Dumping GD-ROMS using an ordinary CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive!!!

[STC-Fan]

1.) In GDLister open up the toc and select the audio track which you wish to extract from the Audio.bin file (make sure that you have the toc and the audio.bin files in the same directory) then it should pop up a dialog or something that will ask you for the audio.bin and then the rest I think is pretty understandable already.

2.) Get the beginning and ending LBA for each audio track from the toc and then extract the CDDA tracks one-by-one...

I have tried it like that but still I am never prompted to locate the AUDIO.BIN file, only a dialog box comes up telling me to input the starting LBA value, which I put in (actually that's not true, it comes up already in the box depending on the track selected), and then click "Aceptar" at which point the dialog box closes and nothing happens. The whole "bashing head against a brick wall" feeling has crept in all of a sudden... lain:

Anyway it's just that not everyone has or can afford Cool Edit Pro :cough: :cough: :cough: Me included, cause I'm dirt poor, yup, my parents work and I don't, meaning they make money and I don't, meaning they have money and I don't... :blush:

True. But, Audacity is perfectly good for extracting the tracks with. And Cool Edit Pro has been pissing me off recently because it now crashes 99 times out of 100 when I exit the application normally (i.e. by clicking on the X button).

This means that when I go back into it, it pisses me off even more by asking me if I want to recover the previous session (even if I've already saved it before closing) and I'm sick and tired of it. Especially as it leaves loads of junk files in the Temp folder everytime. Uninstalling & reinstalling it might sort it out but I can't be bothered. Might try and make a switch to Audacity seeing as there's just been a new stable version of it released. And no, I'm not just saying this out of the blue. Cool Edit Pro is really annoying me to that extent (well, it happened with Trillian Pro, and I dumped that for Miranda IM - freeware - so it's not like this is new to me.)

About the games with the two data tracks...
Were you able to rip them? the second track I mean cause something struck me (i was half sleeping at the time), try to Insert the trap disc, read the toc, and extract the first data track, to let's say data1.iso or bin or whatever the extension is (forgot) after extracting the first one, insert the trap disc again, read the toc again and try extracting the second data track to a separate iso let's call this one data2.iso or whatever. I wonder if it will rip it to the end this way?

Never managed it in the end. But I must say, the newer LITE-ON firmwares are worse than the old ones. I've found that with revisions CH11 and CH12, extraction of any GD-ROM data track at high speeds (16x in my case) wasn't possible without the drive pausing for about 10 seconds for every 10% of something extracted - this never happened with any prior releases and is annoying. Probably if I try and get any more DVD-ROM drives (at the moment my only realistic source is eBay) they will only be old ones.

As if this experience with firmware revisions isn't proof enough of old stuff being better, I bet LG don't build their CD-ROM drives with as much accessibility in mind as they used to back in 1997 (i.e. putting all the drive assembly cables into one side of the PCB, meaning it can be flipped over with ease, and using simple plastic clips to hold the disc fastener in; try finding features like that on other drives! )

Sorry if I'm being a bit a bit pushy or rude, I'm just so excited with the progress of this method. Good job and keep up the good work!!!

Thanks

 

[StateS]

Hey I was wondering... can that lite-on drive read 90min discs? I have a pioneer 108d and it can only read up to 700megs apparantly (which is strange as hell cause It's supposed to be a dvd-rw) I wonder if drives that can read those 90 min discs would work better than the normal readers... ?

Just a thought...

 

[STC-Fan]

Hey I was wondering... can that lite-on drive read 90min discs? I have a pioneer 108d and it can only read up to 700megs apparantly (which is strange as hell cause It's supposed to be a dvd-rw) I wonder if drives that can read those 90 min discs would work better than the normal readers... ?

Just a thought...

'Fraid not - I've tried out a TDK 90-minute CD-R and it wasn't readable in the Lite-On, with neither firmware revisions CH0U or CH12 (the latter being the newest release).

It is quite surprising that there's DVD drives out there that can't read these over-sized CD-R discs. Probably the laser in the drive is unable to adjust itself sufficiently to read the disc - in part because 90 and 99-minute CD-Rs are not actually standardized formats (hence manufacturers' incentive to add support for them is not that high).

