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Selfbooting Dreamcast Discs on Mac OSX

January 19th, 2009

To follow this tutorial, you will need the following items:

  • MacPack 4.0-(Iso Fix 1.3)
  • Mkisofs (1.1 or 1.1.3)-Pre-compiled for OSX
  • Toast Titanium

This method requires OS X because of the unix Terminal program.

This method supports up to 31 character file / folder names.

  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

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

The original version of this tutorial was available from Dreamcast @ MacEmu. The staff at DCHelp did not write this tutorial, and take no credit for doing so. Unfortunately, Dreamcast @ MacEmu no longer exists. However, I.M. Weasel, the developer behind Dreamcast @ MacEmu, has a new Web site on DCEmulation.

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