Sony's Clever but Flawed PlayStation Copy Protection--And How They Might Have Fixed It

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  • čas přidán 24. 03. 2018
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    The original PlayStation is a pretty neat thing. Using the CD as a storage medium was a smart move. But, Sony needed to add anti-piracy features to the disc to prevent miscreants from making bootleg copies of Crash Bandicoot. This video tells the story of how that works, why it wasn’t infallible, and also proposes a potentially impervious solution (24 years late, though).
    Here’s that paper on reading optical discs. It’s a good read:
    pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f772...
    You can support this channel on Patreon! Patrons of the channel are what keep videos like this coming. If you’re interested in supporting the channel through a voluntary contribution, please check out my Patreon page. Thanks for your consideration!
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  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 8K

  • @whiterunsteward7477
    @whiterunsteward7477 Před 2 lety +2555

    My thought on the black ink being an anti-counterfeit measure, is that it would make it difficult to sell a counterfeit disc to a buyer while stating it's legitimate.

    • @MadMamluk88
      @MadMamluk88 Před 2 lety +279

      The thing is back in the day, I’d say super early 2000’s, places like Walmart were selling black inked CD-R packs.

    • @Tismtay
      @Tismtay Před 2 lety +114

      @@MadMamluk88 So it was a failed attempt at security theatre.

    • @purwantiallan5089
      @purwantiallan5089 Před 2 lety +8

      @@Tismtay yes. Security device must've been broken.

    • @purwantiallan5089
      @purwantiallan5089 Před 2 lety +7

      @@MadMamluk88 what? Walmart created those?

    • @YesIAmSmarterThanYouPleaseCope
      @YesIAmSmarterThanYouPleaseCope Před rokem +44

      @@Tismtay Copy protection and counterfeit protection have different purposes, and neither of them have anything to do with security. As counterfeit protection, the black coloring still works well because nobody will think your Walmart disc is a genuine Sony product.

  • @matt_b...
    @matt_b... Před 6 lety +5530

    11:28 "Visual Aid" is by far the WORST PS1 game I've ever played. I'm surprised to see it featured here.

    • @CybrNight
      @CybrNight Před 6 lety +276

      matt b well it’s the only game to play if your vision is failing

    • @joergn83
      @joergn83 Před 6 lety +130

      remember the book of cheats, you could get free in mags. trading cheats in school. a while ago. something lost from the genre. even with all the cool graphics

    • @lister_of_smeg6545
      @lister_of_smeg6545 Před 6 lety +295

      Yeah, it was just a shoddy rip-off of "Mockup".

    • @TheDeeplyCynical
      @TheDeeplyCynical Před 6 lety +101

      The Sequel was much better.

    • @MarkTheMorose
      @MarkTheMorose Před 6 lety +111

      There are thousands of copies for sale on eBay. Each one describing it as 'rare' and charging a fortune.

  • @jimsnotreal
    @jimsnotreal Před rokem +201

    I remember doing the disc swap a little differently. You had to boot up the PlayStation with the lid open, button pressed, and no disc, then put in a PlayStation disc and enter the cd player in the system menu. It would spin up the disc and get the copy protection code. Once you backed out of the player the disc would stop, swap in the burned copy, and whamo, I was playing the bootleg Japanese tekken 2 disc my brother got from who knows where. Doing it while the disc is spinning seems crazy.

    • @grahamkelly8662
      @grahamkelly8662 Před 6 měsíci +3

      When my friend showed me this I was so happy.

  • @rhomis
    @rhomis Před 3 lety +1061

    When the PS1 was new, I shortly discovered that my kid already broke or cracked 2 discs. That's when the discovery of the MOD chip came handy at a Computer Expo in town. I took my chance and bought the chip from some Chinese vendors. Every game we bought was backed up onto a rewrite-able and the master copy stored in safe keeping incase another disc got damaged.

    • @mahmoodmawed4347
      @mahmoodmawed4347 Před rokem +30

      You have a very smart kid

    • @rhomis
      @rhomis Před rokem +116

      @@mahmoodmawed4347 - Smart, yes. Breaking discs at 4 and 5 years old, expected.

    • @notme5744
      @notme5744 Před rokem +89

      @BenBenson I'm guessing they interpreted the word "cracked" to mean that the kid had cracked the copyright protection

    • @doltBmB
      @doltBmB Před rokem

      @@notme5744 *copyright

    • @notme5744
      @notme5744 Před rokem +1

      @@doltBmB Thanks, I don't know why I spelt it that way

  • @Aix_Plainer
    @Aix_Plainer Před 5 lety +1751

    Also, from personal experience: I worked at a company who burned CDs (legally, for the legal publishers). One day we made Audio-CDs, the other day PS1-CDs, CD-ROMs, etc. We had four big rigs, but all for the same size. Those things are expensive as hell. So Sony, WB and others simply rented our time to make their CDs.
    Sony having to build their own factories, making their own CD wouldn´t have been profitable.

    • @Baigle1
      @Baigle1 Před 4 lety +66

      thanks for insight

    • @Alex-ki1yr
      @Alex-ki1yr Před 4 lety +29

      Addressed that at about 13:00 min in

    • @delulu6969
      @delulu6969 Před 4 lety +31

      @@Alex-ki1yr That's why the title is a click-bait. The solution he said isn't a feasible solution or even defeats the purpose of making the PlayStation (cheaper manufacturing compared to other consoles).

    • @irgendwer3610
      @irgendwer3610 Před 4 lety +68

      @@delulu6969 did you even watch the whole video? 13:00

    • @ZeldagigafanMatthew
      @ZeldagigafanMatthew Před 4 lety +22

      burned, or pressed?

  • @CamilleonProductions
    @CamilleonProductions Před 5 lety +2976

    Ten thousand people don't want to be patient and learn something from someone that's very thorough and excellent at explaining complex concepts.

    • @zatty232
      @zatty232 Před 5 lety +82

      Yeah wtf

    • @cloneskiller
      @cloneskiller Před 4 lety +190

      Its a viral video, ppl just dislike things early because they were impatiant.

    • @suprememasteroftheuniverse
      @suprememasteroftheuniverse Před 4 lety +34

      Conciseness is a mark of superior intelligence

    • @bean_man8752
      @bean_man8752 Před 4 lety +37

      George ツ you’re **

    • @KyonXyclone
      @KyonXyclone Před 4 lety +140

      @@suprememasteroftheuniverse Your comment is not relevant here. It's not as you imply, i.e. that verbosity is necessarily a mark of lower intelligence. This guy however isn't being particularly verbose he's just explaining lots of things in detail which naturally means it won't be simple or short. That's not the same as being inconcise.

  • @Lily-gr1ct
    @Lily-gr1ct Před 3 lety +587

    10:34
    I remember having a burnt copy of Tomb Raider and thinking that it was impossible to get past the first area. I found out years later that there was copy protect on the disk that made it so any body of water had piranha in it.
    Including the Croft Manor swimming pool.

    • @OfficialUknow
      @OfficialUknow Před rokem +70

      That’s hilarious lol

    • @StoutShako
      @StoutShako Před rokem +17

      Is there a video of that on CZcams somewhere??? Omg.

    • @NiVoldiza
      @NiVoldiza Před rokem +94

      I remember this too, but you are wrong. This has nothing to do with burned copied games or copy protection. Copied games don't work without a modchip at all, and when they work they work as the game. You are insinuating that the game was a copy of the original, but copying it somehow wrote the game code over and put piranhas everywhere? No chance that you could have been playing a free commecial demo-version of the game designed to showcase the revolutionary 3d gameplay to potential customers? These demo issues used to come with magazines as freebies, and include many demos of many games that were restricted in some way.

    • @Berryturtle1
      @Berryturtle1 Před rokem +6

      @@NiVoldiza tldr. Ur done bud, ur done

    • @mastermariogamer1427
      @mastermariogamer1427 Před rokem +54

      @@NiVoldiza Lots of used PS1s have modchips in them, so they could have bought one second hand and it already had a modchop in it. Also, games like Spyro had code like this to make the playing experience bad on copied games

  • @hassaization
    @hassaization Před 2 lety +239

    Of note is how the sega Dreamcast did use a "bigger cd" in their GD-rom format which was out of bounds of a normal CD as a form of copy protection. This was actually defeated by compressing the data into cd size and a fancy software exploit that allowed for the code to run. People used a firmware hacked dvd drive to read the GD-ROM format

    • @jacksonpiper8774
      @jacksonpiper8774 Před 9 měsíci

      lol lol😊l I’ll l

    • @bubbles581
      @bubbles581 Před 9 měsíci

      Wow 5 years since this jacketless video!

