Burning .mdf/.mds

I'm trying to burn a Saturn game, but these filetypes aren't mentioned in the sticky. I'm using Linux (Ubuntu). Should I use K3b? I don't know exactly how to do this.
 
bigcheese said:
I'm trying to burn a Saturn game, but these filetypes aren't mentioned in the sticky. I'm using Linux (Ubuntu). Should I use K3b? I don't know exactly how to do this.
It might work to use cdemu and then copy the virtual disc with cdrdao, but I don't know the details of how to do that.


You might see recommendations to just burn the .mdf with k3b or to use mdf2iso; both of these approaches will fail to properly produce a mixed-mode disc (the advice is commonly offered because it happens to work for DVD and regular CD-ROM images). That said, they might produce a working disc if the game only has a data track, or if it has an audio track that is not actually used by the game.
 
bigcheese said:
Well, what are the two files. Is one of them audio and one video? Or do I just need to burn one of them?
The MDF contains the actual data stored in the data area of the CD, while the MDS contains information about the track layout and modes that are contained in the CD's Table of Contents. Generally speaking both of them are needed for a proper burn. However, burning programs can often figure out the sector format on their own and produce a working burn from the MDF alone if there is only one track (this is rare for Saturn games). DVD doesn't have "tracks" or "modes", so the MDS file is usually not needed for single-layer DVD images.
 
Okay, I am still having trouble with this, and do not know what I could be doing wrong. I burned them both onto the disc, and it won't work. I'm testing it on my computer with SSF.
 
I use Alcohol 120% to burn those types of files simply because Nero can't read them. They burn fine. Though I use a modded system, not an emulator.
 
I have no idea. The source code is posted if you want to take a look. I just did a quick google search found those links and posted them.
 
ExCyber is right, your best bet is to use cdemud.

It can be rather annoying to set up initially, but once you do, you'd want to mount the image that way and use the device instead of the image file in your emulater, or re-rip it into something else from the mounted image.

I wrested with this fairly recently, none of those tools work well -- I've never ended with a working image. Don't believe you can just mount the mdf as iso format as some tutorials would have you believe either.
 
dibz said:
ExCyber is right, your best bet is to use cdemud.

It can be rather annoying to set up initially, but once you do, you'd want to mount the image that way and use the device instead of the image file in your emulater, or re-rip it into something else from the mounted image.

I wrested with this fairly recently, none of those tools work well -- I've never ended with a working image. Don't believe you can just mount the mdf as iso format as some tutorials would have you believe either.

Not sure if the original poster ever figured this one out or not, but I recently found the *perfect* way to do this on a Linux system...at least it works fine for me.

Like a lot of other people have said, it is best to mount the mds (table of contents) with cdemu, but getting all of that setup is another subject.

Once that's done, just treat it like a normal unmounted cd in in your drive. On my system, the first virtual device that's created when I load an image is /dev/sr0.

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=whateverGame.iso

That command will give you an iso for the data track. You will see an error when it gets to the audio portion of the image, but that's normal. Then use cdparanoia for the audio portion:

cdparanoia -B "2-" -d /dev/sr0

And then you will get a series of wav files; you will still need to rename them appropriately.

Of course, there's still the matter of writing your toc before burning with cdrdao. I've found it's easiest to generate a cue with SegaCueMaker and then use cue2toc to generate a toc for use with cdrdao.
 
Back
Top