> Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 20:24:31 +0800 > From: Jonathan Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Question about WINE and adding the "low-level" CD access APIs... > > Many copy protections use special tricks on the CDs (I dont know the > details). Presumably these protections use some kind of > lower-level API to > access the data on the CD directly (instead of going through the file I/O > calls). Currently TransGaming does something specific for each > kind of copy > protection to make it work. Would it be possible to implement > these APIs in > WINE and have them redirect to whatever low level APIs are provided by > linux/x/whatever? That way (assuming the implementation was > complete), any > copy protection would work (i.e. when the protection says "give > me this bit > of data from the CD in this form", WINE hooks that, gets the > relavent data > and returns it to the application.
I believe this can be done in ASPI, and has been already implemented. At least this is how SafeDisc v1 worked. > Same could be said for > protections that > use the "boot blocks" to store licence data (such as CDilla Licence > Manager), for those you could hook the "read from boot block" and > "write to > boot block" calls and store the data somewhere (preferably not the real > boot block :) You would probably need to run Wine as root to do this (as you would need to run the game as Administrator in WinNT), but the API's should be there. > If someone can tell me what the low-level access that these > protections use > is actually called (i.e. what search term to use in MSDN to look for > documentation etc) as well as info on whatever the relavent linux > low-level > access stuff would be, I can look at drawing up some kind of "here is how > this could be done" document. Again, I guess most protection methods (that would work on NT) would probably use ASPI. > Similar low-level hooks could be used to allow things like AudioCatalyst > (program that converts audio-cd tracks to MP3 files) and anything > else that > does lower level access to CDs/DVDs than the high-level file I/O APIs and > etc. (the day its possible to run Nero Burning Rom in WINE with > no problems > will be a great day indeed for the project :) Well in that case, the great day was a while ago as I have already burnt a CD in Nero (with version=Win2k). I'm not sure about AudioCatalyst but I see no reason why our current ASPI implementation shouldn't work. > If this isnt fesable for copy protection and so on, please explain why (I > know nothing about copy protection or how to program the CD-ROM in win32) > Basicly, I dont understand why there is a need for "protection-specific" > code in WineX when you could emulate whatever the protection uses and > appear just like real windows to the game... > Laurent Pinchart did a lot of work on this, but unfortunately a lot of it wasn't accepted into the Wine tree. Though his patch is available at http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-patches/2002/04/0194.html. It may require some major work to get it working now, as I believe some of the hooks he used (in relation to NT kernel shared memory) have been removed now. Note that I'm unsure the un-hackish parts weren't accepted, although a good guess would be DMCA. Rob