    • @fdmillion
      @fdmillion Před 9 měsíci +6

      What is fascinating is IIRC GD-ROM was actually readable on standard CD drives. All they did was step way outside the specifications for the CD, while still maintaining *enough* compatibility for a standard CD transport to read the disc provided the firmware allowed for those tolerances. The same technique actually brought us the 700MB CD - the original spec only allowed up to 650MB, all they did was shrink the track pitch to the edge of the tolerance to get 700MB. It was actually very similar to how Microsoft made 1.6MB floppy disks for Windows 95 distribution by screwing with the disk format while staying within tolerances of floppy controllers.
      I remember some manufacturers going even beyond 700MB. I owned a stack of 90 minute CD-R's that worked fine in most of my burners, but choked on many standard CD players, even ones that could play 700MB/80 minute CD-R's. I believe at least one manufacturer even pushed it all the way to 99 minutes - the maximum the TOC allows for - which is actually approaching the density of the GD-ROM (something like 900MB).

    • @fattomandeibu
      @fattomandeibu Před 7 měsíci +1

      @@fdmillion The original CDs from before CD-ROMs were standardised in '83 were "only" 550mb, but at the time that was a mind-bogglingly impossible-to-fill amount of storage with your average computer having 64-128kb of RAM.

  • @MegaLazygamer
    @MegaLazygamer Před 5 lety +916

    4:45 I always figured it made it easier to identify pirated games, because they just look different. At the time I had a few people try to sell me pirated games, and that lack of a black disc saved me from getting ripped off because my PS1 didn't have a mod chip.

    • @-DeScruff
      @-DeScruff Před 5 lety +114

      I imagine it also would be used as a visual aid to say "This is a PS1 Disc, don't stick it in a CD Player." (Or another console)
      If you put some early CD games like the ones from the TG16CD, Sega CD, or Sega Saturn in a computer, or a CD player, youll usually find an audio track saying "This disc is for use in ____, it contains computer data, which may damage your equipment." - If it looks different, you might not stick it in the CD Player.

    • @ReeseRiverson
      @ReeseRiverson Před 5 lety +31

      @@-DeScruff There were still plenty of PS1, SegaCD, and other console titles that still had audio tracks that would play on a CD player just fine. :)

    • @-DeScruff
      @-DeScruff Před 5 lety +13

      @@ReeseRiverson Yeah there were a lot of Redbook audio CD based games. I love those cause these days its super easy to rip the music! :D
      However Ive heard early CD players would try to play the 'Computer Data' track as audio and it will sound like really loud static and garbage..
      And I think newer players would recognize that the track was computer data and just skip it, or stop playback after the warning. - But Im not sure about that.
      Nobody seems to agree if it will or will not damage your speakers... But everyone agrees whatever it is, its unpleasant.
      I'd hazard a guess that CD players that didn't skip Computer data tracks (or whatever) were common enough that such a warning was needed.

    • @thehearth8773
      @thehearth8773 Před 5 lety +24

      A number of actual PS1 game releases did in fact have conventional silvery discs. Final Fantasy Chronicles and Final Fantasy Anthology both did, for instance.

    • @defiraphi
      @defiraphi Před 4 lety +6

      Cd-Rom's were the same . You could put those in a CD-Player and listen to the music.
      Biggest example is the game for PC "Tunnel B1" put the CD-Rom in your CD-Player you have all the CD Album there so you don't need to buy the official CD album from the game . It's very neat imo.
      Also today you can easily get the right codecs thru internet .

  • @flar7684
    @flar7684 Před 5 lety +1081

    Renting games at Blockbuster to burn them was the good ol days my dudes

    • @kalle1453
      @kalle1453 Před 5 lety +15

      Haha smart guy =)

    • @HeadNtheClouds
      @HeadNtheClouds Před 5 lety +118

      I copied everything. YO HO YO HO THE PIRATES LIFE FOR MEEEEE ☠️

    • @MILSPECMOM
      @MILSPECMOM Před 5 lety +173

      I was a manager at one here in Canada, let's just say they may not have paid much but I made it up in copying our entire stock over the course of a year. lol

    • @craig158yt
      @craig158yt Před 5 lety +5

      Flar ha ha, those certainly were the days! 💰💰💰

    • @bentosan
      @bentosan Před 5 lety +3

      That’s where I got my copy of Diablo 1 from :D

  • @landsystems5807
    @landsystems5807 Před rokem +49

    My first hustle was selling and installing "mod chips", in 8th grade. I had the whole ft. Worth water department coming to my grandparents house to have mod chips installed and browse my "back up" collections. Started a long story of devious activities and interest in fine soldering but was a good run!

  • @georgf9279
    @georgf9279 Před 3 lety +261

    3:16 Sony always trying to be different: "Let's run the loading bar backwards."

  • @10p6
    @10p6 Před 4 lety +1376

    The larger area was simply to allow the disc to be picked up by larger clumsy fingers.

    • @rhettorical
      @rhettorical Před 4 lety +123

      Maybe, but later models of the PS1 didn't have the larger area. It would have saved a fortune to have made the space slightly smaller, and thus the entire console smaller, thus saving a bunch of plastic on each console (which is one reason why later models are smaller).

    • @defiraphi
      @defiraphi Před 4 lety +54

      I don't like the later models from the PS1 . They looked cheap and not that "Revolutionnary Looking Design" the first models looked as for the nostalgic purpose the first model is "The Real PS1" .

    • @sellers737
      @sellers737 Před 4 lety +33

      @@rhettorical I always figured the parts inside dictated a wider area. Back then PC parts were (relative to now) pretty big. Also parts that get hot need to be far away from one another to keep everything cool. Once parts started to shrink down in size, the rest of the console could shrink with it

    • @rhettorical
      @rhettorical Před 4 lety +33

      Another reasonable assumption, but no other DVD or CD players at the time or even today have caddies that large. There's no real justifiable reason for making the caddy larger unless they planned to make the discs bigger.

    • @defiraphi
      @defiraphi Před 4 lety +8

      @Rhettorical
      Exactly all new generations seems to forget that the Playstation 1 doesn't offered all these features . Which i'm really fed up to hear about not needed complains about that console .
      The Playstation 1 ( PSX ) first model offered everything to the peoples dreamed for in that era . " the hell with space ecology from today which people don't even understand why it was made for to begin with "
      Strange from it all you could easily put CD-Rom's into your standard CD-player to listen to the full soundtrack from the game ( easy example Tunnel B1 game from Ocean ) no need to buy the separate CD since it was on the CD-rom itself .
      So for me the revolution part from the Playstation 2 being able to read DVD's was passé since Computers were ahead of their times by miles .
      And last paying so much for a console today is still way too expensive . Even as games that aren't even finished and falls directly into being "Beta Versions" no wonder PC games gets the final product and has mods is a fact .

  • @GaleonXZ
    @GaleonXZ Před 5 lety +1375

    "Parappa the rip-off" insta like to the video

    • @ohnoitisnt
      @ohnoitisnt Před 3 lety +1

      Mate that was a banging game

    • @arktos7444
      @arktos7444 Před 3 lety

      Gran turismo mode engaged

    • @crf80fdarkdays
      @crf80fdarkdays Před 2 lety +2

      @@arktos7444 gran autismo mode engaged

    • @eboone
      @eboone Před 2 lety

      @@crf80fdarkdays :/

    • @scalp340
      @scalp340 Před 2 lety

      "crack crack crack the egg into the bowl.....stir and mix the flour into the bowl"

  • @boogiedaddy3434
    @boogiedaddy3434 Před 3 lety +97

    I love revisiting these older videos to refresh my brain on things I have forgotten, but seeing how the channel has evolved is equally fun. Seriously proud of this channel.

  • @MartyMacgyver
    @MartyMacgyver Před 3 lety +77

    I just wanted to say thank you: I remember well the early PlayStation days, disk swaps and modchips and all that... But I never knew that much about how they worked and why. While anyone can read a wiki page, I enjoyed listening to your explanation and all the detail you added.

  • @MichaelPohoreski
    @MichaelPohoreski Před 6 lety +176

    I worked on Need For Speed 1 and had always wondered how the PSX did its copy protection. We used the "blue" dev kits which could read normal CD-Rs and the _"swap trick"_ was pretty common knowledge (I think one of the QA guys re-discovered it) so I knew the copy protection wasn't complicated. Thanks for taking the time to explain the wobble!

    • @TorutheRedFox
      @TorutheRedFox Před 5 lety +1

      whoa

    • @meneldal
      @meneldal Před 4 lety +3

      So you used the loading trick to test if your game worked on a real console?

    • @dee_fox
      @dee_fox Před 2 lety +13

      @@meneldal no, ps1 devkit consoles read cd-r without a modchip or the swap trick

  • @dwaindibbley1965
    @dwaindibbley1965 Před 5 lety +6

    As one of the only teams to produce PS1 discs outside of Sony (I think there were two) I can confirm your information is completely correct. The wobble groove is a 22.05khz (IIRC) oscillation. Spelling the initials SCEA, SCEE and SCEI for the three territories. Early PS1's had a very primitive and easy to reverse. 18 to twenty something bandpass filter. How we produced the discs was to find a friendly CD-R masteringhouse and instead of using the ATIP generating machine just use a small microcontroller along with the original 22.05khz signal generator and switch it on and off appropriately during the lead in area

  • @aaronriggs4430
    @aaronriggs4430 Před rokem +18

    This makes so much sense now! I remember PRAYING for that second stage, and that sweet sweet sound of the black screen that ensured an old disc would boot. If the copywrite protected area were scratched in a way that hindered the system from picking up he wobble, it was fubar. WOW

  • @throttleblipsntwistedgrips1992

    20 yrs later, I'd say that "FU" to nintendo worked pretty well.

