Ever wanted a GoTek for CDs? If you have a Raspberry Pi Zero W or 2 W, USBODE turns it into a virtual optical drive. It allows you to store many disk images on a MicroSD card and mount them through a web interface. This project was featured on Phil's Computer Lab, and his video provides an excellent demo.

• Acts as an optical drive on retro computers equipped with USB.
• Switch images whithout rebooting or ejecting.
• Install and run optical disc-based programs, including multi-disc titles.
• Supports ISO images, and with some caveats, BIN/CUE images.
• Use the Waveshare OLED HAT to swap images without the need for a web interface.
• Or, use the Pirate Audio Line Out/LCD HAT (PIM483), which also has a Line Out, enabling CD audio.
• Ability to use PWM audio for CD Audio (low quality, but works in a pinch), needs to be configured in the settings menu through the web UI.
• Some users have reported success with the IQaudio DAC+, however this would have to be used with a zero without headers since the headers on this device are backwards.
• Audio via the HDMI port (this might be the most expensive option though). Read details below.

Note: Some forms of CD-ROM copy protection won’t work with USBODE.

1. A supported Raspberry Pi SBC, please review the following table for details:

   Model	Support status	Notes
   Raspberry Pi A/A+ (2014)	Unsupported	Requires USB Host mode to operate
   Raspberry Pi 2 B (2015)	Unsupported	Requires USB Host mode to operate
   Raspberry Pi Zero (2015)	Supported	As of 2.9.2 now supported
   Raspberry Pi Zero W (2017)	Supported	If purchasing a new Pi, try to get WH model (this has headers)
   Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W / WH (2021)	Supported	If purchasing a new Pi, try to get WH model (this has headers). Has multi-processor support, which may be used in the future by USBODE
   Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ (2018)	Supported	Requires USB-A-to-USB-A cable.
   Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (2016) / B+	Unsupported	No USB host mode on this model (2018)
   Raspberry Pi 4 (2019)/4B (2019)	Supported	Use USB-C power port for gadget mode. All RAM configurations supported
   Raspberry Pi 400	Unknown Support	I'm unsure if this model works
   Raspberry Pi 5 (2023)	Unsupported	USB host-mode stack not supported by current dependencies.

2. A target computer (i.e. the computer you want to emulate optical drives on) that supports USB.

3. A computer to perform the initial setup on. Needs to be running any modern OS and have a MicroSD card reader/adapter.

4. (Optional) A 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network. The Pi will connect to this network and will then be controllable through a web browser. Any device that is connected to that same network can then be used to control the USBODE. This includes mobile devices and even retro computers running IE 6 or above.

5. A MicroSD card. Previous limitations of 256 GB have been resolved and has been tested with SDCards up to 1TB. Cards marked A1 or A2 will perform better.

6. A Micro USB cable (not Mini USB) that can transfer data along with power.

7. The latest USBODE Circle Release.

• USBODE supports the Waveshare OLED HAT and the PirateAudio Line Out/LCD HAT. The Pirate Audio HAT requires no configuration. The Waveshare requires that you change one line in the config.txt file. See Initial Setup below.
• The PirateAudio HAT also enables CD audio. An aux cable going into your sound card's Line In port will play that audio over your computer's speakers. Additionally, enterprising users have created 8mm-to-4-pin converter cables, allowing them to connect their Pi to their sound card's internal Line In port. You'll need to know your sound card's pinout to make one for yourself, as they vary between models.
• For Audio setup via HDMI, a number of additional components (~$30 USD) is required in order for it to work, read below for further details

1. Download the latest release .img file. For Raspberry Pi Zero W (not 2) use the 32-bit build, all other supported Raspberry Pis can use either builds, but be aware 32-bit is tested more thoroughly.
2. Mount the MicroSD card on the setup computer. Using the Raspberry Pi Imager, flash the latest release image to the MicroSD card. To perform this:
   • Open the Raspberry Pi Imager.
   • Under Raspberry Pi Device, choose No Filtering
   • Under Operating System, choose Use Custom
   • Select the .img file that was downloaded in step 1
   • Under Storage, select the SD card to flash
   • Click Next. If the Imager gives you an error, try using diskpart's Clean command, then try again, or check out our Discord.
3. If required, re-insert the MicroSD card if a bootfs volume is not listed. Open the bootfs volume on the MicroSD card, open the file labeled “wpa_supplicant.conf”.
4. Under country=GB, replace “GB” with the two digit code for your country if needed. Different countries use different WiFi frequencies; if you are in the US, the device will not connect to US wifi unless you change this line to country=US.
5. Under ssid=”MySSID”, type in the name of your WiFi network between the quotes. Keep in mind that the Pi supports only 2.4 GHz wifi signals.
6. Under psk=”WirelessPassword”, type in your WiFi’s password between the quotes.
7. The other lines in this file likely don’t need to be changed. However, if your network uses different key management or other security configurations, this file can be modified to comply with those settings.
8. Safely remove the MicroSD Card from the computer as to reduce the likelyhood of corrupt files.
9. Plug the MicroSD card into the Raspberry Pi and connect the Raspberry Pi to a computer to complete setup. If using a pirateaudiolineout (PIM483) screen, a setup screen will appear. The device will reboot itself automatically within 60 seconds once setup has completed. Be aware, no networking is available during this phase.
10. Once the initial setup has completed, remove the MicroSD card from the Raspberry Pi and copy image files to the IMGSTORE volume on the SDCard. Remember to always Safely remove the MicroSD card from the computer, however it is safe to just pull the power from the Pi in most instances.

