Why do CD-R's Damage the Duo Lens?

Golgo13 · 11/06/2007, 04:59 AM

I was wondering about this, I have an old style Duo, and some real games, and some CD-Rs for some weird games, I have not had any problem playing either, is it really true that use of the CD-R's will damage the Duo? And if so, how the hell does that happen?

Turbo D · 11/06/2007, 05:07 AM

I know that if the cd-r is burned incorrectly, the laser will go out to the edge of the disk and get stuck. I imagine it might strain the laser if the disc is lightly burned by a crappy burner, haha.

SignOfZeta · 11/06/2007, 07:30 AM

They don't. The only thing that happens is that the drive sometimes ends up parked beyond its ability to bring itself back to the zero position. I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but the main point is that since the system pre-dates CD-R, weird shit is bound to happen.

chaoticjelly · 11/06/2007, 08:42 AM

It's an old rumour spread by people that don't like "backups" the laser has to work a little harder to read a CD-R since the pits aren't as defined as a factory-written CD, but people make out as if using a few CD-R's will kill a game console laser..

nat · 11/06/2007, 11:14 AM

Even if this were true (and it might be), it would take thousands of hours playing CD-R games for your laser's life to be shortened by any noticable amount.

There are, however, some CD-R games that just refuse to work on my Duo at all. Meteor Blaster DX, the official release, was on some kind of CD-R media. It won't boot at all on my Duo.

Neo Rasa · 11/08/2007, 10:43 PM

I can see why people would think this happens, since by definition anything with moving parts is going to eventually wear out, and in this case anything that makes a disk drive read media in a way it wasn't intended to is going to wear it out "faster" than normal.

Fortunately, nat is correct, and the "damage" this can cause on something like NEC's family of systems is not being an issue.* The "makes the laser work harder" line of thought doesn't make sense for the NEC hardware because it's a CD-ROM drive to begin with. It's not like running a CD-ROM (blue disk) game on a fat PS2 where a laser designed to quickly stream and load information off of DVDs has to read much more slowly to stream off the CD-ROM media. The "working harder" issue with the PS2 is because it has to read at a SLOWER speed than intended for the blue disk games, most people automatically think "working harder" means working faster.

There's a reason we have 3DOs and Duos and SegaCDs and such from over a decade ago that work like a dream now while some of us same people are also on our third or fourth PS2/XBox/360/etc. The system's that have the 1 or 2x CD-ROM drives in them by default can't exactly read any slower, whereas playing Virtua Fighter 4 on your PS2 or Eternal Darkness on your GC can actually result in dire consequences in some rare cases.

The zero position issue...honestly I haven't made or played a backup of any of these games for some time, doesn't this have more to do with the track layout and what the data the Turbo CD knows to look for first? It's seems like something that shouldn't be a problem as more and more understanding of the systems's bios is achieved. That said if your CD is opaque, don't even bother, in any system.

Either way it's definitely an issue exacerbated by people who think they're god because they sold their children to slavers to get their mitts on Darius Alpha. ;)

*With disk media there's always going to be the odd case where a particular item just will not load right, or just plain won't work on some systems and so on.

D-Lite · 12/13/2007, 02:21 PM

The CD-R shouldn't damage the laser at all. The only problem I see happening is that poorly burned CD-R's tend to have more errors and the Duo doesn't seem to have very good error correction at all. Bump your Duo even slightly during CD play and the redbook audio is gone until the next disc access. I would only think that after long periods of using CD-Rs you may find that the motor starts to wear out from repeated searching trying to read a bad disc. But that's just a guess.

Just make sure you burn at 1x or 2x

nat · 12/13/2007, 02:25 PM

My burner only goes as low as 4x which seems to work OK (for the most part) for the 3 or so CD-R's I have.

What D-Lite said about the audio is true... Although on my Duo, it's to such a great extent that you don't even need to bump it. Sometimes playing CD-R games the CD audio will just stop playing as of it's own free will randomly, without being bumped.

This seems to be true with my IFU CD-ROM^2 on the SuperGrafx as well, not just the Duo.

Turbo D · 12/13/2007, 10:05 PM

I've burned games at 40x and they play on my duo. I know I'm crazy, but thats how I roll, lol. It hasn't had any problems. Once the sound went out, but then it came back in a few weeks later.

OldRover · 12/13/2007, 10:33 PM

My burner does 16x lowest and has never produced a PCE coaster. I think the most important factor is the quality of both the disc and the burner. Having lazy software doesn't seem to help though.

