Burnt Games = Reduced DC Life?

[Beak]

(I apologize if this is a thread repeat. I searched the forums and couldn't find anything.)

Recently, I had to crack open my beloved Dreamcast to try to fix its resetting problem. It was horrifying to me to realize something could go wrong with my system, but it got me thinking: these systems won't last forever.

So, I recall something that's always kind of worried me. Seems that whenever I'm reading/talking about burnt Dreamcast games, there's always one small admonishing voice that says "playing burnt Dreamcast games reduces your GD-ROM's life!"

Is there any credence to a statement like this? Is it just a myth, or does it have any truth to it?

[corn619]

From what I've read when I googled it yes it does reduce the life. The read area is smaller on GD-Rom than a CD-R. And the fact that a pressed disc is easier for a laser to read than burnt disc.

[emwearz]

That goes for every system that reads discs, burnt discs require more 'grunt' to read than pressed discs (as said above), thats why many people with old PS1's have to do pot adjustments to read backups, though real discs read fine.

[BigTinz]

People say that it slowly kills your dc. I've NEVER seen proof. My DC is a launch USA model and has seen heavy usage since 99 and I've been playing burned games for about 5-6 years.

It still works like a charm.

[Amon]

I had this talk with a few of the dreamcast dev people. It all depends on how the data is organized on the disc. IIRC it is easier for the dreamcast to read data on the outside of the disc so you need to pad the inside. The first generation rips were really bad for your dreamcast making the laser do more work to read data. I could pull the log if you wish.

[Hatta]

That would be most interesting. So how would you know whether your image needs to be padded or not, and how would you do that?

[hailrazer]

Granted I have virtually NO knowledge of how a laser works but this seems like complete bunk to me.

I know you sometimes have to tweak the laser a bit to increase it's power to get it to read burnt discs, This being because the laser needs to be a bit stronger because it has a different distance to read the disc or it is reading through more plastic or something like that.
Anyway even when you tweak the laser it is still well within the tolerance of what the manufacturer designed the laser for. Now once the laser is tweaked it is reading at that same power level all the time, right. So how does it have to "work" harder to read the burnt disc? It doesn't.

So it seems like bunk to me.

Also I have modded every system I own. PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox/Xbox360 etc. And they are played a bunch and the laser has never burned out of any of them.

So like I said , I'm calling horse pucky on this one.

Course what do I know.

[Hobie-wan]

Well, the harder you push something, the faster it will break. Take some old V8 that grandma drove to the grocery store and church for 20 years and has 20K miles on it and drives like new. Give that car to a teenage grandchild and you can pretty much guarantee that they'll push it and it will be running like crap within months. Without someone taking several new older generation consoles out of a box and running exhaustive tests with real and burned discs, we'll never know for 100% certainty how much of a difference it makes. But CDRs do reflect less light than pressed discs, so the unit will have to work harder to read them or possibly have to reread and do more error correction. Anything being worked harder is more likely to break.

[DownSince86]

I'll chime in since I know a little about the subject.

First off; _Proper_ backups are no risk to your Dreamcast. With that said it is important for you to understand that _a lot_ of the backups floating around the internet are not "proper".

I'll try to explain the situation as best I can.

To start with you need to understand that the Dreamcast was designed to load data from CDs. Most games were released in GD-ROM format but the Dreamcast's disc drive was also able to load what are called "MilCDs" which were originally used for karaoke software. Several other MilCDs were sold on the retail market, the most well known is the bleemcast series of emulators. All new Dreamcast games are also released in MilCD format.

Backups of GD-ROM games, bootdisks, and all homebrew are also released in MilCD format. The only difference between them and retail MilCDs are the fact that they are usually burned to CD-R.

So why do so many people claim backups are bad for the disc drive?

Well what it boils down to is this; A lot of the early scene releases and releases done by individuals that don't know any better were not properly converted over to MilCD format. The most common error in nearly all releases are files not begin placed in the correct order in backups.

Basically lets say the GD-ROM has the following file order: a,b,c,d,e,f. This file order is optimized so that when the game has finished loading "b" and is in need of the data in file "c" that file should be close to the laser. Now lets say someone converted this game to CD-R but didn't bother to correctly order the files, now the order is: a,f,e,c,d,b. Now when the game needs the data from file "c" after loading "b" the laser will have to move further leading to longer seek times.

In other words if the files are not in the correct order you would expect: Longer loading times, hearing the laser seeking more often, and probably things like laggy loading of menu music and cutscenes.

