Wierd Dreamcast problem

[MaliceValentine]

Hey im new here and hopefully these fourms are more helpful than gameFAQs where i got flamed for being a sega fan anywho im having this odd issue with my Dreamcast (PAL) All of my games work perfectly it was second hand but in mint condition got it for 60 bucks with 10 games all good condition but it refuses to play Power stone after 30 minuets it freezes of the frame rate drops but all other games work fine,
now i went out and bought another copy of power stone same thing happened, so gave it back got my money back won another copy of of ebay...once again same problem...any ideas?

Because im considering buying just number 2 to see if that works but worried and iv been dying to enjoy this game for a while!

[Tercoil]

could it be the dreamcast overheating??
not sure why it would only happen on powerstone, but its a possible cause for the freezes/ framrate drops

[Niode]

My PAL Dreamcast is the same. I've had my DC since it launched in this country. All my other games work without problems. As soon as I plonk Powerstone in. Blam, won't work. None of my other genuine games will work after that point. It's the strangest thing. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It just dies.

I just downloaded a copy from UG and now use that instead. It works fine.

I also have a problem with Crazy Taxi which will refuse to read the disc after a while. The disc is in mint condition. I just use a backup copy now.

(btw all my genuine DC games were bought brand new when they were still being sold in this country)

It's odd, some games will happily play for hours and then some just set the system off on a weird hissy fit where it just refuses to play after I put certain games in. I've made backups of all my games now and just use them to play. The DC seems a lot less fussy with backups.

[MaliceValentine]

Rather odd well im lucky Skies of Arcadia didnt bug up i would of cried lol ill try the back up as you suggested havnt made any before though

[Niode]

You can't make them yourself unless you have a coders cable or broadband adaptor. Since the BBA never came out in this country it's highly unlikely you have either. Coupled with the fact that it takes an age to rip the data from the disc in this way since the coders cable is serial and the BBA is capped, plus if the image is larger than a CD-R (which is entirely possible since the DC used GD-ROMs which can hold just over a GB each) you're going to need some tools to rip/demux/downsample data so that it will fit on a standard CD-R for burning. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's DC ripping and burning in a nutshell. You just can't pop the game in a standard disc drive and expect to do a 1:1 copy. The drive will only mount the cd-rom section of the disc, which was used by devs to put wallpapers etc as an added bonus. If you copy this you will just end up with a CD-R that is a couple MB big and is completely useless to the DC.

You need to download the image from a bittorrent website, somewhere like emuparadise or underground gamer should have the games you require. This is much faster than trying to rip the game yourself. Just the burn the disc in Alcohol 120% or if you want to be old skool, Padus Discjuggler

[MaliceValentine]

thanks ill torrent power stone then!