Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Arcade Collecting => Merit/JVL Touchscreen => Topic started by: Driftek on July 30, 2024, 05:48:53 pm

Title: Megatouch Force 2004.5 Hard drive clone
Post by: Driftek on July 30, 2024, 05:48:53 pm
I cloned the old IDE drive inside of my model: KOV-105-104 Merit mega touch to a SSD and used a converter with the jumper set to master to boot the drive using the IDE cable. I verified that the serial numbers match after the clone. It boots up, but it tells me that my key is invalid for the software. If I put the old IDE drive in then it makes it past the key check. Is the hardware key locked to a hard drive? What am I missing here?
Title: Re: Megatouch Force 2004.5 Hard drive clone
Post by: Megatouchmike on July 30, 2024, 10:32:48 pm
The key isn't locked to a drive, but there is a hard drive model check in Force 2004.  The game reads the model from /proc/ide/ide0/hda/model, so it's easy to bypass.

Adding something like this in a boot script should do the trick:

Code: [Select]
echo MERIT0011 > /tmp/hd
mount -n -o bind /tmp/hd /proc/ide/ide0/hda/model
Title: Re: Megatouch Force 2004.5 Hard drive clone
Post by: Driftek on July 31, 2024, 05:30:03 pm
Thank you! I’ll give that a shot
Title: Re: Megatouch Force 2004.5 Hard drive clone
Post by: Driftek on July 31, 2024, 06:10:18 pm
The key isn't locked to a drive, but there is a hard drive model check in Force 2004.  The game reads the model from /proc/ide/ide0/hda/model, so it's easy to bypass.

Adding something like this in a boot script should do the trick:

Code: [Select]
echo MERIT0011 > /tmp/hd
mount -n -o bind /tmp/hd /proc/ide/ide0/hda/model

That did the trick! Thank you.
Title: Re: Megatouch Force 2004.5 Hard drive clone
Post by: lilshawn on August 04, 2024, 02:32:02 pm
the "merit0011" custom hard drive model check was removed beginning with the 2005 software year. the installer software will complain of a non-merit drive being installed (buy a merit drive for reliability and performance and whatnots message) but will still install after a short delay of displaying the message.