Guide: Extracting And Recompiling CDI Images

[Zombieatemyneighbor]

I rather make cdi with selfboot. And I already said I don't need to burn another cd.

[mrneo240]

That seems off topic from this thread.

[mistamontiel]

Lawwwwwdy have mercy!@#

Just wants to make his backups. Besta DL those CDIs man there's lots of downsampling maybe hardlinking dupe files and things that may need to be nuked involved so will fat on a CD-R l0l

[Zombieatemyneighbor]

That seems off topic from this thread.

I am not the one who changes the subject. You misunderstood what I said. I was asking him how to find 1st_read.bin. I was showing him the picture of track03.bin via isobuster. I didn't ask for burning the cd. I want to make the cdi with selfboot. I could place it on my laptop's ssd and work on it for the project. I am trying to find 1st_read.bin. My project is to build a new emulator. I am programming C++ language. Dr Teamcast believes that 1st_read.bin exists inside track03.bin. I checked it out. I don't see it.

[mrneo240]

For any GDI yes the file exists in either track 3, 5 or last track.

For any cdi it will be track 2.

This is a fact of the console and isn't really up for debate

[Zombieatemyneighbor]

Thank you for replying, mrneo240. I think you and Dr Teamcast are right about last track. Do you know how to force the last track to show items? I posted one picture of track03.bin via isobuster. You might know what I meant when you see the picture.

[Aleron Ives]

You need to use isofix to pad the LBA to 45000.

[Zombieatemyneighbor]

You need to use isofix to pad the LBA to 45000.

I had to make track03.bin into iso via isobuster and then placed it on isofix. I followed your lba numbers. Now I can see 1st_read.bin. Thank you, Aleron Ives, Dr. Teamcast, and mrneo240! Dr. Teamcast and mrneo240 were right about track03.bin. isofix is an useful tool. How did you know lba is 45000?

I actually closed isofix after I saw the message like found "I forgot a line" 0 repeatly.

[mistamontiel]

Idn't 45000 LBA a very common value

Anywho I cannot even recompile so ignore my post xD

[DR TEAMCAST]

@zombie this isn't a guide for Creating a CDI from scratch, there's a lot of extra steps involved like finding LBA specific hex values in the binary (primitive copy protections), downsampling dreamcast specific formats like ADX audio or SFD video, etc

this is a guide for extracting a working pre-made CDI image for the purpose of modding or research

if you want to make a CDI from scratch, refer to this guide, its how i learned all this
https://pastebin.com/jfFs6jdM

LBA 45000 is the standard LBA from almost all retail GD-ROMs