CDXA Formats on Mac OSX 10.5.7

Discussion in 'Mac - General discussion' started by djhotwhee, Jul 26, 2009.

  1. djhotwhee

    djhotwhee Member

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    Ever since Classic died I have never been able to backup certain CDs that are XA format. Most of the titles are Sony Playstation original games I collect and and want to play only the backups. The Mac will mount the CD in to 2 parts. The data and audio. I cannot reburn the CDs using Toast 10. This also goes with other gaming systems like Sega CD, Nintendo Wii, PS2 and others. I am a huge collectors of gaming items and keeping the CDs unscratched or used is the goal.

    Does anyone have a solution to making these work properly?
     
  2. varnull

    varnull Guest

  3. djhotwhee

    djhotwhee Member

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    Is there a link to this program? Your link goes to a page full of scripts and terminal stuff. Help!
     
  4. djhotwhee

    djhotwhee Member

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    The link is for an open source page. This is all greek to me.

    Is there a simple easy way to put a CD in the drive and have the ISO extracted with audio in one file?
     
  5. Gneiss1

    Gneiss1 Regular member

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    CD-XA format I don't know much about. It had something to do with various video formats, I had thought. These people know, though:

    PS2 and Xbox Backup Tutorial and Information
    http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/15105

    I've never had any copy-protected SVCD discs, so I've not a clue how one backs them up. However, using only the backups is a great idea!

    Ran across this free little application that might interest you:
    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21477/xdumb

    Perhaps you can double-post (if allowed) on the gaming forum.

    PS. Thoughts for those with a PPC Mac & PPC PlayStation 3.

    'Djhotwhee' is right: you likely don't want to use Unix's 'dd', made for system & application programmers to use in scripts. (It may called by the backup program you get.) It just does a sector-by-sector copy. It might replicate a copy-protected disk (depending upon your CD writer), but I don't know. Modifying sector size was used 20 years ago for copy protection.

    However, there's a bright side here. Because PlayStation 3, using a PPC processor (just like early Macs), comes with 'Yellow Dog' Linux (a PPC variant of Fedora), there may be many Linux applications being written for the PlayStation 3. Linux programmers don't bother with 'platform': they easily port their applications to any processor. Linux on a new Mac will run these as easily as Linux on an old Mac.

    Recently, I discovered that my granddaughter's Intel Debian Linux read & wrote Mac's HFS+ format seamlessly. Consequently, I'm installing it on a separate disk, to add 20,000 free applications to my Mac.

    So, should you have both a Mac & PS3, it might be a profitable adventure to install Linux on a CD or USB Flash Drive. If MacOSX can't do what you want, you can boot Linux and alter the file. If your Mac has a PPC processor, you could have 'Yellow Dog' Linux on both Mac and PlayStation 3.



     
  6. djhotwhee

    djhotwhee Member

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    I am actually trying to restore and keep old Sega CD / PSX / Sega Saturn titles.
     
  7. Gneiss1

    Gneiss1 Regular member

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    Linux programs that use it assume they're reading a CD that obeys the red- and yellow-book standards. I assume the firmware in game CD readers makes the format proprietary. If so, a CD reader would just stop with an error.

    If the disk obeys specs, and it's a backup for your game machine, I should think this would do.

    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8398.html

    But if it's to be converted to play on a Mac, this might be needed.

    http://www.segacd.org/mac.html

    Perhaps you could use this reference to help you find why you can't just copy your CD using Apple's 'Finder' or 'Disk Copy'.

    http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_protections.shtml

    Because I don't play video games, I've no knowledge of this sort of thing. I am sorry. Perhaps AfterDawn needs a 'Video Games for Mac Users' forum.
     
  8. scum101

    scum101 Guest

    Obviously using open source tools (and making the scripts to get around deliberate bad sectors and proprietary formats) is a bit of an art. As it directly relates to cracking/patching it's against the rules to be any more specific than I was earlier.

    I have been named in court documents before now (dvd ripping related) for giving out that kind of info and posting scripts.

    If people can't read the tech stuff and then add that knowledge to a little thought about how the well known (and published elsewhere) protection strategies work that isn't my fault.

    That's the trouble.. you people are too lazy and ignorant.. I can't "link" to that kind of ripping program... because it doesn't exist. You have to script it up yourself for each type of protection, then save your scripts.

    dd is the tool.. with suitable instructions. Disks contain media checks, so you need to either strip that from the disk or change the console firmware to ignore the results. I prefer finding the check strings and then making them return the right result whether it's good or not.. my preference.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 17, 2009
  9. Gneiss1

    Gneiss1 Regular member

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    Yes, engineering requiring several years of dedicated study.