    • @SuperHns
      @SuperHns Před 2 lety +14

      I honestly think Nintendo indirectly killed off Sega with that move... PS2 is also one of the reasons the Dreamcast failed.

    • @CyberdustStudios
      @CyberdustStudios Před rokem +3

      @@SuperHns It really was Sega's fault the Dreamcast failed, and it really wasn't the Dreamcast itself. Sega's long string of bad decisions with consoles, trying to keep the Genesis alive with not so good add-ons, and giving up when add-ons and consoles were tanking. These really made people lose hope in sega and was, In my opinion, the point when sega was starting to hit rock bottom. I think of Sega in the late 90's as a drive-by shooting; the 32x, CD, and Saturn as the intended victim of gang members, with the Dreamcast being the innocent bystander. All of which led to Sega's 3rd party conversion, and near bankruptcy.

  • @Myriachan
    @Myriachan Před 5 lety +176

    As a PlayStation hacker during its heyday, I can confirm that what is described here is true. The only thing that I would add is a clarification that on the PS1, the regional lockout and copy protection are closely tied together. The copy protection data was different for each region, and other regions' PlayStations would think that the disk wasn't just an import, but also illegitimate. This is why you used the same mod chip to play imported games.
    The copy protection data was simple: four ASCII letters. Japan was "SCEI", America was "SCEA", Europe/Australia was "SCEE". The special Yaroze boot disk had "SCEW". All mod chips did was inject "SCEISCEASCEE" into the data stream: the console ignored the wrong-region codes and accepted the correct region (this is why PS1 mod chips weren't region-specific). The ignoring of wrong codes seems to be both for reliability and to keep open the possibility of manufacturing multi-region disks, which as far as I know never happened other than by unauthorized parties.

  • @SumeaBizarro
    @SumeaBizarro Před 5 lety +121

    The black color does not protect the game in action, but does make a real copy stand out from a pirate, making it extra hard for someone to fabricate a copy that would pass as a real copy, so at least you always knew what you were bying, if you paid for a pirated copy.
    Same goes for the Purple shade of CD based PS2 games and five faintly visible playstation logos in bottom of DVD based PS2 games.
    Like with trading cards, gamers do assign value to genuine product, even those who got pirates, and making it uniquely clear what is genuine, making it easy to spot and next to impossible to replicate without bigger effort, probably Chinese factory getting involved just to make very realistic pirates but if the "wobble encoding" needed to be replicated too...
    Well, we know in history that modchips or swapdiscs/tricks won and especially in europe playstation and piracy went hand in hand in a lot of places. Even Ape Escape's PAL version has unique copy detection code in PAL version alone.

    • @rhettorical
      @rhettorical Před 4 lety +9

      Usually yes, but I've owned plenty of PS1 and PS2 games that lack the dark coloring and I know they were genuine because I bought them brand new at the store.

    • @micglou
      @micglou Před 4 lety +2

      Like others already said, not all discs were black, some were the standard shiny silvery ones, I've also seen blueish/greenish ones. And if I remember correctly rental versions of PS1 games had a reddish/pinkish color, later Sony used the same color for their rental DVD's. But also black colored discs were not exclusive to Sony PS1, they also sold black writables, they called them 'carbon' or 'vinyl' discs... I still have some albums burned on those discs buried away in a box somewhere.

    • @reifenabhobeler4331
      @reifenabhobeler4331 Před 3 lety +2

      Nah, I have some Black CD-Rs from different brands like Maxdisc and Intenso. The black colour means nothing

  • @cursedaudio984
    @cursedaudio984 Před 3 lety +42

    My favourite example of developers getting around the mod chip is spyro where they made the game increasingly more annoying to play if its a chipped console making it impossible to finish because it would drive you insane

    • @raven-a
      @raven-a Před 6 měsíci +4

      I remember back when I had an R4 for my Nintendo DSi every new game would have some hideous crazy antipiracy, and then days after launch you would have new versions of the game patched by the hacker teams, then you would start playing and maybe stop half way because of another copy protection that went undetected, then maybe a week later you would have to download the ROM a third or fourth time to be able to play it, some games weren't even cracked properly, it was a crazy time (and even though I thought I would eventually brick my DSi with some ROM running on the R4, I never stopped trying to play the new games, I just couldn't afford any 😂)

    • @egon3705
      @egon3705 Před 24 dny

      @@raven-a flashcarts can't brick the dsi, they don't have access to its internal memory

  • @nexigram
    @nexigram Před rokem +38

    I remember when they made a Chrono Trigger port for PlayStation with all kinds of new anime cutscenes on it, but they only released it in Japan.
    Needless to say that is when I learned about disc swapping. 🤫

  • @tiagosoares8790
    @tiagosoares8790 Před 5 lety +1036

    don't understand why the dislikes. It was brilliant mate, well done. Nice context to everything being said, nice personal input, and with the ability of making one wonder :)
    Well done buddy, wonderful video! Subscribed!

    • @jasonobrien1004
      @jasonobrien1004 Před 4 lety +46

      Tiago probably just idiots who didn’t understand

    • @romxxii
      @romxxii Před 4 lety +89

      I wouldn't be surprised if he got brigaded by pro-piracy kiddies.

    • @philsurtees
      @philsurtees Před 4 lety +8

      @@jasonobrien1004 No, probably because he's an idiot who is wrong, and idiots like you who don't understand why he's wrong, consequently think the video is good.

    • @Doomblud
      @Doomblud Před 4 lety +123

      @@philsurtees And how is he wrong?

    • @andromedajunky9215
      @andromedajunky9215 Před 4 lety +111

      @@philsurtees Well, if he's so wrong, share your wisdom as to why, old wise one. Instead of just spouting your opinion like it's fact with nothing to back up, and acting like that entitles you to throw around insults like a 12 year old. Or am I giving you too much credit and you are just another lame troll?

  • @Sindragozer
    @Sindragozer Před 6 lety +317

    I think they meant the black cds helped with people selling illegal copies of games as legitamite.

    • @serpentine1983
      @serpentine1983 Před 5 lety +38

      Sindragozer nah, I bought CD-R's that were black back in the days... They said that the black ink helped the CD drive read the data easier if it was scratched... Do not know if this is true or not, but black CD-R's were sold xD. and were not more expensive than normal CD-R.

    • @GabrielFranco
      @GabrielFranco Před 5 lety +8

      Yes, i had a Red CD-R with Castlevania Burned lol

    • @BlazeRhodon
      @BlazeRhodon Před 5 lety +3

      Today BD-R discs are black (original pressed BD-ROMs are silver just like original DVD-ROMs and CD-ROMs). I don't think that layer's color matters with reading discs. My BD drive read original BD-ROM and burned BD-R discs with the same speed.

    • @AndrooUK
      @AndrooUK Před 5 lety +9

      It was a great touch to discs. I found it very nice to have that unique look, no matter what the intention.
      There's no substitute for the feel of physical media, even for digital information. Books, photographs, CDs, USB drives... they all have a special something.

    • @spoada
      @spoada Před 5 lety

      And your thinker are is working better than his, thats exactly why the deep purple. Plus to hide scratches better imo.

  • @mandi8345
    @mandi8345 Před rokem +8

    RE cd tracking: The lens assembly is 'floating' (actually more like cantilevered I guess, its held up by stiff thin plastic or metal arms), inside a set of magnets (source for strong small magnets btw). The lens assembly also has a set of coils. Driving these coils moves the lens assembly in the X and Z axis (and a little bit Y, but since Y is in the direction of disk rotation it is effectively a timing problem of when the pit (pip? bit, data) is in the light field of the laser, not where the laser is in space). Thats closer or farther from the axis of rotation (X, or track, cylinder), and closer or farther from the disk surface (Z, or focus). They basically work like speakers to move the lasers focal spot instead of move woofers. In the laser sled there is a beam splitter tthat shaves off a bit of the reflected light and sends the light to a photodiode array. This photodiode array is divided in to 4 sections, 2x2. Thus one quarter (1/4) of the spot should equally illuminate the photodiodes, if it were to go out of focus or X position the spot would unevenly illuminate the diodes causing them to pass less or more current. The optics of the system cause a cross shaped focusing error at the focal point, so and focus error registers as opposing photodiodes to pass more or less current. Now here is the clever bit, you take opposing diodes (ones across the point from each other, at 45 degrees) and subtract their output from the other set of diodes (invert one side and compare, or compare the total value +/- from 0), feed that analog signal into a little booster amp, and 'play' it back in the laser assemble coils! BAM, you are literally playing the low frequency 'sound' of the disk wobble. The PS just added a T off that signal and read it to see if the wobble matched the key.
    Oh also, X has an extra set of photodiodes that look at the next and previous tracks, if they see them (or dont see them if the laser tracking dots are just inside the track radius) the X coil correction signal stays the same, as one side or the other detects a difference (ie, drifting under or away from the next/prev tracks pips) the X signal changes, and the laser moves in X to keep the reading area under the data track being read. The distance the laser assembly coils can move the lens in X is wider than the step distance of the sleds X axis motor. So once the system sees its X tracking signal correction is above a certain level (or receives an instruction to seek to the next/prev/some other track) it will step the sled motor, all the lense assembly sees is a drift off track, and drops the signal to the coils accordingly. Laterally all automagically!
    Its crazy how simple and stupid-smart CD laser tracking is! Youd think its complex circuitry, but nope just basically some op amps resistors and capacitors!

