CSO/ZSO and RC2 questions

[TuxTheWise]

RC2 looks awesome! I'm going to try it soon, but I have some questions first:

1) How do I create CSO/ZSO images?
2) What is the difference between CSO/ZSO and regular ISO images? Assuming it has some kind of compression, will its CPU use impact too much on games?
3) RC2 still requires 1st_read.bin patched for LBA 0 correct?

Thank you

[SWAT]

1) Download ISO Make Pack v2.2, put ISO image to folder with it and run compress_iso.bat
2) In most cases this has no negative effect on the speed in games.
And in the case of SD, you can even get a speed boost in some games, due to the fact that the decompression is much faster reading. If the data are well compressible (not media formats), the compression of images will only benefit. In addition, it saves a lot of space. If you have HDD, use compressed image does not make much sense.
3) Supported ISO as before (zero lba, auto detect by mkisofs string, just converted to ISO track03.bin from GDI), and now supported CDI and GDI images.
But you need to understand, CDI images and BIN tracks in GDI have some unused data in sectors, so the loader used sector-by-sector reading, this leads to some regression in speed of reading.
I recommend use GDI images with small optimization. You need just convert BIN tracks to ISO, and change info in .gdi file. For all operations I writed a new util (gdiopt), you can use it with optimize_gdi.bat in new ISO Make Pack v2.2
And... just not use CDI for all For SD it's a hard work (as BIN tracks in GDI) and CF too. For HDD just less comfortable.

[TuxTheWise]

Thank you for the detailed response Mr. SWAT, you're awesome