Dreamcast age-old GD-Rom drive woes.

Hey everyone,

I haven't been around for a bit so please bear with me if this has already been tackled / think-tanked but as with most Dreamcast owners, I've got more than a few units that now have completely dead drives. I've looked into new laser units from eBay that I presume come from China, these haven't worked out so well for me, in fact, they simply haven't worked at all (not even CD-R)


I'm aware there's the GD Emulation group which has now become an actual product but cost issues and ordering clarity hold me back from this option if I'm being honest, I don't really want to pay $200 ideally for each Dreamcast that I've got that I'd like to save from the scrapheap. Do we think over time that these devices will get cheaper? I would have thought mass (relative) duplication would be an option by now but it's not looking viable I assume.

I think my question is, could the Dreamcast GD-Rom drive be in some way duplicated? Or at the very least, the laser unit for a dead certain working condition? I've never known a system this new (again, relatively-speaking) that has such an elephant in the room when it comes to disc playback and a sure-fire, go out and buy option to repair it

 

It might be easier to just rebuild/repair damaged gd-rom drives. The best method I have found for repairing a non working gd-rom is to use a laser lens from older pc cd rom drives. I used an older NEC pc cd rom drive laser lens then tweaked the potentiometer a bit and retail dc games boot fine. Pick up the old pc cd rom drives at a thrift store, or computer shop. They are basically considered junk drives since most people want some type of burner i.e (DVD DL Multi, or a CDRW). So you can get them for cheap if not completely free.

 

As another user above mentioned, replacing it with PC lasers sounds like a good option.

Another option could be to use an SD card reader and a custom BIOS chip with Dreamshell preinstalled. You could then boot ISOs stored on an SD card. No drive needed.

As I prefer using real discs, having a high quality replacement GD-ROM drive would be a great option. My original drive works fine still so this is really only for me if it breaks down the road. Hopefully an easy solution could be found/made that is affordable.

 

It a fun option and nice for maxing out the DC capabilities. But most games have a lot of lag. Load times are slow and most ISOs need to be heavily edited before playing via serial port. I seldom use mine because I hate seeing the dreamcast run slowly.

 

funny question about to make duplicate gd-rom drive. as GD is really more than CD and less than DVD ))) , so we cant just use pc drives directly...

but possible idea, use cd-rom drive from pc and make firmware mod to support SPI protocol and even support gd-disc format. will it take less time than make gd-emu device...
i plan make cheaper gd emulator. but it's plan

 

I bought a couple of those eBay lasers and they really are crap. I did get hold of an old PC drive and followed the guide online but for some reason I couldn't get the unit to fit properly into my GD housing, it was the same model and everything too...

 

SPU3200 lasers? I've read about someone on here that claims he got one of those to work with in a Yamaha drive. If I remember correctly he said that he had to raise the laser assembly closer to the disc for it to work. Makes sense as I've tried on two occasions now, and I haven't been able to read anything else than a music CD at one point.

I would really love a drive replacement that didn't involve SD cards or Harddrives. I have more than 200 original games, and I'd like to play those for many years to come
I have a Dreamcast I bought brand new about 5 years ago. I hope it lasts many years still. But I'm afraid I already put a lot of strain on the laser, because I installed one of those terrible 4-wire modchips clones when I got it. And to my knowledge these chips wear down the laser fast

The original 4-wire chips were mounted on a small PCB and would turn off once a game has was loaded. The clone chips were just the chip itself, and these did not turn off, ever.
It makes sense to me that the original chips would turn off to preserve the life of the laser. Why else would they have added this feature?

I can't be a hundred percent sure that the clones causes damage to the drives, but two of the drives in my systems were worn down very fast, and both had those chips installed. That's probably not a coincidence, but these are just speculations

I have another Dreamcast on the way. I'm stocking up, so I always have a few spare parts handy