  • @nahuelnunez2
    @nahuelnunez2 Před 3 lety +9

    I grew up near Paraguay... we just had to cross a bridge, and believe you me, there were TONS of cartridges copied.
    I for instance had a "Family game console"... which I later found out was a copy of NES... with all its games and then some.
    I used to buy Sega Genesis games and they were all copies (didn't know when I was a child)... so yes... cartridges were easy to copy as well...
    Cheers

  • @enkiimuto1041
    @enkiimuto1041 Před 5 lety +371

    You wouldn't be able to burn a 15cm CD, because there was no machinery for this at the time.
    China: Yeah, right, but IF THERE WAS...

    • @alswo9628
      @alswo9628 Před 5 lety +33

      Enkii Muto “Supply by demand”

    • @davidgn40
      @davidgn40 Před 5 lety +9

      @@alswo9628 you mean supply "and" demand?

    • @alswo9628
      @alswo9628 Před 5 lety +52

      @@davidgn40 No you read it right; when there's a demand, there's always some chinese sellers on ebay/ali/taobao that selling that item.
      In this case, some clever chinese guy would've made a special CD burner for 15 cm discs because there's a market.
      And now it's pretty much confirmed that my joke was a shit.

    • @davidgn40
      @davidgn40 Před 5 lety +5

      @@alswo9628 ahhh my bad

    • @antus666
      @antus666 Před 4 lety +6

      Sega dreamcast had the 1Gb GDROM, pirates used the console itself to read the disk and re-encoded video and audio with slightly lower bitrate (or removed it, if it wasnt part of the main game) so that the game would fit on a standard size cdrom. Sure a 15cm disk would have prevent copys of store borrowed games, but it would not have prevented piracy of pre-ripped games, and copies of copies.

  • @palibakufun
    @palibakufun Před 4 lety +32

    10:00 God that sound is as wonderful today as it was back then. Probably my favorite console startup sound of all time, followed by the OG Xbox, but not closely

    • @geo2819
      @geo2819 Před 3 lety

      Same. Except I still get a little confused when it says SCEA, I’m used to seeing SCEE..Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. My brain just doesn’t compute it for a split second every time and thinks it’s wrong somehow 😂

  • @Deagoldpp
    @Deagoldpp Před rokem +225

    My personal theory that I've held throughout the years is that Sony specifically designed PS1 to be easy to pirate. They wanted an easy way into a market that was absolutely dominated by Nintendo and Sega, and making their system easy to pirate was their way in.

    • @popstar_pills
      @popstar_pills Před rokem +36

      idk look what it did for the dreamcast (not much), they didn't even need a modchip they could straight up just play burnt discs (I think later models fixed this, been too long lol)

    • @MillTurnBR
      @MillTurnBR Před rokem +17

      It's exactly what Autodesk did with Autocad

    • @pong9000
      @pong9000 Před rokem +33

      Sony grew huge by selling piracy equipment. Why else would you buy a cassette recorder that inputs all audio media, and even copies the copies?

    • @philroo1
      @philroo1 Před rokem

      @@MillTurnBR they put the boot into their customers though, check your licenses and uninstall when handing down workstations to accounts dept. etc.

    • @scottex.
      @scottex. Před rokem +3

      ​@@MillTurnBR yup, and now they cut it with needing proof for the student thing

  • @trashboi-bk
    @trashboi-bk Před 3 lety +10

    Not sure if it was mentioned before in the comments, I'm sure it was, but an important note to remember is that original PS1 games didn't use the Jewel Case at first. Not sure if the OG case would have fit a larger disk, but there is an early gen of games that were not in Jewels, but what I remember being a larger more proprietary black case. Specifically I remember the original Twisted Metal being shipped in this case.

    • @timmytatoe4248
      @timmytatoe4248 Před 3 lety +2

      The 1st version of resident evil was as well

  • @bullhornzz
    @bullhornzz Před 4 lety +66

    Having worked in CD mfg in the late 90s, tooling up to produce a 15 cm disc wouldn't have been that difficult. Many places probably still had equipment around that laser discs had been produced on. I know we did. Granted it was old equipment but we still ran some of it for large slow batch orders. The MET and PC machines just used a smaller mask. Honestly the worst of it would have been the screen printing machines, they had been changed over to only work with normal sized CDs at that point. But for a company like Sony to kit out a plant to be able to produce 15 cm discs wouldn't have been a big deal at all. That said, I'm glad they didn't, a friend and I had a hanging business chipping consoles on the weekend. He was still in highschool so by Friday we'd usually have 5-20 consoles delivered to us. We'd spend Friday night and part of the day Saturday chipping them. It was cash up front. Really good money for a couple of kids, after the first few batches we invested I a programmer and ordered chips from Digikey to save and profit more. A few years later we rolled that same process into chipping DirecTV receivers after "Black Sunday" .. Those were the good old days!

  • @mikeb1013
    @mikeb1013 Před 4 lety +23

    In the 90's I had an early CD writer with some expensive DOS based bit level copy software. I used to recoup some of the cost of this setup by duplicating Playstation disks for people at work. The software would copy what appeared to be error sections as well. I did hundreds of these copies over time and everyone seemed happy. They provided the Playstation disk and what they did with the copy was up to them.

    • @hello-word-youtube
      @hello-word-youtube Před 6 měsíci

      did such a copy work without a mod chip?

    • @CJinMono
      @CJinMono Před 5 měsíci +1

      ​@@hello-word-youtube Early systems could play imports and backups with a swap trick.

  • @Broeils
    @Broeils Před 2 lety +6

    Our PS1 discs broke so often that we started copying discs and using the swap trick just to preserve our games. I still remember the disc of need for speed just exploding to bits inside the console at one point; games weren't exactly cheap to replace, cd-r's on the other hand ...

  • @methodamericon
    @methodamericon Před 3 lety +4

    I'm becoming addicted to your videos. As information soaked as they are digestible, each video has the perfect touch of humor that keeps me engaged. Thank you for all of these!

  • @BIGBOICOMBO
    @BIGBOICOMBO Před 4 lety +119

    9:48 while they were being lazy , it was actually the most genius way to detect modchips by game makers , the game will try to grab the region code from the CD after boot (usually at press start screen) and theoretically it should fail , if it can get region code then there's a modchip installed , Spyro and the year of the dragon is the best example

    • @RedS_DEV
      @RedS_DEV Před 4 lety +4

      If game started console not gives country codr but modchip gives, this is awesome way for devs

    • @ultrairrelevantnobody1862
      @ultrairrelevantnobody1862 Před 2 lety +4

      Spyro: Year of the Dragon is a masterclass in collectathon platforming game design.

    • @alihasanabdullah7586
      @alihasanabdullah7586 Před 2 lety +14

      First, this prompted modchip manufacturers to create 'stealth' modchip that passes the auth at boot and then deactivates itself. Quite an easy modification.
      And second, that's not the copy protection method Spyro 3, and many other later games used, since it was defeated quickly after it came out.
      Spyro used Libcrypt from Sony which requires you to get a cracked version with libcrypt removed rather than copying files yourself. But more importantly, it had CRC checksums embedded into the code and the way the code was written meant it was very hard to find in an editor. You could of course still find all of them and have them patched to give you the desired value that passes the check, and that's what the scene did. Paradox released a new crack that passed piracy checks in around 3 months. Ahh those were good times :)

    • @thecianinator
      @thecianinator Před 2 lety

      @@RedS_DEV did you have a stroke

  • @aidanarguin2485
    @aidanarguin2485 Před 6 lety +64

    I think when they said that the black color prevents piracy, they meant that there was now a way to tell if a CD was a genuine disc or not.

    • @IWasAllLikeG93
      @IWasAllLikeG93 Před 6 lety +12

      I remember owning and using CD-R discs that were in all sorts of colors, including black, around the time the PSX was out. They were called "cool colors" by memorex and are still sold today. Personally, I think the black discs were purely for the cool factor. 8 year old me certainly thought they were.

    • @dylanharding5720
      @dylanharding5720 Před 6 lety +2

      Some Jeep Guy I think Sony said that to mislead pirates.

    • @SchlossRitter
      @SchlossRitter Před 6 lety +4

      Sadly, perhaps to counter the cost of coloring the disc plastic, my Cool CDR seem to have been made with the cheapest possible method of keeping the data layer directly under an easily damaged label (commercial CD-ROM normally put the data layer between two fused layers of the plastic afaik). Even a slight bit of water on the label was enough to cause the label and data to peel away, as I found out when using some failed burns as coasters.