Setup is now complete. See the instructions below to learn how to use the USBODE.

1. Connect the Pi to the target computer.
   • Zero W/Zero 2W: Connect the MicroUSB end to the Pi's "USB" port, not the “PWR” or “PWR IN” port. Connect the USB-A end into your target computer. Do not connect any other power to the Raspberry Pi 3A+ as it can cause a power loop.
   • 3a +: Connect one of the USB-A ends into the Pi's USB-A port and the other into your target computer. Do not connect any other power to the Raspberry Pi 3A+ as it can cause a power loop.
   • 4b +: Connect the USB-C end to the "Power In" port, and the USB-A end into your target computer.
2. The Pi should immediately turn on. It will then boot into the Circle environment, which takes about 7 seconds on a Pi Zero W 2 and an A1-class card. If the target computer is set up to use USB devices, it should quickly see the Pi as an optical drive.
   • Drivers may need to be installed under Windows 98, such as nUSB. For DOS, we recommend the USBASPI community driver.
3. If the “wpa_supplicant.conf” file is configured correctly, it should automatically connect to your wifi network within 10 to 15 seconds of startup.

If you have any difficulties, help is available on Discord.

1. Update config.sys file to use one of the USBASPI drivers, the one the developers recommend is the one like the one referred to in the previous section.
2. Update config.sys file to use a usbcd1.sys file. The developers recommend the panasonic one (Panasonic USB CD-ROM Driver v1.0).
3. Update autoexec to use mscdex.exe or SHSUCDX.exe with the switch /d:usbcd001 since that is the default CDROM device name provided by usbcd1.sys.

The browser interface is used to load images, shutdown/reboot the device, configure settings, and view logs.To access the interface, you’ll need the IP address of the Pi. Once it connects to your WiFi, this address can be viewed from your router’s configuration page. It should appear as “usbode” in the list of connected devices. If you use a display HAT, the display will also show the IP address. Use that IP address preceded by “http://” (not “https://”). For example, if your Pi’s IP address is 192.168.0.4, you would enter http://192.168.0.4 into your browser’s address bar. The address http://usbode or http://usbode.local should also work as well.

The Web Interface displays a list of available images, and denotes the currently loaded image. Images can be switched at any time by clicking on them.

• The Configuration page can be used to change HAT settings, configure audio output, USB speed, and whether logging is enabled and how verbose it is.
• The Display Configuration section lets you change what kind of HAT you have connected, if any. It also lets you change the screen's timeout, brightness when in use, brightness when asleep, and how long the sleep timeout is.
• Audio Configuration is used to choose what mode your audio output HAT uses, as well as the volume.
• USB Configuration can be used to change the Pi's USB mode. If your retro PC has issues with High Speed (USB 2.0), it may work with Full Speed (USB 1.1).
• Logging Configuration determines if logging is on, what file the logs get written to, and how much detail is included via Log Level.

An Audio Test function is also available on this page. Click "Execute Sound Test", and the USBODE will send a sound out the Line Out port. If your speakers, Line In port, etc. are configured correctly, you should hear it over your speakers.

On the USBODE homepage, click Shutdown USBODE. The LED indicator on the Pi will flash for several seconds and turn off. Or if there is a HAT connected to the Pi, navigate through the menu to choose Shutdown. Be aware that removing power from this version of USBODE has not adversly affected developers in the same way the previous linux based version has.

USBODE stores images on the MicroSD partition labeled IMGSTORE. You'll need to put .ISO and .BIN/.CUE files directly onto this volume. This can be done by connecting the SD card to the setup computer and copying files, or by connecting to the Pi via FTP (see Using FTP). Mounting the card to the setup computer is the fastest method by a significant margin.

