Dreamcast-Talk.com

Gary_b wrote:I would use IMGburn to back up a disc. the problem is if you have old backups you should look into the newer ones out. There are people who have improved the images and added better dummy files, enabled VGA in some etc.

I don't know if it's my burner or what, but I've had zero luck with IMGburn. I do use VGA so I downloaded a few patched games that I was able to get to work with discjuggler.

However, there are still some games I can't get to work. Should I do Mode 2336 instead of 2352 in Discjuggler? And what is the difference between the two settings?

When I burned all these games years ago it seemed so much simpler lol.

I only use IMGburn to make a disc image. I use DJ to burn them. For some reason IMGburn does not burn CDI's correctly. I have played with the settings in Dj before but I am pretty sure my settings are defult right now and they worked for the last 10 or so burns that I have done without failing. My DiscJuggler version 6 settings are set to as fallows.
Mode, Audio.
Offset, 0
Block, 2352
TOC, CD-DA

It very well could be your burning. If you can try a different burning that would be a good way to rule that out. It could also be the media that you are using. I personally have not had any issues using various different kinds of blank media, but others say they have.

I use the imgburn linked in the DL section at dreamcastlive and it has worked with everything Ive thrown at it.. which admittedly isnt much.. Ive only burned like 6 discs for Dreamcast...

Gary_b wrote:Also you wont be able to play them on a Dreamcast.

If they're backups, then you already have a working CD-R to use. The point of the backup is to be able to replace the CD-R when it fails.

Gary_b wrote:Hard drives are pretty cheap these days and you can store a bunch of roms on a 500 to 1TB drive.

Yeah, but they also have moving parts, so they're more likely to fail than optical media. BD-R in particular is pretty robust, so it would not only take fewer discs to store CDIs this way, but it would be more reliable than burning multiple CD-Rs.

Of course it's a good idea to check your backups now and then to make sure they still work, regardless of whether you use discs or HDDs.

As for how to burn a disc, I suggest trying my guide:

http://psopalace.sylverant.net/dreamcast_burn.html

You can find a download link for this version of DiscJuggler on my site, as well.

Gary_b wrote:I only use IMGburn to make a disc image. I use DJ to burn them. For some reason IMGburn does not burn CDI's correctly. I have played with the settings in Dj before but I am pretty sure my settings are defult right now and they worked for the last 10 or so burns that I have done without failing. My DiscJuggler version 6 settings are set to as fallows.
Mode, Audio.
Offset, 0
Block, 2352
TOC, CD-DA

It very well could be your burning. If you can try a different burning that would be a good way to rule that out. It could also be the media that you are using. I personally have not had any issues using various different kinds of blank media, but others say they have.

Appreciate the insight, man. Those settings are quite different from what I've been using. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes

My backups are not in cdi format. They are broken down bins. Had them for a long time. What's the difference?

I wanted to know that because ReviveDC had the best Dreamcast images for download and they removed of the site theisozone.com. Problem is that many other sites simply hotlinked to this site and all links don't work anymore. I have some of them burned here and I wanted to convert them to be possible to run on SD or IDE, but simply recreating the image doesn't work.

Yes, some games are available online, but most of them are that awful releases back to the 2000's like Echelon, littered with that awful cracktros that make the game don't work or just burst your TV with that loud intro song.

For IDE mod and GDEMU, it's not so aggravating to just download a GDI image, but not only they don't give the option to the player save space with decent quality, but downsampled games work better in SD due to slower speeds of the serial port.

GDEMU connects to the the GD-ROM drive port, so it's actually faster than using a real disc. Serial port limitations only apply to games booted with DreamShell, which uses a different SD adapter that doesn't replace the optical drive.

120% Alcohol with the burn setting set to TAO works for me every time. Not too many people point that out or use it for some reason. I was never able to get Discjuggler or imgburn working

If you have a BBA:
Burn HTTPd-ACK
Boot the HTTPd disc
Swap in your CDR backup
Type BBA IP into PC browser
Download data tracks of CDR
You can usually directly open the .BIN/.ISO is from HTTPd-ACK in ISOBuster, if you can't you have to use ISOFix.exe and guess it's LBA, the most common LBAs are 11702/11700 and 45000. Rarely they're different from that. RDC is usually always 45000

Without BBA.
Insert CDR backup into PC
Use discjuggler to create a new CDI from the disc
Use CDIRip.exe and point it to the CDI
Take note of the LBA values for each track, especially the larger track
Point ISOfix.exe to the larger track and input the noted LBA value from previous step
Open fixed.iso from isofix in ISOBuster
Extract files

Once you extract the files, there are many ways of burning again, but here's one

Get MKISOFS.exe
Input the following command
"mkisofs.exe -C 0,<LBA FROM BEFORE> -V BACKUP_NAME -l -o data.iso c:\path\to\cdr\data"
Assuming the LBA is 11702 and the disc root folder is c:\data, this is the command "mkisofs.exe -C 0,11702 -V BACKUP_NAME -l -o data.iso c:\data"
Then point data.iso to isofix.exe using the LBA from before
Then point fixed.iso to bin2boot.exe
Your new CDI file will be generated

Your method will remove any optimisations made to the disc by using an alphabetical sort order when you create the new ISO, so I wouldn't call it a backup of the original disc.