Not absolutely sure if that's true but I would strongly doubt they are, otherwise the discs would not have been discontinued by some companies after being on the market for only about 3-4 years (Infiniti ended production of 99-minute CD-Rs last year) and the discs might actually be supported by more drives - very few CD-RW drives are capable of fully writing a 90 or 99-minute disc. And because of the above issue (caused by what's mentioned in the first paragraph) a lot of drives are not capable of reading them at all, or are only able to read them at a heavily reduced speed.

Also, 90+99-minute CD-Rs have not really gained a great deal of popularity, so don't expect many future drives - even DVD writers (!) - to be capable of writing them. The Yamaha CRW-F1 is one of the only drives capable of doing this, so maybe it could perform better with the swap trick. It's just a case of getting hold of one to find out.

 

[Onky]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking for a while now and FINALLY got round to registering an account here. I've been following this method very closely and managed to complete the StateS guide up to 5.4. The drive I used was an NEC 1901A (I've never heard of the brand either, but it still worked ) which is just a standard 52x CD-ROM. The game I tried was Shenmue, disc 1.

I made the trap discs myself using STC-Fan's guide, which was all OK. The toc.iso creation also went without a hitch. The extraction process was erratic though, I managed to extract the first half iso, straight off no problems. I started the second half, CDRWin got to 92% and I got an error message. Anyway, I found if I put the read speed up to 16x and just kept trying, eventually it made it

I fused the two half iso's together no probs and then used the extract program to extract all the files into a folder. I extracted the audio tracks into wavs and put them in the same folder. Fortunately there was an IP.BIN included in the extracted iso, so no problems there either, but... I know this must sound really dumb...

What do I do now? I now have a folder containing hundreds of raw extracted files (around ~700 mb). How do I convert this into an ISO that Chankast will recognise? I don't want to burn it onto a CD, as this will decrease performance. I know all about Daemon tools and virtual drives, I tried running the iso before extracting its contents, but was declared invalid upon mounting. How do I proceed for high-res Shenmue goodness ?

Sorry this has gone on a bit, thanks for all the work you've done so far! If someone helps me with this last little bit I'll glad help anyone with the stages up to now Thank you!

 

[STC-Fan]

Onky, well done with your progress, for a minute I was thinking the number of confirmed-as-working-with-this-process drives was only going to go down (see my second compatibility list, which I updated last night but haven't uploaded yet), but I have been proved wrong. Also I was really doubting that any CD-ROM drive could actually do this so, erm, wow. Nice work

Anyway, once you have all the files extracted from the .ISO image, you will need to use ExoBoot to convert the files into a self-bootable .CDI image for use with Chankast. The latest version of ExoBoot (v1.31) can be found here:

http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?p=234903

Using ExoBoot is pretty easy - once you have downloaded & extracted it, make a directory within its folder called "data" if it is not already there. Then simply copy / cut + paste all the extracted files into there, run ExoBoot, select the option "Mode 2 - Data to CD or image" (leave the "Remove dummy files" option as Automatic), and click on Next.

On the next screen, click Browse to go to the directory where your game data files are (e.g. D:\ExoBoot\data), put a tick in the box labelled "Create images from the data files" and pick your file format as DiscJuggler (.cdi). Optionally you can pick "Delete in the end the folder with the data files" as well. Under Game Name, enter the game disc's volume label - to see this, insert the game into your test drive normally and look at what name it appears as (e.g. Sonic Adventure appears as SONIC_ADV). Enter that name into the Game Name box.

Then press the Next button and ExoBoot will create the bootable .CDI image, which should take only a few minutes. Finally, mount the image in DAEMON-Tools (v3.29), load up Chankast, and see if it works. Good luck!

One more thing though - ExoBoot does have limits; as far as I'm aware it cannot make a self-bootable file from DC games with mixed audio & data tracks (e.g. ChuChu Rocket, Ready 2 Rumble), however it will make bootable images from all DC games which only have data in the high-density region (e.g. Sonic Adventure, Fur Fighters, Fighting Vipers 2, MSR). Sadly the author has not been to these forums since about October last year so I have no idea if he's been working on ExoBoot or not (I believe he has made it one of his aims to add support for mixed audio + data track games though).

