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

[Wesley Parish <wobblygong@gmail.com>]

On 12/06/24 17:43, Andrew Warkentin wrote:
> 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.

FWIW, I've successfully dd'ed cds and cd-roms into iso files and burnt 
copies. I've never made use of the bin/cue setup, and wouldn't know how 
to work it.

Wesley Parish