I'm in a Framemiester group on Faceboook and I asked this exact same thing. BUT I got alot of stupid answers like this one guy that doesn't understand why cheap discs will wreak your systems. Another person who said OH just replace the GD Rom drive in your Dreamcast and don't put any discs in it at all. (Ignoring me saying that I have 60 legit Dreamcast games) Since it's going to die tomorrow. Another person totally ignoring me saying it's not the Drive it's the PSU.......... BALRG......... and I just wanted to discuss how to best burn discs for games that super expensive. But everyone has an opinion that has nothing to do with my question. So here it is exactly as posted in the group: Important topic for those of us who blew all our money on scalers. What Recordable media to use? Some of the best Saturn/Dreamcast/Neo Geo CD games are way up there in price so Burns are the only option for playing on real Hardware. What is recommended? I've read AZO Verbatim and Archival Discs are best as well as Taiyo Yuden discs are as close to factory pressed CDs as you can get. Discuss.
I still use Taiyo Yuden as they play perfectly fine on my Dreamcast and PlayStation 1 & 2. AZO Verbatim works great as well. The only 2 issue I've run into is that 1) some cd burners won't do overburn for Dreamcast images and 2) Taiyo Yuden CD-R are harder to find. I have some left of the 100 pcs JVC Taiyo Yuden and have had no coaster when burning. I had used the CMC pro version and got 9 coasters out of 20 burns. Even though they burned 100% complete, they won't play at all. Switched back to Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden and the same image plays fine. This is just my opinion and experiences, others might have different results with other or same media.
For DC, I'm with the dude recommending the drive replacement, tbh. Yes you might have a bunch of legit games, but you can dump those and keep using them. With a GD-ROM emu there's no need to compromise with those titles that wouldn't have fit on a CD without resampling or leaving stuff out, either. And it's just so very convenient once you have everything set up, and a lot less noisy too (while I sometimes miss the sound of floppy drives working, the noise of a CD spinning down and then back up every few seconds can go fuck right off). As for those systems where no drive emulator is available - I tend to just use what's available (and works), and have yet to see a drive failing on me because of that (usually it's stuff like drive belts). Of course games might load slightly faster had I spent lots of time hunting down the perfect CD-Rs to "keep the laser in shape", but that's hard to verify and, more importantly, my spare time is limited. This may be an unpopular opinion, but here we are.
If I did do the SD mod it would be to complement what I have not replace it. Nothing like the sound of a loud ass Dreamcast. I have 3 so I'm free to do whatever.
I use Sony CD-R's They look like that. Burn them at whatever slowest speed your burner supports. I've had very good luck with these working great with my NGCD.
I had the same problem with my newly acquired PS1. It's hard to find good information about CD-R quality nowadays so I went the easy route and just bought some Verbatim DataLifePlus AZO from Amazon. They seem ok and are made by Mitsubishi Chemical Corp India, I would have preferred something made in Japan though.
I have used those Sony CD-Rs and DVD-Rs in the past with success too. But generally I use JVC / Taiyo Yuden discs. I agree with Sanni, if you can get media that's Made In Japan you're probably better off.
Too little space to be of practical use, I guess? I mean, those M-Discs are pretty expensive to begin with.
I think us retro gamers are the only ones even buying Recordible media as it is. People don't really listen to CDs anymore (they should it's still better than Shitty MP3s) So.... burning game discs is probably all anobody uses CD-Rs for anyway.
Don't be so sure of that, just a few years ago my employer was hunting down friggin' MO drives and media on eBay to keep their backup strategy going. Some people are incredibly resistant to change (don't even get me started).
just get decent discs of your choice, ignore the crazy fear mongering that cheap discs ruin drives, burn well. play and enjoy, its simple as that. my disc of choice lately is verbatim digital vinyls, $12 for 50 and havent had a single issue on dreamcast or 3do yet.
It's not so much cheap discs ruining drives. It's cheap discs not working. Burn quality can be very important for a disc to work on older stuff
op if you got the money (and love the dreamcast enough to spend about $185) then buy a usb-gdrom. youll be enjoying 1:1 gdi images and best of all no loud laser noise. though if you still prefer cdrs then get verbatim azo blanks from walmart, you can get two 50pack spindles for about $25. i would recommend taiyo yuden but they are harder to find the quality ones only the cmc pro crap btw i still listen to cds in my car. slowly ditchin mp3 format in favor of aac and flac
Old Tech plus it's not an assembler thread if we don't go off topic for a moment. I love the Dreamcast enough to have 3 and considering a 4th if I can't get my first working (for Japanese games) so....... There's also the matter of burning for the Saturn and Neo CD. Saturn I'll need the Psdueo cart. Neo CD I assume same thing high quality AZO Verbatium or better.
