When I first looked at Shenmue 1 stream folder I was viewing ripped .cdi files so the structure is completely different due to the afs files being compressed. (afs compactor)
When .afs is compressed it shows as (file1, file2, file3 etc.)
Instead of a raw .afs file would show the actual file names.. i.e (0001.srf, 0001.str, 0002.str etc.)
This is why I thought the /stream (.afs etc.) file structure was different for Shenmue 1.
It is different in many ways to what is used in Shenmue 2!
A few differences are that there are no .ahx files used for speech like in Shenmue 2; instead the speech in Shenmue 1 uses .str files. Shenmue 2 .srf files do not hold subs, and the .idx files are different.
The .srf files are for the subtitles in Shenmue 1.
idxwrite will allow you to create a new .idx file depending on wether or not you extracted the original .afs files and have the .xml file for it.
If you try to make a custom .afs, then use idxwrite it will say the file is invalid!
For some reason you can create an .idx after you compress the .afs files, but this results in no speech in cinematics or free speech.. subs work though.
To selfboot Shenmue 1 this is what I found:
binhack ip.bin and 1st_read.bin to 11702 LBA.
Use custom sort order based on Shenmue Perfect rip. (remove dummy file .dat from data files and sort order)