The second problem with a lot of backups is the lack of a proper dummy file (padding). You see the Dreamcast will always read data faster from the outside of the disc, and slower from the inside of the disc. So if you have a small game (300MB or so) like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 it is important to make sure that all the game data is at outer edge of the disc. You *could* burn this game like any regular CD and all the game data would be near the inside of the disc. It would work but it would have longer loading times and delayed music if you compared it to the original GD-ROM.

To get around that problem you use what is called a dummy file. This file is basically just a file full of garbage data that is placed at the start of the file order (it should always be the first file). By doing this you push all the important game data to the outside of the disc. This is why you see backups that are around 200-300MB when compressed in .rar format but expand to 700MB+ when extracted.

If your making Dreamcast backups there are several other gotchas. Some are found in all games, other are specific to a few games or one game. All of them require hex editing or using a pre-made tool to get around. There is a lot more to making correct Dreamcast backups than dumping a GD-ROM and packing the data in to a .cdi image.

For that reason I can not recommend making backups yourself to avoid the problems I mentioned simply because the process is far more technical when compared to making PSX/PS2/Other disc based system backups. However if you want to know more here is a good place to get started: Making GDI files bootable on real Dreamcast with perfection.

If your looking to find _proper_ backups for use on your console the author of the tutorial I linked has released several selfbooting backups over the last year or so. There are other people like him that are re-dumping and re-releasing selfbooting backups and doing it properly. So if you can't find a proper dump for the game you seek just keep looking around, no doubt it'll show up soon.

Finally don't worry so much about running the "improper" backups from CD-R. They might have increased load times and cause the laser to seek more often but they won't damage the console any more than playing retail games all of the time. You'll probably go through multiple fans before you have to replace the GD-ROM. I've been using mine non-stop since '99 and have never had to replace or repair the GD-ROM.

I know you sometimes have to tweak the laser a bit to increase it's power to get it to read burnt discs, This being because the laser needs to be a bit stronger because it has a different distance to read the disc or it is reading through more plastic or something like that.

You should never have to tweak the laser to read CD-R's. I think what your referring to is the modification that you have to do to get most Dreamcast consoles to read CD-RWs.

I personally do not recommend ever doing that modification. It will damage the GD-ROM over time and there is really no point when CD-Rs are so cheap. There used to be a slight benefit if you did it and were developing software for the console. However now we have all sorts of options for loading code (Coder's cable, USB -> serial adapters, LAN adapters) that it is no longer needed.

Most any Dreamcast will be able to read CD-Rs out of the box. If it won't your better off finding another one as the modification is just going to ruin a perfectly good GD-ROM.

Anyway I hope that cleared everything up.

[hailrazer]

You should never have to tweak the laser to read CD-R's. I think what your referring to is the modification that you have to do to get most Dreamcast consoles to read CD-RWs.

I personally do not recommend ever doing that modification. It will damage the GD-ROM over time and there is really no point when CD-Rs are so cheap. There used to be a slight benefit if you did it and were developing software for the console. However now we have all sorts of options for loading code (Coder's cable, USB -> serial adapters, LAN adapters) that it is no longer needed.

Most any Dreamcast will be able to read CD-Rs out of the box. If it won't your better off finding another one as the modification is just going to ruin a perfectly good GD-ROM.

Anyway I hope that cleared everything up.

I used to think that to , but it's just not true. A lot of times you do have to tweak the laser to read backups. I have had over 20 Dreamcasts now and have had to tweak the laser on about 5-6 of them to get them to read backups perfectly. And no it doesn't ruin the GD-Rom. They have been working perfectly for years after the tweak.

Nice explanation on the rest though.

Well, the harder you push something, the faster it will break. Take some old V8 that grandma drove to the grocery store and church for 20 years and has 20K miles on it and drives like new. Give that car to a teenage grandchild and you can pretty much guarantee that they'll push it and it will be running like crap within months. Without someone taking several new older generation consoles out of a box and running exhaustive tests with real and burned discs, we'll never know for 100% certainty how much of a difference it makes. But CDRs do reflect less light than pressed discs, so the unit will have to work harder to read them or possibly have to reread and do more error correction. Anything being worked harder is more likely to break.

As I said though you are not really pushing the laser harder. It is still well within the tolerance of the laser. Heck sometimes the pot resistance value on a tweaked laser is lower than the resistance of another Dreamcasts factory set pot value.