[TUHS] Re: 5ESS UNIX RTR Reference Manual - Issue 10 (2001)

[Andrew Warkentin <andreww591@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 9:41 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> What would you suggest?  My main point of reference is years and years of being in the console video game scene, bin/cue is the most accessible of the high fidelity formats I've seen for things, compared with say cdi and mdf/mds.  Does a plain old iso suffice for all relevant data from the media?  Frankly I've never done dumps on a UNIXy computer with an optical drive, only Windows boxen, so can't say I'm hip to the sort of disc image you get doing a dd from an optical /dev entry, maybe I just need to get a UNIX of some kind on my old beater game machine with an optical drive to do these dumps going forward.
>
The vast majority of non-game software was distributed on discs that
were formatted with a single data track and no special formatting.
These can be safely imaged in flat (ISO) format. The main reason to
use the lower-level formats is for discs with disc-based copy
protection or multiple tracks (usually one data track and multiple
audio tracks), both of which are very uncommon for non-game software.
BeOS install CDs are the one exception I can think of; these have an
ISO-format boot track followed by one or two BFS-format system tracks
(separate system tracks are used for x86 and PPC), although even these
aren't actually dependent on multiple tracks and can be run from a CD
with just the system track if a boot floppy is used.

Most dumping programs should be able to show you how the discs are
formatted; if they only have a single track each, ISO format should be
sufficient.