Dreamcast Having issues with burning CDi on Linux

[KenaiPhoenix]

Hello, a while ago I burned some DC games using Dcdib on some Sony CD-R Cds. Some games required more than one try, but overall it worked.

Recently I try to get some new games burned but my Dreamcast (V1 from march 2000) refused to read them:

- It would get stuck on the splash game screen
- Pass the DC Logo, the Sega logo, and then reboot endlessly
- Just not boot at all

I try my old burned disc and some original ones and they all worked fine, so I thought it probably was the quality of the CD, so i decided to get some Verbatim CD-R. The burn is successful again, but the games just refused to work.

What can it be? Any Linux Dreamcast gamer here that can give me hand on how do you burn your games?

Thanks

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

The issue likely stems from burn quality, media compatibility, or subtle changes in your burning setup, not just the brand of CD-R. Even though Verbatim is usually reliable, recent batches may vary in quality, and Dreamcast drives are notoriously picky.

Several Linux users have reported similar problems when burning .CDI images for Dreamcast. You mentioned using Dcdib, which is a solid tool, but success often depends on a few critical factors. First, burn speed matters. Try burning at the lowest possible speed, such as 4x or 8x, to improve disc readability. Some drives default to higher speeds even when you specify lower ones, so double-check your burner’s actual output. Second, not all Verbatim CD-Rs are created equal. Older “AZO” dye variants tend to work better than newer ones, which may use cheaper materials. If you can find “Made in Taiwan” Verbatim discs, they’re generally more reliable than “Made in India” ones.

Also, check the .CDI image itself. If it boots fine in an emulator but fails on hardware, it might still be a bad rip or incompatible with your Dreamcast’s laser calibration. Try testing with a known-good image from a trusted source. Some users recommend using cdrtools or cdrecord directly instead of wrappers like Dcdib for more control over burn parameters.

Lastly, your Dreamcast’s laser may be aging, even if it reads older burns. Some newer discs require stronger calibration. Cleaning the lens or adjusting the potentiometer carefully has helped others in similar cases.

 

[aquova]

Lastly, your Dreamcast’s laser may be aging, even if it reads older burns. Some newer discs require stronger calibration. Cleaning the lens or adjusting the potentiometer carefully has helped others in similar cases.

This is the exact problem I had. I was burning Dreamcast games using DCDIB and I was getting about a 50% success rate for no rhyme or reason. It turned out that my Dreamcast's laser had aged somewhat. I had to increase the power on the potentiometer (which you need to be very careful not to overdo it), but after that I never had any disc read issues again, even with CD-Rs that hadn't worked previously.

 

[diapered]

The burn is successful again, but the games just refused to work.

You can't go by if the software says the burn was successful. Doing other "burn checks" is also a waste of time, it's not like you can fix anything anyway. It is either going to work or not.

First, burn speed matters. Try burning at the lowest possible speed, such as 4x or 8x, to improve disc readability. Some drives default to higher speeds even when you specify lower ones, so double-check your burner’s actual output.

This is outdated information. Others in the linux thread (and I think elsewhere here) have talked about this. And I personally can attest that it is bullshit advice from back in the day, and it is unfortunate you will still find it everywhere. Nowadays, you want to burn at the MAX your drive will do. Forcing lower speeds will give a higher failure rate. Disks today NEED to spin fast I guess lol I don't know the technical details, but that is how optical media are designed for today.

@KenaiPhoenix If you want to burn dc cdi on linux. Run imgBurn under wine. On their site, there is another file you need for dreamcast games (it is clear you need it for cdi files), dl that as well and put it in the wine folder it tells you to. You will have to fiddle with something else to get it to work depending on your drive (iirc it is under I/O tab). And set to MAX speed.

That is the most reliable way I have found on linux. I would give the user that helped me with this a shoutout, but they are no longer here

Post automatically merged: Nov 10, 2025

And yea, you will still get some failures, it is frustrating. Your verbatim disks (which I have used successfully many times) should be fine. Even random "low" brand disks I got to work with this method. Contrary to what you read, I don't think the quality of the medium matters that much. Again, I think that was an issue years ago?

That's something that was frustrating for me. I was burning at low speeds and thought I needed higher quality disks like I saw online about this topic, then finally a user here set me straight.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Thank you all for the replies!

