Can any DC play CD-R back-up's?

[Shingotink]

Has anyone actually seen a DC that does not play CD-R back-up's, my freind says that all versions should play them and that Sega actually started the rumor that newer ones won't play the games.

Can anyone verify this?

[TheMaskedm0m0]

I'm pretty sure most any DC can play CD-Rs, you really should of taken advantage of the SEARCH feature, conviently located at the top of this forum before posting this redundant question, though.

As for the "rumor" it was not a rumor, Sega did hire out a company to build a Dreamcast incapable of reading CD-Rs and CD-RWs. Unfortunately the company went bankrupt, back in January, and while Sega was hunting for another company to continue that work, they too gave up on the Dreamcast, back in March I think it was.

~The Masked M0M0~

[Wayne]

It's not a rumor, but it's a little bit misguided. Dreamcast machines that were manufactured after approximately October 2000 will not play the previous format of self-boot copies that consist of a tiny audio track followed by data. They require data in the first track as well. A new format was developed by the groups that accommodates the new machines. This format appears (from my limited knowledge) to be a duplicate directory at the beginning, that points to the files in the actual directory that follows it. It almost looks like if you burned all the files to the disc, then you burned a second session while only importing the previous session with no additional files. I don't think this is how they did it, because the actual files are in the second session, not the first. Therefore, the first session's "DATA" directory is merely a copy of the directory in the second session (rather than the other way around).

Anyway, some of the newer games have already been released using this newer format and the "BIN2BOOT" program was updated in January 2001 to write this format as well.

Sooooo.... There was about a 2-3 month period there where not all CDR discs would play on SOME Dreamcast machines (newer ones), but now if you find a game that doesn't play on a new machine, you can extract all the files and build a new ISO, then run BIN2BOOT on it, burn the .CDI using Disc Juggler and voila! It now works on the newer DC.

[Tron]

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Sooooo.... There was about a 2-3 month period there where not all CDR discs would play on SOME Dreamcast machines (newer ones), but now if you find a game that doesn't play on a new machine, you can extract all the files and build a new ISO, then run BIN2BOOT on it, burn the .CDI using Disc Juggler and voila! It now works on the newer DC
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Hi!
How extracting the files and how building a new ISO? How does BIN2BOOT work?
Sorry for the questions but i´m a DC-Newbie. My DC is a HKT-3030, a newer one as i think and so some well burned games won´t start. Pleas help me.
THX

[Wayne]

Use CDMAGE to extract .CDI files, or ISOBUSTER to extract .BIN files. These can be found on DC CopyWorld website (link at the top of the page).

Once extracted, use MKISOFS.EXE (also available at the above link) to create a new ISO file. For info on how to use it, read the tutorials such as the Echelon Self-Boot tutorial.

Once you have an ISO created, run BIN2BOOT (http://dcxeal.virtualave.net/b2b-cdda-b1.zip ) to convert it to a .CDI.

Finally, burn the new .CDI using Disc Juggler.

[mr2000jp]

as long as sega added the support for the cd playing (audio ) that means the cd-r's are playable on all models
maybe laser calibration is needed some times only

[Wayne]

It's not that CDR discs don't work, but that they changed the way the Dreamcast reads the disc, making it more strict on the way the data must be written to the disc.

Of course CDR discs will work on all DCs, but the bootable discs that were burned between 09/00 thru 01/01 (and many that were burned later) will not work on the post-Oct2000 machines. This is because the data was written to the disc images in a way that is now incompatible with the new firmware.