@#$%ing self-booting CDs! And the goddamn logos too!

So I've got a homebrew .elf file that I'm trying to burn to an actual CD to test out, and I want to also insert a boot logo at the "licensed by Sega" screen. Two hours of following all the useless tutorials and tips in the homebrew scene, fighting with the logo insertion program (which was insisting that my <8kb PNG file was about 3 times its size and wouldn't fit in the IP.BIN until I took the color out of it) and all I have is a stack of wasted CD-Rs and a growing loathing for the DC homebrew community and their secret knowledge that somehow enables them to make flawless bootable CDs that they withhold from their tutorials. :angry :smt067

So can anyone tell me, in failsafe, easy to understand terms, what the hell I need to do to get a .elf selfbooting with a logo? I'm running Windows XP, and am using Nero for burning. :smt100

Also, can anyone tell me why sending said .elf via serial cable and dc-load works perfectly until the program is about to execute, and then hangs? :smt1069

And just in case anyone is thinking it, yes, it is a legit homebrew project and not some piracy scheme. :smt096

Act fast! Only the proper help can save my Dreamcast from being fed to the grinding robot that lives under the kitchen sink! It's life is in your hands! :funkinmu:

 

I've got no real experience with elf files since I've always used sbi's, or straight isos/built-in iso creators for the emulators I've got. What is it exactly you're trying to burn? Something of your own?

I suppose I'd use elf2bin, then bin2boot, then isobust the first session and do whatever it is you do to the ip.bin to give it the logo. No guarantees how far this method will take you.

 

Something I made, I think he is referring to :-D
It's a 1540kb ELF file that runs perfectly with dcload-serial here. GSL, have you tried with Chankast?

 

You can't burn a .elf file and assume it will work! You need to convert it to .bin first!




PD

 

Ah, so basically you mean dcload is loading/relocating/executing the ELF and the DC's bios has no support for the format?

 

Dev Box can use elf, it's just .BIN with the tags changed for debug purposes. I never had trouble booting .elf in codescape, but the SDK has a utility to change the tag in the elf file to make it a bin :smt023 Lack of documentation does kinda suck though, it only makes sense after you know how to do it :angry

 

I highly doubt ELF is a "raw" format like BIN. For one, it has sections. If it's anything LIKE the ELF format Linux uses it is way more complicated (try reading the spec).

 

things compiled with the official sdk contain an ip.bin as well right?

anyway, you need to convert the elf to bin with objcopy or what have you. Then you need to burn the first audio track, leaving the disc open. Then, you get the sector location that track ends at. Scramble your binary, make your iso, and insert your ip.bin. The tutorials should be able to explain that more in depth.

 

Which is essentially what I said - download elf2bin, make your elf into a bin, then burn it into selfboot format (either the manual session-by-session way or by using bin2boot to quickly make a selfbooting disc).

 

DC DEV SDK begs to differ, had mucho time playing with them when I had my kit :smt023 It's pretty much the debug executable whilst BIN was the 'proper' executable.

 

no no no no.... listen, you need to take the discombobulation unit, re-rout it through the intake manifold, boot in safe mode, THEN burn the elf file as an iso image.

 

And once again this is why open-source will never fully work/replace proprietary "closed"-source software. Not unless people want to work for peanuts.

 

Maybe I should have specified:

The .elf was entirely legal, done by Antipasta with the Kallistios tools. I neither need nor want to get it working with official dev stuff, as they could compromise the legitimate nature of this project. I'm using a serial cable and the dc-tool/dc-load programs for the DC. As far as the disc goes, the original IP.BIN that I was trying to add a logo to was Marcus Comstedt's serial slave, and I am very well aware that .elf files cannot be burnt to CDs directly - it was converted to a 1st-read.bin file and combined with the free/legal (or as legal as it can get and still boot) IP.BIN file downloaded from boob.co.uk. Still no progress.

Anti, if you have time, would you mind sending me the specifics of how you got it running? The upload goes just fine, and it goes through the 8 or so bytes of loading while the message "Executing" is displayed and then it just hangs... :smt009

 

Did it print "hmmm ete" to the PC? It should be among the list of messages output by dc-load.