Lastly, your Dreamcast’s laser may be aging, even if it reads older burns. Some newer discs require stronger calibration. Cleaning the lens or adjusting the potentiometer carefully has helped others in similar cases

I really hope it is not the case, I will give it a clean tho, its been a while

I was burning Dreamcast games using DCDIB and I was getting about a 50% success rate for no rhyme or reason.

I was using it until recently, and it was pretty flawless until now.

@KenaiPhoenix If you want to burn dc cdi on linux. Run imgBurn under wine. On their site, there is another file you need for dreamcast games (it is clear you need it for cdi files), dl that as well and put it in the wine folder it tells you to. You will have to fiddle with something else to get it to work depending on your drive (iirc it is under I/O tab). And set to MAX speed.

I was having a big issue with installing IMGBurn and running it on linux through wine, but one user in DC Talk was kind enough to make me a really easy video tutorial. Im right now giving it a try on that burner.

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

Thank you all for the replies!


I really hope it is not the case, I will give it a clean tho, its been a while


I was using it until recently, and it was pretty flawless until now.


I was having a big issue with installing IMGBurn and running it on linux through wine, but one user in DC Talk was kind enough to make me a really easy video tutorial. Im right now giving it a try on that burner.

Glad I could help!

 

[diapered]

I was having a big issue with installing IMGBurn and running it on linux through wine, but one user in DC Talk was kind enough to make me a really easy video tutorial. Im right now giving it a try on that burner.

Yea, wine can be annoying. What distro are you using? A user here recommended garuda to me, and it has been the first distro to make wine hassle free for me which is one reason I have come to love garuda. Wine has always been a pain in the ass for me, until I switched to garuda.

gl, and when you get wine working, I found imgBurn worked best with a windows XP environment.

using Dcdib

I never heard of that one, but it should probably work? Were you burning at the max rate for your drive? That's what I did with imgBurn and then I was only getting like one failure out of every 8-10 disks or so. idk, I went with imgBurn since that seemed most recommended from what I found.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Yea, wine can be annoying. What distro are you using? A user here recommended garuda to me, and it has been the first distro to make wine hassle free for me which is one reason I have come to love garuda. Wine has always been a pain in the ass for me, until I switched to garuda.

gl, and when you get wine working, I found imgBurn worked best with a windows XP environment.

Im using Arch (btw), and yeah it was a pain in the ass. More than the distro was that all the information in the internet was "Bruh... dont bother", but thankfully a guy in Dreamcast Talk make me video tutorial that let me install Wine really easily:

I never heard of that one, but it should probably work? Were you burning at the max rate for your drive? That's what I did with imgBurn and then I was only getting like one failure out of every 8-10 disks or so. idk, I went with imgBurn since that seemed most recommended from what I found.

I have tried at minimum, x8, and maximum. So far no luck. I managed to burn a CD disc with music for my car, but the DC just refuses to boot. The idea that my drive might be dying is probably, Im going to make one last burn and then try to burn a PS1 game (I totally forgot I could give this one a try lol), to rule out this possibility.

 

[moonbits]

@RETRO-VETRO touched on all the potential issues.

You gotta burn that baby slowly, like a good stew my dude.

Looking to the docs on DCIB, this stood out:

dcdib -c <file>        Check the self-boot method that <file> uses, without burning. If you have a late rev 1 Sega Dreamcast that can't boot the audio+data self-boot method used by many CDI files, this option can save you from some wasted CD-Rs

Try checking the self-boot mode with the cdi's that work?

Spoiler

(I'm reading documentation outside of work, HELP)

 

[diapered]

You gotta burn that baby slowly, like a good stew my dude.

Incorrect. It's more like a surgery where being fast and efficient is preferable, taking too long leads to greater possibility of infection. Modern disks can burn at 52x, so unless your drive can go above that (my shitbox can not get anywhere near that), you should burn at the native max speed. Taking longer than needed will just lead to more possibility of errors during burning.

Try checking the self-boot mode with the cdi's that work?

Pretty much any cdi file (from the repo) will self boot, unless saying it needs a boot disk? I have not encountered one that doesn't. I can confirm that the RDC cdi works for this one

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (USA) DC ISO Download – CDRomance

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (USA) DC ISO CDI/GDI for SEGA Dreamcast. Genre: Action-Adventure. Published and developed by Appaloosa Interactive, SEGA

cdromance.org

despite the description saying it doesn't, so I am pretty confident in my dc burning knowledge on linux...

