bin/cue Mounting under OS9

[TarableCode]

Is there any software that will emulate a physical CD drive that accepts bin/cue files and runs under MacOS 9?

I want to start backing up some of my discs but I don't want to lose CD audio on those that have it.

Neither Toast nor the Virtual CD emulator seem to be able to do this and I wondered if there was some obscure piece of software I just haven't found yet.

 

[ArmorAlley]

This is a topic much discussed in the forums of  the Macintosh Garden (e.g. http://macintoshgarden.org/forum/how-create-image-hfsaudio-cds)

From what I have read there, the answer is no. Bin/cue files are just too modern.

However, I am ever hopeful that someone can prove me wrong (MissingMediaBurner perhaps?)

This thread may prove to be your answer: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/76863-mac-tool-to-make-cuebin-images-from-cds/

 

[TarableCode]

It's a shame it's not supported, I thought bin->iso caused the audio tracks to be lost though.

I was looking into the g_mass_storage driver from linux and thought about hooking up a tiny arm pc to it and using that as an image but it seems to only support iso as well.

 

[theirongiant]

MacOS 9 has no facility to do this because it cannot playback the audio digitally. Your only option was analog audio directly from the inserted disc. Astarte / Adaptec Toast has a virtual CD mounter, and there's a third party utility called "Virtual DVD-ROM/CD Utility" that runs great on both 68K and PPC Macs running System 7 - 9.x. Both of these can only handle data discs. Dual format (Mac + PC) discs mount just fine; both partitions appear on the desktop.

An ISO would not have the audio tracks. ISO is short for ISO-9660: the specification for data-only optical discs. Only the BIN/CUE pair would be able to accurately write data with audio. BIN is completely raw (BINary) data from the disk, and the CUE file describes the size and length of each "track" and any sessions. Data is always track 1.

I ended up buying a five-pack of 12x CD-RW discs in jewel cases from Amazon for under $20. I can reuse them at least a thousand times before they wear out. This is more than adequate to burn the occasional abandonware game for playback on a PowerMac G3. The only game I can think of that has five CDs is Myst II: RIVEN from Ubisoft / Cyan Studios (I own the original). The next largest is The Last Express by Jordan Mechner (3 CDs).

 

[LaPorta]

What the heck is a bin/cue, what is it used for, and why is it not an issue with physical discs....if there are any for Mac?

 

[obsolete]

I ended up buying a five-pack of 12x CD-RW discs in jewel cases from Amazon for under $20. I can reuse them at least a thousand times before they wear out.

Don't count on that. I've had problems with CD-RW wearout in far fewer (like 10) write/erase cycles.

 

[LaPorta]

ended up buying a five-pack of 12x CD-RW discs in jewel cases from Amazon for under $20. I can reuse them at least a thousand times before they wear out. This is more than adequate to burn the occasional abandonware game for playback on a PowerMac G3. The only game I can think of that has five CDs is Myst II: RIVEN from Ubisoft / Cyan Studios (I own the original). The next largest is The Last Express by Jordan Mechner (3 CDs).

Why not just get the 100 pack of blank CDs for $20? You mess one up, who cares? Plus, they are more universally readable than RWs.

 

[Arbee]

Bin/Cue (aka CDRWin) is the “industry standard” CD rip format. Unlike ISO it works for discs with more than 1 track and/or where the track type isn’t plain data.

 

[LaPorta]

Ahh something “win”. Sounds like most Mac discs wouldn’t need it.

 

[finkmac]

Ahh something “win”. Sounds like most Mac discs wouldn’t need it.

very true. mac discs are Known to Not use CD audio or multiple tracks.

 

[LaPorta]

If I recall, the only one I’m aware of that I have is Virtual 3D Pool.

 

[saybur]

The MacPlay ports of Descent I and II have Red Book audio. There are some other games that use it too, I think Warcraft had audio tracks. It was definitely not as common as on the PC side though.

For OP this doesn't exactly address your question, but if you're using a SCSI emulator both ZuluSCSI and BlueSCSI v2 have support for bin/cue. No audio (without separate hardware) though there were some commits referencing audio over SCSI, I don't know if that is a officially working thing or not.

 

[ymk]

For OP this doesn't exactly address your question, but if you're using a SCSI emulator both ZuluSCSI and BlueSCSI v2 have support for bin/cue. No audio (without separate hardware) though there were some commits referencing audio over SCSI, I don't know if that is a officially working thing or not.

If we're getting into hardware solutions, MacSD has supported BIN+CUE and CD Audio since 2020.

 

[LaPorta]

Alternatively...is there a reason you can't make images of both of them and just mount individual images together.

 

[saybur]

If we're getting into hardware solutions, MacSD has supported BIN+CUE and CD Audio since 2020.

Sorry, bias toward what I've worked with with is showing, I should have mentioned your implementation as well

Alternatively...is there a reason you can't make images of both of them and just mount individual images together.

There would unfortunately need to be some kind of driver written to parse the .bin file correctly and present it to the OS like a real drive. The data in a .bin isn't set up in a way that allows it to be simply "played back" or anything like that absent special software. It would probably be a real project.

I missed that the original post was from 2017: IMHO these days you're better off just using an existing & working hardware solution, like @ymk said you can buy a MacSD and get audio+data support images out of the box. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, ZuluSCSI also has audio support with hardware modifications. All the ones mentioned would handle bin/cue files (or plain iso) just fine.

 

[theirongiant]

The MacPlay ports of Descent I and II have Red Book audio. There are some other games that use it too, I think Warcraft had audio tracks. It was definitely not as common as on the PC side though.

Ahem: the original CD release of Half Life had audio tracks. The dark ambient soundtrack was amazing.

Modern releases of Half Life delivered via Steam include the soundtrack and play as digital audio.

Mounting the Red Book audio session is only half the problem; you also need an app or service that:

1. Will appear as a real CD drive;
2. Intercept ATAPI calls to play audio tracks;
3. Play them digitally through the sound card.

On a technical level, the last item is the easiest part; even the first version of iTunes can play CD quality audio, and a fast 68K Mac would not have too much trouble playing uncompressed 16-bit stereo tracks. #1 and #2 are significantly harder; this requires a driver / extension to masquerade as a real disc drive. It's the reason why Alcohol 120% is so popular on Windows: they put in the engineering effort to make a pure software CD emulator that works with all kinds of disc formats.

MacSD is awesome, but it's just hardware masquerading as another kind of hardware.

 

[Arbee]

The only 68K Macs that actually had 16-bit audio playback were the Quadra AVs. But it's easy enough to only send the top 8 bits to the (Enhanced) Apple Sound Chip on all the other 68Ks.

The more pressing issue is that the ASC clones built into the various system ASICs are limited to the 22257 Hz sample rate. (the real discrete ASC has a 44.1 kHz mode specifically for this, and EASC can play samples at arbitrary rates). You could in theory only send half the samples to the hardware, and hope people don't notice that it's playing slightly too fast, that's more or less what 24 Hz film movies converted for 50 Hz analog TV did.

 

[olePigeon]

I suspect there were quite a few educational titles that were mixed, especially the shovleware you got with your Performa.