My Dreamcast hates me.

[Ack]

Ok folks, I know Dreamcasts are known to be finicky, and mine is extremely so. She'll work for one week, and then suddenly laugh at me the next. Last week, I played Record of Lodoss War fora long time, enjoying myself immensely. But now...now my Dreamcast refuses to load. I can always access the beginning menu without any trouble, but sometimes my DC will hang while loading my save, or sometimes it will hang when I enter a certain area, or sometime it will hang if I enter a certain teleporter...and now I am no longer able to access the desert.

Sometimes, my Dreamcast refuses to load certain games, games I know work on other Dreamcasts(such as VF3, which my DC flat out refuses to play). Sometimes she decides to freeze randomly in D2(again, something that doesn't happen in other Dreamcasts), and sometimes, just to piss me off, she'll freeze right before I get to a save point.

The odd thing is, she works. I've played games one day with no trouble, then the next she freaks, and then the third my DC's fine. Anybody know a good way to get her to stop her odd behavior? I'm kinda tired of staring at a load screen in RoLW for five minutes before crashing to the console.

Hell, I didn't know console games could crash like that.

[xzeronature]

Only thing I can recommend is clean the laser, But my dreamcast has never given me that much of a problem so I don't know if that will help.

[Ack]

Yeah, this thing acts like a friggin house cat.

[Ziggy]

I think all those problems could be tied to a dirty lens, did you try cleaning it?

[hailrazer]

Your laser needs tweaking. It's really quite simple :

http://www.ilovetheinternets.com/2004/0 ... ion-trick/

[Devezu]

Have you tried re-lubricating the entire drive?

No, I'm not being a jerk. I'm serious.

Remember, that drive is VERY sensitive to everything due to the ridiculous density of the GD-Roms. It seems that since it can't read the data (being, moving the laser up and down as quickly as it needs to), it simply gives up. You're going to have to find yourself a tub of WHITE Lithium grease (it has to be white. No kidding), and a guide to open up the drive part of the console. Then, remove the old grease, and add moderate amounts of grease to anything that moves. Spread evenly. With that, problem solved, and less sound coming out from it too! Test before putting it back together. I would tweak the laser (its potentiometer) as a last resort.

[hailrazer]

I would tweak the laser (its potentiometer) as a last resort.

I have tweaked 10 or more Dreamcasts lasers. Very easy and works EVERY time.

[Devezu]

Well, you got me beat there - I only own one.

You get a shrug.

But, the reason I say this is that this has happened with my PSX, PS2, and DC - no lube = bad reading (BIG reason I hate Devil May Cry for that one intro, but that's another story).

Edit: I really wish I had a better picture - he shrugs ALL THE TIME, but that's the only picture google had. Sorry.

[Ack]

Well, as ordering a lubricant would cost time and money, I decided to go with some of the other steps. I cleaned the lens, but to no avail. It worked *slightly* better, but not too much. A few places where I had crashed earlier just took abysmally long to load. So I opened it up and tweaked her way too much the first time. Then I went back and corrected, but didn't fix it enough. On the third time, it finally started working. I still hold my breath at every load screen, but at least I can play Record of Lodoss War again.

Now if only Wagnard wasn't being such a little bitch.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

It could just be your DC's motherboard.

I know that my good DC worked like a champ and looked great until one day it just refused to load half of my games or just crashed when loading certain levels on some titles. I tried all the discs in my backup/first DC that I've had for forever and all the games booted up and played 100% on the first try.

To then test it further I swapped the drive from my main/broken DC into my older DC and behold everything worked just fine with no errors whatsoever. A quick few seconds and a swap of my backup's drive into my main system and behold I got the same errors I had been getting with the original drive that had been in the system before the switch so all that was really going bad was my mobo, not my drive.

Remember the DC's motherboard is often more fickle than anything the GD-Rom drive can throw at you.