MM3 mod for PS1 has been a hassle.

so which is it??? burning slow is GOOD or BAD??? cuz you just said it's "nonsense." reducing jitter sounds like a good thing.

 

Burning slow for you and your writer that doesnt handle TY well - good thing.

Generic advice like its a fact of life - bad thing.

If I burn TY discs at 2x - I will get far worse jitter and errors. Burn at 24x - 99% quality on disc scans. You cant tell the OP "burn slow" as advice to solve his issue, as its drive/firmware/disc specific.

 

i don't want people reading this thread to think there is no point to trying a slower burn speed. i want to state, again, that TY media is what my PS1's prefer, and burning slow seems to help. for whatever reason that may be. Bad_Ad seems to be flip-flopping on the issue (and calling me names for some reason); that's fine.

to the OP: try TY/JVC discs and report back! it may just help.

 

"darling", theres a difference between "try burning some ty discs at different speeds and see if those work" vs "burn at slowest possible setting, it makes the discs more reflective."

Go read my original reply again, you will see i was only saying slow doesn't automatically equal better.

 

come on man. i read the whole thread. the OP was using Ridata for god's sake. he has no clue what he's up against. my primary advice was about media, NOT burn speed. although i did comment on burning slower and what i recommended, my own anecdotal evidence is what it is.

 

Not all Verbatim medias are manufactured at MCC or MKM plant, most outsourced to third party factories.
CMC and Moser Baer companies seem to have poor control quality. also modern CD/DVD burners cant write a CD-R lower than 8x-10x.
In the past, CDRW burners are able to write slower write speed.

 

indeed. the DataLifePlus spindles i last bought say Made in China on them. but... they work! (though not ideally)

take none of what i say as gospel, but this is all about making sure your pickup is in good working order, then finding the magic combo of media, burn speed, and burner.

i didn’t realize that JVC gave up making TY’s optical media back in 2015 and handed the operation to CMC. (!!!) but amazingly, on my setup, these “CMC Pro” discs work better than anything else.

CMC Pro CD-R > Optiarc AD-5280S > 16x > KSM-440ACM > total success.

CMC Pro CD-R > Optiarc AD-5280S > 8x, 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x > KSM-440ACM > fail.

CMC Pro CD-R > Optiarc AD-5290S+ > any speed > KSM-440ACM > fail.

JVC CD-R > Optiarc AD-5280S > any speed > KSM-440ACM > fail.

JVC CD-R > Optiarc AD-5290S+ > any speed > KSM-440ACM > fail.

JVC CD-R > very old HP 9300i > 2x > KSM-440ACM > almost total success.

Verbatim DataLifePlus > HP 9300i > 4x > KSM-440ACM > moderate success.

Verbatim DataLifePlus > HP 9300i > 1x, 2x, 8x, 10x > KSM-440ACM > usually fails.

JVC CD-R > seemingly any burner > any speed > KSM-440BAM > total success.

it’s like a 3D chessboard. changing one part of the formula can throw everything else out of whack. the key is persistence. but these are just MY findings. find the formula that works for YOUR burner and YOUR media.

 

i have to chip in since i just recently got back into ps1 things and i put my old scph-1002 back together...

now, let me start from this fact, it has a KSM-440BAM drive assembly, which is an original one, but it's old, and in relatively unknown condition.
it barely reads retail games as it is. (i found it from under my kitchen table covered in dust lol, god knows just how long it's been there.)

i had a pile of random cd-r's with the "vinyl" lookalike upper surface, total fail, barely boots, FMV's unwatchable, games freeze allover the place
same with "black magic" black surfaced disks that are made by some cheapass noname company, they boot, skip a lot etc.
retail games, boot rate is about 50% usually playable when they happen to boot aside FMV's which either freeze or skip completely lol

then i tried JVC "yudens" which still have the mediacode of TAYO YUDEN COMPANY
burned a couple at 4x and a couple at 8x and all have 100% success rate, 100% boot rate, no skipping no lagging, no read erros.
these disks are just unbelievable.

i still wish i'd get my old 1x/2x burner to work but alas, i have no idea what the hell is going on with it
it reads disks fine ,but trying to burn with it, it just says that it fails to set the burning profile and hangs any and all burning software right there.
(it's a HP cd-writer 7200+ i use internally now but it originally came from an external parallel(!!!) enclosure.)

 

Your old 1/2x burner wont have the correct writing strategies in the firmware for newer discs like the TY's.

So dont worry about it

 

i figured as much that it's some form of firmware issue...

too bad, i used this drive for tons of ps1 burns back in the day and never failed a single burn Q_Q
such hardware just doens't exist nowadays.

