Subchannel compatibility in Popstation...

[SelfTuner]

hi, i had this idea to try and get subchannel-protected games to work under the PSX emulator, and i wanted to verify if it was feasible... well, we all know how certain games, like ff9, simply crash if the subchannel data is not what the game expects it to be, and for that reason it's impossible to code a workaround directly into the emulator. but what if the popstation compiler tried to generate sane, working eboots in the first place?
i thought about it because there's a PSX emulator for PC, epsxe, that doesn't natively decode subchannel data, but an external CDR plugin for it handles them alright... it works like this, the plugin on certain drives is capable of decoding the subchannel data properly into small SBI files, which then are loaded by the plugin itself, which in turn takes care of passing the right subchannel data to the emulator when required.
so i figured that such a concept might work on popstation as well, only rather than replacing the data on the fly in the emulator (impossible to do without sources) the converter could try to generate sane eboots to begin with. there are sources here, http://sourceforge.net/projects/peops/, is anyone here willing to give it a look and see if it's at least possible? it would make for a perfectly functional (and legal) way to enable those hairy games that don't start because of libcrypt. thank you, looking forward to development.

[sherpya]

there is no source for pops emulator, and this means that it would be very difficult to add new code, pops may support itself this feature, or maybe they will have in the shop different versions of games that use subchannels,
does ff9 is in the official playable game list?

[SelfTuner]

emulatable with copy protection fix, such as ff8, tombi and spyro 2; but that's beside the point, since certain versions of these games or more obscure ones have no patch to begin with, meaning they can only work with subchannel replacement.
now, i'm fully aware that there is no source to the POPS emulator itself, but we do have the sources for the compiler, popstation.exe; infact what i'm suggesting is to modify it so that it can prepare working eboots based on these subchannels. the main problem is figuring out how to get it working, but since i can't code for beans i provided the link to the sources that implement the described method for whoever might want to take a thorough look into it. i volunteer to beta test any solutions that might possibly come up.

[SelfTuner]

sorry for the bump. is anyone undertaking the project? it appears to me there is some interest around this feature, so i'm rather eager to know myself. hope it won't die down, subchannel integration is well worth the effort.

[codes02]

Use a sub-channel compatible popstaion to convert your iso's.
They have been mentioned before.

[SelfTuner]

i searched everywhere but didn't find anything, can you confirm the existence of such a build? i read about it too, and looking around was the first thing i did, but that came up blank.

[Coldbird]

What tool do you use to dump ur ISO?
afaik magiciso dumps the iso INCLUDING subchannel data...

You could just use that ISO for converting...

Or use the modified popstation that supports CloneCD .ccd / .img / .sub files...

This also includes the Subchannel Data... Therefore easily fixed...

[SelfTuner]

What tool do you use to dump ur ISO?
afaik magiciso dumps the iso INCLUDING subchannel data...

You could just use that ISO for converting...

Or use the modified popstation that supports CloneCD .ccd / .img / .sub files...

This also includes the Subchannel Data... Therefore easily fixed...

i'm afraid it's not that easy: the tocstation mod, as i like to call it, only reads the .img file from clonecd images, the only purpose being to repair toc data on games containing CDDA music, otherwise left as-is by the regular build; for the purposes of that build the subchannel file could be missing completely, since it's not even used to perform the task.
for fairness purposes i'm going to try using magiciso as you suggested, but i don't think it will avail to much at all since we are talking about special subchannel data, present only in a few games (like ff8 and 9), that needs to be decrypted in the first place (unless there is a copy protection fix -- doubtfully legal and in some cases inexistant at all). i'll post an update shortly.

[SelfTuner]

well, what do you know... that bombed, as i guessed. bottom line: popstation outputs images with no subchannel data at all, because even if it's there it doesn't get calculated when creating the eboot, no matter the program or format used. (unsurprisingly enough, images created with magic iso, doesn't matter which format is chosen, fail to convert completely, stopping at about one third of the actual data, rendering it useless for the purpose.)
i rest my case and remain available to test any possible solutions to a rather important problem of an otherwise complete converter, because there is absolutely no way to get heavily libcrypt'd games to work without patching them beforehand; which basically means that where there is no patch, there's no game either. it's the only major feature that doesn't work, therefore i really hope there is someone who can find a way to kludge it in. thanks again.