P.S. The above ExoBoot guide has now been added to my GD-ROM ripping results + info doc - I would upload this newer version but upload.ntlworld.com is still down so I can't

 

[Onky]

Thanks for the reply I forgot to mention, I already tried Exoboot! I tried it again now with a fresh install and it just says the same thing: "The folder you have select doesn't have any selfboot bin files or it's not in the right format." !

Is this what you were talking about regarding mixed mode CDs? The people that make the copies that are around on the Internet must have figured out a way to do it so we can too! There must be another way...

PS. I also managed to sucessfully rip the other 2 Shenmue discs (hurray!) on my trusty NEC drive, so I'm just dying for the final stage... I also tested the method on my LITE-ON 24102B CD-RW drive and it wouldn't rip a single sector! I also tried it on my Samsung SD-616 DVD drive and it seems like it is especially designed not to have access to the disc. From what I could see, the magnetic ring is actually built into the top part of the casing, making CD switching impossible without total disassembly. So I guess you better add them to your incompatible list

PPS. I have attached an image of the ripped folder to show that I am not making it up

 

[STC-Fan]

Thanks for the reply I forgot to mention, I already tried Exoboot! I tried it again now with a fresh install and it just says the same thing: "The folder you have select doesn't have any selfboot bin files or it's not in the right format." !

Is this what you were talking about regarding mixed mode CDs? The people that make the copies that are around on the Internet must have figured out a way to do it so we can too! There must be another way...

To the first point: only thing I can think of is that your IP.BIN file has not been extracted when you did the extract operation. If it's not there, you can extract it with isofix.exe. Copy that to the same folder with the ripped disc image, open Command Prompt (might wanna get this because with it you can right-click on any folder and select "Open Command Window Here" so it saves you having to browse all the way into it) and execute this command:

isofix filename.iso /boot

That will extract the boot sector to a file called bootfile.bin. Rename this to IP.BIN and put it with the rest of the game files in the "data" subfolder in the ExoBoot folder. That should get it to work.

And yes, it would be possible to make a mixed mode DC disc image. However, as pretty much all DC releases on the Net are for burning to a CD-R they are often missing most of their audio tracks, or in some cases (such as ChuChu Rocket) they are missing all of it, in order for the game to fit on a 700MB CD-R. There are quite a few other game releases missing audio, which are indicated so on the Chankast compatibility list.

Anyway, making a mixed-mode image would be easy; since the .ISO format does not support combined data + audio tracks we will need to convert our data track rips (say, data1.iso for the 1st data track and data2.iso for the 2nd) into .BIN files, which can be done using WinISO. Assuming you extracted all the audio tracks to a .BIN file as well (not that there is any other way of getting them all, except to extract them seperately which is time-consuming), then theoretically you could merge all three files together in the order of the original disc layout.

To do this, we would open Command Prompt in the folder with the relevant files and execute this command:

copy /b data1.bin+audio.bin+data2.bin

Sadly I don't know for sure if this would work, because I am unable to fully dump the second data track of ChuChu Rocket with my LITE-ON LTD-165H DVD-ROM drive. And even then I'm not sure, but I'm just trying to make an educated guess here, seeing as this command has been used before to successfully merge any Mega Drive ROM image (e.g Sonic 3) to Sonic & Knuckles.

PS. I also managed to sucessfully rip the other 2 Shenmue discs (hurray!) on my trusty NEC drive, so I'm just dying for the final stage... I also tested the method on my LITE-ON 24102B CD-RW drive and it wouldn't rip a single sector! I also tried it on my Samsung SD-616 DVD drive and it seems like it is especially designed not to have access to the disc. From what I could see, the magnetic ring is actually built into the top part of the casing, making CD switching impossible without total disassembly. So I guess you better add them to your incompatible list

Hm, shame Samsung have started putting the disc fasteners into the drive lid as well... saying that though, I've opened a few of their old drives (SM-308 CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo for one) and the old seperate magnetic disc fasteners are just as irritating. The retention mechanism they use is screwless, but it's an absolute nightmare trying to fit it back in after removal.