  • @ray73864
    @ray73864 Před 3 lety +36

    All I know is that when we were copying PS discs back in the '90s and early '00s, we told the cd burning software to NOT ignore the errors.
    Most CD copying software would ignore all errors it came across, so you got just the data and only the data.
    I still have my copy of Tekken 3 on a Kodak gold disc that works 100% on an unmodded playstation, and I also used to play the disc on the software called 'Bleam!'.

    • @david4599
      @david4599 Před rokem

      Hey, AFAIK, the errors you are talking about are related to Libcrypt which is a protection that uses modified subchannel Q with wrong CRCs that burners correct automatically when copying discs and can be defeated by copying in RAW mode. But this is different from the special wobble protection made in Sony CD pressing factories which uses CD drive tracking errors to encode the SCEx signal. This signal is what authenticates the disc that the modchips send but it can't be replicated exactly with burners.
      Can you provide more information on your Tekken 3 copy playing on an unmodded PS1? If that is true, the burner firmware had to be modified and used with special burning software in order to "simulate" the SCEx signal. Do you remember what burner and software you used?
      I am actually working to bring back this hack that seems to have disappeared from the internet apart from some rare comments like yours. I have interesting results with a burner firmware I am able to modify slightly but for now, my PS1 struggles to read the custom pattern I burned and stops. Any info is appreciated!

  • @carvis3290
    @carvis3290 Před 3 lety +3

    Very informative channel. Very clear, concise explanations that are easily understood.
    I Remember people using a mod chip they called a "Mach Chip" for the PS1.
    An interesting topic I haven't seen covered much, but you mentioned briefly, was the "pirating" of cartridge games. Although specialized equipment was needed to do such a task, I would love to see you do a video on the "Dendy", aka the Soviet Bootleg NES

  • @MansakeLabsOfficial
    @MansakeLabsOfficial Před 5 lety +159

    It looks to me like the tray was made unusually large so that removing discs would be easier on your thumbs, especially since up until this point, most gamers had only dealt with carts. A bit of an "entry user friendly" aesthetic, one could assume.

    • @situationalawareness
      @situationalawareness Před 5 lety +11

      People used removable discs for music far before this, they weren't ignorant to it. In fact, it's the reason most people went with it so quickly.

    • @spazzwazzle
      @spazzwazzle Před 5 lety +15

      @@situationalawareness Yes, but kids were definitely not familiar with it. They also have clumsy hands, so it would make sense. The PS2-4 all are designed so you don't have to pry the disc up with your hands, as are most consoles; the Gamecube is a top loader but it uses small discs, has plenty of room, and a button to press.

    • @jitsmapper4438
      @jitsmapper4438 Před 5 lety +2

      my thoughts as well. the rest of the video was interesting though

    • @robertt9342
      @robertt9342 Před 5 lety +3

      They would have had just thumb divets or at least not require such a large space. Also, for clumsy kids, they have smaller fingers even requiring less space.

    • @darylg.4270
      @darylg.4270 Před 5 lety +4

      They made the load area larger for Shaq. You didnt know that??

  • @HunterKnightCustoms
    @HunterKnightCustoms Před 6 lety +576

    Oh brother you never lived in South America. The only games we had there were pirated games. We got Nes, Snes, Sega etc. all in pirated cartridges even before the American market. We also had the Japanese games too. Official cartridges were expensive as hell and only certain rich kids would own one. But yeah cartridges were super easy to copy over there.

    • @Ark_Strike
      @Ark_Strike Před 6 lety +71

      Yeah, south american here, I even played the original super mario bros and zelda on a pirated catridge and I think my brother got a copy of Contra from a friend. My PS1 game collection was of over 150 games and I still have the box sealed in my closet. 6 years of my childhood, thanks to piracy.
      Also a cousin of mine had a dreamcast and yeah, none of his games were original copies.

    • @Mike-ff9ji
      @Mike-ff9ji Před 6 lety +54

      Agreed, every plaza in my country had a pirate store where you asked the dude at the back to burn any game you wanted for like 50 cents to 2 dollars for the new ones.

    • @SomnusLucisCaelum
      @SomnusLucisCaelum Před 6 lety +28

      hunterknight4 remember how fake NES consoles were called Familys because they were actually japanese Famicom clones? Amd you grew up thinking it was fake until you saw an original famicom? Ah the good times.

    • @reboomer8369
      @reboomer8369 Před 6 lety +3

      Leslie Montserrat Uribe Cruz
      Now they aren't even called 'Family's, i only see that they call them 'Alien' for some reason

    • @ggvaldez
      @ggvaldez Před 5 lety +23

      I remember opening them and installing the batteries so they could save games :P

  • @bloodySunday77
    @bloodySunday77 Před 10 měsíci +5

    As others have noted, and it is surprising that this is not mentioned in this otherwise great video, is that there are always ways to bypass protections and to make the receiving end think that the incoming data are from a legit source. For example, in exactly the same way as the mod chip, a system hack would allow that security check bypass, regardless of a larger physical disc or not. The hack game is always a loop of discovering vulnerabilities, using them, them getting patched/fixed, finding new ones, using them etc. Back then, these responses were very limited and slow. Today it's the opposite, mostly due to online security checks and patch deliveries.

  • @DonKing86
    @DonKing86 Před rokem +6

    Even if they had made the disc's bigger, a mod chip would probably have removed that protection anyways. I remember having a Power Replay which used the disc swapping feature. It came with a spring which sat between the lid and the switch. Worked like a charm. I'm thinking their biggest mistake was probably that serial port on the back, and not reading the wobble more often than just at start up.

  • @panthermodern64
    @panthermodern64 Před 6 lety +211

    "The first commercially successful game console to use the compact disc..." What a polite way to say "haha suck it NEC, Sega, Amiga CDTV and 3D0".

    • @TechnologyConnections
      @TechnologyConnections  Před 6 lety +72

      I approve this comment.

    • @bernoulli3023
      @bernoulli3023 Před 6 lety

      It’s like Sony giving an up-yours for cd games for a gaming console to Nintendo...

    • @Dragonfire511
      @Dragonfire511 Před 6 lety +5

      And the fm towns marty

    • @Tempora158
      @Tempora158 Před 6 lety +17

      But the PC Engine CD format was successful (in Japan), and the Saturn came out before the PS1 and that succeeded too (in Japan), so the PS1 was really the third successful console to use CD.

    • @seanseanston
      @seanseanston Před 6 lety +5

      Also the Amiga CD32, which was so unsuccessful you forgot to even mention it :'(

  • @sunnohh
    @sunnohh Před 5 lety +163

    Or economic policy.... BEST THROWAWAY LINE EVER

    • @pipo8561
      @pipo8561 Před 5 lety +10

      sunnohh
      He’s good at that and it’s why I like his videos.

    • @LukeCleland
      @LukeCleland Před 4 lety

      I only looked in the comments to see if someone had mentioned this. nice

    • @williamreid6255
      @williamreid6255 Před 4 lety

      Luke Cleland I don’t get it

  • @joylox
    @joylox Před rokem +4

    The slow read time of optical is a lot more evident when comparing the PSP to the DS. It's also interesting that a number of bootleg cartridges do exist. They were often different colours, and didn't always work. For example, I have a fan translation of Mother 3 on a GBA cartridge, and it works perfectly in my original GBA (AGB-001), but in my DS Lite, it often mistakes it for an attachment, such as the piano, Guitar Hero grip, or other such peripherals that used the GBA slot. It's interesting to see the different approaches.

  • @MoisesSoto
    @MoisesSoto Před rokem +4

    I just discovered this channel and I'm loving it. The idea of a bigger disc seems a good one. But eventually even mod chips could possibly defeat this security measure. Still, I think the main reason to not implement it is the prohibitive cost that it implies among the other reasons noted in the video.

  • @amcghie7
    @amcghie7 Před 4 lety +323

    I remember one day, would have been about 4 or 5, I came down stairs to jump on the PS1 to find it gone - obviously causing me and my brother to freak and think we'd done something wrong....
    Nah, my dad just sent it off to get it modded haha

    • @burtdanams4426
      @burtdanams4426 Před 4 lety +29

      ur comment is unintentionally written like an MF DOOM rap flow, nice

    • @micglou
      @micglou Před 4 lety +43

      A neighbor a few doors down from where I lived back then modded PS1's as a "hobby" and sold all kinds of games that usually weren't released to western markets... he made a lot of money off it... enough to drive a very nice car and go on expensive vacations.

    • @DasAntiNaziBroetchen
      @DasAntiNaziBroetchen Před 3 lety +19

      @@micglou Considering that that is still a business nowadays, the guy must have made a killing back then.

    • @mikel9567
      @mikel9567 Před 3 lety +6

      I never got my PS1 modded but I modded my others. I have a modded xbox360, wii and I had a modded PSP but it got stolen. Also have an original xbox development console. Ah the good old days.

