ECM And APE Guide

[Zorlon]

ECM And APE Guide

Needed Files (All of these are free tools and you do not need to pay for any of them)

• 7-zip Extract *.7z and *.rar
• ecm tools extracting and creating *.ecm
• Monkey's Audio *.ape to *.wav software
• change wav to bin.zip extract this to your working folder (it's a batch file for renaming all wav files to bin)
• DAEMON Tools Lite virtual CD drive
• ImgBurn for burning and re dumping

Extra's

• Cue's and Sbi's for any games missing cue sheets, sbi's can be used to aid hacking protection

This guide will cover all the above software used and point to downloads of the software but you may already have the software installed on your machine so just skip the download and install parts


7-zip
Dealing with 7z and rar files


Go to the 7-zip site and download and run the version designed for your OS.

Once installed you can then right click on rar and 7z files and select extract here or extract files if you wish to choose your own output folder

Note that some of these contain 7z files inside of rar files, both of these will need extracting

Do his now with your downloaded game (do one game disc at a time)


ecm tools
Dealing with ecm files


Download ecm tools and extract this into the same folder that you extracted the above, you can use the same right click method and choose extract files then choose the same folder as the game you extracted.

Now you should have extra files with you game files including unecm, you can now drag your ecm file and drop it on unecm.

Unecm should now run automatcly, this can take a small amount of time so just wait for it to complete.

once fully unecmed you should either have a *.bin file or a *.img file, at this point you may delete the old ecm file.


Monkey's Audio
Dealing with ape files, you may skip this totally if your game does not have ape files


Download and install Monkey's Audio (MAC)

Run it, now you will see on the left there is a big monkey head that says compress under it, hit the down arrow button on the right of the monkey head and hit Decompress, the Monkey head should change into what looks like a box with arrows pointing away from it

Now drap and drop all ape files into the big space under "File Name", now you can hit that Decompress button (picture of a box with arros pointing away from it), just wait for it to complete

Now not only should you have ape files in the folder but now there should be a wav version of every ape file you ran through the program, the ape's can be removed now and you can close the software.

Download and extract "change wav to bin.zip" and run "change wav to bin.bat", this does exactly what is says, it should change the file extention of all the wav files to bin, to make them work with cue files


Cue Missing
Dealing with games that have no cue or ccd file included.


Download Cue's and Sbi's and open with 7-zip

From there you can find the folder that matches your game, you are best off sorting by name in 7-zip.

Once you find the folder just double click it like you would with any other folder in that folder you should find the missing cue file and maybe an sbi file.

Drag and drop the cue file to the same folder the other game files are in.

You can close 7-zip now.


Faking CD hardware
Make your computer think you have a new CD/DVD/HD-Rom drive with a disc inserted


Download DAEMON Tools Lite and install it

(you may need to reset for this software during the install but the software will tell you if you need to do this)

Once fully installed there should be a small icon on the right of your task bar a round icon with a single lightning bolt going through it, if not run it manually the first time

Right click on the Daemon Tools Lite icon on the task bar and move your mouse to Virtual CD/DVD-ROM then move the mouse again to Device 0: [Drive leter] No Media, move the mouse once more to Mount Image and left click on it.

Now find the folder you have extracted and converted everything in and select the cue or ccd file and click on Open


Emulation with ePSXe
Setup ePSXe to read from Virtual drives


Run ePSXe, Hit Config, Cdrom then Configure.

On this screen make sure the drive leter is the same as the virtual drives, default is FirstCDRom but that should be your actual CD-Rom Drive not the Virtual one.

Once you have this setup just click OK till your back on the main program, now to run the disc you have mounted, in ePSXe you just need to hit File then Run CDROM


Burning to CD-Rom
Creating a bin+cue CD image from the Virtual drive using imgburn and burn the image.


NOTE:- if the game does not use wav/ape you can skip steps marked * and make sure the cd image is not mounted

Download and install ImgBurn then run it

*Choose Create image file from disc, next under Source choose the virtual drive, unlike your actual drive it has a very strange looking name but the drive leter matches up fine.

*Look at the Destination and change it if your not happy at where it will save by hitting the small folder icon with the spy glass at the end of it.

*Just hit that big green play button and wait for it to complete, shouldn't take that long then hit OK when it say it's done.

*Now thats done you can burn the new image file, click Mode on the top menu and choose Ez-Mode Picker.

Click Write image file to disc.

Under Source hit the folder icon with the spy glass at the end and choose your new cue file and hit Open.

Under Destination make sure your burning drive is selected, this should be selected by default though.

Under Settings change Write Speed to 1x, this will make the software burn at the slowest speed, though this will almost always be faster than 1x.

Time to hit that big green play button, you are given extra options while this burns, I'll leave that up to you to choose what you want the software to do after it completes it's burn.

Once done just hit the big OK and quit the software if you didn't tell it to do so automaticly








Thats all for the guide, for now, hope this helps.