Burning Selfbooting Dreamcast Discs on Mac OSX

@Dreamcast

Published in

Dreamcast

· 10 Nov 2018

Programs Needed

MacPack 4.0-(Iso Fix 1.3)
Mkisofs (1.1 or 1.1.3)-Pre-compiled for OSX
Toast Titanium 5.1.2 or a newer version
Stuffit Expander

This method requires OS X because of the unix Terminal program.
This method supports up to 31 character file / folder names.

Making the Layout

1.) Download the emulator/program in plain files. Unzip it.

2.) Move the folder that contains the files "1st_read.bin" & "Ip.bin" to your home directory.

3.) Rename the folder you just moved in step two to "data".

4.) Move the "IP.BIN" file into your home directory.

5.) Create a new folder in the "data" folder.
Read the "readme" text files with each emulator for appropriate folder name that the emulator wants the games or roms kept in.

6.) Unzip mkisofs and put it into your home directory.

7.) Launch the Terminal program, type "cd ~" to go to the home directory. Press Enter.

8 .) Type "sudo ./mkisofs -C 0,11700 -V EMU -l -o data.iso data" in the terminal window and push return.
Then enter your password. Wait, the terminal should display its progress in percent (if the data folder is large).

[localhost:~] mycomput% ./mkisofs -C 0,11700 -V EMU -l -o data.iso data 
mkisofs: Warning: -C specified without -M: old session data will not be merged. 

29.96% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:18 2002 
39.93% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:23 2002 
49.91% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:24 2002 
59.92% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:24 2002 
69.90% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:26 2002 
79.87% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:26 2002 
89.85% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:26 2002 
99.83% done, estimate finish Sun Jul 7 21:02:27 2002 
Total translation table size: 0 
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 0 
Total directory bytes: 10240 
Path table size(bytes): 62 
Max brk space used 0 
50091 extents written (97 Mb)

9.) Type "( cat IP.BIN ; dd if=data.iso bs=2048 skip=16 ) > selfboot.iso" and push return.
Wait, the Terminal should display something close to this.

[localhost:~] mycomput% ( cat IP.BIN ; dd if=data.iso bs=2048 skip=16 ) > selfboot.iso 
38375+0 records in 
38375+0 records out 
78592000 bytes transferred in 8 secs (9824000 bytes/sec

10.) Launch IsoFix, Select the ISO file to work with, "selfboot.iso" then select the Isofix Config File "Isofix Config File".

Now you have three new files "bootfile.bin", "fixed.iso" and "header.iso".
Only the file "fixed.iso" and "header.iso" are needed now.

Burning the CD (using Toast 5.1.2-5.5)

Launch Toast, select Edit > Preferences. Make sure "Prefer disc-at-once" is unchecked and click ok.
Select MultiTrac CD-ROM XA (click and hold down the Other button).
Click ADD and select the file "fixed.iso" then click Burn.
Burn as Write Session. Burn at low speeds if you're having trouble.
Select MultiTrac CD-ROM XA again (click and hold down the Other button).
Click ADD and select the file "header.iso" then click Burn.
Burn as Write Disc. Burning speed now should be the same speed it was.