    • @energeticyellow1637
      @energeticyellow1637 Před 3 lety +6

      Awesome dad

  • @tyronenelson9124
    @tyronenelson9124 Před 6 lety +19

    I can remember putting the PS1 game discs into a CD player and the game music would actually play.

    • @bdel80
      @bdel80 Před 5 lety +1

      Tyrone Nelson That happens with pc-cd rom disk too. If it has cda music files.

  • @CorruptPianist
    @CorruptPianist Před 4 lety +36

    Phillips?? So you're telling me Nintendo sacrificed their Sony partnership for the CD-I???

    • @SandTurtle
      @SandTurtle Před 3 lety +4

      yep but it was a pretty bad deal as while nintendo would make a lot of off the hardware they made basically nothing off the software, and nintendo realized that philips were trying to pull the same thing but they already had the rights to the trademarks and even though they canceled, so even though nintendo was probably screaming their heads off how bad those games were they couldn't do a thing.

    • @ultrairrelevantnobody1862
      @ultrairrelevantnobody1862 Před 2 lety

      @Sand Turtle
      I've yet to find proof that Nintendo thought their games on the Philips CD-I were bad, even in retrospect, but I did find something interesting.
      According to the guy who was responsible for the little sculptures for Zelda's Adventure, he said some of Nintendo's members did visit to check how it was turning out and were overall impressed with what had been done and Viridis' ambitious use of the Zelda license.
      One thing to note is that the games were well received at the time, especially for their use of the CD technology.

  • @rascaltheferret8151
    @rascaltheferret8151 Před 3 lety +1

    That makes a lot of sense.
    I've even got a copy of Dark stalkers from early in the PS1 history that came with a case that's much bigger than a regular DVD case.

  • @colemanadamson5943
    @colemanadamson5943 Před 5 lety +41

    This guy is great! And I especially appreciate his admitting an error with humility. I'm subbing this channel on this one video presentation alone!

  • @ratchet1freak
    @ratchet1freak Před 4 lety +18

    One possible reason for the black die is to hide the (probably intensional looking) wobble from someone looking at the tracks through a microscope. Using the IR material means needing an IR capable camera (and light) attached to your microscope which is a bigger step than just a microscope.

    • @chitlitlah
      @chitlitlah Před rokem

      I would think by the time you were zoomed in enough to see the pits, the wobble would be too big to fit in the field of view. It would be like trying to see crop circles while you're lying in the field.

    • @ratchet1freak
      @ratchet1freak Před rokem +4

      @@chitlitlah you would only need to see the tracks and then rotate the disk, I'd think the simple fact that the tracks wouldn't be parallel to each other would be a big giveaway.

  • @moparkr
    @moparkr Před 3 lety +4

    got a mod chip in my ps1 back in 2000 while stationed in korea. $25 got you the chip installed and 10 copies of games, what a deal. had a cd burner as well, while having to copy at 1X it got you a playable copy in no time.

  • @coryulrich6489
    @coryulrich6489 Před 3 lety +20

    Technology Connections: You'd be staring at this loading screen for a while.
    Me: Laughs in GTAV.

    • @mercynotfakebutvhs
      @mercynotfakebutvhs Před 3 lety

      I’m 6 I like the Xbox one it was a fun game

    • @tld00
      @tld00 Před 2 lety

      Well, cloud simulator got fixed now :D

    • @Sharpless2
      @Sharpless2 Před 3 měsíci

      @@tld00 and oh boy that took a while. For a modder. A modder that illegally RE'd the game and in the end got paid by R* for fixing their own game.

  • @killerpoopguy
    @killerpoopguy Před 6 lety +179

    I always thought it was weird that of all companies Sony, the king of proprietary storage mediums, just used a standard CD .

    • @nekomasteryoutube3232
      @nekomasteryoutube3232 Před 6 lety +19

      Well its a standardised format that most factories should be able to produce, aside from the extra protection that sony put into them.

    • @Ice_Karma
      @Ice_Karma Před 6 lety +53

      You remember that they were instrumental in creating the CD format, right?

    • @trashj8778
      @trashj8778 Před 6 lety +6

      KooriShukuen same with Dvd right?

    • @tomservo5007
      @tomservo5007 Před 6 lety +16

      and minidisc and memorystick ... sony loves to come up with new media tech

    • @Tatsh2DX
      @Tatsh2DX Před 6 lety +3

      They did and for some reason decided against creating their own file system until IIRC PlayStation 3.

  • @smallmoneysalvia
    @smallmoneysalvia Před 6 lety +72

    I always wondered how CD-R/RW discs contained the information about what they were.
    Are you interested in doing a video on disc burning? I’d be really interested in an explanation on how it works, the history, materials used, why new burnable discs suck, how the black magic of rewritable discs worked, why nobody ever actually reused a rewritable disc, and how overburning and non-standard formats could be used to store more data on discs.

    • @TechnologyConnections
      @TechnologyConnections  Před 6 lety +19

      I will be doing at least one video on a certain type of rewritable disc--though I can't yet say how deep of a dive I'll go

    • @smallmoneysalvia
      @smallmoneysalvia Před 6 lety

      CRVdisc?

    • @KuraIthys
      @KuraIthys Před 6 lety +2

      soupisgdfood CD-R sucked already in 2000. I have far too many disks ftom that period that delaminated themselves in less than 2 years...
      100 year lifespan. HAH yeah right!

    • @duraker1
      @duraker1 Před 6 lety +8

      Lightscribe tehcnology was a mighty interesting gadget back in days.

    • @phantasos12
      @phantasos12 Před 6 lety

      At least 4 layers deep please. ;)

  • @matthewzepess5721
    @matthewzepess5721 Před 2 lety

    Good explanation, I remember hot swapping a disc one time and all the bearings that held the cd fell out with it. Very worn old unit.

  • @JasonMeeks79
    @JasonMeeks79 Před 2 lety

    Always love your explanation on thing. Even if they need minor corrections later. Thank you good sir for your history on stuff.

  • @NikoKauppi
    @NikoKauppi Před 6 lety +93

    I remember wanting to copy the contents of one of these PS disks on my computer to see what's inside. My friend would argue that the computer disk drive might damage the black disk... Because it looks different. I didn't know any better and didn't want risk loosing the game so I didn't. So I think the color did something to discourage piracy.
    As a side note, I did experience my friend's PC game disk explode in the drive once. The drive was reading at 52x speed.

    • @nitramsk8
      @nitramsk8 Před 6 lety +7

      Niko Kauppi One time I played a cracked music disc in my PS1 and it actually played

    • @SpearM3064
      @SpearM3064 Před 6 lety +17

      Yeah, that can happen if the CD is unbalanced. Start with a minor vibration. At 1x speed (300 rpm), it's no big deal. But run it at 52x (15,600 rpm) and the wobble is amplified. If you've ever had a CD that was so noisy it sounded like the computer was trying to blast off into orbit, that's why.
      Back in 2003, the Mythbusters modified an angle grinder to spin a CD at speeds in excess of 76x (~23,000 rpm) and even a nearly-perfect CD would shatter. Physically damaged and unbalanced CDs made shattering more likely. The result of their experiment? Yes, it's possible (it's actually happened to me once), but *extremely* unlikely unless the CD is already damaged. And if it does happen, you're even less likely to get injured. The sides of the drive (and the sides of the computer case if it's a desktop computer) are more than adequate to protect you.

    • @kricku
      @kricku Před 6 lety +32

      It happened to us too. The funny thing is that the brand was called Xplosiv.

    • @nathansmith3608
      @nathansmith3608 Před 6 lety +6

      heat cycling never helps plastic's structural integrity either..

    • @wilkinlow
      @wilkinlow Před 6 lety +5

      My sonic adventure dx literally exploded in my pc and I fucking cried because you can't play the game without the disc. Fuck the old times.

  • @chrrmin1979
    @chrrmin1979 Před 4 lety +91

    That impossible to make anything including "economic policy" was the moment i needed to make sure i liked this video 👍
    Thanks for the chuckle bro
    Cheers

    • @paigem
      @paigem Před 3 lety +2

      I'm glad someone else caught that lol.

    • @stephengnb
      @stephengnb Před 3 lety +1

      That's the same time I checked to make sure I liked the video. 😆 I have never NOT liked a video by TC, but I always have to double-check.

  • @dragonmaster613
    @dragonmaster613 Před 3 lety

    thanks for bring back memories of the load screen with disk sound. good times!👍

  • @Skinny_Popeye
    @Skinny_Popeye Před rokem +1

    I remember at some point you didn't even need a chip. There was a card you had to insert into the memory card slot and a small spring had to be put onto the closing mechanism, worked like a charm.

  • @TheDreadedAssassin
    @TheDreadedAssassin Před 6 lety +45

    2:21
    *Sees the back of the disk*
    ..aaaah the memories..

