Tutorial: How to create and/or burn a Dreamcast disc in 5 minutes

[Christuserloeser]

This tutorial has three sections:
1 - General Info you should know.
2 - Burning a .CDI with BootDreams
3 - How to create and burn your own DC image with BootDreams


1General Info:

Media:
You'll need CDRs. Best are 80min/700Mbyte. CDRWs and other media are -NOT- supported.

You do -NOT- need a modded DC. About any Dreamcast will work with CDRs. Very, very few won't.


Format:
Standard in Dreamcast software is the DiscJuggler .CDI format. Nero's .NRG format would not work on MAC and LINUX, also any Nero version newer than 5.5 had its problems with the DC format.

Most downloads for Dreamcast come as .ZIP or .RAR files. WinRAR should help you with unzipping/unraring:
http://www.winrar-rog.com/eindex.html



2 Burning a .CDI file with BootDreams:

To burn a *.CDI file, it's recommend to use BootDreams' CDI-burner. BootDreams is VERY easy to use and it's for free:

Download here: http://dchelp.dcemulation.org/


1. Download BootDreams and install it to e.g. C:/BootDreams/

2. Download the image you'd like to burn and unzip/unrar it somewhere, e.g. to C:/

3. Start BootDreams and choose "CDI Burner". Now click on "Browse" and point BootDreams to the CDI you would like to burn.

4. Click on "Burn CDI Image". That's it.


Other:
Nero Burning ROM isn't recommend for Dreamcast software but Alcohol120% (in TAO mode) works good too. Download the free trial version here:
http://trial.alcohol-soft.com/en/download_120.php



3 How to create and burn your own DC image with BootDreams:

1. Download BootDreams and install it to e.g. C:/BootDreams/

2. Download the emulator/game/app you would like to burn and put it in a dedicated folder, e.g. C:/BootDreams/SNES4ALL/

3. Now unzip/unrar your emulator/game/app into that same folder. The 1ST_READ.BIN contains the actual DC programme.

4. Start BootDreams and point it to C:/BootDreams/SNES4ALL/. It will then guide you trough the process. I recommend the 'CDRecord' method.

[moi]

great tutorial: thumbs up!
should definitelly be added to a FAQ-section!

[moi]

great tutorial: thumbs up!
should definitelly be added to a FAQ-section!

[Cid Highwind]

Here's a small tutorial on an alternative way to create an emulator disc:

1. Get DCHakker and burn it onto a CDr, this will be your emulator/homebrew bootdisc from now on. Personally I suggest getting the discjuggler image over the Nero one.

2. Grab the 'plain files' versions (binaries) of your homebrew games and emulators you want to have on the disc. If zipped, unzip them and rename the 1st_read.bin file to a recognizable 5 letter word, include version number of the emulator as well. Example: S4allv3

3.Make sure you have your roms at hand, putting them on the same disc as the emulator will save you the hassle of switching to a third disc.

4.Open a CD burning app that will allow you to make your own compilations (Nero will do)

5. Important: Make sure you create a multisession disc. If a new version of an emulator will be released, you can add it to this very same disc, so also keep in mind that you will not finalize the disc.

6. Create subfolders for emulators that only take one file, it will keep it more organised. Certain homebrew games have a folder structure of their own so I suggest putting their binaries and folders in the root of the disc.

FYI: Dreamses likes to have its roms in the /roms folder, Nester uses the /games folder by default. Be sure to read readme files of other emulators to find out if they require a certain rom folder.

7. Make sure the 'finalize disc' option is unchecked, then burn your disc.


Now you can pop in your DCHakker disc, wait till it's done loading (you'll know it's done when you see the files of the DCHakker disc in the onscreen browser). Then take out the DCHakker disc and put in your homebrew disc. Point at Rescan, hit A, and you can select the program you want to run.



PS. I do not know if homebrew games with their own folder structure will work if the whole program is put in a subfolder as shown in the image above, maybe someone can confirm it works?

Fixed your picture. - fackue

[72da9]

1. Create a folder on your hard drive for your emulation disc. I.E. "NES".

2. Place the plain files 1st_READ.BIN & IP.BIN in this folder. If there is no IP.BIN, you can create one by taking an existing ip.bin file and using dx-ip4win08b to edit the ip.bin file to locate the 1st_read.bin file. This creates the selfboot portion of the disc.

3. Make a roms sub directory for the roms. Typical rule is to max out at 128 roms per directory.

4. I use a program called Selfboot. Once this program is opened up, locate your directory. I.E. "NES". Then in the window option I click on the choice to make a *.cdi image for discjuggler. Then click on the *.cdi button to create your *.cdi image with this program. It takes a bit to make the image. When done the image will be located in the Selfboot directory. Usually called "image.cdi" or your directory's name. I.E. "NES.CDI"

5. I use discjuggler v3.5 to burn the created image to disc. That's it, error free and easy to do.

[milksheik]

In case anyone is interested, I have written a script that can burn most CDI images on Linux. It is based on cdirip 0.6.3 and cdrecord (I use version Cdrecord-Clone 2.01.01a04).

To use the script, just type "burndc-cdi {name-of-CDI-image}" in a shell. You may have to adjust the device specification for the burner in the script. To find the ID of your burner, try

Code

cdrecord dev=ATA -scanbus

or

Code

cdrecord -scanbus

The script is attached. Save it to a file, remove the ".txt" and make it executable.

Use at your own risk

[fackue]

Does it work? It seems like you're burning the second session as multiseesion. I'd like to see some possible input on there, like for example displaying the drive IDs then asking for their's, CD label and burn speed.

[milksheik]

It worked for me for about 5 out of 6 cdis I tried. I'm too lazy to add more comfort, but I would definitely like to hear any ideas about how to increase the success ratio

[fackue]

I would (and this is how BootDreams works) check if a audio file exists after ripping the image, if it does you burn the audio with multisession on, then burn the data session with it off. If it doesn't, burn the first data session with multisession on, then burn the second data session with multisession off.

The image mostly likely that didn't work for you was audio/data.

[milksheik]

So basically you say, burn the last session with mulitsession off, correct? Would it have the same effect when I just put "cdrecord -fix" at the end of everything?

I'll play with these options next time I encounter an image that doesn't work.

[fackue]

CDRecord -fix wouldn't do anything.

The image you burned before was probably a audio\data CD. This CD image is audio\data.