The Randomness of Dreamcast Back ups

So, here's what's going I have several Back up discs I made the other day some work on both Dreamcasts these are games a friend of mine made for me.

Now for the other discs it's a bit more complicated some burns work on My Sega Sports Dreamcast, others work on my launch unit Dreamcast (the one you may recall that sounds like it's having a seizure when I try to boot Jet Grind Radio.)

But in almost all cases save for the VMU Save disc almost none of them work in BOTH Dreamcasts.

For Example, Radirgy worked ONCE in the Sega Sports unit and hasn't booted since but will always boot up in the launch unit.

For the record I burned all these with IMGburn.

So what's the deal here? Way they were burned? Way they were ripped?

I just confuzzles me how I need 2 Dreamcats.

 

Maybe it's the quality of certain CDrs? Maybe the games your friend gave you, were burned back in 2000? Sometimes the gdrom laser intensity decreases with age (common DC problem that results in not reading CDrs, and eventually GDroms), this can be adjusted if you trust yourself to take your DC apart. Search for the DC CDrw mod, as the CDrw mod basically just involved you increasing the laser intensity.

I have three working dreamcasts. I have never had a backup work on one system and not on another.

 

See the burns from the friend are the only ones that work on both. The ones I burned my self are the ones that aren't.

The ones I burned my self are on White labeled memorex discs.

The laser in the sega sports unit is in better shape than the one in the launch unit.

 

Software related i'm sure. Try disc juggler on the slowest burn for a high quality backup.
Great quality cd-r's never hurt either. If the file has to be over burned then its a coin toss, and is left up to the your software to burn it correctly.

 

Memorex aren't generally high quality media. Also the quality of your CD writer plays a part. Ofcourse nothing compares to factory pressed GD-ROM discs.

 

Yes and I'm sure it's going to be quite easy for me to get blank GD Roms and a GD Rom Burner...

Actually who knows maybe it is

 

Well I guess try a different brand of Cd-r, Gd-rom drives are funny things. doesn't even really need to be better quality, I have a dreamcast which struggles to play my most expensive CD-rs but plays dirt cheap unbranded ones like a charm.

 

Memorex CD-R's are the crappiest of crap. I've literally tossed entire batches because you could write once to them, but the verify step would fail (and you couldn't erase the CD-R/W's afterwards!).

It's by far the worst brand I've ever used, and I wouldn't put it passed anything that it's the root of your problems. Get some Verbatim's and eliminate that source of questionability.

 

Verbatium is what I'm going to start using for Duel Layer Discs. I could have gotten Sony CD-R's but really...I feel weird using them in a Dreamcast.

I had some Memorex Duel Layer DVD+R DLs that would NOT burn in my laptop but would burn in an external USB drive.

For PS2 Backups I use Sony Discs.

 

Memorex are the brand my purple CD-R's are I believe. Textured top, Chinese companies just buy discs that failed testing in bulk, plaster the purple on and sell them cheap.

 

Hm, yeah, memorex is utter crap man, that could be your issue. I personally use Verbatim CD-Rs or Sony CD-Rs for all the media I burn to those type of discs.

Also, why are you using imgburn for the dreamcast? In my experience, discjuggler has always worked best.

 

I had quite some experience with these, some burners and respective software are crap and dont cope well with multisession burns.
They tend to burn a few extra sectors betwen sessions and that ends up screwing the selfboot (which is binded to a specific starting sector for the 2nd session)

Making 1:1 copies of these DC discs can be tricky and Disc Juggler isnt the most stable app as well.

I normally used Nero or Imgburn for everything else but Nero is shit for imaging/reading and Imgburn doesnt go well with multisession, also DiscJuggler tends to hang a lot while burning.

My most fullproof method was:
Create image with DiscJuggler
Convert to nrg with cdi2nrg.exe
Burn with Nero

Never had a problem with these steps, if I tried to burn with DJ or make an image with Nero I always got problems.

 

For media get
JVC
Taiyo Yuden
Verbatim DataLifePlus [AZO] make sure it has the AZO logo.
Not all Verbatim disc are made equal
They have a value line which is crap.

Burn at 4X-8X

 

HP CD-Rs are actually pretty good I've found, and TDK run good in my Dreamcast.
SONY are ok but a bit pricey.

Also, depending on your writer some discs are good, some are bad.

 

I use Maxell CD-R, burned at 24x and either Lite On drives or whatever is built into my laptop with no problems on any of my several Dreamcasts.

 

This is what I do now and oddly found the exact same findings. The PS1s I mod and sell hate my cheapy Verbatim discs but love my Taiyo Yudens...mostly. I have one TY burn that won't read in anything but a PS2 and some PS1s will skip in FMVs until the laser power is raised just slightly.

Burning them at 16x works for the most part, but if I want a burn that has a higher probability of working across the board I pull out my Yamaha CR1-FW to burn at 4x. Though the poor thing seems to be on its last leg.

 

Nothing beats a god ol' crw-f1!

The gd-rom is a strange beast, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it randomly does ...

Just find the burning set-up that makes yours happy!

 

Surely brand is irrelevant and it's all about the dye they use? Even "reliable" brands can use sub par dye in some lines (as highlighted in the Verbatim example).

It's not as if the name on the box reflects who actually makes the disc anyway, much like many accessories. Taiyo Yuden for example make their own discs, but also brand their discs for different multinationals (hence why good discs often use TY dye)

heres a handy link as an example (if outdated) http://club.myce.com/f33/taiyo-yuden-faq-178622/

 

Just curious, is there any actual (big) hardware differences between an original DC, and the Sports version? I grabbed a Sports version recently, and I'm just wondering.

One suggestion (as odd as it might be), is to try to use the Utopia Bootdisk, to load some of the games. I previously had a normal DC, and like 75% games worked fine. But the remaining 20% didn't work (but did, with the Bootdisk). The remaining 5% of that is Maken X, which requires some weird CDR's to even attempt. Although it looks like they fixed that problem.