  • @r1w3d
    @r1w3d Před 6 lety +16

    Nothing stopped you from taking the soundtrack from the games files and making your own cd👌

  • @chadkrause6574
    @chadkrause6574 Před 3 lety +6

    Similar method: make the CD hole smaller or bigger or an odd shape. It would fit in the case and I suspect the retooling wouldn’t be too difficult. Although the molds aren’t cheap, they’re not expensive either in the grand scheme of things

    • @CJ-442
      @CJ-442 Před rokem +2

      Yeah, but then you have the same issue as making bigger disks in that you end up spending more money retooling your industrial process to make it physically unique. The whole point of using CDs to store game data was that it’d be cheaper since Sony was using a product that they were already making and that could be used for things other than game disks.

    • @circuit10
      @circuit10 Před 9 měsíci

      @@CJ-442But they dyed it a different colour anyway so it wasn’t exactly the same anyway and I feel like it wouldn’t be too hard compared to changing the size of the whole disc as the actual pressing part should be the same. I think the bigger problem is that normal CDs wouldn’t fit any more so it couldn’t be used as a CD player

  • @mattsparks3546
    @mattsparks3546 Před 2 lety +23

    Even with a 15cm disc, mod chips could have worked. The games would have been reduced in size by modders and or pirates, but it would have worked nonetheless (similar to how the dreamcast's copy protection was defeated)

    • @Movie2Documentary
      @Movie2Documentary Před rokem

      13:32 "simply couldnt exist"
      I m sorry, but this hastened ´conclusion´ is really dummm.

    • @ZaCloud-Animations___she-her
      @ZaCloud-Animations___she-her Před 5 měsíci

      Couldn't the disk basically have instructions to seek for blocks of data that extended out beyond the copy-disk's physical space though? So if it'd hit nothing but air, that'd signal it that it's not a full-sized disk, thus not legitimate (or, only attempt to treat the disk as an audio CD at that point, if they'd even still decide to also make it play music CDs).
      Also, if they did go through the trouble of making proprietary-sized disks, they'd likely also have the data grooves further apart, & the console's laser set to only read such spaced-out grooves.

  • @bobby4500
    @bobby4500 Před 5 lety +32

    3:30 dude i loved that sound because you knew the game is loading and the level is coming up :)

  • @caspianchan2371
    @caspianchan2371 Před 4 lety +35

    "Wanna play a skirmish in Twisted Metal 4?"
    Hell yeah, I do.

  • @V4mpyrZ
    @V4mpyrZ Před rokem +3

    Excellent video as always (actually the first one I saw on the channel, years ago). But thinking about it, I disagree on one point: larger discs wouldn't have helped. You underestimate the effort that the pirating scene can deploy. They are the kind of guys who would hand-mofify a standard cd reader/burner to be able to handle a larger disc, by actually modifying the hardware and re-writing the low level software, to have a Frankenstein cd reader, and then strip out useless stuff in the game (cd music, some cinematics...) So it can fit back in a standard CDR.
    But man, going back to this video after seeing other ones and also many other from your channel, I have to say I am a huge fan, your explanations are incredibly detailed yet easy to understand! Excellent work!

  • @HiFiInsider
    @HiFiInsider Před 11 měsíci

    love your videos. I like that you dive deep into the topic.

  • @rayanepa7763
    @rayanepa7763 Před 4 lety +23

    3:19 i love this sound

  • @TechnologyConnections
    @TechnologyConnections  Před 6 lety +419

    GET TO THE POINT! VIDEO STARTS AT 6:00! QUIT WASTING PEOPLE'S TIME!
    Yes, I agree with the dozens of comments that this video could have been shorter. I included more info than necessary and went on many a tangent, and I realize that. With new exposure comes new criticism, and I'd rather not just fly in the face of it. Instead I'd rather learn from it.
    Now, as many people have pointed out, a physically larger disc would probably have been defeatable by modchip, too. Simply trick the console into thinking it's reading where it isn't, and voila! Pirated game. But, this would still require first getting the data off of the disc--requiring hacking the console to communicate with a PC. This could of course be done, and even the Dreamcast with its proprietary GD-ROM format was cracked.
    BUT, If Sony were OK with removing the ability to play a standard Audio CD, then for our theoretical 15cm optical disc scenario, they could have perhaps simply shifted the laser carriage over. Then it would be impossible for the theoretical console to read the data in the inner portion of a standard CD-R, thus requiring either somewhat significant hardware alteration to re-position the laser assembly (which would then make real games impossible to play) and/or 15cm writable media. But again, that sacrifices audio CD compatibility and would have drastically increased costs. As I said towards the end of the video, it's obvious why Sony didn't do it.
    In any case, that solution was a minor part of the video. I just think the wibbly wobbly data stream was a neat idea!

    • @SalahEddineH
      @SalahEddineH Před 6 lety +5

      This is why I love your channel. Cheers!

    • @mukiex4413
      @mukiex4413 Před 6 lety +13

      Consider it an information pot luck. You brought the main course; we're just providing side dishes =)
      Seriously, up until your video, I thought the copy-protection was handled via corrupted sectors that would never be written by CD-Rs as they'd be considered bad data at the firmware level. And that doesn't even touch all the misconceptions you've cleared up in your earlier vids.

    • @TheCunningFellow
      @TheCunningFellow Před 6 lety +15

      Pete, It was 2003 in the CD-Freaks forum myself and a few other guys where talking about exactly how the wobble copy protection worked. I am sure we were not the first people outside of sony that knew about it, but we seemed to be the first people talking about it publicly.
      It's a bit crazy that in 2018 - 15 years later that there is still misinformation going around about how the copy protection worked.
      I guess it never helps that some people keep repeating the information with anecdotes like "I had a special magical CD ROM that would write the errors in the lead in and boot with out a modchip" and other fanciful made up stories.

    • @BrekMartin
      @BrekMartin Před 6 lety +5

      Without stepper motors I don’t see how the PSX could know where the sled is other than at it’s limits, or the CD data telling it, so it occurs to me there’s a hole there for a duplicate CD to fake it... but needing a bigger disc would stop the wide spread reading I suppose. I think the larger circle is just needed to get fingers in to take the disc out. Discmans have entire side wedges missing for that purpose.

    • @ZipplyZane
      @ZipplyZane Před 6 lety +2

      Right--I assumed you were dealing with reading, not writing. Once the disc can be read, they can add all sorts of hacks to get around it. But they'd have to read it first.
      No anti-piracy method is perfect. Heck, we did in fact figure out how to copy cartridges--that's how the emulator scene started up.

  • @stevecleaver8933
    @stevecleaver8933 Před rokem

    Great video, lots of fantastic & interesting information, well presented, easily understandable keep it up.

  • @ahkeen
    @ahkeen Před 3 lety +2

    Wow, this is good stuff. I remember I had a GameShark and a spring to do the disc swap instead of the mod chip. The ending comment about using a larger disc I wouldn’t be surprise if Sony did it. Remember when Sony has MiniDisc player to combat mp3?

  • @adirmugrabi
    @adirmugrabi Před 6 lety +281

    Starts at 6:00

    • @2JZ.4ME
      @2JZ.4ME Před 6 lety +15

      thanks mate, you're a top block. that shit was killing me.

    • @TsvetomirIvanov
      @TsvetomirIvanov Před 6 lety +4

      Thank you!

    • @LNasterio
      @LNasterio Před 6 lety +4

      HERO! I regard not reading your comments first.

    • @DlcEnergy
      @DlcEnergy Před 6 lety +6

      9:55 ahem, stop wasting their time

    • @cokistoon
      @cokistoon Před 6 lety +1

      my hero

  • @AwesomeVidzChannel
    @AwesomeVidzChannel Před 5 lety +501

    I never owned an original PS1 game, all the games we had were burned.

  • @aabeceedeeeff6076
    @aabeceedeeeff6076 Před 3 lety

    I'm sorta new to this channel. And at first I thought this was another person. Great to see you evolved, not just a channel but as a person!

  • @arxaaron
    @arxaaron Před 2 lety

    Fascinating information. Never been a big gamer. so I almost skipped this one (back in the computer gaming renaissance I was more intently focused on the multi processor & multitasking OS designs that fostered the invention of multi-media with the "game changing" Amiga meta computer, as well as it's CD32 predecessor to the PS1 and Sega Genesis). Wonderful detail on how all optical devices actually compensate for the physical imperfections of disc media. The Sony DRM (Destructive Restriction Mechanisms) taking advantage of those compensation mechanics is a wonderful bit of evil genius. :-). Kudos on the research an clear presentation!

  • @knucklecorn
    @knucklecorn Před 6 lety +30

    The black dye is more forgery protection than copy protection. It prevents copied discs being sold as genuine.

    • @lucasrem
      @lucasrem Před 6 lety

      knucklecorn
      Black is developers PS light edition.ネットやろうぜ Netto Yarōze. CD disk can be in all colors, laser reads the 0-1 data in gabs and spaces, dynamic, round disk, so the lasers length need to be variable!
      Please stop saying weird shit, why you need CZcams?

