Those wonderful new DCs
 

I recently got a DC because of the new price cut and it was manufactured in August 2000. One would think that it should work with boot disks but it IS protected against cd-rs. I've tried everyone with just about every burning app and they all are recognized as an audio cd. The new utopia boot cd that is suppose to work with new DCs actually shows the Sega logo unlike the others, however it then goes right to the "Play,File,Music,Settings" menu. I then put a game in and it says "checking disk" and proceeds to make many weird noises and nothing happens.
I've tried 3 games too so I don't think this new utopia works at all. It seems I can either find an even older DC and hope it works or get a modchip.But do modchips even work with these new DCs? Any help with this beast would be great.

Have you actually tried discs that you *KNOW* work on other Dreamcast machines?

I would be willing to bet it's not the AUG2000 Dreamcast at fault, but rather the disc is a coaster. Look at the disc in Windows Explorer from your CDROM drive. If you don't see files (if it says it's blank with 648 meg free), it's best used as a frisbee.

Thanks for the suggestion. Explorer recognizes them as Audio cds and they all have one track that is 44 bytes. One of the games appears to be an echelon rip with the "e-" prefix so I'm surprised if it's defective. I burned from image in DJ 3 with the default settings if that makes any difference :/. I would appreciate if I could get a verified working image via ftp/icq/irc from someone to figure out the problem. :)

If your discs look like very small audio discs, they are coasters as well.

It doesn't matter that the rip is Echelon, since it's not the rip that is in error, but rather the burn to the disc. Try looking at the .CDI file with CDMAGE. If you can see files and they all look good, try to extract them to a folder on your hard drive. If this works, I'd say the CDI is just fine (you may now delete the files you extracted, or burn them manually using Echelon self-boot tutorial).

How are you getting the .CDI to Disc Juggler? You cannot drag and drop the .CDI. DJ assumes you are dropping a .CDJ file instead of .CDI and will totally misunderstand the contents of the file - and as a result, you'll get a coaster.

You have to click NEW, then choose CD IMAGE to CD.
Now, click the SOURCE icon (looks like a square with a folder in it) and browse to your .CDI file.

The burn should work if you do this.

Always remember, if you don't see files on your disc (not audio, but data files), it won't work on the DC, because that's exactly what the DC sees as well.

One other thing, I don't know if Echelon rips are going to be NEW DC compatible, so you may still want to use those files you have on the hard drive (remember when you used CDMAGE to extract the files to verify the .CDI was good?).

What I'd suggest in this case is to follow the tutorial at this site: http://dreamlover.tecbox.com/#6.1

You may also need the new copy of BIN2BOOT, which can be found at this site: http://dcxeal.virtualave.net/b2b-cdda-b1.zip

I guess I have 3 game coasters as well then. As for using DJ, I have always used the New->CD Image to Recorder option. I will check the rips with that program because I'm not sure if it's the burning process or the rip that's messed up at this point.Thanks for the help.

EDIT
I used CDMage and the images look ok. There is one audio track under the session 1 folder and many subfolders (alot start with "DP") under the session 2 folder. Anyway I copied all those folders to the hard drive then burned like you suggested. However I had no clue where to put that small audio track so I just didn't include it. I put in the new DC utopia disk then swapped in the game that actually shows the directories and such in Windows, it then checks the disk. Then it shows the message "insert game disc" which I've never seen before. From there I still can't get it to work.
I read that tutorial and when it gets to IPBIN4WIN it's very vague and couldn't get past that step.

IPBIN4WIN is just a utility that tailor-makes an IP.BIN for your game. You can usually substitute the generic IP.BIN from the ZEROTOOLS.ZIP package (which should be found on the DCCOPYWORLD site). I've used the generic file several times unchanged, aside from the BINHACK utility that sets the offset in the file.

Ok I've been reading this thread http://www.fileforums.com/UB/Public/HTML/B3/14989-1.topic.shtml. Since he verified it worked I'm going to use this method but I don't how "mkisofs -C 0,0 -V RUSH2049 -l -o data.iso data" works. The only DOS I know is cd and dir :/. Could you explain how to use mkisofs and bin2boot from DOS? I hope this is the last of my questions because *gasp* buying games isn't starting to look that bad.

After you have all the files from the .CDI on your hard drive, in the SELFBOOT\DATA directory (the DATA subdirectory within the SELFBOOT directory), you'll need to go to an MS-DOS window and go to the SELFBOOT directory (not DATA).

Now, you should already have MKISOFS.EXE in the SELFBOOT directory already and note that the -V RUSH2049 in the command line is actually the VOLUME LABEL of the CD you plan to make, so just keep it under 11 characters, ALPHANUMERIC and UNDERSCORES only, no spaces or other symbols.

Be sure to copy the 1st_READ.BIN and IP.BIN to the SELFBOOT directory and use BINHACK on them. It will prompt you for the name of the binary file (1ST_READ.BIN or whatever it's called), then it will prompt for the BOOT SECTOR (IP.BIN) and finally it will ask for the MSINFO VALUE (should be 0,0). Now copy the 1ST_READ.BIN back to the DATA directory and hold onto the IP.BIN for future use.

Now you'll type the following line (assuming the files from the .CDI are in the DATA directory):
mkisofs -C 0,0 -V WHATEVER -l -o data.iso data

This will create a file in the SELFBOOT directory called "DATA.ISO" from the files in the SELFBOOT\DATA directory and will have an OFFSET of "0,0". Be sure you run the IPINS.EXE file to patch the IP.BIN into the ISO. Now run BIN2BOOT (the newest one I mentioned earlier) using the command line in the NEW Dreamcast Machine tutorial.

This should give you a .CDI file that you can burn to your disc. It will take a good long while to burn (it will look like DJ is stuck a couple of times, but just let it sit for a while).

Note: Some of these steps may or may not be necessary with the BIN2BOOT program. The BINHACK and IPINS may be unnecessary because BIN2BOOT may automatically set the IP.BIN offset to 0,0, but it doesn't hurt to do it anyway.

You said to copy back the 1ST_READ.BIN back to the data folder, but where should I put the IP.bin? Should I copy the IP.BIN into the data folder too???

no, only the 1st_read.bin
whith the ip.bin you must patch the iso you made of the data. the ip.bin is the bootsector for the cd

How do I patch the IP.BIN to the new iso image?
Some other guy CptTalis or so said, that the IP.BIN have be copied back to data folder too. So what is right now?

I believe you are right when I said that but either way should work. As long as you use the new bin2boot as wayne mentioned above, you should be fine. I think the tutorial actually says to keep it in the root directory.
Try to follow the steps that I posted in the other thread. If you need help in one of the steps, just ask and i'll try to clarify things a bit.

Woohoo! I finally burned a working one. The selfboot and data directories didn't make any sense until I downloaded the selfboot toolkit and saw that that the folder setup wasn't just arbitrary, but that it works the way it does with all the included apps. Thank you Wayne for the help.

Great! Congratulations. Glad to have been some help.