Even so, getting around integrated disc fasteners isn't too hard - on my LITE-ON DVD drive (which has such a disc fastener), I had to bend two of the rear metal clips on the lid outwards slightly with a pair of pliers so that it could be removed without difficulty while powered up. Dunno if that'd be possible with your Samsung drive, though.

And of course, I'll add the dodgy (and working) drive(s) to my list soon. NTL's upload site has just gone back up but it's kinda late now to update anything (note timestamp of this post )

 

[Onky]

Great! I'll head home now and give that a try and post the results. A couple of things to chew over while I do...

All three of the Shenmue discs, when I check the size of ripped folder, they are all very close to 700mb (a little more including the audio tracks). Is it just me or does that strike you as slightly strange? Sure, we have missed out the filler track, but it just seems a bit too uniform for my liking. I just have this crazy idea running round my head that because the trap disc is essentially a 700mb CD, only 700mb of the GD is actually getting ripped; please put my mind to rest on this one...

One more thing was regarding the audio tracks. When I open up the toc.iso in GD-lister, there are 4 tracks. One is the filler track, 2 audio tracks, and the data track. When I rip the audio tracks (straight into .wav), they are just short jingles (I think they are the music that plays when the disc first starts, showing the developers or whatever). It doesn't have any actual music from the game in there or anything like that. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks again for all your help

 

[STC-Fan]

All three of the Shenmue discs, when I check the size of ripped folder, they are all very close to 700mb (a little more including the audio tracks). Is it just me or does that strike you as slightly strange? Sure, we have missed out the filler track, but it just seems a bit too uniform for my liking. I just have this crazy idea running round my head that because the trap disc is essentially a 700mb CD, only 700mb of the GD is actually getting ripped; please put my mind to rest on this one...

Nope, believe it or not, that is correct. As long as each of the ripped ISO files (unextracted) are 984MB (or 1.04 GB if you ran isofix on it so that the files can be extracted with any regular app like ISObuster) then that is correct. It's just that most games do not use up all of the space available - even if they don't, the GD-ROM disc (presumably) still has to be padded out with null data for the game to be read correctly in a Dreamcast.

Discrepancies between the size of extracted files vary wildly between games - Sonic Adventure, for instance, uses almost all the available space (980/984 MB), while Fur Fighters uses only 833/984 MB. Fighting Vipers 2 uses even less than those two, at around 200 MB (I would check the exact size but I ran the wrong command with isofix and wrecked the file - remember kids, DON'T DO THIS! - isofix toc.iso image.iso 45000 - DO THIS! - isofix image.iso 45000. Thank you. At least I can re-rip it, but making mistakes like that is damn annoying. >_<)

One more thing was regarding the audio tracks. When I open up the toc.iso in GD-lister, there are 4 tracks. One is the filler track, 2 audio tracks, and the data track. When I rip the audio tracks (straight into .wav), they are just short jingles (I think they are the music that plays when the disc first starts, showing the developers or whatever). It doesn't have any actual music from the game in there or anything like that. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks again for all your help

Sounds about right. Probably in your game the rest of the music is in .ADX file format (or in that format, but stored in a single .AFS file) which lots of DC games use. Those will all be stored in the game data track.

 

[madprofessor]

this is more than wonderfull to follow. can we say that it is a big step towards
programs/scripts that rip the games automatically and maybe at some point gd-rom plugins for chankast for dierect play?
fingers crossed :bouncy:

 

[Onky]

OK woah woah woah. I think there are some serious discrepancies between our methods here. You are saying I should extract all the tracks from sector 45000? If you look at the attached image of GD-Lister, according to 4.1 in the StateS guide, it says that the first data track is just filler that I ignore and should start ripping from sector 190424! Should I be ripping the first track too?

I only ask because I tried using Isofix in the way you talked about, but it just says "Could not find PVD!" and quits.