    • @fargeeks
      @fargeeks Před 6 lety

      even the ps2 recognized these as Black disks

    • @DlcEnergy
      @DlcEnergy Před 6 lety

      fargeeks of course anything else did, you're missing the point. the point is to protect what's going in the ps1, not anything else. even though all the black ink is for, is to know the disc is genuine. and it's not like it worked on xbox. sony would clearly know what works on their ps2. lol

  • @canyouwishuponacar5044
    @canyouwishuponacar5044 Před 4 lety +35

    i freakin died when it said ''PaRappa the Rip-off'' lmao

  • @reifenabhobeler4331
    @reifenabhobeler4331 Před 3 lety

    Great video,I like it. I know how this copy-protection work before, but good work and explanation, man :)

  • @roserichardson9480
    @roserichardson9480 Před 3 lety +6

    Would a larger disc have been CD standard compliant? I can't imagine Sony would want to risk not having that nice little logo on the box.

  • @supimzazz
    @supimzazz Před 5 lety +61

    Twisted metal will always have a place in my heart

  • @SianaGearz
    @SianaGearz Před 6 lety +97

    There are numerous possible reasons for the size of optical drive bay on Playstation, such as aesthetic, to make the disc lid cover the system creating a pleasing shape where a circle and rectangle merge, manyfacturing related, air dynamics related, as when you put a moving part too close to a stationary part or especially an air gap, there can be a whistling sound, and keep in mind the console spins discs faster than devices before it, by a factor of 2 and might have initially aimed at the factor of 4.

    • @erikandrews4713
      @erikandrews4713 Před 5 lety +4

      Plus the fake 15cm disc blocks the button the lid presses when closed.

    • @kendrickjg
      @kendrickjg Před 5 lety

      Then why not just make the entire box smaller. Would've saved them a lot more money

    • @SianaGearz
      @SianaGearz Před 5 lety +11

      kendrickjg, it's about as small as it could be for including the power supply with the technology that was affordable in 1994! The whole side of the enclosure where the power button is, is occupied with the for the time fairly modern and compact power supply, and the rest of the enclosure is sized to match the logic board. The first production board houses 19 or so ICs, populated on BOTH SIDES, which is normally a last-resort design decision, as this makes the board significantly more expensive to make than if they made it bigger and populated it single sided, as bottom side components additionally need to be glued so they don't fall off when top side is reflow soldered, and then masked with a piece of tape to protect them during wave solder run for the connectors, and then the masking tape is removed - top side ICs don't need the glue or the tape. Later models did coalesce some logic and reduced the board size, but not by much, even bottom mounted components remained - it probably made more sense to retain parts of the enclosure tooling and the iconic appearance than to try to shrink it a little bit.
      They did eventually redesign it as a smaller, white and rounded PSOne when they could condense the system even further thanks to newer IC manufacturing technology and engineering effort that was performed to make PS2 backwards-compatible.

    • @_nognom
      @_nognom Před 5 lety +1

      The extra space was there for disc removal. Fingers need enough clearance.

  • @BlabberizeYT
    @BlabberizeYT Před 2 lety

    Came to learn about the PlayStation - and learned so much about data mechanics of cd readers/writers. Amazing.

  • @TheExplosiveGuy
    @TheExplosiveGuy Před rokem +1

    I'm actually glad they didn't implement the wider disks, I loved being able to play the game OST on my CD player, there were a number of games with pretty good music and I really enjoyed that functionality.

  • @vincentt2309
    @vincentt2309 Před 4 lety +381

    “There was no copy of cartridges”
    My 25yrs old chinese super nes to floppy disk copy system: hold my beer

    • @diablotry5154
      @diablotry5154 Před 4 lety +5

      Not cartridge...

    • @beefcakeandgravy
      @beefcakeandgravy Před 4 lety +3

      __

    • @behindthemask5477
      @behindthemask5477 Před 4 lety

      スライアチン Nice MJ profile pic.

    • @micglou
      @micglou Před 4 lety +3

      Yup... seen those. Also seen a system for the snes with pirated games on some kind of memory card which was used in tandem with an original cartridge to make them run, I think it was some kind of hacked Super Gameboy system. Also counterfeit cartridges were sold for both the NES and SNES. This dude needs to brush up on that I guess...

    • @nelsonantunes5099
      @nelsonantunes5099 Před 4 lety +13

      @@diablotry5154 actually, yes cartridges... Half of my snes cartridges were pirate copies. Pirated cartridges were fairly common in the street markets in Brazil. Downside of pirate cartridges was that they weren't cheap. They sure were cheaper than the originals, but they weren't cheap...

  • @Dominus_Potatus
    @Dominus_Potatus Před 4 lety +13

    3:30 How I had all three of these is really nostalgic: PS, The exact model of that Sony TV, and that game

  • @ebdo7863
    @ebdo7863 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Always come back to this channel

  • @KingFrogWizard
    @KingFrogWizard Před 9 měsíci

    i remember opening up my ps1 as a kid and watching the disk spin and wondering why it got slower for a second. i still have my ps1. good console

  • @TheXFalzar
    @TheXFalzar Před 5 lety +63

    Take a shot every time he says wobble

  • @foxpup
    @foxpup Před 6 lety +144

    It seems to me that the larger "hole" for the CD of the Playstation allows room for fingers to get in there and pick up the disk by the edges like you are supposed to, not so much to accommodate a larger format that never happened. It would be a whole lot harder to get discs out if the hole was much smaller.

    • @TechnologyConnections
      @TechnologyConnections  Před 6 lety +21

      Even with an extra 1.5 centimeters on each side of the disc, there'd still be plenty of room left to spare. It can nearly accommodate a 7 inch vinyl record (45 RPM single).

    • @Ice_Karma
      @Ice_Karma Před 6 lety +9

      Pardon the pedantry, but sub-5¼" floppies are a little bit of a different case, because there was initially no clear standard, with manufacturers experimenting with everything from 2" to 4" disks, in both floppy and hard shells. Eventually an industry consortium got together and standardized on the hard-shelled 3½" disk, which skeuomorphically lives on as the Save icon...

    • @MaddTheSane
      @MaddTheSane Před 6 lety +2

      KooriShukuen I think Sony also formalized the 3-1/2 inch floppy format. I’m fairly certain that Apple used Sony drives in their Macs until they dropped it.
      There’s a story out there where a Sony employee had to hide from Steve Jobs.

    • @Ice_Karma
      @Ice_Karma Před 6 lety +1

      Sony invented a 90 mm disk format, very slightly over 3½" and first marketed in 1981, but it was not quite the same as the format the Microfloppy Industry Committee endorsed in 1983.

    • @mikeall7012
      @mikeall7012 Před 6 lety +1

      The psone version of the PlayStation has a much smaller hole but still gives plenty of room for your fingers. I always wondered why the hole on the original was so big and this is the best explanation I have heard.

  • @BazzaroPlays
    @BazzaroPlays Před rokem +1

    Great video was always curious how the mod chip consoles worked.

  • @manafro2714
    @manafro2714 Před 2 lety

    Great explanation, thanks! I've learned a lot!

  • @AZREDFERN
    @AZREDFERN Před 6 lety +11

    Dude this is the best channel I've found in a while. I just binge watched through all of your videos over the past few days. Keep up the great work!

  • @saiyansnake
    @saiyansnake Před 5 lety +315

    Playstation... one on Nintendo's greatest creations.

    • @David.L291
      @David.L291 Před 5 lety +5

      ????

    • @saiyansnake
      @saiyansnake Před 5 lety +69

      @@David.L291 Back in the days of the SNES Nintendo partnered up with Sony to release a CD based system. At the very last minute Nintendo backed out of the deal and partnered up with Philips instead. Sony was going to scrap all the work but Ken Kutaragi asked his superiors if he could use all that research and development to create a gaming system and *BOOM!!* the PlayStation was born.

    • @David.L291
      @David.L291 Před 5 lety +12

      @@saiyansnake I know some guy had to make a really quick prototype as Sony wasn't convinced at the time why they should even have something that connects to a TV to play games because they couldn't see why people would want to do that when they could already play games on the PC, I really hate playing games on the PC so truthfully thankful for that guy to show them it was possible and to bring about the PlayStation amazingly looking at how far it's come now

    • @shockthetoast
      @shockthetoast Před 5 lety +23

      @@saiyansnake People seem to forget that the reason Nintendo dropped Sony is that Sony was suddenly demanding a portion of the profits from every game sold. However, it seems like Nintendo handled that very poorly by not notifying them before announcing their partnership with Philips. So Nintendo is by no means blameless, but they didn't just randomly drop Sony unprovoked. BTW it was Philips and not Panasonic, which is how the Philips CD-i got those terrible Zelda games that should never be spoken of outside of this particular discussion. Lol.

    • @kenshinflyer
      @kenshinflyer Před 5 lety +11

      Let's just say both parties had their mistakes.
      However, with this experience, Nintendo thought they were invincible--they just found out with the PlayStation that they're not.

  • @Gunnberg85
    @Gunnberg85 Před 3 lety +1

    Looking back, I think this was the first TC video I ever saw. Oh how far this channel has come. And oh how high the snark factor has grown. :P