***FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO KEEP BEGGING ABOUT DC COPYING PART 1***

[Evil Unka Tony]

Let me first start by saying this message is NOT a tutorial on DC copying. It is merely an informative text on the methods used, what's involved, etc. The reason I will NOT tell you how to burn DC games is simple: Echelon, Kalisto, and all of the other backup groups go thru GREAT pains for their releases. There's a lot more involved than simply copying a game. If everyone had the knowledge they do, then the newsgroups, forums, IRC etc would be littered not only with lamer requests on "How do I rip THIS game or THAT game?" or "I ripped it but it doesnt work, why?", but also bad rips distributed across those various mediums. Think of it like this: Would you rather get Silent_Scope-Echelon from some FTP, or Shitty_Game_Ripped_By_Joe_Blow that you REALLY don't have any idea if it works or not? The reason for this text is to lay to rest all of the shitty so-called "DC copying instructions" abound across the Net. I've heard it all, from idiots claiming they have 400+ games (The DC doesn't even HAVE 400 games yet they've ripped with so-and-so program/CD-Rom to the claims that it's impossible. If it's impossible, then how does Echelon, Kalisto, etc do it? Here's how.

**NOTE** The below information is NOT meant to be a tutorial as I have stated. So don't go emailing me or the DC CopyWorld Forum admins about "Well what do I do now?". All requests WILL be ignored. Lastly, the tools described below are not limited to Super-Gurus, they are easily obtainable thru IRC, the Net, and even DC CopyWorld.


First thing's first, the tools of the trade. There are 4 VERY important tools used in DC ripping, none of which can be substituted or ignored:

1. A DC-to-PC serial cable. The cables you see on Ebay, and these lamer websites claiming to be interface cables are all FAKES, so don't waste your money! You can easily damage your DC using these, as the DC serial port uses CMOS voltages of 3.3v, whereas the PC side outputs +5v! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

2. A Serial Slave CD image burnt to CD! This is vital to enable bidirectional comms with the DC serial port! You CANNOT just hook the cable up and go!

3. A Tekram DC390 SCSI CD-Rom driver for your PC. This is used to "emulate" a SCSI CD-Rom drive from your DC to your burning software, which brings us to the last tool..

4. CDRWin 3.8d. Yep, you heard it, the all-magnificent CDRWin is the key to it all. Kinda disappointing, isn't it?

[Evil Unka Tony]

Now for the basic rundown: After building the DC-to-PC serial cable (which costs around $28 US for all the parts), the DC must be initialized in order to send/recieve data. For this you need the Serial Slave image burnt to CD and loaded into your DC after popping out the Utopia bootdisk. You'll know the DC's ready when 2 blue bars appear on the sides of your TV screen. Now you can begin DC-to-PC comms.

The Tekram DC390 driver is used to emulate your DC as a 1x SCSI DC-Rom drive. I won't go into the bitrate, xon/xoff etc settings for proper comms for security reasons. Your ASPI layer MUST be updated to the Tekram ASPI layer for any of this to even work, so be forewarned.

CDRWin 3.8d SHOULD read the DC as such given the proper settings have been set in device Manager for the Tekram driver. Your DC is NOT Plug-and-Play compatible, so don't bother rebooting and hoping Windows will see it. It ain't gonna happen. Everything MUST be set up by hand.

Now here's the biggest part to DC ripping: Dummy adding and encryption cracking. After the game has been ripped with CDRWin, the image file must be dummied first and foremost to move all the data to the end of the CD. Many DC games are encrypted, and possibly contain CDDA tracks, so this must also be accounted for. If you don't know anything about encryption and programming, now's not the time to learn, because you'll have a nice collection of coasters to share with your loved ones. The patches you see on DC CopyWorld are NOT encrytion cracks, so don't bother.

DC copying is not for the meek or the impatient. It takes a lot of time, energy and money. If you don't want to invest any of those, then don't bother trying to learn. Like I stated in the beginning, this is not meant to be a tutorial for those who want to pirate games, make money, etc. it's here simply to disbar any and all rumours and false methods you've learned. If anything, I hope it at least saves you money on CDs trying the other so-called "ripping" methods.

If you really want to learn after reading all of this, here's what I suggest: Get on teh net, go to every site you can find on DC information, schematics, hardware specs, etc. Check around, talk to ppl via IRC, etc. And most of all, have fun.

Evil Unka
irc.relic.net
#PSX-DC and #PSXDC-Help

[Evil Unka Tony]

I'm so glad there's a few intelligent people who know how to scroll back and read a post.

Quote "a few intelligent people who know how to scroll back and read a post."
I would like to see the forum where they actually do that!
An idiotic post is often easier than using brainmatter to read.
READ before POSTING is what the forum rules state.

[Evil Unka Tony]

Nemesis, you seem to have been here for a while. I just have 1 question:

Are these people ALWAYS like this? I'm starting to think that if you took the whole population of these "backup" request postees and combined their IQs, you might have enough brain cells to open a pack of Twinkies and maybe, and this is a close MAYBE, even tie their shoes with the Loop-Swoop-Pull method.