Re: [WinMac] More on cross platform CDs

Bruce Johnson(johnson[at]Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU)
Wed, 4 Aug 1999 15:12:32 -0500

Tom Roth wrote:
>
>
> I've been following the thread about cross platform CDs and just
> yesterday tried to create one and was not entirely successful. I've
> made cross platform CDs before but not with long Win95 & NT filenames.
>
> Here's what I've did...

> Second attempt: I burned just the Mac HFS partition on Toast not closing
> the disc and then took the CD to my WinNT machine that has a writable CD
> and wrote the ISO partition there using Easy CD Pro 2.11. Is this
>because Toast
> didn't write the whole thing or because I didn't close the CD on the
> Windows side? Or should I have written the Windows partition first and
> then finished by writing and closing the disc in Toast?

It is because what you actually have here is a multisession CD, not a
'hybrid' HFS/Windows CD. A true hybrid CD has _two_ disk catalogs, one
HFS and the other ISO, pointing to the _same_ data track; what you have
here is a disk with one HFS session, and one ISO session: two catalogs,
two data tracks.

>
> Another problem with this second attempt CD was when I tried to
> duplicate it in a CD duplicator it only duped the Mac partition and not
> the Windows partition.

This is probably because all the duplicator was seeing was the first
session.

People here are throwing around 'ISO' as though it is interchangeable
with Windows Joliet and Romeo CD formats. They are _not_ the same thing
as ISO 9660 levels 1, 2 or 3! ISO Level 1 (8+3 ALL CAPS filenames) is
the only strict ISOformat either EZ CD or Toast use.

How do I know this? I tried to burn a LinuxPPC CD using a joliet format;
the installer doesn't recognize it. Anyone want a Linuxx PPC coaster?

ISO9660 levels 2 and 3 are more often known as ISO 9660 with Rockridge
extensions. There is overlap in the specifications of Joliet and ISO
but, in MicroSquishies inimitable fashion, they decided to rewrite the
standards _again_. Close but no ceegar.

AFAIK, the ONLY way to write true ISO 9660 disks with long filename
support is to use mkisofs or mkhfsfs, which are GNU disk image writing
tools. I'm sure there are other programs out there, but I have not heard
of them or found them. You should then be able to use these disk images
to burn with either EZ CD or Toast.

Both mkisofs and mkhfsfs are readily available, but they are strictly
command-line programs. There are graphical interfaces for these
programs, but all the ones I've seen are for various Linux windowing
systems, since these programs are the _only_ way to burn CD's under
Linux, and the only way to burn UNIX Cd's (ISO9660 + Rockridge). mkhfsfs
is the only way I know of to make 'tribryd' CD's, readable as HFS,
Joliet or ISO9660RR formats, ie: long filenames on all platforms.

This _is_ an annoying drawback of both Toast and EZ CD. Maybe Toast 4.0
(due any day now, I think) will address this problem.

-------------
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

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