[OFFER] bleem! CD key

[Threat]

This CD-ROM was a key to allow the bleem! emulator to work (a commercial PlayStation emulator for Win9x) released around 1998/1999.

It ultimately failed due to an on-going lawsuit with Sony, in which they "won" the arguments but went bankrupt in the process. Another reason for it's ultimate failure was it could not run on NT kernel (I think they underestimated how quick the change to the NT kernel would come for desktop operating systems), so Windows 2000/XP doomed it.

It had an advanced copy protection, the CD has physical rings in the surface rather than "software" bad sectors.

[ATOS Productions]

So, this is a giveaway? First come first serve?
Can I have that key if that's the case?

[Threat]

No, I think you need to read more

The cd is itself the copy protection. The emulator was downloaded from there site and you presented the cd as proof you own it - much like a dongle.

I am offering to upload it to the ftp (with scans) if its wanted.

[Wheatley]

Of course it's wanted

[mrpijey]

Yeah, a proper dump and scan of it would be quite interesting . I believe they released several Bleem! discs too that were tied to specific games...

[Threat]

Yeah, a proper dump and scan of it would be quite interesting . I believe they released several Bleem! discs too that were tied to specific games...

Not on the PC, that was when they decided to do a dreamcast version called bleemcast, which was unfortunate as they picked another platform that was then killed before they launched it. Never had a dreamcast so never saw bleemcast discs, but I heard they started off planning a single disk, then they reduced the plans down to a game pack, then down to a single disc per game realising each game would require unique coding. Each one was sold for a few dollars and only about 3 were made before they went bust. Around the year 2010 a Russian hacker managed to crack the protection on one of the discs so it could be copied to a CD-R and I believe modified to try and run other games.

The PC version, the key contains nothing but copy protection data as audio tracks (all with massive errors) and track 1 is a data track that included a copy of DirectX. The CD was pre-order when I got it and it was shipped with a $1 value. I think it's worth including a scan of the surface of this CD too so you can see the physical marks on the data surface.

The original developer Randy Linden was renown for making copy protections difficult to beat (Dragons Lair on the Amiga)

As a note for the PC version, the actual emulator can still be downloaded:

http://web.archive.org/web/200105150825 ... bleem.com/

[Darkstar]

Why would anyone want to use Bleem! when there's tons of better and more compatible PSX emulators out there (pSX, PCSX, ePSXe, MESS, ...)?

[mrpijey]

Why would anyone want to use Windows 1.01 when there's tons of better and more compatible operating systems out there (Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, ...)?

[Darkstar]

Yes, yes, I can understand it for Windows, or Operating Systems in general. And maybe for other things that are products in their own right (Office etc.). You can play around with software that looks totally different from what we have today. You can try to find little things or Easter Eggs in it. You can even say "hey I want to see how people back then actually worked with this stuff".

But Bleem was a (not very compatible and quite slow) emulator for a different system. Other than a reaction like "oh look at how crappy emulation was back then" you won't get anything meaningful out of it, because, well, it's an emulator. You can still find easter eggs, look at what kind of games people enjoyed back then, etc. by using a current emulator (and the experience will be even better because it emulates these old systems fare more accurate than bleem! ever did)

But well I guess there's a use-case for everthing. I have tons of old zSNES, Snes9x and ePSXe builds (even betas) somewhere (probably others too), maybe someone wants to take a look at these too? If there's interest I could upload them...

[Threat]

It's about preservation.

Also I think some people are a little unfair towards bleem. It may not be the best general purpose emulator, and it's designed that relied on Win9x kernel was bad, the games it did run ran well and enhanced by PC hardware. Bare in mind it was written in almost 100% assembler (have you tryed programming Direct3D in pure assembler?)

It also did not use the official sony bios (which would have been illegal) so they had to program there own from scratch.

Yes, yes, I can understand it for Windows, or Operating Systems in general. And maybe for other things that are products in their own right (Office etc.). You can play around with software that looks totally different from what we have today. You can try to find little things or Easter Eggs in it. You can even say "hey I want to see how people back then actually worked with this stuff".

But Bleem was a (not very compatible and quite slow) emulator for a different system. Other than a reaction like "oh look at how crappy emulation was back then" you won't get anything meaningful out of it, because, well, it's an emulator. You can still find easter eggs, look at what kind of games people enjoyed back then, etc. by using a current emulator (and the experience will be even better because it emulates these old systems fare more accurate than bleem! ever did)

But well I guess there's a use-case for everthing. I have tons of old zSNES, Snes9x and ePSXe builds (even betas) somewhere (probably others too), maybe someone wants to take a look at these too? If there's interest I could upload them...

[Darkstar]

It's about preservation.

Also I think some people are a little unfair towards bleem. It may not be the best general purpose emulator, and it's designed that relied on Win9x kernel was bad, the games it did run ran well and enhanced by PC hardware. Bare in mind it was written in almost 100% assembler (have you tryed programming Direct3D in pure assembler?)

Yeah, back then you tried to get every last bit of speed out of the computer. But just read the comments on Slashdot, for example (link here) to see that it did not work very well (people complaining that the compatibility is bad, the protection is picky about the CD/DVD drive, and worst of all the Direct3D mode is slower than software rendering).

Of course, back then, there were no better alternatives available (people even claimed that emulating a PlayStation would be "impossible" and stuff like that), but around 2001/2002 people started actively suggesting to use ePSXe instead of bleem because it reportedly worked better in many cases (I didn't care much about PSX emulation back then so I can't tell if it's true or not)

Anyway, sorry for the long history lesson

Too bad it's probably still impossible today to accurately dump the bleem! cd (they used a very nasty protection scheme, which didn't keep the hackers from just cracking the EXE and be done with it, but the actual CD is very much non-dumpable even with A120%, at least that's what I've been told by someone who had one of these CDs and tried very hard to duplicate/crack them )

[Threat]

It can be dumped

If done correct

[mrpijey]

It's about preservation.

Bingo!

Yes, current emulators has surpassed it by miles by now, but Bleem was basically the first fully functional PSX emulator and it got a lot of attention, especially from the by-then sleeping lawyers at Sony.

But, if this is the original disc, and dumped and scanned then we'll treat it as the commercial and original software it is!

[CodeAsm]

I should probebly google it first, but is the protection technically documented somewhere? I love those docs to read on a bus-trip. and preservation and documenting protection schemes are interesting too

(I did a quick Google, and well, difficult to copy if not impossible, Russians leaking some software but their forum off-line)

[QBiN]

Hmm... I have an original copy of this as well. Although I don't know which version it is. I'll pop it an an older Win9x machine and see. Wouldn't hurt to have more than one person working on this, would it? Especially if our versions are different.

[Threat]

Did yours come in a case with a cover with a yellow background or a black background? Mine was the original black.

Mine is uploaded now, with scanes. Tested working and I've also included a rar file with the Bleem! 1.5a setup, and the 2x1.6 Beta's in it.

[mrpijey]

Your bleem! 1.5a exe differed with the one I downloaded through the web.archive... I added both to the release either way and uploaded it to the FTP! Would be interesting to compare this to QBiN's copy as well and see if it's identical.

[InsaneNutter]

Bleem was pretty awesome at the time, I always wanted a PlayStation back then, however Bleem was a great substitute that let me play Circuit Breakers on my 300mhz Pentium 2 PC. PlayStation games actually looked a lot better than on my friends actual PlayStation too!

Sure this is obsolete now, however as a 13 year old kid myself and my friends thought Bleem was amazing, we have some good memories of it!