Manuel, can you test the tool with your real disks?
Can you send me some DMK images from your protected disks so I can analyze the locks? I may find a way to put it back to real disks. Can you do that please? Like 10 DMK files from protected disks.
No, you did not understand it.
This DSK file is just the tool, DMK creator.
Save this tool in a real disk and run it in your real MSX computer.
After that, choose a protected game to create a DMK file from it.
This DMK file, if it is from a 720k disk, it will have 1 mega byte, and because of that can not fit in a single 720k formated disk.
That is why it is necessary two 720k formated disk to do that, each disk receiving 500 Kbytes (+-).
After that, copy this 2 files from this 2 disks to the PC and use the tool File Joiner to create a single DMK file to be run in the emulator OPENMSX.
PAC: it depends on how these DSK images were created and what kind of copy protection is used.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I understand that for file-based disks no problem but for sector-based ones we should use an specific tool to deal with the protections and make the resulting DSK images functional. If so, are there games which couldn't be copied in DSK format? I mean due to the copy protection used (just curiosity).
If so, are there games which couldn't be copied in DSK format? I mean due to the copy protection used (just curiosity).
Yes!
E.g. if you download Xak dsk images, they are not original copies but cracked versions. (Or, if you’re unlucky, just plain copies where the copy protection will block your progress mid-way into the game.)
Even otherwise file-based games can still have a few special sectors for copy protection btw.
There could even be some file-based disks that are checking protection by just using file functions (expecting a file-read error, or file content being different depending on the read-timing). Not sure if that has been done for real...
I did a test on openMSX, though:
- start openMSX with "Boosted MSX2 EN" and IDE extension.
- start your DMK tool
- put DMK in drive A as disk (The Shrines of Enigma)
- let the DMK tool dump to a DMK file on some IDE partition
- dumping was completed
- after dumping, export the DMK file to my local drive
- try to start the DMK file with openMSX
- expected result: see The Shrines of Enigma boot. Actual result: I see the Sunrise logo, but it hangs after that. (Probably the copy protection kicks in...)
Of course this means there could be either a bug in openMSX or in your tool.
This test still fails with DMK 2.0, with the very latest openMSX code. Any idea why?
