dreamroast2

I've written a little shell script for Unix called "dreamroast" which can burn a directory of files to a CD-R such that the disk is bootable on a dreamcast. It's not perfect, but it's already better than any of the alternatives. (For one, it actually works with modern versions of cdrecord). I've released this software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

This script is useful if you want to try out any of the programs that dreamcast hobbyists have released (for example, IMR Technology's port of Miss Driller).

Download

Dreamroast version 0.1. Released March 2006. Version 0.1 works on my machine, which is running Debian GNU/Linux, but you should let me know if it works on yours. Ideally, I'd like this script to work everywhere without having to be edited.

Prerequisites

Before you can run dreamroast, there are a few things you need to setup first.

• 1. You must have cdrecord and mkisofs installed.

  2. You must have a Dreamcast IP.BIN file.

  3. Either specify it on the command line or place it in the current working directory. (For details on creating one, see http://mc.pp.se/dc/ip.bin.html).

  4. You must cd to the top level directory that you wish to burn. That directory must include a scrambled file called 1ST_READ.BIN.

  5. It is assumed that "IP.BIN" will load "1ST_READ.BIN". Note that case is significant. "1ST_READ.bin" is not the same as "1ST_READ.BIN" and will not boot. As of version 0.1, dreamroast will attempt to rename a lowercase filename to all-caps. Technically, this might be an invalid assumption since IP.BIN can specify any filename to load; however, in practice it's helpful. If you have suggestions, let me know.

  6. Place a blank CD-R in cdrecord's default drive.

  7. If you have not specified a default drive in cdrecord's config file, you can edit the dreamroast script. However, I recommend just setting CDR_DEVICE in /etc/default/cdrecord and be done with it.

Screen Shot

"Screen shot" isn't exactly the right word, but here's a typescript of dreamroast in action. As you can see, running dreamroast is extremely easy. Get the files you want to burn, cd to the directory, and type "dreamroast".