Dug my Dreamcast out of storage..

[Ginza]

...and went on an EBay rampage, grabbing some of the titles I'd long since sold. Just glad I kept both shenmue titles and a handful of others!

Anyway, I'm considering purchasing a few import titles, but although I know I need a boot disc (and woe is me, but I think I threw out the one that came with dreamcast magazine...argh), I have no clue what to get. I sometimes see action replay or DC-X (is that its name?) pop up on ebay, but not purchased anything yet. I know you can make your own boot disc, but don't have a clue about doing that (and I tend to get confused on this as I end up reading about emulation discs too, which I'm guessing aren't the same thing)?

Anyway, thanks for any help you can give me. In a nutshell, I just want a boot disc to play imports - nothing fancy :) Oh, and if it *is* possible to make your own boot disc, do they damage the laser in any way? (or does having to read the imported discs damage it either)?

/ edit to add - I checked under the machine, and it has a "1" in a circle on it. I read this can be important somewhere.

[beetroot bertie]

The DC-X is an excellent boot disc for playing imports and worth it if you can get it at a price you're happy with.

Other alternatives (if you can find them) would be the CDX Demo Disc (not the same as DC-X), the Utopia Boot Disc or the Gameshark Disc. If you don't fancy messing around learning how to burn them then the DC-X is a good bet although I have issues with it using a VGA Box and my LCD TV whereby it doesn't display anything on screen. It still works but makes any changing of options impossible. That said it worked fine with the same DC and VGA Box on a CRT Monitor so I'm guessing it might be something to do with the TV some how? If you don't have a VGA box then it's irrelevant anyway.

I severely doubt that boot discs damage the laser as the DC only has to read data from the disc for a short amount of time and then you're swapping in a GD-ROM DC Disc. Imports are just GD-ROMs too so they do no less wear and tear than any native region DC discs you have.

The 1 just means your DC is capable of playing homebrew and CD-Rs. If your DC is PAL then it should be fine anyway as I don't thing and PAL models were modified late in the DCs life.

[Ginza]

The DC-X is an excellent boot disc for playing imports and worth it if you can get it at a price you're happy with.

Other alternatives (if you can find them) would be the CDX Demo Disc (not the same as DC-X), the Utopia Boot Disc or the Gameshark Disc. If you don't fancy messing around learning how to burn them then the DC-X is a good bet although I have issues with it using a VGA Box and my LCD TV whereby it doesn't display anything on screen. It still works but makes any changing of options impossible. That said it worked fine with the same DC and VGA Box on a CRT Monitor so I'm guessing it might be something to do with the TV some how? If you don't have a VGA box then it's irrelevant anyway.

I severely doubt that boot discs damage the laser as the DC only has to read data from the disc for a short amount of time and then you're swapping in a GD-ROM DC Disc. Imports are just GD-ROMs too so they do no less wear and tear than any native region DC discs you have.

The 1 just means your DC is capable of playing homebrew and CD-Rs. If your DC is PAL then it should be fine anyway as I don't thing and PAL models were modified late in the DCs life.

hi! yeah, its a PAL machine - i'll keep an eye out for the boot discs you mentioned. i'm hopeless at burning discs so i probably wouldn't get very far with that!

[fackue]

You can download the CDX demo at the bottom of this post (http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=85751).

BootDreams (http://dchelp.dcemulation.org/?BootDreams) should be more than happy to burn it for you.

[beetroot bertie]

It's a dead link fella :(

[fackue]

Hmm, I'll see if I can find it anywhere.

[fackue]

It was at Boob! in plain files. A new CDI was uploaded there. I'll attach it here as well.