Weird Backup CD-R crashes with a PC Engine Duo

I acquired a refurbished PC Engine Duo unit from a friend. He purchased an RGB modded unit from Doujindance about a year ago and sent it to me with a Turbo Everdrive and some backups. The backups were burnt onto Taiyo Yuden 52x speed CD-Rs and burnt at 24x.

The system works fine as far as Turbo Everdrive is concerned, but I have been having inconsistent results with CD-R backups. Some games will work, some games will freeze. All the Ys games crash at distinct points. Ys I & II will freeze just after the "In the Beginning" when you start a new game. Ys III will freeze after the conversation between Dogi and the girl at the beginning of the game. Ys IV will freeze after Dogi speaks for the first time in-game. You will not hear any sound at these points where you should be hearing a digitized sound effect (waves in Ys 1-2, speech in 3 & 4) Dracula X will crash when the cutscenes where you rescue the girls are about to be loaded. All these crashes have something in common, non-CD Audio Track digitized speech or sound effects are being or about to be streamed from the CD. I have no issues with CD Audio tracks not playing or obvious audio quality issues otherwise.

I tried making my own backups with Sony SUPREMAS CD-Rs and I exhibit the same issues regardless of whether the media is being burnt at 16x, 24x or 48x. What is even weirder is that sometimes the digitized audio does work and I can play games without any freezes. I just cannot pin down the reason why, and I tried fiddling with the VR101-105 pots, but I think that those are meant for more fundamental issues. I have a sneaking suspicion that the games work best when the system has had time to warm up, which would indicate failing capacitors. I observe that dojiundance did replace some of the SMD capacitors with radial capacitors, but there are still many SMD capacitors on the board. Perhaps more need to be replaced?

 

Before doing anything to the system, if one of your games crashes reliably at a certain point you should get an original CD and see if it does the same. I think it's more likely a problem with the CD-R than the system. If you can't get an original CD, burn another CD-R on a different PC perhaps.

I had an original PC-Engine DUO (black console) which would play some CD-Rs fine but others it would reliably freeze as the laser lens sled would travel all of the way outward and get stuck. I have a DUO-R unit now which doesn't seem to exhibit that issue although I don't exclusively play CD-Rs.

 

You should burn them with 4x max to ensure that they work.
Taiyo Yuden is good.

 

That's a myth. You should burn at the speed that gives best burns. It's not slowest for everything. You should do research on CDR freaks. It's not even possible to burn some discs that slow. The TY discs I use, the slowest I can go is 16x, but best burn is at 24x when checking it

 

Been the case here with me. My SCPH-1001 PS1 fitted with a 101 assembly is pretty picky but once I found the sweet spot it got reliable quick. I haven't tried burning any TY blanks on my new laptop but I'll bet the drive won't allow for 4x to start with.

 

I acquired an original Ys Book 1 & 2 CD from a friend and it crashes/freezes in the exact same place as my CD backup and his CD backup. There is a PCM sound effect that plays as you see the text "In the Beginning", which does not play when the freeze occurs. I am not sure whether warming up the system by playing a HuCard game is a reliable way to fix it, this has been inconsistent. Do I need to replace the ADPCM chip? Replace more caps? I will try adjusting the pots again.

 

I would advise asking at this forum: http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php

Perhaps the CD unit's laser lens is failing, or maybe the motor or sled/sled rails has an issue.

If some of the original caps are clearly in the section for the CD-ROM and you're capable of replacing them then maybe that's something to try. Just be careful not to cause another problem while trying to fix another. Again I'd check out the PCEngineFX forum if you haven't already.

 

I have registered there, waiting on approval.