Then things get even MORE weird. I tried ripping Powerstone, now this game has one giant data track, that runs from sector 45000 right up to 549100. I ripped this successfully (though I had to do it in three parts!), BUT when I came to extract it, despite the iso being 1.08gb, only 120mb worth of files were extracted!

BUT I ran Isofix on the Powerstone iso and that DID find and rip the boot sector no problems. However, I replaced the extracted IP.BIN with the one created in Isofix, but it STILL kicks me out in Exoboot, saying it doesn't contain any self boot files or they're not in the right format.

Sooo where to now? And thanks again

PS, if you have MSN or equivalent, please PM me, we might get a bit further

Edit: OK things are just getting really weird. I tried ripping the first data track as well (sectors 45000 to 179940) and combining it with the main data track, to give me a 960mb iso, NOW Isofix works and rips me a boot sector. BUT when I extract the bigger iso, it actually gives me LESS resulting data. Putting this new folder through Exoboot now tells me "The folder you have selected hasn't any bin files." Arg! I could go crazy thinking about this!

 

[STC-Fan]

OK woah woah woah. I think there are some serious discrepancies between our methods here. You are saying I should extract all the tracks from sector 45000? If you look at the attached image of GD-Lister, according to 4.1 in the StateS guide, it says that the first data track is just filler that I ignore and should start ripping from sector 190424! Should I be ripping the first track too?

Yes. According to the Yursoft guide, to get it all the data out, you need to do the following command with extract.exe:

extract toc.iso data1.iso data2.iso (the LBA number from the start of the second data track +150)

There's just one problem - this doesn't seem to work. I tried using this with my ChuChu Rocket ISO files (named the same as above incidentially) and the only file extracted correctly is IP.BIN. And even if a tiny bit of my data2.iso is corrupted, you'd think I could get at least one other file out that wasn't corrupt.

No doubt there is quite a bit of confusion that will arise out of the two guides; what I do know is that StateS' guide* is older than Yursoft's guide. Hence Yursoft's guide has new info about extracting audio tracks to a single .BIN file, and also that little bit I just posted on how to extract the files from two data tracks. Although Yursoft's guide is in Spanish StateS did have a go at translating some of it (should be a link to it in my GD-ROM results + info doc - the file you want is T_ripear_gds_con_lector_de_cdrom.txt); in turn I asked someone else to finish off the translation but he hasn't got back to me yet. I should ask him about it soon...

*Technically it's not StateS's guide - it was originally written by someone called inetd (in Spanish) in 2002 but in 2004 it was translated into English by someone called vagrantcharly at EmuParadise and StateS published it to the MegaGames forums last year. Hence it always turns up in Google (unlike inetd's guide, which was published to an e-zine site that is entirely in Spanish). So really we should call it the inetd guide, but force of habit means I tend to refer to it as the StateS guide. So it's all kind of confusing. :|

I only ask because I tried using Isofix in the way you talked about, but it just says "Could not find PVD!" and quits.

Then things get even MORE weird. I tried ripping Powerstone, now this game has one giant data track, that runs from sector 45000 right up to 549100. I ripped this successfully (though I had to do it in three parts!), BUT when I came to extract it, despite the ISO being 1.08gb, only 120mb worth of files were extracted!

Hmm... that does seem pretty small. It really depends on what sort of game it is - offhand I can't remember what Powerstone is - not a 2D fighter is it? - but Fighting Vipers 2 (a 3D fighter) only has about 260 MB of files inside it. In fact it has very few files at all, because all the game data is stored in .AFS files (not just the ADX music, but the graphics, sound effects & other data as well). So in total it is only about eight actual files on-disc.

About the "Could not find PVD!" error - that should happen only when attempting to run isofix on the second data track. The reason is that the second data track is not physically at the start of the disc, hence it will not have a PVD value. This page gives a good explanation of what the PVD is.

Also, I've just added the drives you tested to my doc (credit is given at the end of the table notes, point no. 13) and also corrected all of the table notes because somewhere along the line they all ended up pointing to the wrong notes; they have all now been exhaustively (OK, maybe that's exaggerating a bit, but you get my drift ) checked and corrected. Should be uploaded in a few minutes.

