Ripping Dreamcast GD-ROM using ordinary computer hardware

[Vorde]

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http://stc.hacking-cult.org/gd-rom_stuff/"Welcome to my extensive section about GD-ROM ripping. However, you won't find any guides on ripping them with the rare (and expensive) Broadband Adapter, the coders' cable (a slow and clunky serial port interface) or the Dreamcast's 56K modem. Instead, these pages are dedicated to ripping GD-ROMs via plain old PC-compatible CD and DVD drives using the "swap trick" method. This isn't exactly new information, as there are numerous guides available on how to do this on the Net, which other people have written over the last few years.

However, most of the guides are not only hard to come by, but also not entirely clear on certain points, so I decided to try and tie up all of the loose ends, and also provide a single location to obtain those guides. First off, you can get all of the guides I (and others) have collected over the years from inside this folder. You'll probably want to read all of them, as they're all a little bit different in their exact methods.

Secondly, I have written some documents to tie up all the loose ends within the original guides. These include information on how to perform tasks related to ripping GD-ROM discs (e.g. making selfboot CDI files to use in Chankast), and to test many different drives to see what models are any good to use with the guides.

Lastly - please note that your mileage may vary with this method. Unfortunately, as with the other GD-ROM ripping methods, it's not perfect as it only works really well with certain (mostly DVD-reading) drives, but I (and others) have managed to dump some games in a working state, so you might want to consider this method if no other options are open to you.

(P.S. This is not piracy - read this.)

News

28/05/2008: An actual update - well, sort of. As I've been re-coding all of the site for XHTML 1.0 Strict compliance, I figure I would do some actual useful work, so I converted the old text file, Second Drive Compatibility List, into a HTML document, while also tidying up a lot of my comments, the presentation of the file, and so on. Hopefully, this will be a bit more useful now!

(Really) old news is available for viewing here.

Site Sections

The Main Guide (READ ME FIRST) - This guide tells you how to prepare for carrying out the ripping process described in the numerous rip guides (which you can download from there), plus detailed instructions on burning (and making) GD-ROM trap discs.

Other Essential Guides (READ ME SECOND) - Goes into things you'll want to do after / if you've managed to dump any DC ISOs with your CD/DVD drive, like verifying for corrupted files, and making self-boot CDI files for play in a DC emulator. There's also detailed instructions on how to rip, convert and split CD audio tracks that may be present on a GD-ROM, but if you're using Chankast, you might want to skip that bit, since making a CDI image file with CD audio tracks is beyond my abilities (apparently).

Drive Testing Results (READ ME THIRD) - A big table of results of drives that I, and some others, have tested out with the ripping process.

Second Drive Compatibility List (READ ME AS WELL) - Now in brand-spanking-new HTML presentation, this file combines a compatibilty list from a Spanish website, and another from an additional site (and a bunch of others), with myself adding in a new layout and filling in loads of missing model numbers, so that it's a bit more useful. (Plus, it does help by keeping all this information in one place - should save a couple of hours off time spent on Google!)

Lite-ON LTD-165H - Alternate Firmware Testing - My attempts to flash the best drive I have for ripping GD-ROM discs with alternate firmware revisions (older and newer than the original one), to see whether it made any difference to data extraction performance, particularly on certain discs (the game ChuChu Rocket! was troublesome to rip, for example).

GD-ROM Ripping Toolkit (DOWNLOAD ME) - a small package that I have assembled myself with all the necessary utilities to go with the ripping guides by StateS, Yursoft, and so on. Some stuff in here is also relevant in the guides I have written on this site.

Contacting Me

Any questions, comments or corrections you'd like to point out to me? Drop me a line at the following e-mail address:

thedaytoday[AT]gmail[DOT]com

Boring Copyright Stuff

Unless otherwise stated, all of this information was written by myself (RobbyW / STC-Fan / zedeckseightyone) ©2004-2008 or adapted from sources who have helpfully contributed information to this document. You may NOT use any information from this document unless you ask nicely beforehand, or something like that."

Go to the website for the tools and extensive info on how to do it