Self boot question? Wince

[iruleyou25]

I am having trouble making my copy of Tomb Raider Last Revolation self bootable. I ripped and downsampled the game myself. I have a new dreamcast and have been able to get other games that I downloaded to self boot which were cdi images. When I try to boot the game that I ripped it brings me to a screen with a menu that has play and other options on it. I have tried two self boot methods and tired of making coasters. I have a philips cdrw series 800 cd writer and I am running windows me.
I burned the audio track first with cdrecord instead of with cdrwin b/c I am not able to leave the session opened with cdrwin.
My msinfo number was 11702 after burning the audio track. I did not create a dummy file and do not know if it is nesassary or what the purpose of the dummy file is.
Can somebody please help me out with this problem. I would also like to know how to make this non self bootable. I have found many tutorials on the internet on how to make games self bootable but I have not found out how to make a game non self bootable game.
Please help. It is a windows ce game but I have had the same prob with a firstread.bin games as well.

[Wayne]

The dummy file isn't necessary to boot the game. It's only purpose it so push the data files toward the outside edge of the disc. Since the GD-ROM is a CAV drive (Constant Angular Velocity), it spins faster as it reaches the edge of the disc, and you can get more data throughput when the data is near the edge of the disc. This helps prevent graphic dropouts in some fast games like Crazy Taxi.

So far everything you've done sounds like what I do for self-boots. I use CDRECORD because I was having problems with CDRWin and just feel more comfortable with cdrecord. My msinfo number is also 11702 after the audio track.

You still need to use BINHACK, even though you have a WINCEOS.BIN. Let BINHACK do what it needs to, it will ignore the WINCEOS file and won't try to hack it. After you complete everything and make the ISO using mkisofs.exe, are you remembering to patch the IP.BIN back into the ISO?

I've succeeded in making self-boots of WINCEOS.BIN-type games.

If you want to convert the game to non-boot, you need to take the IP.BIN and WINCEOS.BIN files, and run BINHACK with offsets of 0,0 (instead of 0,11702), and make sure your IP.BIN and WINCEOS.BIN are copied back to the data folder. Then just burn a MODE-2, CD-XA session with that data, and be sure to close the session (and maybe the disc??)

I've done this as well - converted Wacky Races to non-boot because the DC kept resetting when trying to boot it. Of course there were larger problems with Wacky Races - like the sound samples were out of sync with the action...

[iruleyou25]

Thanks Wayne for the quick response. Will I still need to burn the audio track for the non-selfboot cd. Also do I still need to insert ip.bin into the begining of the iso file or do I just copy it over to the data directory along with firstread.bin and then make an iso file.
I have read that for newer playstations you will want to burn the audio track last instead of first. Does this make any difference.

Thanks

[Wayne]

iruleyou25 (24-07-2001 13:43):
Thanks Wayne for the quick response. Will I still need to burn the audio track for the non-selfboot cd. Also do I still need to insert ip.bin into the begining of the iso file or do I just copy it over to the data directory along with firstread.bin and then make an iso file.
I have read that for newer playstations you will want to burn the audio track last instead of first. Does this make any difference.

No, you are only interested in the actual files in the data directory if you're burning a NON-BOOTER. You don't patch any files into the ISO file because you really don't absolutely need to create an ISO before burning the files. I've made a NON-BOOTER using Roxio (Adaptec) Easy CD-Creator. Just have to be sure to burn Mode-2, CDROM-XA and close the session and possibly the disc (use DISC AT ONCE if possible, or SESSION AT ONCE if DAO isn't available on your burner & software).

By the way, in your last statement, I think you meant "Dreamcasts", not "Playstations".

In theory (I've never done this because I have a June-2000 DC), you can use MKISOFS.EXE to create the ISO with 0,0 offset, and then use BIN2BOOT to create a .CDI file that when burned with Disc Juggler, should work on newer Dreamcast machines. I've never done this so I cannot vouch for it's factual nature.