Turbo D · 12/14/2007, 01:07 AM

I use Nero to make exact copies of the image. The drive I use is a Sony dvd-rw. No coasters for me either

OldRover · 12/14/2007, 06:36 PM

Nero is my weapon of choice as well. I've always used HP burners.

D-Lite · 12/14/2007, 07:05 PM

When I had regular access to a PC, I used CDRWin at 2x and it worked beautifully

Kitsunexus · 12/14/2007, 08:47 PM

Quote from: OldRover on 12/14/2007, 06:36 PMNero is my weapon of choice as well. I've always used HP burners.

Aren't HP burners Liteon anyway?

OldRover · 12/14/2007, 11:02 PM

I wouldn't know.

PCEngineHell · 12/15/2007, 12:16 AM

Something that helps also is to use long strategy cd-rs,not the cheap short strategy stuff. These days however it is getting harder to get the good stuff,you do have to look around.

JoshTurboTrollX · 12/15/2007, 12:37 AM

I must have a crappy burner then. Ever since I discovered burning CD,SCD, and ACD games with CD-r's I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet! But back in 2002, when I played a regular True CD game on my Duo it would load normal, but the CD-rs started to play slower. More glitches/Black screen of death between loads. And just overall long ass Load screens.

Then soon after, my regular games started to load slow too.... So I decided to stop playing CD-rs all together on REAL hardware.

It freaked me out pretty bad. Then suddenly my Duo broke on me, the disks stopped turnng on the tray. The Duo would just say- Disk read error, please set disk.

This was back when Retro Games still did repair work on Duo's through TZD. And Shitty service to boot. Anyway, 4 months and $60 later I finally got a different Duo in the Mail and it played perfectly. Then somehow I got talked into using CD-rs on it again, in a topic similar to this one, full of guys who say that playing CD-rs doesn't effect the lense of a DUO.

So I made a few more games, and played them on the REAL hardware, and sure enough after a month of doing this, the games started loading like ass again, and sometimes the music wouldn't even play anymore.

So I INSTANTLY stopped playing CD-r's on REAL Hardware. And of course I am a dumbass for even doing it again, but I never played CD-rs on it anymore. I picked up a Duo-R now just incase my US Duo finally kicks the bucket.

Anyway, the main thing that happens now with my US duo is that when you first boot it up and put a CD game inside(Real Software) the music doesn't work, but the sound effects do, and of course Hucards work just fine. But if I turn it on and put a HuCard in it, for say about 30 minutes it warms up so that if you then put a CD game in it all of the sudden works just fine. And its been that way for over a year. It just needs to warm up or something....

But if you want my opinion, No to CD-rs on Real Turbo Systems, maybe others have other experiences.

And dude if you want the Magic Engine to work with CD's just google the BIOS for Super CD System Cards, preferable System3 so you can play Arcade card games. Its the best way to play CD-R's of those hard to find Massively $$$$$$ games!!

Turbo D · 12/15/2007, 12:41 AM

that warm up might be caused by old capacitors.

guyjin · 12/18/2007, 06:53 PM

CDRs are not the cause. The Duo is at least a 14(?) year old piece of equipment, possibly older, and failures will eventually occur.

D-Lite · 12/18/2007, 07:27 PM

Quote from: guyjin on 12/18/2007, 06:53 PMCDRs are not the cause. The Duo is at least a 14(?) year old piece of equipment, possibly older, and failures will eventually occur.

At least 17 years old. Most US Duo's were made in late '89 to early '90.
JP Duo's are about a year older.

guyjin · 12/18/2007, 07:33 PM

My duo was made in January '93 (so says the sticker on the bottom); I guessed that it wasn't the last one, and left a year of wiggle room. I also used the term 'at least', meaning it could well be older.

nat · 12/18/2007, 08:25 PM

Quote from: D-Lite on 12/18/2007, 07:27 PM
Quote from: guyjin on 12/18/2007, 06:53 PMCDRs are not the cause. The Duo is at least a 14(?) year old piece of equipment, possibly older, and failures will eventually occur.
At least 17 years old. Most US Duo's were made in late '89 to early '90.
JP Duo's are about a year older.

Huh? The Duo didn't come out in the US until '91 or '92. Are you saying they made them all in 1989 and '90 and then shelved them for two years before releasing them?

If that's the case, it's news to me!

