent a while ago.

All I can say for now is that trying to dump this with a plextor + DIC is a waste of time.

[escarlata]

What do you suggest Jackal? OptiARC + DIC is ok?

[Jackal]

https://redump.info/disc/42279/
https://redump.info/disc/43333/
https://redump.info/disc/43270/

These dumps all have ~462 error sectors. This is the number that you should aim for with these discs.

You basically start by getting a "rough" dump of the data track. I prefer to use CloneCD with Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner and Sector Skip set to 500.
The problem also is that you will still need DIC for the audio tracks, cuesheet etc.. Currently the only way that I know to get DIC to skip through the ring without taking forever is to press the eject button of the drive when it starts retrying sectors, then wait until it filled enough sectors with dummy data, and then pause the command prompt by right clicking into it. Then when the program is paused, press the eject button again and when the disc is loaded again, let command prompt resume and it will continue reading the remaining post-ring area of the disc.
Ideally sarami could implement some kind of smart sector skip function that skips x sectors after x read errors, maybe for a preset range.

When you have a dump of the data track with a wide error range, the next step is to try and read as many sectors as possible before and after the ring, and inject them into the image.
Reentrant made a tool to help automate this process. The tool lacks any documentation / help text, so it's better not to share it for now. Maybe he can make a more "release friendly" version. The tool lets you specify the range that you want to read, the direction (back / forward or both), number of retries for each sector, etc. It looks at the reference image to determine if a sector is corrupt, and then saves any readable sectors to a folder. The tool can then be used to inject the readable sectors into the image.

For the 2 dumps that I did, I used a combination of drives (Optiarc + Samsung + Plextor) to get as many readable sectors as possible. It's a trial and error process that can take several hours. OptiArc drives are well suited for reading most sectors, but keep in mind that you would still need a Plextor drive to dump the rest of the disc (including the audio tracks) properly with DIC.

There should only be a handful of games with this particular protection (maybe only Blue Byte ones). They can be identified by the ring with spikes, that is also visible on the label side. Also, the errors start at around 94% of the data track IIRC, so comradesean's disc might be a different protection.

[comradesean]

Splitting it up into chunks has made this infinitely easier. I've discovered there are 536 to 537 sectors between 213856 and 214392 damaged* by the ring so these are filled with dummy data. One of my attempted reads read the 537th sector, but it didn't pass an ecc/edc check, so not sure if that was a fluke or not yet.

My biggest problem is there are three sectors past the ring that are not passing an ECC/EDC check. Two providing consistent results, but one having two bytes bouncing between two different values.

Because of this and because one of my drives is picking up some extra bytes on a few sectors (unrelated to the previously mentioned three) that breaks the ECC/EDC verification, I'm gonna try getting the disc buffed and attempt these sectors again. I've also purchased a sealed copy off amazon which should get here next week to do comparisons against.