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Sony's Clever but Flawed PlayStation Copy Protection--And How They Might Have Fixed It - YouTube
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When Sony released the PlayStation, the first
commercially successful game console to use
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the compact disc as its storage medium, they
had a problem on their hands.
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Using a CD gave them all sorts of advantages,
but the CD burner and CD-R presented a challenge.
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Whatâs to stop someone from making illegal
copies of our precious intellectual property?
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Well, they thought of a solution.
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If I take this copy of Parappa the Rapper
and pop it in my computerâs CD drive, it
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can see whatâs on there.
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And it will gladly make a copy.
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My duplicate disc has exactly the same files
on here.
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Awesome!
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It should work!
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And yet, it doesn't.
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The PlayStation knows that this is a counterfeit
disc, and it wonât play it.
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Why?
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Well, the data on these two discs may be exactly
the same, but this disc is missing something
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which cannot be replicated by a CD burner.
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Now, itâs actually pretty easy to get around
this.
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Mod chips and disc swapping were two well
known ways to bypass this copy protection.
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And of course these days, there are emulators,
so using the console itself isnât even required.
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Now Iâm not going make a comment on the
pitfalls of DRM or the people who circumvent it.
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Sony has valid reasons for using it, and there
are also perfectly legitimate reasons for
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an individual to use a copied disc--for example
to provide a backup of your software library.
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But in this video, Iâd like to suggest a
way that Sony could have made the PlayStation
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discs almost impossible to copy.
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Thereâs a certain quirk in the design of
these consoles that suggests they might have
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had this in mind, but abandoned it.
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So first, letâs take a quick look at the
history of the console, as well as how the
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copy protection actually works.
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The original Sony PlayStation was a groundbreaking
product in a number of ways.
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Though not the first video game console to
use the compact disc for data storage, it
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was the first to achieve widespread success.
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Thereâs a fascinating history as well as
a juicy tale of corporate backstabbing behind
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the PlayStationâs creation which I wonât
go into here in much detail.
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But if you werenât aware, the PlayStation
started as an accessory for the SNES.
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Yep, Nintendo hired Sony as a hardware accessory
partner, and after deciding that the terms
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of the contract werenât to their liking
in regards to software rights, Nintendo just
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shoved Sony aside and instead announced a
new partnership with Philips.
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Rather than just abandon their work, Sony
decided to make their own game console as
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the ultimate F.U. to Nintendo.
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Using optical storage for game data had tons
of advantages over the then standard ROM cartridges.
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They were cheaper to make, could hold MUCH
more data, were smaller, more versatile, and
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due to that extra data, allowed for things
such as CD-quality audio alongside gameplay.
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The CD-ROMâs biggest disadvantage was that
of a slow load time, as the data being read
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from the disc isnât coming in particularly
quickly.
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A ROM cartridge could be read at any point
randomly and with higher data throughput,
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allowing many games to load nearly instantly.
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Oh, and the CD was also pretty fragile, so
thereâs that, too.
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And, uh, early consoles suffered from a poorly
designed CD reader, soâŠ
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well they werenât perfect.
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Even though the original PlayStation only
has a measly 2 megabytes of RAM, a normal
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CD only outputs 1.2 megabits per second.
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The CD-ROM drive in the PlayStation could
operate at 2X speed, but even then it would
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take 6.5 seconds to fill the RAM completely.
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But of course, it usually took longer than
that, as the laser would have to dart around
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the disc to get all of the data it needed
to load the next environment.
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Want to play a skirmish in Twisted Metal 4?
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Youâll be staring at this screen and listening
to this for a good while.
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[Sound of console seeking data on CD]
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Anyway, though there were downsides, the CD-ROM
is arguably what made the original PlayStation
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so successful.
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But it also introduced that unique problem for
Sony.
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All cartridge based video game systems are
essentially immune to counterfeit copies being
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made of their games.
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Youâd need to have awfully specialized equipment
to duplicate one of these, and then youâd
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need to track down a blank cartridge with
writable memory.
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So, it was pretty much never done.
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But the CD-ROM, well thatâs easy as pie
to copy!
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Although they were pretty expensive at the
time, the CD Burner was very much a thing
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when the PS1 was released, and so was the
CD-R. Obviously worried about the potential
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for piracy, Sony engineered a pretty clever
trick into the system to ensure only legit
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discs could be played.
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However, it wasnât actually that clever.
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OK, well, the actual feature is, but the implementation
wasnât.
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Like I said before, in reality it was pretty
easy to get around the copy protection.
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So then, how does the copy protection on the
PS1 discs work?
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First, letâs get it out of the way and say
that the black color of the disc has nothing
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to do with it, whatsoever.
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Though one promo video about the PlayStation
suggests that this could be the purpose, it isnât.
