spontaneous reboot after warming up

[Saoshyant]

[quote author=MetaFox link=board=hardware;num=1095908093;start=0#8 date=10/09/04 at 10:37:52]
Have you actually bought one from Lik-Sang, and can personally verify that they are TecToy Dreamcasts? Â*Lik-Sang has never stated they recieved their shipments from Tectoy, just that they are refurbished Dreamcasts in their original boxes. Â*It seems kind of weird that they'd leave in the PAL-M format for the systems, then have them modified with a modchip for worldwide use, as the PAL-M format is only used in Brazil. Â*Plus, all the Dreamcast systems from TecToy I've ever seen have not had a tectoy logo on the system, just on the box.[/quote]

I did not buy from Lik Sang. The one I saw was from a brasilian friend who bought a TecToy version, and yes that one at least had the crappy logo on the system itself. To tell the truth I am not 100% sure Lik Sang sells Tectoy Dreamcasts as I only have the word of others on this. Still, the fact you know it uses that horrible PAL-M system is quite a prove they are selling Dreamcasts produced on Brasil.

[tinku]

well all homebrew comes on cdr dosent it ?? the same as a pirate copy.

i think your talking rubbish, when you say it harms the dc, look at the mp3 player the movie player the divx player all streaming data off a cdr no one likes pirates but come on no one writes gd roms these days.


tinku ;D

[Eric]

lol thats why it says on dc scene sites or games dont complain to us if your DC is harmed for the known fact that it may destroy the laser sometime in the future. In my case i dont know if its true i have had a DC since 2001. Bought it used and its still working i always vacuum out the fan if i notice it needs it and that may help people out a bit to.

But everything dies these days your computers laser may go aswell it happens to every system so its not just CD-R's that would kill it all disks could do it no systems last forever computers do cause you can repair them. Systems can if you want to go find somebody who can or just buy off LikSang the parts if they are available.

Eric

[DCDayDreamer]

well all homebrew comes on cdr dosent it ?? the same as a pirate copy.

That's a very good point to raise, albeit a little misinformed.

There is some 'homebrew' that's not on CDR (unless a pirate has got hold of it) - Feet of Fury etc. :-*

The big difference with a CDR containing a homebrew game and a commercial copy is not just the blatantly obvious legality issue, but the layout and size of the data contained on the media.

The majority of homebrew available for the Dreamcast is small and loads directly into memory, meaning the laser does not need to read the CDR again once it's loaded the data into memory - hence less wear and tear on the laser. Obviously there are a number of homebrew creations that require the laser to read more data off the CDR once in a while, but normally this is a lot less frequent than the 'backup' counterpart. The only homebrew creations that require the laser to constantly read off a CDR are the media players and games that use MP3 etc. for background music. Even these creations don't put a lot of strain on the laser because although it's reading off the CDR, the laser isn't hunting around for the data, but constantly streaming.

Of course who's to say for sure if you used your Dreamcast only for playing MP3's or movies it wouldn't last as long as another Dreamcast that was only used for games?. I can however say this:
I have 6 Dreamcasts, two of which I use for hardware projects for playing MP3's and movies - they are still going strong. I use one Dreamcast purely for testing homebrew and playing original games - still going strong. One other dreamcast is as new and kept as a replacement if my main machine packs up (happens to everything eventually). The last two Dreamcasts were used for backups on a regular basis - one is dead, the other has problems reading any disc.

Even though I have not tested every homebrew creation developed for the Dreamcast, you'll find that homebrew is developed for the use of CDR's, backup games are not.

One game that caused a lot of strain on the laser was 'SmashDC' in it's original release form. The data for the game was all in the root of the CDR, causing the laser to hunt around and load all the individual components (graphics/sound etc.) when booted.
BurnerO later released a 'romdisk' version of the game, this release had all the game data within the binary file, the laser read the binary resulting in less 'hunting' and a quicker load time of the game.
The Dreamcast laser acts the same way with a copy game as it would with the original release of 'SmashDC' but for longer periods and more frequently - meaning almost constant and regular strain on the laser when playing a copy game. Almost constant and regular strain on the laser will undoubtedly wear it out a lot sooner - it's not rocket science!. The DC pirates friend, the good old dummy file helps the problem, but it's just a way to help the DC read the data which is still not in it's original layout and form.

i think your talking rubbish, when you say it harms the dc

The answer to that pointless remark is above!