If you want to chat with me on MSN, my e-mail is: brasseye650[AT]hotmail[DOT]com.

 

[Onky]

Arg, I just can't get this last stage. I ripped yet ANOTHER game just now, Dynamite Cop. The rip went fine, the extract was fine. It was another one of these one giant data track GDs. But Exoboot just simply will not accept the files I'm giving it, with the same old "The folder you have select doesn't have any selfboot bin files or it's not in the right format." error. I really don't know what to do now, I've tried manually extracting the IP.BIN using Isofix but it still just doesn't work... Gutted

I added you on MSN by the way...

Edit: Tried using dir2boot, it makes the .cdi OK, then when I load in Chanka, it gets to the Sega logo and then freezes... *cry

 

[Stalkid64]

Fun fact for Shenmue II; There are ways to edit the files that allow you to play the original beta harbour section (much bigger) and a few other areas. Look around the net for more info. Works on the XBox version too.

 

[STC-Fan]

Arg, I just can't get this last stage. I ripped yet ANOTHER game just now, Dynamite Cop. The rip went fine, the extract was fine. It was another one of these one giant data track GDs. But Exoboot just simply will not accept the files I'm giving it, with the same old "The folder you have select doesn't have any selfboot bin files or it's not in the right format." error. I really don't know what to do now, I've tried manually extracting the IP.BIN using Isofix but it still just doesn't work... Gutted

I added you on MSN by the way...

Damn. Only thing I can think of is that you didn't add on 150 more sectors when you ran this command:

extract toc.iso image.iso 45000 (on the last number you need to add another 150 sectors so that it will work).

Also if you did a rip of a single-track game in several parts you will need to join the files together with this command:

copy /b part1.iso+part2.iso+(however many more parts there are)

Sorry if you already did those, but I managed to go wrong several times with the extract command - so many times in fact that I nearly started to believe my LITE-ON DVD drive couldn't extract anything properly (this went on for a good two months or so before I actually checked the guide again and did it properly :blush: ). Incidentially my drive can rip a whole single data track game in one go, instead of requiring the rip to be in two halves like it says in StateS's guide (i.e. part1.iso would be from 45000 to 369999, then part2.iso would be from 370000 to 549100).

Oh, and thanks for adding me. If you need to transfer files to me via MSN though, it might not be possible for a while because the client I use (Miranda IM) doesn't support transfers. However I'll be switching to Trillian v3 tomorrow so that might be resolved (if I like Trillian v3 enough to keep using it, that is )

 

[StateS]

Hey everybody, long time no see...

I see someone else is trying out the method, Cool!! Hey Onky maybe the problem with exoboot is that it can't detect scrambled .bin files (1st_Read.bin mean...), maybe you have the ip.bin in the wrong folder, heck I don't know... There could be a bunch of different reasons for your not being able to make bootable cd's with exoboot... Have you tried burning one of the games onto a CD, that way you could make sure that the problem was not the files which you extracted but yes the program you are using to make selfbootable isos... about the bin2boot situation... Did you hack the 1st_read.bin file to make the game bootable? Have you read the selfboot part of the compilation document I made?

Hmm, I've got to find more information on this ripping technique, maybe I'll check out the Yursoft version and the Itallian version of the inetd document...

See Ya!

 

[Onky]

Did you hack the 1st_read.bin file to make the game bootable?

Hey hey hey, I didn't know about this! It's really weird, your guide seems so comprehensive, but as soon it reaches the extraction stage, it just sort of fizzles out and starts talking about adding custom logos, audio etc. Can you give me more details on hacking the 1st_read.bin??

Also, what are your views on whether the first data track should be included or not, or is it really filler that should be ignored?

Damn. Only thing I can think of is that you didn't add on 150 more sectors when you ran this command:

extract toc.iso image.iso 45000 (on the last number you need to add another 150 sectors so that it will work).

Hmm I'll head home and try, but I'm pretty sure I did... Do you know anything about this 1st_read.bin hacking topic?

