Playing "Starforce" protected games. Guide please!

[Morglum007]

Lets clarify things step by step:

1.- DaB: yes i can prove, and i m saying how to reproduce results. You may disagree on this point all u want, but the way tests were done have been explained, just believe or not.
According to ur second affirmation u r, as most times, incorrect. SF works in a very different way other protections do (considering Safedisc, SecuROM, Tages, Laserlock, or whatever). Only Tages aproaches SF in optical drives routines, but only does one to four "non standart" check by disc authentication.
To clarify that u must understand how optical drives reads discs, and as i can see, as ever, u speak a lot but dont understand anything. Depending on check on disc zone, drive will proceed in one way or another (CAV/PCAV/CLV), and depending on it, it will make an ECR/ECC error recovery routine. An standart PC drive will read forward without problems (hour way) and will go backwards to check if data is correct and correct if needed (ECR/ECC error) (i recomend u to read CDFreaks Spath articles to learn how drives works). This is the way SF works, reading disc backwards continously, and as u may obtain from driver manufacturer, this is the way a drive is not intended to work. In retail boxes it is usually common to see a drive may do a quick error recovery by reading backwards till certain point, but not in a regular way. Since Tages do this from one to four times at a check, SF does continously (about 20-50 jumps) at a check.
This is the base, from here, think urself.
Both Safedisc, Laserlok or SecuROM reads disc forward, that means no drive stressing. A PC drive is not a XBOX360 drive, reads forward.

Regarding last comment, it is my opinion just by reading ur usual comments.

2.- Tip: I already know, thanks, but i dont care about money. If i liked money as u state, it had been a lot of time i werent here "helping" internet users. Probably i ll be in a prot company designing the prots most of u discusses here or on cdfreaks. Money isnt my main objective in this life.
Secondly, if ppl have "rld SF toolbox" out there, is thanks to cdsteam, who teached old Rld guys to manage SF in the ring0 times. Maybe about SF ring0 vm cdsteam is the leader "group" out there, we made logger and interpreter, so no secret to us. We can "assemble" instructions in SF languaje in real time, so thats not a problem for us.
Thirdly, even knowing the above, it is not needed to disassemble first vm to make SF to allow bus sniffers like bushound (the second vm is is used during gameplay). Just use BIOS interrupts to make SF bypass IDE resets (thats what u called 10 seconds reset), or simpler, use good SCSI equipment (SiS ones as example). In any case this is not needed, cause once Bushound is allowed, data flux is constant, even with resetings.

Finally, and as a side note, now i remember why i stopped posting here, thanks Tip, Dab, for recalling it.

Good luck!

[TippeX]

oh throwing the toys out of the pram now? ;p

what you've described for the sf stuff is probably out of the scope of most people here...

as for starforce signature.. its done via angular velocity not reading backwards... no? surely a bushound log would show that...

[Morglum007]

Originally Posted by TippeX

oh throwing the toys out of the pram now? ;p

what you've described for the sf stuff is probably out of the scope of most people here...

as for starforce signature.. its done via angular velocity not reading backwards... no? surely a bushound log would show that...

Right, but for setting start position it needs to calibrate drive to specific point. It does this backwards, for an "exact" starting point. Checked sectors are not "ramdom" as in Tages (inside a range), they r fixed ones, thats the problem.

EDIT: TIP: If u want i may post a complete SF check authentication process.

[TippeX]

no need, i've done starforce already, quite tedious, all those little sleeps between reads and so on... if you want to post, feel free of course, its probably quite interesting

didnt know the calibration bit was a backwards read, then again to be honest i didnt look at that bit too closely (unlike you obviously).. but then in theory of this backwards read can damage drives (and i do not disagree with you there) isnt tagés more 'dangerous' to drives than starforce is (going by the fact that tagés does lots more backwards reading).. ?

[DABhand]

Like I was saying most protections out there are just as bad.

I dont have to have a 2 page explanation on my reasoning though which would bore the pants off people :P

But yeah most of them are starting to backwards read.

[rlsuth]

I've no idea about the current state of Starforce drivers, all I know is that the first time I installed a game with Starforce, my CD-Rom whirred and made the most horrendous noise and finally stopped working all together. Now, admittedly, it wasn't the newest drive at the time, but still, it was obvious that whatever the hell Starforce was causing it to do, it put a rediculous strain on the device. Starforce actually admitted that their early drivers did this and said they'd fixed the problem, but sorry, I've avoided them ever since.

That first game also royally screwed up my system causing me to reinstall Windows to clear it out.

Long time ago now, but first impressions last and I just wont go there again.

[godjing1985]

I can not successfully use this way to get into these games.when i want play games protected by sf-ucker.I have to remove my dvd-rom.

[Joe Forster/STA]

This way? What way? We're talking about using no-CD/DVD patches as the most effective method.