[Mental2k]

i think your talking rubbish, when you say it harms the dc

Yeah and the reset problem isnt real either,
Neither is the dirty lens problem,
Neither is the RF box problem.

listen to experienced old hands, if you have experienced one of these probs at some stage then you will, so dont tell those who will help you they are talkin rubbish.

Lecture over. :

[semicolo]

Well, I don't think read problems could come from the laser if reading backup/homebrew (after all a laser diode is an electronic component how could it be damaged by reading gd/cd roms ?) The mechanics, though, could be more stressed in reading backups than reading original gdroms. Motors driving the laser and/or the disc are likely to be the problem not the laser itself (even if laser diodes don't last forever, they souldn't burn for just reading cdrs in place of gdrs).

[Saoshyant]

From a old post of mine on the SEGA boards:
(http://boards.sega.com/sega/viewtopi...3&start=45)

Dreamcast has few games with loading problems... after all it used a fast processor and a 12X speeds media reader. And this I mean only for original games, for pirate games are fortunately slow as hell and I hope people speaking in this thread are not talking about it. I might as well explain why pirate games are slow on the Dreamcast as I know all about its hardware. The Dreamcast was conceived with GD-ROM media, on which the one low-density region is on the inside of the disc (near the center) and can be read by regular CD drives. The outside section is the part where they put the game, the high-density part. What happens is that this was another foolish anti-piracy system (foolish in the point it did not work out) and so the Dreamcast player cannot read the first 40 MB of a CD-ROM as it did not need to do that for a GD-ROM. Even Audio CDs suffer of this. You can try play a Audio CD and sometimes you will see the system having problems reading the first and/or second track(s). As pirate games are burned into CD-R media they also suffer from this effect. The Dreamcast wastes several time to read the data in the beginning of the disc, making the game really slow and affecting the motor, slowly killing it. Even when you are for instance playing the last level of a shooter you may suffer from this slowdown. Pirates then came across a idea to nullify this problem: dummying the disc or in other words include a empty large file at the beginning of the cd, so the data would be pushed to the edge and the Dreamcast load the games faster. However this dummying process was not easy and it was only released when the Dreamcast piracy scene was already in its middle, so most pirate games ended undummied or badly dummied. So, in this post I explained why so many people complain of slow loading times, because most of them are playing pirate games something that is very nice.... With this I don't mean there were not slow times. One just needs to play Shenmue 2 to see them, but it was something rare and please it was not worse than the psx, it never was....

(from a dubious document)
The most important feature of the program is that it maintains the correct ordering of files as they appear on the GDROM. When you manually create a dummy file and extract the files using isobuster or winimage, you screw up the file ordering (since it will now be alphabetical when you add it). Using this program ensures the files are in exactly the same sector order (LBA addresses). This stops the unnecessary seeking that generates a lot of heat and is the likely cause of people frying their Dreamcast.

So far only *censoredgroup* releases appear to include the correct ordering of files as they appear on the GDROM (Utopia and Accession releases are sorted alphabetically). Ever wonder why Dead Or Alive 2 takes so long to load and seeks endlessly? This is because it has such a large number of small files and they are fragmented all over the CD. If you are concerned about rips damaging your Dreamcast by over seeking, then I would stick to *censoredgroup* releases until the other groups get their act together.

(I think all this pretty closes the thread)

[DCDayDreamer]

Within the scene people will be debating about the effects of copied games endlessly, going into the individual component damage, layout of CDR files and GD files etc. etc. merely complicates the issue.

I've put a layman's explanation of the effects of using a copy game in my previous post, I could go into more detailed specifics...
Burn speed/Media quality/Dummy files/File layout etc. but it'll end up as a guide as to how to achieve the best quality copy of a game - and there's no way I'm entering that territory, I've already mentioned finding a quality copy can be rarer than finding the original game itself for a reasonable price.

I've put my toes over the line here and no more will be said about that subject.

The choice, as always, stands before the individual:

1) worthless copy.
2) genuine game.

Either way, your Dreamcast will wear out in the end, you'll need spare parts or a replacement eventually. Just choose yourself whether you want to do it sooner or later.

Topic Locked.