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Self-Booting Tool With Other Virtual CD Managers?

garlogan

New member
Hey I have a CDI of a Soul Calibur game that I own, and I can't figure out how to make it work...

I've tried making an image of it using VirtualDrive, (Compiles it into a .VCD) and that doesn't seem to work...

Is there a plug-in for Chankast that allows you to browse for a CDI or such?

And if not, where can I find the necessary tools to make my CDI's run?

Thanks :king:
 

Mouser X

New member
Use Daemon Tools, or Alcohol 120% to mount the disc image. Once mounted, the software will turn the CD image into a virtual drive on your PC. Meaning, it will create an additional drive letter for the CD. Tell Chankast to use this addational drive as the source for its media. If you get errors for some reason, try using Daemon Tools v3.29. For some reason, it seems to be more compatible for certain CD images. Hope that helps. Mouser X over and out.
 
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garlogan

New member
Thanks Mouser! But... Do you know where I could get Alchohol 120% and Daemon?

If not, Thanks for the help anyways =]
 

phinux

New member
help!!! i'm gonna go crazy if i can't get this working

i think i'm having the same problem or similar. i have a game in .cdi format that is supposed to be self bootable already and working. when i mount the image it is read as an audio file that is only the size of 44 bytes. i don't know what i'm doing wrong? i've tried both alcohol, and daemon tools, but they both wont work. i'v tried turning off the file types that windows media player reads. i've tried both the new and old version of daemon tools. it has to be something with my virtual drive right? i even changed the file types that my virtual drives read to see if it made a difference. it worked a few months ago when i played soul calibur, and now i don't know what the heck happened??
so it has to be something with my settings! i'm not going to sleep till i figure this out, i'll die before i give up. :angry:
 

Mouser X

New member
When you say "i've tried both the new and old version of daemon tools," do you mean that you used the most recent version of Daemon Tools, and when that didn't work, you then used Daemon Tools v3.29? In other words, please be a little more specific on what you did. It might very well be your settings. you could also try a different DC BIOS/FLASH file (I don't know if that would make a difference or not. I'm just suggesting it). You could also use "CDcheck" to verify that your disc image isn't corrupt. While that may not be it (I had a corrupt disc that would boot, and then kick itself back into the BIOS), it certainly wouldn't hurt to try. I don't mean to be stupid in asking this, but can you verify that you definatly have a self-booting image? Maybe it's not self-booting after all. Have you tried other games recently? Do they all have this problem?

Sorry I can't be of more help, but hopefully the questions I asked will either lead you in the right direction, or someone else will be able to help out more. Mouser X over and out.
 

Danny

Programmer | Moderator
just use alcohol to mount the images. i have found alcohol to be far better at it than daemon tools.
 

ja_master

New member
hi, garlogan

i had the same problem when i downloaded a cdi of Sonic adventure.
when i mounted the image (in both Alcohol and Daemon 3.29), windows said that is an Audio Cd with a 44 bytes (4 seconds) audio track (that is supposed to be the "Dreamcast Autoboot" or "Dreamcast Backup" protection of any dreamcast game that have autoboot (selfboot).
Nero recognize both tracks in the disk (image), one (4 secs audio track)(boot) and one of data (the game itself). i think that is a problem of the program that were used to rip and create a cdi image of that game.
so it can be a format of cdi that doesn't allow to load the data track as a main track (just like in another game images).
However, the Dreamcast of my friend recognized me that game when i burned it on a cd with alcohol at 2x or 4x, because the dreamcast reads the audio track before, then the data one. Chankast it seems doesn´t do that in the same way (because the image has to be mounted by daemon or alcohol correctly with the data track as the main one, but, it doesn't happen that way), thats the mean of that problem....in my opinion.
but i don't own a dreamcast, so i'd to download another site's version of the game....maybe you can try download the game via bittorrent.....if you want

sorry if i said too much, but i'd to explain all that i know about this problem that also happened to me and i decided share a "maybe helpful" info.

i hope that can help you
bye bye
 
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garlogan

New member
ja_master,

Thanks dude. I did indeed try many different dreamcast discs, but my cd-drive wouldn't even recognize that it was in, let alone read it correctly...

Just recently I found a 587.32 MB CDI of Soul Calibur using eMule, and I used power archive to explore the contents...

It's not corrupt or anything...

But I can't find any way to mount it to the drive that I've set chankast to use.

Is there a "Use Iso" feature, or "Use Image" feature to read the specific game directly from the hard-drive? Or is mounting the game the only possible solution?

BTW, thanks to Mouser X for telling me the proper tools to use...

I've found that Alchohol 120% works best for me, but I havn't tried using it yet on the computer I need to...

Also, the program I have been trying to use is Virtual Drive 9.0, a virtual hard-drive/cd-drive manager.

The only problem I found is that, in order for files to be mounted to drives using it, you have to 1st compile them into a .VCD...

Sadly, Virtual Drive does not support CDI or IMG mounting...

Anyways, thanks for the help.

* This may be out of topic, but does the ja in ja_master stand for jedi academy?

* Also completely out of topic, what emu's do you suggest for snes, psx, and n64?
 
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Agozer

16-bit Corpse | Moderator
Mounting an image or using CD-R discs is the only way to play games on Chankast. Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120%'s virtual drive support a multitude of CD image formats. Use them. If a Virtual Drive program forces you to use their own format, that should be reason enough to ditch it, fast.

SNES: ZSNES, bsnes, or Snes9x
PSX: pSX, ePSXe, or PSXEven
N64: Project64 or 1964.
 
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garlogan

New member
Cool thanks :p

Anyways, I just burned my soul calibur CDI to a CD-R, and set my chankast alpha 0.25 drive to my cd-drive, yet it still shows up as an audio cd.

Plus the swirl at the dreamcast logo is purple.

Any tips to make this game work?
 
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garlogan

New member
I'm beginning to think the CDI I downloaded is corrupt, or the chankast I downloaded is corrupt. Anyone have any reliable download URL's for chankast? I think I may have the Euro version...
 

Danny

Programmer | Moderator
use winrar to extact it. it should say either "soul_calibur.cdi" or Soul_calibur.dj
if it doesnt say .cdi (compact disc image) or .dj (Diskjuggler) aty the end of the name its probably not a genuine file. once you have extacted it mount it with alcohol. then on chankast select which drive the virtual cd/dvd drive is and then click start. Also do you have a bios and a dc_flash file?. cus if you dont chankast wont run. and like everyone said above if its a nonboot file you will have to mount the utopia bootdisc first, load it up with chankast then mount your game.
 
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garlogan

New member
ok... so how do you mount the utopia bootdisc? do I mount it to the same drive as the game? or do i put the utopia bootdisc and game on the same cd?
 

Danny

Programmer | Moderator
dont put it on any cd. just mount the utopia boot disk wait for it to load then unmount the bootdisk and then mount your game. it should then load your game automatically
 
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garlogan

New member
hm... my utopia is a CDI, and I mounted it to the drive... and it shows as a 44 second audio cd.
 

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