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This is just for looks.
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[NARRATOR: Black ink is added to the plastic
to give the CD its distinctive, âcool PlayStation-only look.â
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This also helps protect the CD from illegal
copying.]
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Actually, itâs not even black, itâs a
very deep purpley-blue.
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This is a similar color of plastic to what's
commonly found in front of infrared light
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sensors on a device with a remote control.
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Itâs completely transparent to infrared
light, but mostly opaque to visible light.
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There was nothing special about the PlayStationâs
CD-ROM drive that allowed it to read these discs.
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The infrared light of a normal CD laser will
read it just fine.
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Side note--In my last video, I made an error
in suggesting that DVD players donât have
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an infrared laser, and use their red laser
to read a CD.
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This is not true, in fact many early DVD players
have two complete laser pickups on a single
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sled, and later devices used the same laser
with two diodes.
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The wavelength of light is pretty important
for reading an optical disc correctly--itâs
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tuned to the size of the pits--so a second
infrared laser diode is necessary to read
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a CD.
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I had completely forgotten about the importance
of wavelength, and thankfully the comments
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set me straight.
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One commenter noted that CD compatible DVD
laser pickups usually have two adjustment
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pots on them, one for the IR laser, and one
for the red laser, and sure enough,
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there they are!
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Anyway,
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What Sony actually did was to add two things
to the disc during mastering that werenât
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normally there on a garden variety compact
disc.
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Well, actually, it was one addition that accomplished
two tasks.
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To understand what they did requires a little
bit of knowledge into the laser pickup system
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of any optical disc format.
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Itâs impossible to produce a CD, DVD, Laserdisc,
Blu-Ray, or economic policy that is exactly perfect.
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There will always be some imperfections.
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The discs arenât usually completely flat,
so the distance between the disc and laser
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lens is constantly fluctuating.
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The disc is also never exactly centered, so
the pits usually move back and forth with
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each rotation.
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To handle this, the objective lens is sort
of floating, and electromagnets can lift it
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(or lower it) as well as wiggle it left and
right it to make sure the pits are in focus,
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and that itâs following the data spiral.
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To see this in action, itâs actually easiest
to look at a Laserdisc.
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This disc is badly warped, and towards the
edges the laser is bouncing pretty wildly
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to keep its focus distance constant.
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Though almost never this extreme, a CD player
or PlayStation needs to do this, too.
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In fact, hereâs the laser of a PlayStation
wiggling back and forth ever so slightly to
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read the data from this Audio CD.
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This clip also shows how the laser carriage
only moves for coarse tracking in steps.
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Notice how it moves outward, but the position
of the lense relative to the disc doesnât change.
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Now, the laserâs movement is only there
to maintain tracking on the data stream.
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A CD player couldnât care less about what
the Laser is doing,
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it just wants to see the data.
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Any wobbliness of the track is irrelevant
to its goal of reading the data; so as long
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as the wobble isnât too extreme, its presence
is of no consequence.
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Generally, the circuitry in charge of this
tracking and focus is part of the laser pickup assembly.
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This task is done at the hardware level, and
can be considered automatic from the perspective
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of the circuitry that actually processes the
data itself.
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Thereâs a really great paper linked in the
description that goes over how this is actually
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accomplished.
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What Sony did was introduce a way to actually
keep track of how the laser lens moved.
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The hardware would monitor the horizontal
movement of the objective lens, and it was
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looking for a specific wobble in the data
itâs reading.
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As part of the mastering process in PlayStation
discs, the very first sectors of data in the
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pregap are recorded with a wobble of a specific
frequency.
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Rather than a smooth spiral, the track looked
something like this.
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The wobbling was also used for encoding which
region the disc was for.
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The region code was amplitude modulated into
the wobble itself, and if the code on the
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disc didnât match the consoleâs BIOS,
it would not play.
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The reason this worked was that any ordinary
CD drive would just ignore this wobble.
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Actually, ignore isnât quite the right word.
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It was unaware of the wobble.
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The tracking circuitry in its laser pickup
would just do its job and keep the laser in
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line with the data stream.
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It didnât matter how the data wobbled, or
even if the data wobbled.
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Its job was just to get the data.
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When you made a copy, that copy would be missing
the wobble.
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When the CD drive is reading the disc to make
an image file for burning, it isnât even
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aware of the wobble.
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The data captured during the disc read is
all that matters for burning the disc.
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Now, a CD burner is looking for a wobble
on a CD-R, but for a very different reason.
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A CD-R has a premade wobble molded into the
polycarbonate--thatâs the plastic the disc
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is made of.
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This wobble contains the ATIP, which tells
the CD burner the properties of the disc such
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as its capacity and maximum write speed, and
throughout the rest of the disc it wobbles
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at a constant frequency.