That said, my Duo is a Oct. '92 model.

D-Lite · 12/18/2007, 08:46 PM

Quote from: nat on 12/18/2007, 08:25 PM
Quote from: D-Lite on 12/18/2007, 07:27 PM
Quote from: guyjin on 12/18/2007, 06:53 PMCDRs are not the cause. The Duo is at least a 14(?) year old piece of equipment, possibly older, and failures will eventually occur.
At least 17 years old. Most US Duo's were made in late '89 to early '90.
JP Duo's are about a year older.
Huh? The Duo didn't come out in the US until '91 or '92. Are you saying they made them all in 1989 and '90 and then shelved them for two years before releasing them?

If that's the case, it's news to me!

That said, my Duo is a Oct. '92 model.

Doh. Sorry, I meant late '92 to early '93
I think the last one I saw was an April 1993.

Kitsunexus · 12/19/2007, 04:54 AM

Quote from: Validus on 12/13/2007, 01:59 PMthis is a complete f***in lie

i have over 100+ PCengine/TG CD-Rs and only ONE is original (EXILE COMPLETE MINT IN BOX BOUGHT IT UNOPENED LAST YEAR)

i've played ALL my games to make sure they all work and all of them are flawless

i dont know how to play CDs on magic engine so i play them all on my duo-R

Quote from: Validus on 12/18/2007, 06:42 PMmy duo died today from CDR use.... its the only explanation, i've ONLY had CDRs for this system so i guess it was doomed since it started playing....

"then I saw her face, now I'm a believer..."

Mortis · 12/19/2007, 10:15 AM

*sings a song about urban legends*

MissaFX · 12/23/2007, 09:18 AM

I don't know if this is an issue with the DUO but the 3DO can have some serious laser troubles if it crashes at the wrong time or if you press eject or power it off (!) while it is streaming mp2 audio. It's like it literally cannot focus or something and the only way I have found to fix it in these cases is to play the same game that caused the trouble and coax it into playing the same type of file that caused the problem. Usually after a few seconds of streaming the file it will magically fix itself and then it will read discs again.

Could this problem be similar for some people in the DUO?

Also unless this has happened to someone with an new laser in their DUO, it does sound to me like the laser simply needs to be re-calibrated like on the PSX to make it work. I don't know if this is simple or not to adjust on the DUO but it might be something else to look into.

PCEngineHell · 12/23/2007, 02:36 PM

I never had that issue with any 3DO I ever owned,ranging from about 9 different decks,FZ 10 and FZ 1,so it may just be a wonky prob your having with yours. The worst problem I have ever seen is the FZ 10 grinding noise prob. Some FZ-1 decks were also prone to random resets. The Goldstar unit had many issues,its not worth owning. Also,I don't know if the method was used on every game,but some titles on 3DO used file repeat patterns so the same file could be on the disc 2-4 times or more.

They did this with the mind set that it would help to better play scratched disc. Between that and the Sport DMA mode its cd drive used,the design was well done. Only a few computer cd-rom drives even had the sport DMA mode,the only ones seemed to be the ones that would work with the pc 3DO kit.

Way of the Warrior was one of those titles that employed Sport DMA mode in the drive.Now it doesn't matter since we got well past the 2x speed drives,but back then it def made a difference for being able to load game data,play the music file,and load voices on the fly.

MissaFX · 12/26/2007, 02:24 AM

Quote from: PCEngineHellI never had that issue with any 3DO I ever owned,ranging from about 9 different decks,FZ 10 and FZ 1,so it may just be a wonky prob your having with yours. The worst problem I have ever seen is the FZ 10 grinding noise prob. Some FZ-1 decks were also prone to random resets. The Goldstar unit had many issues,its not worth owning.

Mine is a Panasonic FZ 1, USA model.

Quote from: PCEngineHellAlso,I don't know if the method was used on every game,but some titles on 3DO used file repeat patterns so the same file could be on the disc 2-4 times or more. They did this with the mind set that it would help to better play scratched disc.

The multiple locations for some of the files is actually part of the file system itself.

The most offending title (and trickiest for me to shut down) is Digital Dreamware. If you wanna try something ...not fun... eject your FZ 1 while playing one of the visualizations. Then put in another game and it should skip if this is universal. I assume it is, but any title with compressed, streaming audio will do this to me if I eject the drive (which you are supposed to be able to do at any time on this system), only some of them do it if I turn it off instead of ejecting.