 

You will find a modern writer, that supports your discs and is reviewed to write them well - will provide better burns than that old writer.

But getting quality writers is harder these days, as people just want to pay the least possible.

 

im searching, but it's been harder than i expected tbh Been through 7 drives already, with burnspeeds ranging from 4x to 24x and more or less all of them have been terrible. the 8th one i have now does 8x and seems to like the yudens i have so im sticking with it for now. it's just sorta annoying that it seems to be really terrible with every other kind of disk i've thrown at it so far and i will eventually run out of the yudens even though i did hamster over 200 of them xD

 

that's great that you found a way to burn working discs, but if it can't read retail discs, something is seriously out of whack. especially if it's a BAM.

i would link you to calibration instructions, but i don't know of a good source. (there is a popular calibration guide online written by someone who has dedicated a whole website to "audiophile" mods for a 1001 , so it's highly unlikely his information is any good.)

 

Yeah, this can be another issue - I have (6?) drives, which are all better at different types of media. Though 3 of them are generally good across the board.

Id recommend picking up a used pioneer - DVR-215 or 216 should be excellent with TY and still good across the board (assuming the discs arent just terrible).

 

been considering that already since it's not the first time i hear about people saying they're good, so i guess it's about time i'll just go through with that plan. Here's hoping they work with the black disks i have since i wouldn't mind having my ps1 backups on black surfaced disks

having written a couple of those myself i believe im fine when it comes to calibrating the drive, I just havent had the time yet, and since i barely ever use retail disks anymore (i mainly play translations and romhacks on the ps1) and the drive seems to REALLY like my burns as it is, I might leave it be until it starts showing signs of reading issues.

there's also the fact that the drives general age and condition are complete mystery to me since i have no idea which unit i picked it up from or how long was it sleeping in the dust so im working on getting a replacement for it to begin with.

I ordered a KSM-440BAM from totalconsole which claims to have sony OEM stock, and according to comparisons some people did to drives bought from there, if they are not, then they are about as good quality replicas as they can be.... unfortunately totalconsole appears to be some sort of scam business as they are not shipping my drive or responding to emails at all...

 

I agree with Bad_ad84 on this. Don't obsess over write speed. Burn at the recommended write speed that programs like Imgburn preselect. The 3 variables are quality of burner, quality of media and quality of reader.

The first thing to check is that the laser lens (both burner and reader) are thoroughly cleaned with IPA. This is often overlooked and people stampede to a pot adjust. Next the laser on the reader should be checked for calibration with a pressed disc (preferably a test disc) and an oscilloscope.

Once the reading laser is confirmed as good then different burned media can be tested for quality by observing the level of jitter with an oscilloscope. The media with the lowest jitter is the one you want to buy a stack of.

This is the only thorough way of identifying the problem. Testing at different burn speeds or blindly adjusting pots based on resistance values is searching in the dark. I used to do this all the time to adjust my laser assemblies until I read up on the proper way.

A lot of us don't have access to oscilloscopes and will have to compromise. At least look up the expected RF voltage and go by that.

I'm sure @Bad_Ad84 or @rama can correct me if I've missed anything.

 

right, but IMO it's a really bad sign since factory discs are much easier to read back than even the best burns, at least by a high-strung PS1. the goal of making a good burn is to mimic a factory disc as closely as possible, not the other way around...

btw the color of the disc has no bearing on its readability; those black CD-R's i believe use phtalocyanine dye which the PS1 simply does not like. it likes old fashioned cyanine dye, and the closest you can get now is CMC Pro (which uses "super cyanine") but none of this is hard and fast.

tbh, i would get a junk PSone and steal the pickup out of that. you are guaranteed to be getting a real BAM that way. i got a broken PSone for $8 USD delivered from ebay, no fuss no muss.

 

I have a couple but dissecting another psone every time i want to change a drive kinda gets old
for the black disks, i figured the color doesnt really affect anything per-se, i just bought a stack of them since they were cheap and the idea was nice, but as expected, cheapass branded they are, they're bad for this particular purpose. I have a psone which is practically never used, i tested those with and they do play mostly fine on that one, but that was about it. out of my 12 ps1's/psones more or less any other unit sturggled with them so i just discarded the idea of using them for games.

Of course i will calibrate / clean and othervise maintenance the drive if i do end up keeping it for longer time, but for now it does the job for the odd hour or 2 i will use it until the replacement arrives.

 

I recently verified again that current cheap LG drives have good compatibility with supermarket CD-R.
So try that: Get the cheapest (new) LG burner you can find and burn your media at 32x. Don't go faster or slower than that, except if the media doesn't support 32x. Use 40x then.