Copy-Protected Disk (Once it dies, software gone)

[Cosmic Puppet]

Hi All, have been watching this post with interest and eventually decided to drop by. As was stated earlier, this protection was used on a few UBIsoft games (Twinworld & Tom & the ghost).
About 8 months ago I was able to do a backup of theses games, which as you can see from these posts was not able to be achieved from an SCP file, Ijor has explained the technical reasons why and if there was a person that knows, then he is the one.

Now I have managed to do a working backup of Cosmic Puppets original disk, I achieved this by creating a homemade IPF of the disk, the same way i did the UBIsoft games.

I don't have a high res monitor so I can't test the disk on real hardware, but writing the disk and then reading back to SCP format works fine and I can see from re-checking in Aufit or HXC that it all appears good.

When writing this IPF back to disk, make sure that the NOVERIFY option is selected and the GW software must be using V1.19 or above.

C-Lab Aura (DH Homemade IPF).7z

Can this be done in the GUI?

If so which options do I choose as I'm getting failures to write:

Screenshot 2025-01-10 182014.jpg (53.64 KiB) Viewed 1408 times

[Atari74user]

I have yet to use my Greaseweazle, for my purpose specifically for those software copy protected disks I own, and don't want to lose. There are 4 pieces of software I want to use it on, MIDIA and Aura being two of the sister products amongst them. Anyway, although I want to use it on Aura, there is an MCA crack of Aura, somewhat lost over time.

See attached, it is not an image, so you'll have to sort that out if you want an image for Gotek. It doesn't solve the issue, but useful.

aura.zip

(145.42 KiB) Downloaded 28 times

!Message from: Moderator

@Atari74user, we have placed your attachments in-line so they display correctly in your post. Here's the how-to guide.

[Cosmic Puppet]

I have yet to use my Greaseweazle, for my purpose specifically for those software copy protected disks I own, and don't want to lose. There are 4 pieces of software I want to use it on, MIDIA and Aura being two of the sister products amongst them. Anyway, although I want to use it on Aura, there is an MCA crack of Aura, somewhat lost over time.

See attached, it is not an image, so you'll have to sort that out if you want an image for Gotek. It doesn't solve the issue, but useful.

I just tried putting this on my SD Card in my UltraSatan thinking it may be a good hard disk solution but alas it needs to be on a floppy disk to not get the error. Incidentally the folder is over 720kb so it wasn't an option to try a floppy disk.

[Cosmic Puppet]

Hi All, have been watching this post with interest and eventually decided to drop by. As was stated earlier, this protection was used on a few UBIsoft games (Twinworld & Tom & the ghost).
About 8 months ago I was able to do a backup of theses games, which as you can see from these posts was not able to be achieved from an SCP file, Ijor has explained the technical reasons why and if there was a person that knows, then he is the one.

Now I have managed to do a working backup of Cosmic Puppets original disk, I achieved this by creating a homemade IPF of the disk, the same way i did the UBIsoft games.

I don't have a high res monitor so I can't test the disk on real hardware, but writing the disk and then reading back to SCP format works fine and I can see from re-checking in Aufit or HXC that it all appears good.

When writing this IPF back to disk, make sure that the NOVERIFY option is selected and the GW software must be using V1.19 or above.

C-Lab Aura (DH Homemade IPF).7z

Can this be done in the GUI?

If so which options do I choose as I'm getting failures to write:

Screenshot 2025-01-10 182014.jpg

Okay, so thanks to Dave I have managed to make a new disk.

Just be sure to select IPF for Disk Type and add the command highlighted in blue (--no-verify):

Screenshot 2025-01-10 192756.jpg (54.2 KiB) Viewed 1379 times

Thanks to everyone who helped with this!

[Atari74user]

I just tried putting this on my SD Card in my UltraSatan thinking it may be a good hard disk solution but alas it needs to be on a floppy disk to not get the error. Incidentally the folder is over 720kb so it wasn't an option to try a floppy disk.

Not sure what you have done, but I use the crack off of my UltraSatan with no issues, under TOS 2.06.

Nice to have a legit working copy too, very cool!

[Cosmic Puppet]

I just tried putting this on my SD Card in my UltraSatan thinking it may be a good hard disk solution but alas it needs to be on a floppy disk to not get the error. Incidentally the folder is over 720kb so it wasn't an option to try a floppy disk.

Not sure what you have done, but I use the crack off of my UltraSatan with no issues, under TOS 2.06.

Nice to have a legit working copy too, very cool!

Dunno, that's odd. It just comes up with the same message I get when I put my original disk files on the hard disk. I'm very happy to be able to back my disk up though!

[Atari74user]

Dunno, that's odd. It just comes up with the same message I get when I put my original disk files on the hard disk. I'm very happy to be able to back my disk up though!

That is odd, but still, issue solved so that's another piece of software legitimately saved!

[kodak80]

Good to see Dave provided a working IPF file that can be written back to disk.

I converted the working SCP to HFEv3 format to test on a Gotek drive. The HFEv3 works on my two Gotek drives and loads fine. The caveat is that the FlashFloppy firmware needs to be v3.39 as newer firmware seem to not work with this HFEv3 file. Looks like there is a regression to the changes made in v3.39.

Gotek drives with the latest HxC firmware work and if you use FlashFloppy v3.39 firmware this disk will work.

[Cosmic Puppet]

Good to see Dave provided a working IPF file that can be written back to disk.

I converted the working SCP to HFEv3 format to test on a Gotek drive. The HFEv3 works on my two Gotek drives and loads fine. The caveat is that the FlashFloppy firmware needs to be v3.39 as newer firmware seem to not work with this HFEv3 file. Looks like there is a regression to the changes made in v3.39.

Gotek drives with the latest HxC firmware work and if you use FlashFloppy v3.39 firmware this disk will work.

Is it possible to convert the IPF file straight to HFEv3?

[Cosmic Puppet]

Good to see Dave provided a working IPF file that can be written back to disk.

I converted the working SCP to HFEv3 format to test on a Gotek drive. The HFEv3 works on my two Gotek drives and loads fine. The caveat is that the FlashFloppy firmware needs to be v3.39 as newer firmware seem to not work with this HFEv3 file. Looks like there is a regression to the changes made in v3.39.

Gotek drives with the latest HxC firmware work and if you use FlashFloppy v3.39 firmware this disk will work.

Is it possible to convert the IPF file straight to HFEv3?

Here you go @kodak80

C-Lab Aura (HFE Rev 3).zip

(399.21 KiB) Downloaded 30 times

This is from the IPF file made using 5REVS

See if this works on Gotek.