I just bought a dreamcast recently but I have no idea how to burn the games. can someone help me out? is it just like burning a cd?
i’ve been burning CDs for a while, but i’ve always thought these MEmorex Colored CDs could be harmful. does anyone know other brands that work? imation doesn’t, and i learned that the hard way.
I’ve got tons of dreamcast games from emule. They are all compressed and fit on a normal cd. Sometimes the video quality is a little bit toned down, but that’s all.
For burning I use nero or alcohol 120%. Works without problems on my DC.
DL them via some bittorrent hub or e-mule… then burn with alcohol 120% if anything but .nrg, if it .nrg then burn with nero burning software.
Anyone know of a mac equivelant, or how to burn with a mac? I know its possible, I just don’t know how to do it.
no, sorry
Playing burned games on a DC is a good way to ruin one.
Mine is pretty shot. Granted, I’ve been playing burned games on my DC since 2000, and I started having problems last year so…
Last I tried (which was a year or two ago) Toast could handle straight up ISOs, BIN/CUE pairs and Nero’s NRG format. For anything else (like DiskJuggler’s CDI format) the best solution I found was to use conversion tools under Virtual PC until I had something that Toast could work with.
I use taiyo yuden. They’re made in japan so the quality is better. i got mine from here: http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=R&Product_Code=1160&Category_Code=TAIYOYUDEN
any cd-r or dvd+/-r made from japan is generally good in quality.
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq05.html#S5-27
Subject: [5-23] Will playing CD-Rs damage my CD player?
(2002/06/24)
Generally speaking, no, though warnings have started to appear.
One proposed line of reasoning is that the lower reflectivity of CD-R media causes the laser to work too hard. This only makes sense for players with an AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuit, in which the laser power adjusts automatically. This feature is generally found in newer players, because it’s required for reliable playback of CD-RW discs.
It seems unlikely that a player with an AGC would fry itself while running at a valid power level, unless the device were poorly constructed. In any event, the reflectivity of CD-R is close to that of CD – if it weren’t, CD-R would have the same playback compatibility problems that CD-RW has.
The laser shouldn’t have to work any harder to read CD-R. It’s possible that some devices might “strain themselves” over CD-RW discs, but any device built to work with CD-RW should be able to handle the media without self-destructing.
A more likely scenario relates to differences in physical dimensions. One car dealer claimed that CD-R media is too thin, causing their 6-disc changer to occasionally grab two discs and jam itself. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some “slot-in” dashboard players will get stuck ejecting a CD-R that has had an adhesive label added, because the disc is too thick.
It’s possible that the players with warnings simply don’t support CD-R well for one reason or another. Rather than admit to poor construction, the manufacturers are trying to make it seem like there’s something wrong with CD-R media.
COMMENTS
I don’t believe the DC has a AGC, since the only way it reads CD-RW is with a power adjustment, this tells me that the power is probably fixed/manual control.
In addition i don’t know of any tests that say a DC that is only used to play originals actually wears down faster than one used to play CD-Rs. A ton of DCs have had laser problems, as well as most other CD/DVD based systems, so i find it hard to blame it on CD-R’s. What sounds more realistic is that the story was ‘leaked’ to try to discourage some people from using CD-Rs instead of originals.
doesn’t that prove you wrong outright?
i mean, 4 years is a hell of a long lifespan for a console.
mine don’t have problems either, and they’ve been around since 2000. i’ve pretty much never played an original DC game on them.
itsutsu, thanks. i’ll try to find that or other japanese brands. i’ll probably buy one of each and back up some really great game 5 times to see which one is best. lol
I have Alcohol 120% but wheneever I try to burn my bittorented game it says it wont burn it cause its not an image file.
i know this is somehow obvious, but you may have forgotten to unzip the file.
btw, Fujitsu works fine for DC games, and so does Benq. Fujitsu is better though.
make sure it’s not in .rar or .zip format and make sure for alcohol 120% it is in .iso or .cdi
yeah good point. that’s becuase the DC was meant to play GD-rom games. the games were ripped via broadband adapter then were altered to fit on good old cd-Rs.
since they are on CD-Rs the DC laser has to work extra hard moving around to find those data or audio tracks more so then on GD cuase the data “grooves” on GD are so much more tighter and compact than standard CD-Rs.
eventually the my Dc will wear out but oh well…
PM if you guys need help with DC burning.
I’ve got a slightly related problem. I have burnt games for my DC. I want to copy them onto another disk. I make an image with Nero, this works fine. But when I go to burn in doesn’t like it’s own image. It burns the audio part fine, but shits out the disk when trying to burn the data piece. Anyone familiar with this or have any solutions?
good explination
burn it with DiscJuggler. 
enable Raw Write, CD XA, Mode 2, and overburn.
Sorry for thread necro, but it appears that I could use some help with this as well.
My copy of SF3: Double Impact was working fine the last time I played it. I hadn’t played it for a couple of months but I had always planned on making some match vids when I had the equipment. But when I finally got my capture card and was ready to make and upload some videos, all of a sudden it won’t load past the “Sega” screen.
And after retrying/using utopia boot/cleaning the disc/cleaning the lens like a hundred times (literally) I gave up.
This is the only one of my dreamcast games that does this (every other one works fine) so I assume it’s the game and decided to download and try to burn a backup.
This is where it got confusing for me:
When I had previously downloaded a backup for marvel and extracted it, I got the image file: http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=marvelimageco5.png
I was using it to make a custom mix and it burned and works just fine.
However, when I downloaded the backup for SF3: DI (from emule) and extracted it I got these files: http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=firstunzipoa8.png
I used CDRWin to build an image file off of those and burned it with disc juggler (CD-XA, Mode 2 and everything)… that didn’t work.
Then I added a dummy file to it (to fill all that space) and built another image, burned it… 'still doesn’t work.
Then I added a 1st_read.bin and IP.bin that Combomasher provided in his tutorial for the MVC custom (I read somewhere those were needed to work with Utopia boot disk) and built yet another image file and burned… no dice.
I’m running out of CD’s so I figured now would be a good time to ask for help before I screw up again. All I know right now is that those files are kalisto type files. I’ve never really heard of or dealt with kalisto before so if anyone knows anything and can help me, I would really appreciate it. 
get a self boot image
problem solved
also that looks like it is a rom… not a cdi/iso/nrg