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Lindbergh VBIOS Update DVD

doozer

doozer

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Hey All,

Does anyone know what the VBIOS disk is for and/or how to use it?

I'm guessing the V stands for VIDEO, but I'm not certain?

If I put the disk (DVP-0021B) in the attached DVD drive and boot the system, I just get an error saying there is no game found.

I thought this might be because I had a game keychip connected, so I removed it, but get the same result.

Perhaps there is a specific VBIOS keychip that's needed?

Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks!
 
maybe it's not for your gfx card.
or maybe it updates the drivers in the game partition.
 
If I remember correctly, there is another option in the grub menu that shows up quickly - unsure if it has anything to do with that, as I remember that does some strange update thing?

(Although ofc be careful of running it if you've got a game installed, as I don't know what it does)
 
stj said:
maybe it's not for your gfx card.
or maybe it updates the drivers in the game partition.
Click to expand...
That's possible, but I would have expected it to at least flash up momentarily indicating it was checking.

All I get is an error saying there's no game on the DVD. That makes me think its not decrypting correctly.
 
bobbydilley said:
If I remember correctly, there is another option in the grub menu that shows up quickly - unsure if it has anything to do with that, as I remember that does some strange update thing?

(Although ofc be careful of running it if you've got a game installed, as I don't know what it does)
Click to expand...
Any idea how to see this menu, or change the selected item?
I'm not seeing anything, everything seems to be hidden by the POST graphic (grey bar across the top of the screen).
 
I possibly modified the grub menu timeout to get it, which would suggest that it's not required for that DVD. You could try spamming an arrow key while it starts up, to see if you manage to move the selection which will stop the time out.

Other thing to try is to mount the ISO on linux, and see if the .img files on it are encrypted - that would suggest you need a keychip for it.
 
Yeah I’ll try that.

I’m surprised no one has used one at some point :)
 
Would be interested to know how you get on with it.

I've always seen that disk flying about, but never known what it was for.
 
I made an image of the DVD.
The first 0x288000 bytes look encrypted. No obvious strings visible.

I did find the BTID structure later in the disk.
The name is set to VBIOS_UPDATE and the gameid is SBMC.

So the obvious next question is does SBMC belong to a game, or is it specific to the VBIOS disk?
And more importantly does anyone have one?
 
A bit more info. From a list of known game ids, I found this:

VBIOS Update (3.00) DVP-0021B SBMC
VBIOS Update (for VTF) DVP-0023C SBLM
VBIOS Update (for VTF 2.0) DVP-0023A SBLM

Most of the Virtua Fighter 5 games all require keychip SBLM.
So it does appear that the VBIOS update is tied to a specific game.

I wonder what game SBMC is?
 
Ok, so a bit of an update on this. I got hold of a VBIOS Update disk for VTF (Virtua Fighter 5) and what I thought was the correct keychip.

I then mounted the cdrom and decoded the bootid. Turns out there are 2 updates on this disk:

Code: 
     Found: RELEASE (sec=00000000)
     Title: ROUTER_UPDATE
    GameId: SBLM
   Version: 1.0
     Model: 255
      Date: 2004-04-01
 Game Spec: 20007FB7
   Graphic: 5
     Sound: 2
       I/O: 1
    Memory: 0
        OS: 00000000
  Firmware: 00000000
    Sector: 32768

     Found: RELEASE (sec=00002040)
     Title: ROUTER_UPDATE
    GameId: SBLM
   Version: 1.1
     Model: 255
      Date: 2010-04-01
 Game Spec: 20007FB7
   Graphic: 5
     Sound: 2
       I/O: 1
    Memory: 0
        OS: 00000000
  Firmware: 00000000
    Sector: 4259840
Interesting they are both called ROUTER_UPDATE. Version 1.0 and 1.1.
You can clearly see the gameid is SBLM.
When I let segaboot do its thing, it mounts the DVD and counts up to 100% verifying the source image. This passes, but then it throws error 92.

That was a new error for me, so I did some digging. It appears you get this error when it fails to unpack the frontend file. Only reason I can see that failing is if it didn't decrypt correctly.
And the only reason it wouldn't decrypt correctly is if the keychip isn't the right one.

So it's been a fun exercise, but I'm no closer to seeing how an update disk works. If anyone has a known working update disk/keychip combo please reach out!
 
Last edited:
router??

did sega japan issue a specific router/switch for networked games??
i thought operators just used a generic tp-link or whatever.
 
I thought the same thing.

Perhaps it just patches files related to IP/networking on the CF card?
 
I see you’ve written something that appears to be pulling the header from the Lindbergh ISOs. You wouldn’t be able to post the header info / explain the header on here would you?
 
This is what I've figured out so far. Some entries are still unknown as they don't appear to be referenced in code anywhere.

Code: 
struct AM_SYSDATA_DATE {
	_WORD m_Year;
	_BYTE m_Month;
	_BYTE m_Day;
};

struct AM_SYSDATA_TIME {
	_BYTE m_Hour;
	_BYTE m_Minute;
	_BYTE m_Second;
	_BYTE Rsv03;
};

struct AM_SYSDATA_BOOTID_HEADER {
	_DWORD m_Crc;
	_DWORD m_Size;
	_BYTE m_Magic[4];
	_BYTE m_HeaderFormat;
	_BYTE m_MajorRelease;
	_BYTE m_MinorRelease;
	_BYTE m_ModelType;
	_BYTE m_GameId[4];
	struct AM_SYSDATA_DATE m_Release;
	struct AM_SYSDATA_TIME m_ReleaseTime;
	_BYTE Rsv01C[4];
	_DWORD m_DiskSize;
	_DWORD m_TotalSize;
	_DWORD m_SegmentCount;
	_DWORD m_SegmentSize;
	_BYTE Rsv030[16];
	_DWORD m_GameSpec;
	_BYTE m_GraphicSpec;
	_BYTE m_SoundSpec;
	_BYTE m_IoSpec;
	_BYTE Rsv047;
	_DWORD m_MemorySize;
	_DWORD m_OsVer;
	_DWORD m_FirmVer;
	_BYTE Rsv054[12];
	_BYTE m_strTitle[32];
	_BYTE Rsv080[64];
	_BYTE Rsv0C0[64];
	_BYTE m_strCostName[256];
	_BYTE m_Data[0x8000];
};
 
Hello folks! I want you to know that I joined this forum after searching for this information everywhere and finding this post to be THE ONLY source of info on the matter and thought that I might be able to help.

I had a VBIOS update disc come with it's original instructions from SEGA so I scanned them and made a PDF version that I could share.

They are in Japanese however so I used some online automated translation services to translate and repack the PDF into English. It's kind of squirrely and maybe someone else could do a better job so I am uploading both here. (see attached)

Sorry to to resurrect a dead thread but I think we'd all like to get to the bottom of this, no?
 

Attachments

  • super56k_Lindbergh_DVP_Original.pdf.pdf
    263.6 KB · Views: 249
  • super56k_Lindbergh_DVP_English-Translated.pdf
    248.9 KB · Views: 294
Aha....so you need to boot your game normally and after a few seconds, then you insert the update disc and it will update but it will also erase existing game
That's why you never see the keychip for these. I guess it's because the DVD has several volumes, one for each game it supports I guess.
so the update is done by the existing game....very interesting, now we know how it is done.

Good info!
 
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