 

[StateS]

It's part of the selfboot process... Did you read the selfboot section of the doc?

 

[Onky]

It's part of the selfboot process... Did you read the selfboot section of the doc?

FINALLY I understand, it's just that when I read that part in the guide, it talked about Utopia versions of the game, which I didn't have, so I presumed it didn't apply to this method. I went through and used it anyway and, well you can see the results for yourself

The only thing I still don't know how to do is get it in iso format so that I can run it straight from the hard-drive. Despite the obvious performance benefits, this is also important for games that go over the 700mb mark, so that I can just play them straight as a large iso without having to downsample audio/video etc. I did the final burn with CDRECORD and it gave me an error that the iso was too big, yet the disc ran anyway fortunately. This is probably going to give me errors later on... so I REALLY need a method of getting it straight to an iso that Chanka will recognise... I tried mounting the iso just before burning but Chanka doesn't recognise it as a game disc, I also tried making an image of the final disc, but the same thing happens.

Come on guys, look at the screenshots, almost there! Thanks again, I couldn't have done it without you...

 

[STC-Fan]

Lovely stuff Onky

Anyway, since my copy of Ready 2 Rumble is scratched up too badly for track three (the last data track in the high-density region) to be extracted, I went and bought another (second-hand) copy today. Comparing the two, I noticed that the serial number was different on each. The new copy's number was 830-0054-50 while the old copy's was 830-0064-05.

Note that the difference in the last two digits on the old copy is probably a typo, because it's meant to denote that the release is for the UK, and other countries, whose TV display type is PAL (which runs at 50 Hz). Hence the old copy is not likely to be one specially made for TVs with a 5 Hz refresh rate. =P

But anyway, I thought nothing of this difference. So I got down to ripping that second data track, and, just to check it was OK, extracted the table of contents (TOC). This is what it came out as. Weird or what? For comparison, the TOC from the old copy is here. In the end though, it turned out all that was different was the TOC file - I double-checking to make sure by ripping the first data track in the high-density region (from 45000 to 286474) I examined the resulting file in GD Lister and sure enough, the original R2R TOC was there. Not long after, I successfully ripped the entire second data track with no errors. With both parts now in place, I ran extract.exe with the appropriate command in Yursoft's guide (since he says in there that this is what you need to do):

extract data1.iso data2.iso (the LBA number from the start of the second data track)+150

Guess what? It didn't work. So I tried that again, but removed data1.iso from the command string, pressed Enter, and it worked. I was sure of this because the resulting files were almost as big (data2.iso was 467 MB, resulting files were 466 MB total), took quite a while to extract, and also because I was able to convert 0GDTEX.PVR into a bitmap file successfully (below is the aforementioned image compressed in PNG) so it appears none of the stuff is corrupted.

I haven't done an "acid test" (i.e. tried making a bootable .CDI image from the files in ExoBoot) yet though, as ExoBoot is unable to run BIN2BOOT, BINHACK and some other DOS apps at the moment because apparently I don't have "appropriate permissions". Despite the fact that I'm the only person using this PC. No matter, I should be able to fix it with a quick re-boot.

EDIT: Rebooting hasn't solved the above problem, sadly. It's been coming up & disappearing recently so it should fix itself. If not, I can always copy ExoBoot and the R2R game files to one of my other PCs to build the bootable .CDI image.

Also, with R2R almost sorted out, I've been taking another look at my ChuChu Rocket rips - it appears they are well and truly screwed up. Examination in a hex editor of the first data track (data1.iso) reveals it to be mostly null data. Which seems normal. But examination of the second data track (data2.iso) reveals it to be entirely null data. Not a clue why - chances are CDRWIN could be responsible for it.

Since I cannot extract all of it, to get the entire track in any form I have to force CDRWIN to fill the last un-extractable 11% with other erroneous sectors by checking "Ignore" under the Error Recovery settings. Only things I can think of are to: 1) re-rip it but with "Replace" checked instead of "Ignore" (which does something different), or 2) just rip it up to the point where no more can be extracted. I'll try these out later on this morning.