How To Burn or Create a Dreamcast Disc in 5 Minutes

Simple to follow guide which explains how to burn a backup or homebrew game to work on the Dreamcast!

@Dreamcast

Published in 

Dreamcast

 · 6 Mar 2021

This tutorial has three sections:

1. General Info you should know.
2. Burning a .CDI with BootDreams
3. How to create and burn your own DC image with BootDreams

1 General Info:

Media:
You'll need CDRs. Best are 80min/700Mbyte. CDRWs and other media are -NOT- supported.

You do -NOT- need a modded DC. About any Dreamcast will work with CDRs. Very, very few won't.

Format:
Standard in Dreamcast software is the DiscJuggler .CDI format. Nero's .NRG format would not work on MAC and LINUX, also any Nero version newer than 5.5 had its problems with the DC format.

Most downloads for Dreamcast come as .ZIP or .RAR files. WinRAR should help you with unzipping/unraring:
http://www.winrar-rog.com/eindex.html

2 Burning a .CDI file with BootDreams:

To burn a *.CDI file, it's recommend to use BootDreams' CDI-burner. BootDreams is VERY easy to use and it's for free:

Download here: http://www.dcisozone.com/downloads/789/BootDreams-106.html

1. Download BootDreams and install it to e.g. C:/BootDreams/
2. Download the image you'd like to burn and unzip/unrar it somewhere, e.g. to C:/
   
3. Start BootDreams and choose "CDI Burner". Now click on "Browse" and point BootDreams to the CDI you would like to burn.
   
4. Click on "Burn CDI Image". That's it.
   

Other:
Nero Burning ROM isn't recommend for Dreamcast software but Alcohol120% (in TAO mode) works good too. Download the free trial version here:
http://trial.alcohol-soft.com/en/download_120.php

3 How to create and burn your own DC image with BootDreams:

1. Download BootDreams and install it to e.g. C:/BootDreams/
2. Download the emulator/game/app you would like to burn and put it in a dedicated folder, e.g. C:/BootDreams/SNES4ALL/
   
3. Now unzip/unrar your emulator/game/app into that same folder. The 1ST_READ.BIN contains the actual DC programme.
   
4. Start BootDreams and point it to C:/BootDreams/SNES4ALL/. It will then guide you trough the process. I recommend the 'CDRecord' method.