MODULE RIPPING FOR PROFESSIONALS - WRITTEN BY DIGIT/DMX THIS FILE IS COPYRIGHTED BY DIMESION X COPYRIGHT ©1993/94/95 DMX YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ THE NOTICES BEFORE THE ACTUAL DOCUMENTATION __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well I once wrote a quick document on how to rip modules using various methods but they were only looking for mainly Tracker modules. In this document I will hope to cover all aspects of module ripping so even the un-experienced among you will become semi-pro`s! I will not be giving or telling any information that I would like to keep to myself because there are just somethings that are too good to tell about! REPRODUCTION NOTICE! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following information can be re-used as long as the wording is not like mine in any way and that only this information can be spread by either word of mouth or by this text file. This text file must remain in it`s whole form and entirety. Broadcasting of this document by radio or television is prohibited in any country of the world, this also includes HAM radio transfers, CB`s. The spreading of this document can be done by either post or by modem transfers ONLY! HEALTH WARNING ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am in no-way responsible for the loss or destruction of any data that you may encounter by following or using the information provided in the document. You will be doing it at your own risk. Any breech of copyright by following a method(s) in this document is entirly your own risk, I do not condone or encourage users to break or breech any copyright law(s). Variations of this may depend upon the country you are in and their own laws on copyright. __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ PART ONE - DESCRIPTION OF VARIOUS RIPPERS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To rip a module you need some tools, I mean what is a plummer or electrician without any tools? Useless? There are many rippers available in either the PD libraries or commercial software. My best advice is to get rippers that are PD - why? Well because they are mainly written by scene freaks who know what you the hacker wants, okay that`s not really fair to say that not all module ripper coders are doing illegal things but they generally know what you would like to rip and the best ways to go about such tasks. To choose a decent ripper can be very daunting especially if you are just starting out. There are thousands of rippers, some are single rippers which only search for particular formats or there are the multi rippers! These are the best tools because not every one can be sure of what format the module they are going to rip is in especially when you are not an owner of an Action Replay (like myself!). The best rippers to look out for are the multi rippers. The main ones that I use are "The Exotic Ripper" and "Multi-Ripper", the greater the version number the better the rippers of these rippers are. Of course I have the latest but you cannot always be sure that these rippers can detect the module you are looking for but don`t worry about this at the moment as we will be leading astray. The reasons why I use two rippers and not one is because each ripper can do slightly different things. For example Multi-Ripper can search for crunched information in memory which is a very exellent tool for non-DOS disks while poor old Exotic cannot! I will be mainly using these two rippers when describing any ripping so I advise you to lay your hands on these but if you can`t then don`t dispare because there may be various commands in your ripper that do the function that I may be discribing. If you are a lucky owner of an Action Replay then you may have an advantage over the less fortunate, but for those that have not don`t despair because I have`nt got one and you can just follow me! Theres really nothing special about the Action Replay`s ripping function and it`s vertually shit anyway because it can hardly detect a module if you told it where it exactly is! It`s deaf, blind and dumb! The real advantage of an Action Replay is that you can access the memory directly into a running program without having to reset and so you are available to save the memory to disk to be sure of a better rip! NOTICE ~~~~~~ You are advised to read any and all documentation about your own tool to understand and help you if you suddenly become stuck or you come across a problem. Even better I would print the documentation out to be on the safe side, just incase you forgot or something! __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ PART TWO - INFORMATION! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Information", with out it we are virtually gonners thats why it`s best to understand about the disk format, it`s producers and it`s protection! To understand what I mean the following information should tell you. FORMAT - No it`s not the `Format', `Format', it`s the `Disk Format' or in better terminology the disk structure. It`s no good diving in the middle of ripping without knowing the fogist about your disk because the module may just be located on a bog standard DOS disk. So what would be the point of hacking into the program, disassembling the disk just to find sod all? There are two type`s of disk formats: `DOS' and `Non-DOS' Dos disks can be viewed by typing `DIR' on your Workbench disk, this will list all the files on the disk. You never know you might find the file `MOD.???' or `SOMEBODYS MODULE!' so all the ripping is`nt necessary just load the file up into the module player! Non-DOS disks cannot be viewed by using DIR because not only is the checksum on the root block (sector 880 or track 40) abnormal but the file headers will be non-existant and files can be spread far and wide so recovery of the files is very hard indeed - but not impossible! There are some good books that can tell you more about these disks if you want to know more about the format of a disk. The Amiga-DOS manual may give some information about them but I`m not sure?! PRODUCERS - Some producers re-use the same stuff over and over again, ie the same type of modules in their productions. If you research some producers or you have gathered information up over the years you may notice that it never changes so you know what module format you are looking for. Be-sure though because you never know when they might suddenly deside to change, I cannot promise everything! PROTECTION - It`s no good checking a disk if it`s protected because the information on either DOS or Non-DOS will be hidden from prying eyes like yourself so that they cannot duplicate the software or information. Of course we all know about hackers (do we?) so you may be fortunate to get a hacked copy that allows you to read the information on the disk. Action Replays can just ignore the protection and just load the software and save the memory to a disk then search, simple as that! If you cannot do either ways you could always hack it to pieces! Hint try disassembling the bootlock and then the first one or two tracks of information before the software loads to learn about the protection routine! __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ PART THREE - GETTING YOUR HANDS DIRTY! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ METHOD 1 ~~~~~~~~ Once you have found out what the disk is like you should really start to think about ripping the module(s) from the disk. The best method and the one I always like to use where possible is to save all the programs information onto disk, ie using the Action Replay. Okay I know I have said I don`t have one but there are some tools that act like an Action Replay. Because I am the owner of an A1200 I am able to take advantage of the A1200 Action Replay (Version IV) which was made by Blackhawk. It`s a fairly good tool because it is more user friendly but some of the best functions tend not to work or not 100%, I suppose that`s the price you have to pay though! The other tool that can be used is Memwatch. This is a fairly unknown program because a lot of guys I know that collect tools such as this did not know about it until I sent them it. It`s a fairly good tool and works 100% on my A1200 but the lack of functions can get fairly anoying. But it`s main function is the ability to view your memory, disassemble/assemble, save, load, etc. You may have noticed that these two tools are all files and are not hardware add-ons so sometimes these tools might not get into the program because they will be destroyed on boot-up! There are some ways on how to get around this but they will be told later on in this file. One method though is to link up two Amiga`s where ever possible. There are some programs that have been produced to actually look at it`s linked brother`s memory and so you are able to save it to disk. This is a good method but the hardware and software really need to be bought because it give`s a good discription on the perfect setup in the documentation. Another reason is making the hardware is not an easy task. METHOD TWO ~~~~~~~~~~ Now we start with one of the easiest methods ever. Once the music has loaded up in the program reset and the load up you ripper. Once the ripper has loaded just hunt through memory and if the program does not make a hard reset you should be able to find the module. One warning when using this method. Be sure that you do not write over the module when loading up the ripper because some tricky coders save the module very low in memory so that they have a higher chance of being destroyed on boot up or during a reset! METHOD THREE ~~~~~~~~~~~~ You might not be able to rip the module by using the two methods above so you might be lucky enough to hold a disk that can be ripped using this method. Load your ripper up, if you are short of memory load it low down in your RAM but not too low as to crash your machine about $20000 to $30000 so that you will be able to load the whole of the disk with the module on into memory. Well load the disk into RAM but do not write it over the ripper, try to leave a minimum of 100 bytes between the ripper and the disk load so that any of the rippers data is`nt accidentally destroyed because of bad allocation. Some rippers tell you where they are in RAM upon boot up but you do not know if the programmer is right or not - do you? Once that is done just search through the memory where the disk was loaded into RAM, hopefully it should be there but....... METHOD FOUR ~~~~~~~~~~~ There is a method but should I tell you? Am I getting bored? YEP! Okay maybe I will wrap this text up? YEP! Well sorry that it`s short and sweet, maybe it is not as good or informative as my other document but I am fed up and why the hell do I want to let all my secrets out? DIGIT/DMX - 2 BIDEFORD AVE, BLACKPOOL, LANCS, FY3 8PU, ENGLAND.