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A CD burner is looking for this wobble as
it writes to a disc both to maintain proper
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tracking as it writes on it, as well as to
maintain the proper writing speed.
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Because this wobble is already there on a
CD-R, even if a CD drive could detect the
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region-encoding wobble on a PlayStation disc,
it couldnât recreate it.
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To recreate the wobble of a PlayStation disc
would require jumping in and out of this premade
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groove, which the burner canât do.
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Even if it tried, by crossing the premade
lines, the data would likely be impossible
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to read correctly.
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Where Sony failed was by being a little lazy
with how disc authenticity is checked.
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With few exceptions, the console only looks
for this wobble at bootup.
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People figured this out, and by defeating
the lid switch and carefully watching a disc
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spin, you can see when itâs checking for
the wobble and swap in a burned copy for a
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real disc with a little practice.
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The reason this worked is that Sony built
in a healthy bit of tolerance for damaged
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discs; so as long as you are fast enough,
it will just pass the disc off as being scratched,
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thus needing multiple attempts to read the
data.
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But disc swapping was annoying and also could
damage your discs and perhaps even the console,
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so the other option was to install a modchip
that would inject the code into the system
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at the right time, so even though the laser
wasnât seeing the wobble, the processor
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would think that it did.
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Game developers eventually created ways to
detect a modchip, so this wasnât completely
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infallible, but it was still a relatively
easy way to play a burnt disc.
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So now that you know what the PS1 does to
determine the validity of a disc, as well
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as why it was so easy to get around it, hereâs
where my little theory comes into play.
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I had mentioned thereâs a design quirk.
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When you open up the lid of a PS1, you might
notice that the area that holds the CD is
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MUCH larger than the CD itself.
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Could it be that Sony had originally intended
for PS1 discs to be larger than a standard CD?
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Some people think the PS1 discs contain data
outside the range of a normal CDâs laser
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carriage, and that this is how the copy protection
works.
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While this isnât the case, Sony could have
done that.
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And if they did it by going outside the normal
readable area, they could have really locked
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this down.
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Imagine that the PlayStation discs were an
extra 3 centimeters across, making it a 15
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centimeter disc rather than 12.
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If Sony had extended the rails on their CD
drive in here, the laser could read all the
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way to the edge of this slightly larger disc.
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Not only would this have increased the amount
of data on the disc, but it would have made
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copying them almost impossible.
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Almost every CD drive has a second insert
for 8 cm discs, and top loading drives can
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of course handle them, too.
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The physical size of a CD can be smaller,
and it will still work.
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But if Sony had gone bigger, you could not
physically fit a PlayStation disc into the
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standard five and a quarter inch CD burner
in your PC.
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If would fit fine in here, but thereâs no
way it will make it in here.
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If they had done this, the PS1 could still
play audio CDs just fine.
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It wouldnât remove any functionality from
the system.
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Itâs already more than capable of playing
an 8 cm CD OK.
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And if they had always ensured that some of
the game data was written outside the 12cm
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diameter of a normal CD, even on smaller games
which needed less than the 700 megabytes of
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data available on standard CD, a copy would
be impossible to make without the console noticing.
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If Sony had gone this route, can you imagine
how difficult it would be to make a duplicate disc?
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No one was making CD drives capable of reading
a disc that large, and there would be little
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incentive to start doing so.
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Even if a CD burner appeared on the market
which could handle a 15 centimeter disc, how
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easy do you think it would be to get your
hands on a 15 centimeter CD-R?
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Now, itâs obvious why Sony didnât do this.
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The whole point of using the CD was to make
manufacturing games quick and cheap.
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To make a 15cm CD is really to make an entirely
new format.
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That would require new disc pressing machinery,
or at the very least significant retooling
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of existing machinery.
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Also, a new case design would be needed, with
a physically larger disc being more difficult
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to store.
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The standard CD jewel case already had the
support of countless storage systems.
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But if they had decided to just make the discs
a tiny bit bigger, which the design of the
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early consoles suggests was possible, if not
intended, mod chips and disc swapping couldnât
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have done a thing.
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A burned PlayStation game simply couldnât
exist.
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Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this
video.
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If this is your first time coming across this
channel, please consider subscribing so you
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wonât miss the next ones.
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And, you can now follow me on Twitter @ TechConnectify.
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Thatâs what happens when youâre late to
the party.
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Of course, Iâd like to take the time to
thank my Patreon supports.
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Patrons of the channel are what keep these
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If youâre interested in becoming a patron
as well, please check out my Patreon page.
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Thereâs a link on your screen, or you can
find one in the description.
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Thanks for your consideration, and Iâll
see you next time!
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[Snaps fingers] And That!... is the end.
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