Found a load of dreamcast GDR's are they blanks?

i was digging around and found a box of new dreamcast GDR's, i was thinking of selling them as i am not into the dreamcast, they look new but my question is on all of the disks the inner blue ring looks to be burned do all dreamcast GDR disks look like this? is this some sort of the formatting? i also appear to have two editions of these

 

sounds very interesting..do you have a dreamcast?

 

Usually the ring is burned data.

 

Can we get some pictures? It'd make it a lot easier to determine whats going on.

 

upload a few pics of the underside of the discs mate

 

The inner ring is the section for normal CD-Rom drives. Looks like a new GD-Rom to me.

But what do you mean with "two versions of these"? Different label?! Dataside light green?

 

Looks used to me, cause the outer rim looks a bit darker.

 

Just put it on a PC CD recorder and see if it has one session (It should be able to detect a session if it's burnt). :nod:

 

That disc in the image is used. that is about the correct size for a Dreamcast GDROM's data area. the rest of the disc will remain blank since the DC doesn't read data that far out or at least not on official GDROM games.

 

Actually, a lot of games read data from quite far on the edge of the disc (Dreamcast GD is CAV) so the drive gets it's highest throughput at the edge of the disc (sadly that's where the jitter rate is highest as well and that's the root of a lot of problems with DC consoles not reading some GDs).

That means the disc spins on a fixed speed but the drive firmware varies the data rate to keep the density constant through the media.

I'll give you an example of game that exploited this to get better load times:

Phantasy Star Online.


It had most of it's critical data on the outer edge of the disc for a better read performance. I happen to be the unfortunate owner of an scratched PSOV2 disc which has the said scratch very close to the outer edge of the disc. It does not boot because of that .... :-(

PS1 and PS2 in contrast are CLV, as the disc changes speed in function of the laser pickup position on the disc. :nod:

 

I too noticed that PS1 games are burned real close to the spindle.

That 'blue ring' is data. There is no way it is padding or something like that.

 

Low density zone look like a CD track. Because density is lower.

After that there's a barcode ring on pressed GD-ROMs and then the high density zone.

GD-Rs have no barcode zone so the high density zone starts right after the end of the low density zone. I assume that to keep the layout consistent with that of GD-ROM the GD-R writer will fill the space that is correspondent to the barcode with zeroes. :nod:

 

If it has data burnt to it, the next logical question is "what is on there?".

I want to say the System Disc 2 was the only way to boot GD-Rs but I get the strong feeling that there are more ways now.

 

DC fans won't sleep tonight, waiting reply from Nano Babe

 

I have a blank GD-R (won on Segakatana.com back in the days) and it looks just like the pictures posted here.

The inner low density area has a different color/glare than the high density one, even when not burnt. I don't know why though, maybe blank media are a bit different for the different density, or maybe it's alignment stuff. What I can tell is that a blank GD-R will have the two section visible and distinguishable even when not burnt at all.

If you talk about the inner first ~1mm which seems a different color, then maybe it's some kB of data, but I doubt it.

Cheers,

FG

@ APE: There's some swap trick you can use to play BETA games without CDDA (or game with cdda, but cdda music won't play).

 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN THEN!

 

That its blank?

Its not rocket surgery.

 

USE A QUESTION MARK AS WELL! :nod:

 

it means he thinks its blank as he has a blank one that looks the same as the posted pic

 

Wait a sec. Ignore the small ring next to the spindle which is first noticed. Take a look at the far edge of the GD-ROM, and you will see another tiny ring.

Are these GD-ROM's re-writable?