I have tried at minimum, x8, and maximum. So far no luck.

Ok, I would definitely give imgBurn via wine a try then. That worked for me. I'm sure dcdib is fine software, but a hardware task like this (burning dc games or burning anything in general) is probably something not many are interested in making sure it works on a wide amount of hardware.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Well I can rule out that the drive is failing:

I burned a PSX game and it worked on first try

You gotta burn that baby slowly, like a good stew my dude.

Yeah, I tried at x4 (my drive is old so it can actually do it) and still no luck. It is like it cannot boot for some reason Im still not seeing.

Try checking the self-boot mode with the cdi's that work?

Just checked, the img is self-bottable. Im still scratching my head to what it can be.

Ok, I would definitely give imgBurn via wine a try then. That worked for me. I'm sure dcdib is fine software, but a hardware task like this (burning dc games or burning anything in general) is probably something not many are interested in making sure it works on a wide amount of hardware.

I have tried broth at this point (wasted like 10+ CDs).

PSX games seems to work nicely, videos included, but no luck with the dreamcast. Not even the Utopia is working.

Incorrect. It's more like a surgery where being fast and efficient is preferable, taking too long leads to greater possibility of infection. Modern disks can burn at 52x, so unless your drive can go above that (my shitbox can not get anywhere near that), you should burn at the native max speed. Taking longer than needed will just lead to more possibility of errors during burning.

I have read the same thing. I tried at max exped but ImgBurn give me a big error and did nor burn the image lol. So I guess there are exceptions

 

[diapered]

ImgBurn give me a big error and did nor burn the image lol.

I think I know what the error is, I was going to show my wine/imgBurn settings to maybe help, but my wine is currently broken apparently >_< Must have broken with an update. Like I said, wine is always a pain, in my experience. This is the only task I have ever used it for lol

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Ok... I learned a couple things that my Dreamcast hates:

1 - Verbatim CD-R (It just tolerates Sony CD-R)
2 - Some old Hombrebrew ports
3 - Fun

I managed to burn a couple of games and they worked fine (tho, not always at first try): Half - Life, UT and the port of Wipeout.

I turns out that between my switch to ImgBurn, playing with different burning speeds and the different CDs, I had missed the sweet spot of: x4, Sony CD-R and probably a good image of the game.

I tried multiple times to burn this image of UT for DC, but it just dont boot. BUT the spanish version works perfectly. The homebrew of Heretic works on emulator but it gives a black screen on hardware (I google it, and I wasnt the only one with the problem).

I wasted a lot of disc and you guys time (sorry), but now I now how to get it. On the plus side I discover a good booter that actually works on VGA and it works every time, for when I want to play Dead Or Alive 2.

Thank you all for your time!

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

Well I can rule out that the drive is failing:

I burned a PSX game and it worked on first try


Yeah, I tried at x4 (my drive is old so it can actually do it) and still no luck. It is like it cannot boot for some reason Im still not seeing.


Just checked, the img is self-bottable. Im still scratching my head to what it can be.


I have tried broth at this point (wasted like 10+ CDs).

PSX games seems to work nicely, videos included, but no luck with the dreamcast. Not even the Utopia is working.



I have read the same thing. I tried at max exped but ImgBurn give me a big error and did nor burn the image lol. So I guess there are exceptions

You never know what old burner someone's rockin'!

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2025

Ok... I learned a couple things that my Dreamcast hates:

1 - Verbatim CD-R (It just tolerates Sony CD-R)
2 - Some old Hombrebrew ports
3 - Fun

I managed to burn a couple of games and they worked fine (tho, not always at first try): Half - Life, UT and the port of Wipeout.

I turns out that between my switch to ImgBurn, playing with different burning speeds and the different CDs, I had missed the sweet spot of: x4, Sony CD-R and probably a good image of the game.

I tried multiple times to burn this image of UT for DC, but it just dont boot. BUT the spanish version works perfectly. The homebrew of Heretic works on emulator but it gives a black screen on hardware (I google it, and I wasnt the only one with the problem).

I wasted a lot of disc and you guys time (sorry), but now I now how to get it. On the plus side I discover a good booter that actually works on VGA and it works every time, for when I want to play Dead Or Alive 2.

Thank you all for your time!

No problem, and no it's completely fine!