If you want to contribute to the growing CD-i preservation
team and you have some CD-i titles that are not dumped yet, keep in mind
these differences that will help you dump the discs easier. Not all
CD-i disc are the same. CD-i member Claunia shows us what to look out
for: "Do NOT dump as ISO, ever. Green Book invented Mode 2 sectors and those do not work in .iso.
Besides that there are three types of CD-i discs:
CD-i discs, the TOC does not contain a track 1, this way Hi-Fi players
just skip to Lead-Out, not playing the data and destroying your
speakers. This one is supported by Alcohol, however as it does with many
other discs, the image is not a faithful representation of the disc
(the TOC in the image is not the same as on the disc). Most games are in
this format.
CD-i Ready discs, the TOC contains several audio tracks from 1 to X, but
track 1 doesn't start at LBA 0, more like 30 minutes after, and the
space between Lead-In and Track 1 is a MODE 2 track containing the CD-i
filesystem. Because the TOC is like that, and the Q subchannel indicates
those sectors as to be skipped, a Hi-Fi player will just seek to the
first audio track. These discs DO NOT dump correctly (or at all) with
Alcohol, CDRWin, Nero, BlindWrite, DiscJuggler, etc. They work with
DiscImageChef, and only in dicformat (because the formats of the
previously mentioned software cannot handle a track 0, or changing from
mode2 to audio mid track). Most of these discs are "CD-i Music", but
some games come in this format also.
CD-i Bridge, are exactly like CDROM-XA, they contain one or more MODE2
tracks. Some even do not use the CD-i filesystem but a normal ISO9660
one. Most movies for CD-i are in this format. These discs work perfectly
in any software that supports MODE2.
[Thanks, Claunia]