Hello Redump!
Want to start by saying thanks for granting me an account. I've recently picked up an interest in creating perfect backups of all my disc-based media and am excited to give back to the community if I can. I do have a couple noob questions though.
1. I've ripped a handful of Gamecube and Wii games using CleanRip v2.0.0. These each have a *.bca, *.iso, and *-dumpinfo.txt file, and using the downloaded dats (GC available here, and Wii I downloaded from Dolphin's forums) they've been verified by CleanRip. Where do I upload these files to add them here? Is my understanding correct in that until I gain "Dumper" status (which I hope to do) I should create a forum post in the dumps forum and post all the data from the dumpinfo.txt?
2. For non-GC/Wii games, it is my understanding that the correct tool to use is DiscImageCreator and that depending on what I'm dumping, I need a specific drive? I had a hard time understanding how to use that tool (getting errors presumably due to my drive model), though I have had success generating files that match hashes in the redump database following an older guide using ImgBurn on some of my single-track PSX games. Is this sufficient to upload, or does it really need to be DiscImageCreator?
3. Regarding my drives, I currently have access to 3 drive models
- LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSCO
- ASUS DRW-24F1ST c
- LG GT30L A1
I've tested the ASUS and know that it doesn't support the /d8 command in DIC and doesn't support "scrambling", but I admit I don't entirely understand what that means. Reading these forums, it seems I should test if it supports lead-in/lead-out reading, but I'm not sure how to do that. Are any of these drives good to use? How would I go about testing lead reading?
4. If none of the drives above are sufficient, where would I go about getting a Plextor drive? Their website doesn't list any drives at all, and though I've found a number of them on Amazon and Newegg, they all seem to be PX-8xx models, which I believe are not compatible with DIC. Is that correct?
Apologies if this is a little long winded and if these are super simple questions, but I had a hard time finding direct answers between the wiki and the forums, and want to make sure I'm working off of current and correct information before I spend a bunch of time making dumps that turn out to be invalid.
Thanks!