Is the CD readable in the Linux system? If not, something may be wrong with your image or associated CUE file. Can you mount the .bin in Linux?

dionb wrote on 2020-04-12, 20:49:

Is the CD readable in the Linux system? If not, something may be wrong with your image or associated CUE file. Can you mount the .bin in Linux?

After burning, CD mounts fine in Linux and is full readable, i.e. I can copy all files back to my hard-drive. I have also been able to convert the bin/cue to an ISO and I can open and read that file just fine. I'm convinced there is no problem with the source.

I think it might have something to do with how the CD is burned on a modern burner in a format that's not readable by a 4x speed CDROM drive. But not sure how to specify this.

Probably the Dye color of the CDR is wrong for the laser type in the old CDROM. There was a topic here about that subject a few months ago. Do you any other brand blank CDR's ? If so try one and see if it will work. I purposely bought a 20 pack of old Imation 16X CDR's for just the issue you are having, they can be read by most 2X cdroms too. Also try burning at the very lowest speed your burner can burn a disk.

Ah. OK. Interesting. Are you burning your CD's on Linux as well? If so, what software do you use to burn your CD's with?

I used Imgburn under Wine in Ubuntu but generally use my old XP computer with Nero6 to burn cd's for older computers, that machine also has a floppy drive 😁. There is a Nero for Linux but have not tried it.

Horun wrote on 2020-04-13, 01:02:

I used Imgburn under Wine in Ubuntu but generally use my old XP computer with Nero6 to burn cd's for older computers, that machine also has a floppy drive 😁. There is a Nero for Linux but have not tried it.

Nero for Linux never made it past the version 4.0 IIRC. It's not worth it, it will not work on modern linux distros. I burn my CDs on a Windows 10 machine using imgburn or anyburn, both work perfectly so far. On Linux I use brasero and that has worked fine always.

I tried Nero 6 on my Windows 2000 machine. I seem to be getting better results but in all it's still flaky. At least Nero 6 has more options to fiddle with. I'll keep trying...

Are you sure the CDROM in your DOS machine is not acting up ? Being DOS you should also make sure all the file and folder names on the CD are true SFN or DOS 8.3 structured. Meaning No names longer than 8 chars+ 3 suffix and no ascii special characters and no spaces. */ + | \ = ? [ ] ; : ” . < > ,~ ! @ # $ % ^ & ( ) { } ` plus "space" are typically not allowed in any DOS file naming (depending on the DOS version but better to never use them), the underscore _ is ok.

I have better luck with K3B on Linux, it runs fine even if you're not using KDE (you'll have to pull in a bunch of KDE dependencies if that's the case but it's not too bad - couple hundred MB.) You can set it to strict ISO 9660 filesystem which should truncate all the filenames & ensure complete DOS compatibility - although Joliet is supposed to be backwards compatible with ISO9660, but it's always possible it's not implemented properly on your specific disc.

That won't help if you're burning from an image though. You could always try copying the files/audio tracks out of the image and recreating it as a K3B project.

...THAT SAID, I've had tons of trouble with "late" CD-Rs (the ones rated for high speeds, like "4x-52x" etc.) on early drives. I would definitely change your media type. I avoid colored discs altogether if I know I'm going to need to read them in an 8x or 4x drive.

xjas wrote on 2020-04-13, 03:38:

...THAT SAID, I've had tons of trouble with "late" CD-Rs (the ones rated for high speeds, like "4x-52x" etc.) on early drives. I would definitely change your media type. I avoid colored discs altogether if I know I'm going to need to read them in an 8x or 4x drive.

Yeah I burn most of mine using Juliet name format but also watch/change the file names before if going to a DOS/Win3 box. Totally agree that the new CDR media being not backward compatible with old drives. Thanks !

Horun wrote on 2020-04-13, 03:24:

Are you sure the CDROM in your DOS machine is not acting up ? Being DOS you should also make sure all the file and folder names on the CD are true SFN or DOS 8.3 structured. Meaning No names longer than 8 chars+ 3 suffix and no ascii special characters and no spaces. */ + | \ = ? [ ] ; : ” . < > ,~ ! @ # $ % ^ & ( ) { } ` plus "space" are typically not allowed in any DOS file naming (depending on the DOS version but better to never use them), the underscore _ is ok.

