Hide CD-R Media Question

Burning Software
#1

I’ve been trying to burn an image that I have, of the SecuROM-protected title “Viper V16”, which other people with SecuROM-killer drives apparently have no trouble burning. It may be a TwinPeak-patched image, if Clony is at all accurate in telling its version number, but it works when mounted with the Alcohol virtual drive, which is odd. (And because no one else has problems burning it, it MUST be patched if it’s a newer SecuROM version.) I have an AOpen CRW-5224, and I normally have no problems burning SecuROM. I have tried burning the disc with both Alcohol and CloneCD, and here is my problem:

I enable the Alcohol ATIP-hider, and the game refuses to run. I enable the CloneCD one, and the game runs fine.

What I’d like to know, however, is if the CloneCD does anything OTHER than hide the ATIP… If it does, I know something’s either wrong with my drive or the image. If it doesn’t, then something pretty friggin’ wrong with Alcohol, wouldn’t you agree?

I already sent a message to SlySoft, but essentially got a reply stating that Alcohol is probably blacklisted, and that TwinPeak images are not officially supported. However, we all know that TwinPeak works fine, as well as this title is fairly old, and the new version of Alcohol is relatively new, so the chances of it being blacklisted (especially since I don’t turn off the ATIP-killer in Alcohol when I turn the CloneCD one on…) is quite slim.

Anybody know anything about the inner workings of CloneCD?

Ooh, almost forgot, I read some stuff in the CloneCD manual, etc. about it doing some stuff other than just killing the ATIP when that option is enabled, so that’s what made me think there could be some sort of strangeness going on.

Thanks!

#2

>It may be a TwinPeak-patched image

May be? So it’s not your image? We only deal with people who own the original. This concept is clearly stated in the rules - the ones you agreed to by becoming a member. Please don’t get all pissed-off over this and say “yeah, sure”.

Virtual drives have been blacklisted by latest copy protection versions.

#3

I do not have Blindwrite, or have any interest in installing it and throwing more useless drivers onto my system. As this is a rather uncommon game (Hobibox English translation of a Japanese hentai game), I have been unable to secure a .BWA file for the disc. As a result, it was necessary to get a friend, who for some reason swears by Blindwrite, despite it’s similarity to other burning software but lack of certain necessary features (or perhaps doesn’t mind having a comp that runs at a glacial speed - OR greatly desired to sneak a copy off of my disc and so was quite willing to do the favor for me - now when I think about it, it would have made much more sense to just get a BWA off of him, but he still has my original for the time being, so I cannot check whether it is his image or my burner is at fault - I also couldn’t just get a copy off of him, as he has some sort of old 8x drive that doesn’t burn subchannel.)

I understand that this forum does not deal with warez or similar; I therefore also understand that it’s quite likely that nobody will believe the above explanation, however I still feel the need to explain things, for what it’s worth.

Afterthought: The image works in the Alcohol virtual drive, though - it’s just after burning it that it screws up unless I use the CloneCD ATIP-killer. I’ve had a few other games, mostly h-games from different companies do this too. Perhaps the Alcohol drivers may merely just be corrupted or improperly installed, or one of many other things…

#4

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Clone’s Hide ATIP does more than that. It also runs an emulator, of sorts.

#5

Aha! That would also explain why my CloneCD-read-and-burned SD2 backups often don’t work without it, but my Alcohol ones do… I thought CloneCD was intended to burn 1:1 backups…

#6

Hmm…anybody know if the “hide CD-R media” emulation does anything to help SecuROM? I want to make sure my copy is more or less 1:1 for most intents and purposes, as I’ll be lending out the original to some friends who probably wouldn’t understand how to use CloneCD’s hide function, and I don’t want to have a emulation-requiring copy on my hands if the original goes south.

I still don’t get how, blacklisting likely to be out of the question, the CloneCD hide CD-R function could be working when the Alcohol one doesn’t, aside from using emulation. :confused:

#7

It does two overt things. It hides the ATIP and it runs the emu that is invoked in Emulate Weak Sectors for SD2 but not SecuROM. There are bugs in the protection which produce unexpected results, which is what you’re describing, I suspect.