Well boys and girls, a bit of monotonous testing on Warcraft III and its pretty easy to copy SecuROM 3! I have 8 readers and 8 writers, mostly well known drives for their ability to work with the tough stuff. Many often suggest that the reader is the deciding factor and after my testing tonight both the writer and reader are imporant. I thought testing the reader would be easy. I first read images on all 16 drives and ZIP them up and compare CRC’s.

Specs: CloneCD 4016, 8x data read, read subchannel on data tracks, do not read subchannel on audio tracks, abort on error, ZIP with Windows Commander 5.0, display ZIP contents with PKUNZIP 2.04g. 12x write. The 2 drives that do not support RAW+96 reading were skipped for images but used for playtesting.

There is no pattern to the .SUB file CRCs and a bit of checking on CDFreaks shows this to be always true for technical reasons. Some patterns do show up on the .IMG files, but since .IMG files include all data including the ECC bits the patterns are only good for the yes-men after the drives have been carefully analyzed. Failing CRC’s, I decide that a bunch of free after rebate and all but useless high error CDR blanks need to be turned into a small army against Sony. I had originally intended to test all 14 images on all 8 writers but the patterns are so obvious already that I can stop after getting a few readers and writers well tested. I did no play testing on writers because I do not use Hide CDR Media. All of my reader drives are DVD.

The source drive is the most important consideration. Most CDFreaks favored drives will write correctly when given correct image files.
· The Aopen 1240 DVD produces non functional image files thus is likely not read compatible with CloneCD.
· The Lite-On 24x as a reader produces an image that fails on everything. This image is so bad that it occasionally fails during Autorun.
· The LG, Lite-On 32x, 40x, LTD163D, BCE3212IM, as readers produce an image that will function on some readers but not others. People posting copy claims with these drives as sources lead us off the track because they state that their copy works. The trouble is that a copy from these images will generally work on the favored readers they already own that have RAW+96 read but not on readers without RAW+96 read they give away to everyone else.
· The Ricoh 40x12x48, Samsung SW-232, Toshiba 1212, and 1612 DVD’s as readers produce an image that functions in all readers.
· The Panasonic 8586 and Pioneer 104F are champion playtesters because those are the drives that fail and demonstrate the errors in Lite-On, LG, and BTC images.
· So far all drives that provide correct EFM also provide damaged RAW+96 reading.

Some second generation CD images were made and a write was attempted.

· Toshiba 1212 -> LiteOn 24102 -> Toshiba 1612 –>? LiteOn 40125. This resulted in an image size of 71:52:56 and a TOC size of 71:54:22 thus was not a perfect copy. This bad image was not written or tested.
· Ricoh 40x -> Ricoh 40x -> Toshiba 1612 ->? LiteOn 40125. Same as above, not written or tested.

It is unfortunate that Asus writers are not sold retail meaning no rebates meaning I must pay full price for them so I can’t include them in the test. Yecch! You all can tustle to and fro about how to fix the broken drives but I really don’t care. As cheap as writers are after rebates, when new drives are found that perform properly, I’ll be able to get so many for next to nothing that these will be sent down the road. Besides, the writers are still functioning well. It’s the readers that need to be upgraded and I already have an army of great readers!

Maybe someone else has large stacks of crap CDR’s and more time so can build and demonstrate a complete crosstab chart. I’d also like to know if anyone can challenge my findings. I have a partially filled crosstab but nowhere to upload it to.

Here is the list of all my images, size, and CRC32 as reported by PKUNZIP.