    One shouldn't have to be an automotive engineer to fill a spare tire. Professional Unix programmers have been known to destroy their hard drives with 'dd' and a single typo. Perhaps one shouldn't recommended it to the average person in Paraguay, for whom the computer is just another tool. The Apple Discussions can advise one where to get MacOS9 and dual-boot it. (I'm sure it's inexpensive :)

    http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10328474-263.html?tag=mfiredir
     
  10. scum101

    scum101 Guest

    well DUH!! .. not being a mac user I don't follow the software... because proprietary software is no interest to me... as it should be for a paid up member of the FSF and EFF.

    It doesn't take years to learn how to write a psl dumper, or a drm remover as an addon to an existing file copy application.. They are pretty basic, but they do take knowing the basics of writing a script.. something EVERYBODY with a computer should be capable of.

    How many times have you forgotten when using the MV instruction to get it destination first? .. I have more than once and wiped a whole directory of 35 paid subscribers websites.. hehehehe. Odd typos can always slip in.. that's life..
     
  11. Gneiss1

    Gneiss1 Regular member

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    Well, last time I looked, this was the Mac forum.

    Unfortunately, I currently don't have a working Mac either. So, I don't know whether CCC will do the job; or whether MacOSX's 'Finder' or 'Disk Utility' won't.

    Remember, however, that people now using MacOSX used to use MacOS9, not Unix. The above application is never a mistake (I'm told), and many Mac users swear by it. It's proprietary and closed-source, but it's free. About your admonishion that I take no interest in proprietary software: I appreciate beauty. Also, I advised a relative to buy an iBook, running MacOSX 10.2 (with an encyclopedia that disappeared!) in 2002 because it has the simplest user interface. ...she still uses it only to send e-mail.

    Let's be clear about 'proprietary' and 'open source', lest one consider MacOSX similar to a closely guarded secret OS that once sat on a DOG.

    Apple sells hardware, like Sun, SGI, Apollo, &c. It's an irony that Unix was built to be portable, but MacOSX is built solely for Apple hardware. At the moment, though, Apple has its hands full just making MacOSX work with its own hardware. That's because of these changes to BSD Unix:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mac_OS_X_technologies

    And NeXT did acquire BSD Unix a decade before its release as FreeBSD. Most of MacOSX's OS is open source, but can't yet be used by Linux:

    http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwin-dev/2006/Aug/msg00067.html

    (Note the licenses, which are inconsistent with GPL software. You probably can't combine it with GNU or GNU/Linux software, and sell it or even give it away. However, as far as I'm concerned, Apple can keep these.)

    Apple spent a lot of its corporation's money on its compositor, that produces the great, anti-aliased fonts & streams PDF rather than PostScript, and on other parts of the Aqua GUI that replaced X with an OOUI interface speaking OpenGL (handing 2D & 3D graphics to the hardware card). This was faster than extending X for accelerated graphics cards, which has recently been done by the Linux community. That isn't open source. However, it offered NeXTStep, an OOUI programmer's environment as OpenStep, now GNUStep.

    Panther (10.3) is a nice version, for it has the simple interface in brushed metal, to match the hardware; and it has retained BSD Unix with a Mach kernel. In Tiger (10.4), one loses all one's friends in /etc (at, cron, rc, inet, & even init), as 'launchd' replaces them and the clever 'SystemStarter' (seen in 'ps' as 'windowstarter'). The latter releases boat severely as virtual memory is changed. The only worthwhile improvements are to security, and anyone can incorporate these ideas without their code. As MacOSX 'progresses', it deviates further from Unix. However, one can still easily compile Sorceforge code for Unix & Linux; and several Linux distributions run on Mac hardware, including PPC.

    I've no objection to commercial enterprises. Apple sells hardware, and the software comes with the computer. (iLife costs about US$100, but compare what you get with 'Toast'. MacOSX alone can burn slowly, in DAO strategy.) I just keep scientific code GPL. Apple has probably given its share to Consortium Standards (well, it's a hardware company). And, while the latter tried to keep PCs back, IMO, twenty years, Apple shows us a simplicity, uniformity, and elegance to strive for. Have a look:

    http://www.apple.com/

    My only objection is selling laptops that fry after a year or two...and a few broken promises to the Linux community, and other things. The GNU and GNU/Linux people, in the meanwhile, are doing fine. ...well, that may have been a little off-topic, sorry.
     
  12. djhotwhee

    djhotwhee Member

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    Still cannot figure this out.

    1 - CDR

    Want to put on .iso and a .AIF files 1 Session...

    HELP!
     

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