Nero 6 on Win 2k allows for full ISO 9660 compatibility. I have two Creative 4x drives, one in a 386 and the other in a 486 build. Both are NOS and both have the same problem reading the disks. Any other disks, such as bought CD's they both can read fine. Sometimes I get a directory listing, sometimes I can copy a bunch of files of the disks. But they mostly start giving read errors sooner rather than later.

I also start to believe that it is a media quality problem. The CD's I have are almost see-through. Modern drives don't seem to have much of a problem with this but the 25 year old drive technology seems to be more demanding. 😀

Hopefully I can get some better quality disks... CD's are becoming more difficult to find these days...

It might be best to see if there's some way you can remove DOS from the equation and narrow it down to a hardware problem.

How old is your DOS computer? Does the BIOS support booting from CDs?

Jorpho wrote on 2020-04-13, 05:26:

It might be best to see if there's some way you can remove DOS from the equation and narrow it down to a hardware problem.

How old is your DOS computer? Does the BIOS support booting from CDs?

There is no problem with DOS and/or the hardware. Both my 386 and 486 read CD's just fine (the CD drives are brand new old stock Creative drives). It's just the CD's I'm burning that aren't read correctly or are read in a flaky intermittent way.

Do they read other burnt CDs? Some old CD drives aren't good with CD-R / CD-RW media in general.

dr_st wrote on 2020-04-13, 07:20:

Do they read other burnt CDs? Some old CD drives aren't good with CD-R / CD-RW media in general.

Yes. Other burned disks (disks I burned 20 years ago) both drives were able to read without problem.

I was able to test the newly burned disks on another drive, a 16x BTC drive, in one of my other 486's, and the disks read fine in that drive. So, the disks themselves seem to be fine.

At the moment I believe its the media quality. I'm going to try to get some other disks, maybe 650MB instead of 700MB disks...

So, I did a few more tests with some old burned CD's, most of these were burned 15 to 20 years ago and I can't remember the burner they were burned on, but...

These disks read and copied fine:

Platinum CD-R, 80min 700MB, 1x-40x
TDK CD-R74 CR-RECORDABLE, Reflex ULTRA, 650MB
iMation, CD-R 700MB/80min
Mitsui SG, CR-R 650MB

These disks don't read or read partially:

D VISION, CD-R 650MB/74min, 1-2-4-6-8x (all these disks have a browned discoloring, aged, but read fine on newer drives).
SONY CD-R CDQ-74CN, 650MB/74min
Fujifilm CD-R, 650MB
BTC, 74min 650MB, 4x 2x 1x
Verbatim CD-R, 700MB, 52x, 80min

The last one is the type I started with. I literally burned through two boxes of them doing various tests.

I have some iMation disks on the way, see if it really makes a difference. 😀

PS: Any "official", as in purchased disks, read without a problem. Same for audio CD's, they play fine.

PS2: An interesting thread as well: EARLIEST CD-ROM Drives that could Read CD-R's ???

xjas wrote on 2020-04-13, 03:38:

I have better luck with K3B on Linux, it runs fine even if you're not using KDE (you'll have to pull in a bunch of KDE dependencies if that's the case but it's not too bad - couple hundred MB.) You can set it to strict ISO 9660 filesystem which should truncate all the filenames & ensure complete DOS compatibility - although Joliet is supposed to be backwards compatible with ISO9660, but it's always possible it's not implemented properly on your specific disc.

For anyone wandering in off the Internet, in the dialog that pops up in K3b when you click the burn button, there's a Filesystem tab and, inside that tab, there's a drop-down labelled "File System" (as opposed to "Symbolic Links" or "White space handling") which contains an entry named "DOS Compatibility".

That drop-down is basically a chooser for a set of mkisofs/genisoimage presets and, if you want to explore what it's doing to replicate it in a CLI-based burning workflow, you can then click the "Custom..." button and look at what checkboxes and radio buttons the "DOS Compatibility" preset set/unset.

Another option is to check "Only create image" under the Writing tab, "burn" the disc, and then click "Show Debugging Output" to see a log that includes the raw mkisofs/genisoimage command that K3b constructed.

I have had problems with other software to create old school DOS ISOs with allmost all modern software. But a program called UltraISO have had best results. And you can add all the classic limitations. I have even made 8GB dual layer DVDs that are readable in plain MSCDEX DOS with a IDE DVD.