Originally posted by Kraelis
bknight: Underneath your PSX should be a silver(?) sticker with the model number. SCPH XXXX.
Everybody else: I know that burned copies will never work. But I never really got around to asking WHY? We suppose a burned copy to be 1:1. Is it something to do with the actual CD itself? Probably some unmodifiable info such as ATIP and stuff?
Sony, in an effort to avoid the pirating (copying) of their software, has added onto their discs a COUNTRY CODE that a Playstation can read (and that CD burners cannot). The country code specifies which continent the disc is from; only Playstations with matching country codes will read the disc.
The country code coded onto the disc is written in the form of bad sectors. When you copy a Playstation game with a CD Burner, the drive (not the software) recognizes that the country code has been coded as bad sectors and automatically 'corrects' these bad sectors on the new copy. Upon loading a copied disc, the Playstation first looks for the country code before it continues to load the game. Since the new copy (or import) does not contain the correct country code in it's original form, the Playstation deems the disc as being not a Playstation game but rather an audio CD and directs you to the audio CD player portion of the Playstation.
AFAIK there is still no commercial burner that can intentionally burn bad sectors on a CD.
btw, my first PSX was a Japanese 1000, and it couldn't play copies without chipping it. I remember because way back in 1996 i was so pissed off at not being able to play copies of games :embl:
