and then it exploded. (?) lol Well, now seriously. My DC had a lot of troubles when reading CD-Rs.. it takes a while to boot. And when it tries to do this, the lens goes to the edge of the disc (or near to the edge, maybe where the lead-out is..), and then comes back, it does until it boots or until the third time, So I tried re calibrating it, the first time I kinda turned it too much :P (laser sounded like crying when reading, I inmediatly turned it off and putting it back like it was). In the second attempt I turned it a little bit, but still, it won't boot easily. Ok, when it finally boots(pure randomly), it keeps making some little sounds, like the lens was focusing, all the time. Ah, sometimes, when I burn a particular CD (like Virtua Tennis 2 or Crazy Taxi 2) it won't even recognize the CD, I'm using an LG DVD/CD combo writer. ... I remember the first time I burnt SA2, the first time I used my DC.. aw, it used to boot PERFECTLY, I think I had burnt the disc with a CD writer. But I don't really remember. About the media: I don't think this quitely makes a difference... Verbatim didn't work that fine, Sony either.. and that first copy I burnt.. was an Imation CD. This shit makes me want to take a hammer and hit my DC PS: No, I am not burning at 48x, I burn at 4x, always. Edit: Ok, I just noticed that all the times I thought I burnt at 4x, I was actually doing it at 10x, damn limit. (With this new DVD/CD drive which I'm currently using)
Sounds like your GD-Rom's been dying. :/ Remember that playing games off CD-R's is unhealthy for the Dreamcast. As far as I know, data is scattered differently on CDs and GDs. The laser has to work harder when reading CD games. If it didn't play a few games, then your laser must be too weak (and weakening). It weakens more and more over time until it will barely read anything. Overtime, my Dreamcast stopped reading several of my CD-r's until it'd only read one: Sonic Adventure 2 (don't worry, I own an actual copy ). I was actually trying to fix my drive last night and found that the ribbon cable was very beat up. So, I switched it out with another ribbon cable in mint condition and it would try to read discs. What I'm gonna have to do now is clean the lens with a small quantity of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip and then try calibrating it. If it works, I'll be shocked. If it doesn't (which I'm sure of), well, then... FFFFFFUUUUU If you don't want to go through all the trouble, then just look around your local game stores and see if they sell used Dreamcasts. You can get a good deal on one without any effort. :P
I am lucky, I got my Dreamcast used, but it was near mint condition. The laser still reads CD-R's fine, but I know what can happen over time, so if possible, I try to get the actual GD copy of the game. I remember when I first got this DC though, I was a huge DC homebrew junkie, so I may have already shot myself in the foot.
And now is when I wonder if Sega actually sold these or was just for their own repair services: http://www.dreamcastgallery.com/dc/gallery...otherkit_id=621
OK, I just put the laser power just like it was... otherwise it just gets worse. So, what can it be now?
Complete lie, as long as your disk is padded to take up the full CD it will take less than a month off the lifespan. A GD-R is pretty much just CD with the data really compressed together to make 1.2gig disks. Reading games off CD's will not damage your DC in any way. This was started when people had their GD-Rom drive die, and blame it on CD-Rs. Same as the later DC models won't read burnt disks, that was started because people could not burn disks properly. I personally have 1 DC that was the last batch and it worked fine. I know multiple other people who have late model DC's also and Sega Sports edition DC which is not suppose to play them either. The GD-Rom drive will just die on it's own, there's nothing you can do to stop it. It was very badly put together.
It is true though that the laser needs to be stronger to be able to read CD-Rs (as opposed to pressed CDs). But the laser wouldn't attempt to increase its strength itself but merely fail at loading the disc instead (the laser still being good). It's sending too much power to it what can kill the laser. Most of the times it'll work with the laser power being as-is in the case of CD-Rs, but there's the occasional case that won't (also with CD-RWs the situation is worse).
So maybe I'm burning it all wrong? I'm using DJ, burning at the lowest speed, the last cd I burnt (crazy taxi 2, that this time did work) was burnt with DAO RAW method.. I guess DJ will ignore those "Settings for unrecognized CD images" since CDI has all the info on it (?) I use a LG DVD/CD burner, with IPC/Verbatim/Red Memorex/TDK media. Though, surprisingly, the first CD I burnt (SA2, that worked just damn too fine) was an Imation CD.. the lens mechanism didn't even go to the lead-out part(what is what it does now..) So should calibrating it work? because I've done it and I pretty much got the same thing... BTW, when it finally boots.. it doesn't sound that nice..and sometimes it will fail when trying to read data. (Spin down sounds, laser mechanism goes to the inner part, and then start reading it again, poor thing )
Is that the same case for the Sega CD? If so then that explains why Sonic CD won't work anymore. (I was playing the 920 beta and now none of the versions work.)
I wish my DC worked as well as my MCD.. it has no trouble AT ALL... (yet :P). Ok, I have two chances for this to work: -Burn it with a only-cd writer -Get low speed media (this is the impossible one :P) PS: Today.. my DC has read SA2 so damn fine, just for one time. In such time I could hear no clicking, and I heard CD speed oscillation when moving the lens assembly (something that not always happen, dunno why).
Well, the Sega CD used the 650MB CD, so I am not completely sure that 700MB work perfectly, but from what I know, it is exactly the same thing, I doubt that the storage size would change anything. If anything it is just normal wear and tear.
So today I discovered that burning at low speeds with some cds (*cough* CMC magnetics CDs*cough*) will not be even recognized by (my) DC. So I've tried burning at 24x, kinda better. And then 8x (Using a only-cd writer), it didn't work, so I went "Oh fuck it" and burned with my DVD-combo thing at 32x, result: complete fail. And then again, tried with 16x with the DVD-combo one. It... was a bit better, though still having errors when reading. I guess I should try with 12x. If that isn't the solution, I need to get those Imation CDs, who said they were shitty was really wrong. =/
I read about the difference between GD roms and CD roms a while ago... The GD rom is written at a constant speed whereas CD rom is written faster in the middle, this is why CD roms have less capacity. The way I heard about how to make copied games is to get some sort of hacked firmware that will allow your computer's CD writer to write at constant speed like the GD roms. I believe people have done this and you can probably find the firmware somewhere. Some people even said the GDR goes the opposite direction but this must be untrue?? I have no sources as I read this info about a year or more ago. A lot of people dump the games from the DC using the ethernet cable, and I've heard they can play games from a hard drive somehow or connect a CD rom drive .. my memory is rusty though. Keep searching and you'll find out about all this I'm sure.
GDs are very different from CDs in their format, they just happen to be made out of the same materials. GDs achieve a bigger size by making smaller pits, by the way (spins slower but reads at the same speed). There's much more to it than that, though.
