Burning CDI's

[Grain]

Hello, new to this forum, I like what I see! In honor of the 10th Ann of the Dreamcast, I put aside my HD consoles and bot a used Dreamcast off ebay, my first! I've read at least a dozen guides on burning discs, and watched another dozen youtube vids. I've used DiscJuggler and 120 Alcohol, mounting the cdi's in Daemon and doing a disc to disc copy with Nero, but I'm only running about a 20% success rate. Got over 30 coasters in the last 5 days. Some work, some don't, doesn't seem to be any method to the madness. Tried HP media and Taiyo Yuden. Is it possible my used Deamcast has a week laser? At a bit of a loss, as I'm quite sure I'm doing it right. Either my cdi's are bad (lots are from Coolrom.com), something wrong with the banged up old Dreamcast (but when it can read a disc it works great). When they don't work, they show up as audio cd's. Anyone got any suggesions or tips? Thanks

edit w/ more info
I'm using 700MB 80min cd-r's, the free vesion of DiscJuggler, and the trial version of Alcohol. I'm a beta tester for the burning program ImgBurn, which some of you may use for your DVD's & BD's. Unfortunately it won't burn cdi's. I've used it exclusevly for the past 4ish years since DVDDecrypter was closed, and while pretty good with a burner I'm not overly familiar with other burning software.

[Gary_b]

I'm a beta tester for the burning program ImgBurn, which some of you may use for your DVD's & BD's. Unfortunately it won't burn cdi's.

why won't imgburn burn CDIs? .CDI is listed under the supported file extensions. i have been wondering why it doesn't work for a while now.

anyway i will try to answer your question, you could have bad ISOs. or they may have been intended for emulators or something? you would have to point me to each specific game file for me to test them in order to rule out it being faulty.

[Smokexz]

Burn with disc juggler:

http://psopalace.schtserv.com/downloads/dj4_demo.zip

Then hit new then click Burn CD and DVD images then do the following:
1. Mount the .CDI file
2. Go to the advanced tab
3. Click the down box and set mode to MODE 2
4. Click RAW WRITE
5. Set write speed at lowest possible
6. Hit burn and within 20-30minutes you should have the disc ready

Most games are auto-boot(meaning they start without having to use another disc) I have not had a game that isn't auto boot and I have tried a lot of games
Crazy Taxi
Quake 3
PSO PAL V2
Typing of the Dead
Sonic Adventure 2
Soul Calibur
Half-life
Sonic Shuffle

All these games I have tried and I can confirm that they should start with out the other disc(I don't even know what the other disc is called because I have never run into the problem)

ENJOY.

[Smokexz]

Also want to inform you the reason your disc was read as audio is because you most likely burned it with discjuggler as audio mode... changing it to MODE2 will make it a dreamcast game.


Just remember mount the game before you change the mode or else the mode will revert back to audio.

[Grain]

Also want to inform you the reason your disc was read as audio is because you most likely burned it with discjuggler as audio mode... changing it to MODE2 will make it a dreamcast game.
Just remember mount the game before you change the mode or else the mode will revert back to audio.

When I use DiscJuggler I switch to Mode 2 and Raw. That's why I was a little stumped on my pile of CD's that show up as audio discs. I'm going to try the version of DJ from your link, it appears a little older than the one from Discjugglers site.

[Grain]

I'm a beta tester for the burning program ImgBurn, which some of you may use for your DVD's & BD's. Unfortunately it won't burn cdi's.

why won't imgburn burn CDIs? .CDI is listed under the supported file extensions. i have been wondering why it doesn't work for a while now.

anyway i will try to answer your question, you could have bad ISOs. or they may have been intended for emulators or something? you would have to point me to each specific game file for me to test them in order to rule out it being faulty.

Are you sure it's one of the supported extensions? Unfortunately there's not a great demand for or requests for support of the cdi extesion, so I doubt that LUK will add it.

One game I'd like you to test, if you would be so kind, is Silent Scope, downloaded from http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtop ... =22&t=1003

[Gary_b]

Burn with disc juggler:
Then hit new then click Burn CD and DVD images then do the following:
1. Mount the .CDI file
2. Go to the advanced tab
3. Click the down box and set mode to MODE 2
4. Click RAW WRITE
5. Set write speed at lowest possible
6. Hit burn and within 20-30minutes you should have the disc ready

not to be rude but most of this is a huge waist of time. im guessing that Grain is using the newest version of DJ, version 6? anyway i have burnt a bunch of tools, games and web browser for testing here at DC talk. i also have been using DJ to burn Dreamcast related images for a long time. back when i first started i would do as you guys are. i would play with the settings thinking i would get a better result, but sadly this is almost never the case. for pretty much every working .CDI the default settings in DJ v6 demo will work fine.


for example the Discjuggler demo will always burn at the lowest speed. this is because they want people to buy the full version to get the higher speeds.

as for using raw write or what mode to use? well, you have to select burn disc image when beginning the burning process. by doing that you are automatically telling DJ that this is not an audio CD. getting the CD screen is normal for a broken game, something went wrong in the burn or the game was not formatted to be self boot. it has been a very long time since i have seen a non self boot ISO floating around though. another thing people often say to do is to select over burn. this option might have been important in the past? but i have not seen any issues with images larger than 700 MBs. so it too seems like a waist of time.

Grain where did you get the disc images that you are trying to burn? are they from DC-talk? if so what games have failed on you? if you have not tried the images from the download section here, you should give them a try!

[Grain]

Grain where did you get the disc images that you are trying to burn? are they from DC-talk? if so what games have failed on you? if you have not tried the images from the download section here, you should give them a try!

One game I'd like you to test, if you would be so kind, is Silent Scope, downloaded from http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtop ... =22&t=1003

[Gary_b]

Are you sure it's one of the supported extensions? Unfortunately there's not a great demand for or requests for support of the cdi extesion, so I doubt that LUK will add it.

i thought it was one of the ones listed, maybe i am thinking of another program. i mainly used imgburn for sega CD games, so i could be wrong.


i am looking at silent scope now.

[Gary_b]

i just got done downloading and burning Silent Scope. it worked flawlessly for me. here is the process that i used.

after downloading the game from rapid share i placed the .rar in a folder on my desktop. i unpacked it using 7zip by using the extract here option. once i had the .CDI i opened Discjuggler and i went to file/new then i selected "burn disc image" from the window that popped open. next using the source tab i navigated to the folder where i stored the CDI image and i selected it. then i placed a blank CD in and started burning the game. DJ warned me that i was using the demo version and that it is in evaluation mode so it would only burn at the lowest speeds, then DJ asked me if i wanted to continue. i hit yes, that's it, a complete step by step of how i just successfully burned Silent scope.

this is one of Tux's files. i had a problem with one of his before too. are you using 7zip or winrar to unpack it? it seems when i had a problem it was related to using winrar.