Incomprehensible Emulation

ADVICE AND HELP

Finding and Downloading Software

There is a lot of software available on the net for most of these emulators. Finding it, and recognising it for what it is, is often not that easy though. The first requirement is patience - you will have to load many web pages that are completely incomprehensible, and follow links and links that you do not understand at all. This is the only way. I suggest starting off with a search engine ( possibly yahoo.co.jp ) and patiently following links.

Many Japanese emu-heads make use of free hosting sites such as GeoCities and Xoom. Unfortunately the admins of these sites just have to get the faintest hint of emulator software and they bump the site immediately. So camouflage is the order of the day.

ALTERING FILE EXTENSIONS.

The simplest form of camouflage is to change the file extension. So some files that look like "innocent.doc" just need renaming to "naughty.zip" and all is well.

EMBEDDING FILES.

The next form of camouflage is to embed your software file within another file. The most popular type of file is a JPEG. If you merely append "naughty.zip" onto the back of "innocent.jpg" the graphic will display correctly to the unsuspecting admin, and you just need to strip the image off the front with a hex editor.

EMBEDDING FILES PART 2.

Some clever people have even developed a utility to embed files. The program is called "JPEG Direct Annex". Sadly this utility does not merely append the file at the end, but appends it in chunks, with interpolated bytes representing each chunk's length. To unpack your file you need to use this utility. This utility can also encrypt your file, and you will not manage to extract it without the password. An ambition is to write a utility to unpack these files - One day!

EMBEDDING FILES PART 3.

You might notice, when loading a web page, that a tiny crappy little picture is taking ages to download, with your browser showing a size far larger than you would expect for the graphic. Well you just hit a jackpot! Right-click on the graphic, save it, and take a look. Chances are you have an embedded file!

EMBEDDING FILES PART 4

File hiding mechanisms are proliferating faster than rabbits on viagra. Here are some more notes on extracting hidden files.

RECOGNISING EMBEDDED FILES.

  • GIF files start with "GIF" and end with H"003B".
  • JPEG files start with H"FFD8" and end on H"FFD9".
  • ZIP files begin with "PK"
  • LHA/LZH files have at offset 2 ( ie: the third byte ) the pattern "-lh?-" where the "?" represents the compression version
  • RAR files and segments start with "Rar!".

CHOPPING UP FILES.

The GeoCities Chainsaw Massacre. Many free hosting sites either do not allow large files or move them to inaccessible servers. So our resourceful emu-heads chop the files into pieces. You might find a series of files along the lines of:

innocent1.doc ( 290,000 bytes )
innocent2.doc ( 290,000 bytes )
innocent3.doc ( 35,768 bytes )

These might be RAR format segments, or merely a chopped file - use a hex editor to see which. To put a chopped file back together use MS-DOS:
copy /b innocent1.doc+innocent2.doc+innocent3.doc naughty.lzh


LHA/LZH Rather than Zip

The Japanese especially have a propensity to use LHA/LZH file compression rather than ZIP. And the problem is that the common LHA versions are not able to recognise the newer compression types in these files. The utility I use is called "LHASA", so look to use this if you are having problems.


Shady Characters

Really - dealing with invalid characters. You have downloaded your innocent file, you have stripped off the graphic, you have a lovely clean .lzh file, and it refuses to unpack! Most probably this is because the double-byte character set used when the file was created contains invalid single bytes on your system. The best answer I have is to try to unpack it on a Mac, which has few qualms about how you name your files.


Shady Characters Part 2

You are pretty sure you have an unencrypted JDA file, but you cannot get JDA to extract the file. The problem is in all likelihood that the embedded file has a filename containing invalid characters. You can fix this with a hex editor - here's how.

Oh Bother! I have no WINNLSEnableIME!

Blast and drat! This appears to be a call to a library procedure that is only in Japanese versions of Windows. It has an equivalent in English versions. Download the iP6 patch package (thank you to whoever first wrote this for the EX68 emu) and modify it for whichever executable is giving you the trouble. Unfortunately at least one emulator seems to do a self-check and detects the change, assuming a crack or virus. Oh well, worth a shot!

UPDATE!!!

I got this most helpful and informative message from Terunaga Matsumoto:

I noticed on your page that you list a problem with WINNLS.DLL and a patch to get programs that use it to run without. There's a simpler route: Otakuworld.com has written a driver for North American and European editions of Windows that replaces the need for both WINNLS.DLL and IMM.DLL, and should be placed in the c:\windows\system directory.

You can get the file here - 1.3Kb.


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