New Life Games LLC
**Reel Slots** Gaming Machines => **Reel Gaming Machines** **General Chat** => Topic started by: Slotman on November 13, 2021, 10:05:56 AM
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Let me preface by saying I do not condone copyright infringement nor am I inquiring about copying software but backup of licensed software.
Has anyone successfully cloned their CF card and created a backup?
This would be software that requires a dongle so it is purely a backup for disaster purposes?
Back when CDS gaming was around I would clone the HDD to a bootable CF just for longevity not knowing how long the HDD would last and it was a byte by byte backup and worked very well.
I am wondering about backing up software for WMS / Aruze / Bally. Has anyone had good luck?
I have some very unique games and they could never be replaced if a CF was corrupted.
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I am in the same boat. I also have some CF cards for my Bally S9000 that I need to backup. I believe they are Linux based so I don't believe that they can be duplicated using Windows.
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I am in the same boat. I also have some CF cards for my Bally S9000 that I need to backup. I believe they are Linux based so I don't believe that they can be duplicated using Windows.
Doing a byte by byte backup disregards any OS and just sees bytes. I didnt know if there was some type of safeguard or protection that if i stuck this in a CF reader it would invalidate the card
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I understand byte by byte copy disregards the O.S., but in order for windows to recognize the CF card to copy, it would need to be formatted with a file system that windows recognizes... Unless you have a cloaner that is not Windows based. I would not think that attempting a read on the CF card would corrupt it, but I could not say that for sure. I can tell you I did try using Windows to read the CF Card and Windows could not see the card. The card still worked after the attempt.
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I use Self image or Recovery Manager. They're both old programs, but they're free and they work.
https://download.cnet.com/VaioSoft-Recovery-Manager/3000-2094_4-10286449.html
https://selfimage.en.softonic.com/
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Thanks Tilt! :applause: :thank_you: :1:
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I use Self image or Recovery Manager. They're both old programs, but they're free and they work.
https://download.cnet.com/VaioSoft-Recovery-Manager/3000-2094_4-10286449.html
https://selfimage.en.softonic.com/
Thank you Tilt. Would you mind sharing the equipment / adapters you use? Have you ever had a card become non usable after? Its just scary the first time.
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AC Coin slots CF has not worked for backup.
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My desktop has a built in CF/SD card reader so I normally use that, but I have also used a USB to CF/SD adapter. I suggest practicing with a Clear card or something easily replaceable just in case you make a mistake. The software (especially Selfimage, selecting the right drive/partition) isn't the most user friendly.
I've never had a problem backing up or restoring Bally software with it (I don't have a WMS machine), but it should work fine too.
The only thing I've messed up with the software as Sunrise Side alluded to was one of his AC coin smartmedia cards. I tried to make a backup copy of it using a USB to smartmedia adapter and it didn't work after that, neither did the file it made.
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My desktop has a built in CF/SD card reader so I normally use that, but I have also used a USB to CF/SD adapter. I suggest practicing with a Clear card or something easily replaceable just in case you make a mistake. The software (especially Selfimage, selecting the right drive/partition) isn't the most user friendly.
I've never had a problem backing up or restoring Bally software with it (I don't have a WMS machine), but it should work fine too.
The only thing I've messed up with the software as Sunrise Side alluded to was one of his AC coin smartmedia cards. I tried to make a backup copy of it using a USB to smartmedia adapter and it didn't work after that, neither did the file it made.
Wonderful, thank you very much.
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The CF cards used in Bally/WMSs are industrial grade and have a slightly different capacity than commercial photo type CF cards. Stick with Wintec or Cisco CF cards and you shouldn't have any problems. You won't be able to write a backed up file to a commercial CF card due to the difference in capacity.
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:1:
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I believe that you do not want to put a CF card in a Windows 10 computer...
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There is no reason why you can't use Compact Flash in a Windows 10 machine. The CF Interface is basically a Parallel ATA interface and common to many types of memory.
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Has to be windows 7 or before.
Gameking 6 if you dont think windows 10 wont kill kill your cf card try coping a wms bb2 file using win 10 to a cf card and watch what happens.
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The issue has to be with the wms bb2 file or even the type of CF being used. Since you can natively copy/read/format Compact flash on a Windows 10 machine. You can also copy/read/format Compact flash on a Windows 11 machine (I just did it to confirm). My guess is the issue is with the compression on the bb2 file (BLED)
So the original comment "I believe that you do not want to put a CF card in a Windows 10 computer" is not necessarily true, but if your doing it to copy the wms bb2 file you shouldn't use Windows 10.
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It ruined my Aristocrat cf's also.
I have another pc with win 7 and never have a problem with cf's
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Do not use anything other than a Windows 7 machine to back up CF and Bally thumb drives. Windows 10 will right a file to the original media and then they are corrupt after that. Just a warning. Just inserting them into a Windows 10 machine kills the media.
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Agree^^^
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How about Aruze? Anyone done those?
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You don't want anything that is a file copier. You need an IMAGE copier. That just copies every byte on the memory card to an .ISO file and can then write it back to make an exact copy on another SD card. This is an excellent program -
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ (https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/)
One nuisance I've discovered is that you never know exactly how big a memory card is. They all say 16GB or whatever but the exact size is a little different because they have bad sectors that are mapped out and that affects the exact size. That's a problem when you make an image file from one card and try to write it to another. If the first card happens to be a tiny bit bigger than the second, the write will fail.
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Still trying to backup Aruze CF cards. I have found that they are a TDK CFG8B type Compact Flash but when backing up the card authenticates perfectly fine but shows a GAME MISMATCHED error.
There has to be some low level code written in to a system partition that doesnt get copied over even when doing a byte by byte clone.
Something else I found strange is after making a .VHD of the original and doing a MD5 hash it is different every single time almost like the driver in the CF distributes the data differently each time its read.
Anyone successfully backup a Aruze CF card? I have one that currently will not authenticate 1 out of 5 times and would like to get it to a fresh card before it becomes 100% unreadable.
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I have a couple of questions for you on this.
The card that gave you the "GAME MISMATCHED error".
Did you use the Win32 Disk Imager program that Op-Bell suggested,
and does your original Aruze card still work?
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I have a couple of questions for you on this.
The card that gave you the "GAME MISMATCHED error".
Did you use the Win32 Disk Imager program that Op-Bell suggested,
and does your original Aruze card still work?
Original still works.
The backup and original are 100% the same as verified by a hex editor.
There is some type of low level programming that has to be written in to an area that is not accesible without the proper drivers or software.
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You need to use Windows7 or older
I believe that you do not want to put a CF card in a Windows 10 computer...
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Or Linux (using something like 'dd').
Windows versions higher than 7 will index removable drives to make them more easily searchable in the future. This often includes making thumbnails for large images, which are stored on the drive. These changes make the disks fail integrity checks.
Anyone have a good source for Sandisk Ultra II cards that are confirmed to work?
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Anyone have a good source for Sandisk Ultra II cards that are confirmed to work?
What size and for which gaming platform?
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I know this is an old topic but I have not been able to get anywhere with writing these Aruze CF cards. Not even for backup. I am actually trying to update my master CF cards to the latest master software and I cannot seem to get the card to write. It's like there is some kind of write protection even though someone has told me there is not. Wondering if there is some special driver or something like that that is needed to write these cards.
Thank you,
John