772 69747481 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8X.ccd
772 69747481 LiteOn40125SrZS0JSubchannel8X.ccd
772 69747481 ToshibaM1212r1R22Subchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 LiteOn32123SrXS0RSubchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 GCE-8320Br1_01Subchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 BCE3212IMCDWRITERIDE3212r0_07Subchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 ToshibaSD-M1212r1R22Subchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 LiteOn24102Br5S57Subchannel8x.ccd
772 69747481 ToshibaSD-M1612r1004Subchannel8x.ccd
786 26ac3dec LTD163DSubchannel8x.ccd
786 26ac3dec BCE3212IMSubchannel8x.ccd
788 e2d95e04 Ricoh40x12x48r1_00Subchannel8x.ccd
799 7d9788a5 SamsungSW-232BrR300Subchannel8x.ccd
939 a2b9d6a1 Aopen12XDVD_MH_R06Subchannel8x.ccd
31062912 0827b06e Aopen12XDVD_MH_R06Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 d41a2c67 Ricoh40x12x48r1_00Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 e39bd5fd SamsungSW-232BrR300Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 d33da654 GCE-8320Br1_01Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 86dba902 ToshibaSD-M1212r1R22Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 dbbc8f1c LiteOn40125SrZS0JSubchannel8X.sub
31062912 36575bca ToshibaM1212r1R22Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 6ed3e87e LiteOn32123SrXS0RSubchannel8x.sub
31062912 4d144b0f BCE3212IMSubchannel8x.sub
31062912 95754669 BCE3212IMCDWRITERIDE3212r0_07Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 f01459c2 ToshibaSD-M1612r1004Subchannel8x.sub
31062912 aa543fd6 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8X.sub
31062912 f9423033 LTD163DSubchannel8x.sub
31062912 e77bf2a0 LiteOn24102Br5S57Subchannel8x.sub
761041344 26af1a11 Aopen12XDVD_MH_R06Subchannel8x.img
761041344 d6538c2b ToshibaSD-M1612r1004Subchannel8x.img
761041344 f15d4b6c ToshibaM1612Subchannel8X.img
761041344 f15d4b6c ToshibaM1212r1R22Subchannel8x.img
761041344 f15d4b6c ToshibaSD-M1212r1R22Subchannel8x.img
761041344 f15d4b6c Ricoh40x12x48r1_00Subchannel8x.img
761041344 f15d4b6c SamsungSW-232BrR300Subchannel8x.img
761041344 a75d2abb LTD163DSubchannel8x.img
761041344 a75d2abb BCE3212IMSubchannel8x.img
761041344 a75d2abb LiteOn40125SrZS0JSubchannel8X.img
761041344 a75d2abb LiteOn32123SrXS0RSubchannel8x.img
761041344 dbfccb4e BCE3212IMCDWRITERIDE3212r0_07Subchannel8x.img
761041344 a75d2abb LiteOn24102Br5S57Subchannel8x.img
761041344 30676e6b GCE-8320Br1_01Subchannel8x.img

A few of those are missing ROM revisions:
M1612r1004
BCE3212Imr0_07
LTD163DrGHR2

772 69747481 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromTosh1212Lt24102.ccd
772 69747481 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromRicoh40xRicoh40x.ccd
31051776 51b6fa3f ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromTosh1212Lt24102.sub
31051776 02b771b3 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromRicoh40xRicoh40x.sub
760768512 491dedf8 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromTosh1212Lt24102.img
760768512 491dedf8 ToshibaM1612Subchannel8XGeneration2FromRicoh40xRicoh40x.img

Ollie needs another sheep marker on RAW+96 read and write.

X = drive reads/writes damaged RAW+96
* = drive reads/writes almost correct RAW+96
** = drive reads/writes correct RAW+96
? = not tested

Drive RAW+96Read RAW+96Write
LG * X
Lite-On * **
BTC * **
Ricoh ** **
Samsung ** ?(Probably **)
Toshiba **

** is not really correct because though it allows the game to be played it does not allow second generation copies to be made.

wow=========

Maybe reading problem could be solved by reading several times and then comparing results?

very impressive results...you did alot of work....

As an owner of a LTD163..not the D version ..I wonder if there is a difference functionally between the drives...they use different fw..I do not have warcraft 3 to test it out

I've got one and not a hint of a problem in copying WCIII when the LTD-163 is used as the reader (read at max speed fine).

Considering all the Lite-Ons behave the same I'd say that there woudln't be much difference. I finally figured out that Excel could publish to the web and came up with a place to put it since these posts don't allow direct HTML insertion.

http://web.newsguy.com/severach/WarcraftIII.htm

philamber...that is interesting suggesting the fw is an issue in the LTD 163 vs 163D ...since I thought the hardware was the same...