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The DVD player is encrypted with MagicGate, so you'd have compatibility for regular DVDs... I don't think any real game uses aMagicGate encryption though.
I know that system 2x6 consoles use a startup card with an encrypted program and its most likely a kelf file. 


 It might be possible to dump them from a real 246 though I'm not sure.

Those arcade machines use a security dongle which most likely contains an encrypted elf KELF. I can't really say much about the 246 other than it is an arcade machine based on the PlayStation 2 Hardware. 

Adding support for kelf files might help with software that is installed on the hard drive. I don't know if the emulator even supports them or not. I know that the secrman module is used with these files.

http://www.lukasz.dk/mirror/cdvdmania/secrman.html


The keys that were posted can be found online with a little bit of searching. It should be noted that those keys only work with retail PlayStation 2 models and will not work with the system 246. 

There are also other people that have released open source tools that allow you to work with KELF files but I don't really know much about their creation or anything like that perhaps you could do some diving into that.

Is the source code to the bios dumping utility on the main website available anywhere?
(04-10-2019, 06:08 PM)gtgamer468 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't really want anyone taking this risk, but say that MagicGate was able to be decrypted. How would this affect compability of certain games? I was thinking that with MagicGate, we would be steps closer to a more perfect emulator. As I said earlier, if it does causes some legal issues, then just forget it.

MagicGate appears in two places, both are attempts to mitigate PS2 data/game replication:
  • Memory card data on the physical cards is encrypted. If you try to stick a PS2 memcard into a Raspi or Arduino, you will be reading encrypted garbage.
  • DVD drive. Though I do not know the details, some process was used to verify integrity of discs. This is why bootleg copies won't work on a real PS2 without some sort of soft/hard mod to the PS2 itself. It is also alleged that this is part of why PCSX2 can't read normal DVDs like the PS2 could, however I am both less familiar with that and skeptical of whether that is the real reason or not.
As for how being able to reverse MagicGate may help us... Well it probably won't.

If it's true that DVD playback in PCSX2 is held up by it... Ok, there may be an application there. Otherwise, there is nothing that is currently limited by it.

All memory card content in PCSX2 is raw and unencrypted. Save file dumps off a PS2 are done by using homebrew software, which at some level will be using the system calls that the PS2 BIOS was built to provide for games. These calls will decrypt the data automatically and hand it over to the requesting program, at which point the program can simply dump it off to a USB device. Remember, the purpose of MagicGate was to prevent data from being stripped directly off cards or otherwise read by external devices, not necessarily to prevent PS2 software from reading them unless explicitly given permission. In PCSX2 then, we just casually ignore that MagicGate exists, since all our data we push into the program (memcards, game dumps, etc) are not encrypted, and we don't want them to be written as encrypted either.

And I'm gonna try to inb4 something here, because I can see the response coming already: "well if the PS2 BIOS has the routines to do the decryption, why don't we just take those and copy them into PCSX2?"

Well if that's the case, why don't we copy the entire BIOS while we're at it? Well we have rules against that, cause it's kind of super illegal. At least, in the parts of the world that respect copyright law.
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