If you’re hunting for for old versions of Linux via the Internet Archive, you may notice very large disc image dumps being broken down into the B6I and B6T file formats.
BlindWrite is a software suite that writes to recordable CDs, building upon the discontinued BlindRead software which specialized in reading CDs and writing CD images. BlindWrite’s key feature is utilizing the CD images created by BlindRead, which contain “Sub code” data providing extra information about the CD - this data distinguishes BlindRead images from other formats.
The BlindRead native format uses .BWT control files plus .BWI image files, sometimes accompanied by .BWS Sub code files. BlindWrite 5 and 6 introduced new native formats consisting of small .B5T/.B6T control files and .B5I/.B6I image files. The BlindRead format has been embraced by enthusiasts interested in making more faithful copies of CDs, as it retains Sub code data that most software ignores. Unfortunately, it adds a hurdle to those wanting to use such copies in a jiffy.
Some Debian-based Linux distributions come with the b5i2iso program within their APT repositories. For everyone else, you can simply download and compile the single C file of source code.
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Download the source code from Ubuntu: b5i2iso_0.2.orig.tar.gz
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Extract it using a graphical archive manager, or this CLI command:
tar -xf b5i2iso_0.2.orig.tar.gz
- If you have GCC installed, simply cd into the new directory run make and you will have a static binary file named: b5i2iso. You may then run make install or place it where you bloody well please.
To convert a B6I and B6T file pair, it’s as simple as running:
./b5i2iso FILENAME.B6I
… and an ISO file will be spit out in your current directory!
This was tested in FreeBSD and Alpine Linux.