If adding DVD images, (and the system needs to read the disc as "DVD"), add .dvd to the filename, so a file named MyMovie.iso would be named MyMovie.dvd.iso

DVD Support is still a work in progress

1. With the Pi off, plug the HAT onto the Pi's GPIO pins.
2. PirateAudio HAT users can move to step 3. Waveshare users first need to edit the file config.txt on the SD card. Under [usbode], note the line reading “displayhat=pirateaudiolineout”. Change this to “displayhat=waveshare”.
3. Plug the SD card into the Pi, and the Pi into the target computer. The screen on the HAT should turn on.
4. The display will turn on a second or two after plugging in the Pi. The display will say “Not connected yet” until it connects to your wifi network, then that line will display the device’s IP address. On the PirateAudio display, the bottom will indicate what the buttons do. On the Waveshare HAT, Key 1 enters Browsing Mode, where you can see what images are on your SD card. The directional stick on the left side can then be moved up and down to traverse the list of images. Moving it left or right skips 5 images, making it easier to get to the bottom of a long list. Pressing the directional stick or Key 1 here will select that image and load it. Key 2 will back out of that screen without changing the image, and Key 3 is not currently implemented.

• ISO files
• BIN/CUE files (the files must have the same name, aside from extension)
• MDS/MDF files (Unsure if SafeDisc rips are supported, files must have the same name aside from extension)
• CHD but be aware performance is about half of what bin/cue is. It is possible to convert with a special arm compression by adding -f -c cdzs,cdfl -hs 9792 to the chdman conversion (this requires MAME 280+). This is commonly recommended in the misterFPGA community

Other filetypes may be added in the future.

BIN/CUE images with multiple .BIN files do not yet work correctly. There is a workaround, however: use chdman to convert the multi-bin file to chd, then convert it back to a bin/cue. Example command lines:

chdman createcd -i MultiBin.cue -o MultiBin.chd Note CHD files are compatible with USBODE, but performance isn't perfect yet. So to convert back to .bin/cue use: chdman extractct -i MultiBin.chd -o SingleBin.cue -ob SingleBin.bin

If there are issues with CD playback, please try this first. The previous recommendation was to use an old unsupported software which does not properly support conversion.

1. Open the FTP client of your choice.
2. Select FTP as the protocol, not SFTP.
3. Enter the USBODE's IP address (see the Web Interface instructions) into the Host Name field.
4. Ensure the Port number is 21.
5. If available, check the "Anonymous login" box. Otherwise, enter "anonymous" as the username.
6. Navigate to 1:/ aka USB (1:/ is the internal name for the second partition, USB is the incorrectly labeled drive name available through the FTP server), and drop image files into it.

USBODE version 2.6.0 introduces HDMI audio support. Testing & development revealed some quirks about getting this configuration setup. In order to support HDMI audio out, the following components are required:

• HDMI Cable: Pi Zero W / Zero 2 W uses Mini HDMI, Pi 3A+ Uses Standard HDMI and Pi4B uses MicroHDMI. For reference, the Pi5 also uses MicroHDMI. It is also possible to use adapter to switch the connector types, but be aware there isn't much space on much of these Pis!
• HDMI Audio Splitter. One of the developers had purchased this specific one from Amazon however it should work with most / all HDMI audio splitters
• HDMI Dummy Dummy Plug: One of the developers purchased this specific Pack of 3 HDMI 4K Dummy plugs from Amazon
• Sound Cable to connect 3.5" sound cable into sound card (same audio aux cable would work from the PirateAudioLineOut solution) *Keep in mind that the HDMI audio splitter will probably require it's own power as well.

The developer believes other sound outputs would work fine, however the above configuration replicates behavior of a traditional CDROM drive best, as it runs directly through the soundcard.

To set a custom USB PID/VID add the following lines into the [usbode] section of config.txt

usbcdrom_vid=0x0e8d
usbcdrom_pid=0x1887

be sure to include the preceeding 0x to instruct USBODE this is a hex number, not a decimal number.

To use USBODE with MacOS9, USBODE must be in "Classic Mac" mode. This is set either in config.txt with usbtargetos=apple or by going into the Web Interface configuration and selecting "Classic Mac" mode, which will set the config.txt manually for you.

This mode enables a couple of quirks for MacOS9, and sets the emulation mode to a Sony Spressa CD-ROM drive, which uses the USBAuthoring extension, and allows for Digital Audio Extraction over USB, and the ability to mount mixed-mode discs over USB.

