there are some local CD Pressing places around here that do like 200 discs for 100$ or something and you get manual ,and back insert/spine label.
But is their mastering software capable of handling non-standard mixed mode discs?
That's the thing. It
is a standard mixed-mode disc. You can even make ISO-9660 mixed-mode disc that works with the PCECD too. I've gone through a 50pack of CD-Rs testing PCECD system for different specs and layouts.
The problem is this. You know when you press 'skip' on the CD player? It automatically jumps to the next track, right? It does, but not just to the next track, it jumps to "index 1' of the next track. In the CD spec, an audio or data track can have 'chapters'. Not only can it have chapters, but it must have at least 2 (index 0 and index 1). Some live concert CDs will play the introduction of a song if you play from track A to track B, but if you skip to track B, it skips the introduction of that song (or whatever) and goes directly to the start of the song. Index 0 is the real start of a track. Most audio CDs have 2 seconds of silence here if it's unused (2 seconds is the minimum for a legal CD, otherwise it can't carry the 'compact disc' logo). When the CD player starts from the beginning with the very first track, it starts at index 01 and not index 00. There exist a few audio CD's that put a hidden track into the space between index 0 and index 1 of the first track, and the only way to get to it is to rewind (seek backwards) back into this area. This is perfectly legal.
What does that have to do with PCE/TG CDs? The system card looks at the very first data track in the CD (it can be anywhere), but it also starts at index 1 of the data track. Nothing wrong with that either. Here's where the problem lies. If index 1 doesn't match up with the identification sector the BIOS is looking for, the BIOS won't boot the game. So you need to make sure that the pressing house has the correct sector that index 1 is pointing to. It's as simple as that.
The PCE CD system doesn't care about the gap length between index 0 and index 1. It only cares about index 1. Knowing this, I was able to 'hide' the SegaCD part of Lords of Thunder in the same data track, and still have the PCECD boot the game normally and play. It plays fine on the SegaCD too because they don't use index 1. They use a hard/fixed offset of 2 seconds, which coincidentally is the minimum length between index 0 and 1 for the first track. Thus, a dual boot SegaCD/Duo game
If you keep the data track as the first, and make sure index is pointing to the correct sector, then you should have no problem.