To switch discs when USBODE is in Classic Mode, eject the disc from the OS first, then mount a new disc and macos9 should detect it.

Current requirements are as follows:

• OS 9.2.1
• iTunes 1.1
• USBAuthoring Extension 1.1.2 (1.1 doesn't work)

I tried initially to get this to work in OS 9.1, however CD Audio games weren't playing the music correctly. Feel free to test different combinations, and please report back earlier MacOS version support for mixed-mode discs!

Current known-good working games: Age of Empires (Requires Patch 1.3) MechWarrior 2

Current known-bad games: (CD Audio doesn't work correctly): Quake 2

I have not been able to get Quake 2 CD Audio working on a physical USB CDROM drive either.

If experiencing issues with games not listed on this list, please try to update to the latest patch version.

• The Stable version of this project is available under the Main branch. This project also has a pipeline set up to facilitate rapid deployment of new features. The pipeline builds are cutting edge and are not guaranteed to be stable.
• If you’re using USBODE 1.99 or before, you need to re-image your SDcard with the Raspberry Pi Imager application. That project and its instructions are located here. Be aware USBODE 1.99 currently supports booting better than this project.

• ITX-Llama is not able to boot from USBODE-circle at this time, it is currently being investigated but no ETA for resolution
• Some modern OSes have a hard time picking up USBODE-circle, this device is designed for retro computers and has been tested in almost all cases up to Windows 7, it is currently being investigated but no ETA for resolution
• Raspberry Pi 5 is not supported yet due to the dependency chain not supporting USB host mode on pi5s. This may change in the future
• Network Initialization can be a little bit slow, please give the device 10-15 seconds to initialize, this should be resolved in the future with a dependency chain update* This may be resolved but we are awaiting user feedback

One of the developers purchased this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZWHVK4B?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1

And used an existing 4-pin CD Audio Cable which can be found here - https://www.amazon.com/Kentek-Computer-Internal-Blaster-DVD-ROM/dp/B07KVF1DY1?crid=38R2KIO014ZFP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Kmw09Awtx2aEGxSh5BVucgSxoH4krHwKBnIjc4-q4MsUdg9MKl6t1YeYPVx9KoTt6xwE3d55CqdHmA8290dJJetnqCtOOUjbcZC6Hn1uywspv0K92m91mCcoGYsyoUAHWiqYhi6UV3Bq1xQWXo3lKgh05uGV4GeBRjMVXPaJcn8KWgdHw09iXLIdOM9MiDtgi-hMveUfRkoMU2mB05ftw20R25fNndK4Pp55wPuABBc.eo0wq0ptcPoQHYEtjhrO0IIuWfxy-gJWUeX-I7lkJ9M&dib_tag=se&keywords=mpc+audio+cable+4+pin&qid=1755264551&sprefix=mpc+audio+cable+4+pi%2Caps%2C210&sr=8-3

Be sure the audio connector fits your sound card correctly

For an R-G-G-L CD Audio cable:

1. Connect the Yellow cable from the TRS3 to the white cable on the CD Audio (L signal)

2. Connect the Red Cable from the TRS3 to the Red Cable on the CD Audio (R signal)

3. Connect the Black Cable from the TRS3 to the Black Cable(s) of the CD Audio (These are the grounds). In my case the grounds were surrounding the White and Red cables from my CD audio cable.

It's also possible to use dupont headers to chain these audio cables together, which is how one of the developers has their device setup.

• Do not delete “image.iso” on the IMGSTORE partition. It is required as a fallback.
• The image "usb-audio-sampler" can be used to test your Line-In settings and USBODE's audio settings. It can be safely deleted if space is at a premium. To test, use Windows 98 CD Player and play track 2. Be aware this audio test has a section near the begining of the track where only audio should come from "L", and when audio should only come from "R". This is to help troubleshoot stereo related issues with custom built cables. The track starts in stereo until around 11 seconds, then goes to "L" only from 11-18.5 seconds, then goes to "R" only from 19 seconds until about 25 seconds, at which point the track stays at stereo for the rest of the time.

To enable verbose CD-ROM/DVD-ROM command debugging, in the config.txt under the [usbode] section add a new line containing debug_cdrom=1. Setting this to 0 or removing the line will disable the feature. Only enable debugging if required, since it does impact performance.

For updates on this project please visit the discord server here: https://discord.gg/8qfuuUPBts

Feel free to contribute to the project.

Support me on ko-fi!
(https://ko-fi.com/danifunker)

Readme updated by danifunker, Zarf and wayneknight_rider.