I am packing and ripping my old games. Hundreds of discs.
PCE CD games - cd is flawless. These discs date to 1992?
Sega CD- same discs is flawless
Psone. Oh. My. God.
Any fingerprints / skin oil left on the discs? Even if "clean" looking
when stored? Even trace oil? HEAVILY oxidize the disc surface.
Does NOT buff out or come off, it is a change in the disc surface.
This is a big big problem.
The bottom of psone games, for some reason are vulnerable to corrosion!
Last edited by ASSEMbler; 07-13-2011 at 02:27 PM.
Yes I have few that are warped around the edges, ps1 discs also scratch very easily my WWF Attitude disc has a very slight scratch to it and it won't load the intro str on the weaker ps1 laser but reads fine on my ps2.
Last edited by KH2K4; 07-13-2011 at 02:36 PM.
Are you talking about the top of the disks? because I don't see how the bottom can be oxidized from finger prints/oils?
Unless you just mean the bottom surface has been attacked from oils/etc? which would make more sense than oxidization from finger prints.
Its usually the reflective layer (metal) that gets oxidized, not the plastics
edit:
Just noticed you say corrosion later on, which makes more sense to me at least.
Is the plastic cloudy and is it just where the finger prints were?
Photos would be interesting?
I own about 300? psone discs. I bought many of them used for just archiving.
Picture 1 is of a cleaned and archived disc.
Pictures 2 onward are of an uncleaned, archived as bought disc which has dirt
and fingerprints.
Last pictures show the permanent fingerprints oxidized into the disc.
Clean disc, cleaned when archived.
Uncleaned
Cleaned
Cleaned with permanent finger marks oxidized in the disc.
engineered to break down.
I just read the other day that removal of fingerprint "data" is not 100% impossible from metallic surfaces due to minute changes in surface composition. Bunch of ionic level changes that allow you to detect fingerprint "data" after the surface has been cleaned.
Wouldn't be surprised if the composition change from transparent to black wouldn't eventually cause some problems. My Chrono Cross disc 1 has a ring scratch from a bloody SCPH-5501 and it has so angered me. This would be infuriating.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums...ad.php?t=31524
My feedback thread, since it seems somewhat difficult for people to find.
Originally Posted by APE
well what this is is an oxidation of the black scratch proofing, I doubt the media is going to go bad as the disc play, it just looks like shit is all.
That is what I figured, good way to ruin resale value but at least its not as bad as LaserDisc laser rot.
Anyone know what makes the disc black? Wonder if it can be chemically altered over time.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums...ad.php?t=31524
My feedback thread, since it seems somewhat difficult for people to find.
Last edited by ASSEMbler; 07-13-2011 at 03:48 PM.
The narrator states that "black ink is added" which unfortunately leads me to come up with the mental image of someone squirting a fountain pen into a batch of molten plastic. They show a handful of the transparent plastic that they melt to make the disc and then show a disc having some transparent viscous fluid being applied to the top. The inner hub is clearly a black plastic but the reflective metal layer is also clearly visible.
Unless they skipped the step for adding black in the video as per being a company secret or something. The narrator did say the black was to help prevent illegal copies from being made but I don't think I've ever heard that one before.
Given CD tech was pretty much mature by the time the Playstation came along I would place my bet on whatever Sony added to make the discs black (or allow the plastic to accept the coloring agent) is what caused the oxidation. Never have I seen a CD come out like that before, even the copy of MYST I've had since 1994 or so and abused heavily as a youngling. Looks like I tried to buff it with 80 grit sand paper but nothing like what your PS1 disc looks like.
Time to scour some patents for information.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums...ad.php?t=31524
My feedback thread, since it seems somewhat difficult for people to find.
I thought they where black to reduce reflection due to the poor quality lasers :shrug: the reason why backups on none black cd-r tend to skip on large videos.
No, that's a myth that was introduced by SONY to try and discourage people from modding their machines and playing bent CD-R's. You have to bear in mind that the PlayStation because it used CD based media was often used by some as a standalone CD player, a laser that destroyed itself for playing anything other than black discs would have led to more class action suits than you could point a shitty stick at.
As for skippy FMV, shit media burnt at maximum speed is the problem there. I raped the living shit out of my first PSX for 3 years solid with either official discs, 'golds' or VCD's and she never once skipped a beat, in fact she was better than my Saturn which was meant to play VCD's.
It wasn't until dual shock was standard did they release a model with a slightly better quality laser taking away the parallel port in the process to stop pirates.Wikipedia
With the early units, many gamers experienced skipping full-motion video or physical "ticking" noises coming from their PlayStations. The problem appears to have come from poorly placed vents leading to overheating in some environments the plastic moldings inside the console would warp very slightly and create knock-on effects with the laser assembly. The solution was to ensure the console was sat on a surface which dissipated heat efficiently in a well vented area, or raise the unit up slightly by propping something at its edges. A common fix for already affected consoles was to turn the PlayStation sideways or upside-down (thereby using gravity to cancel the effects of the warped interior) although some gamers smacked the lid of the PlayStation to make a game load or work.
Earliest series had potentiometers on the board for adjusting the reading mechanism, named BIAS, GAIN and an unknown one. By connecting a voltmeter between the upper-most metering point near the BIAS potentiometer and the chassis, the resulting voltage could be read. The supposed right values are 1.70 V when a CD is spinning at 1x speed and 1.85 V when a CD is spinning at 2x speed. Further tuning was also possible on the unique potentiometer present on the CD drive. Later series featured an automatic laser calibration mechanism.
Then there's the fact that all ps1 cds are 71 mins not the 74 mins cd-r's of the day.
Last edited by KH2K4; 07-13-2011 at 08:03 PM.
It's true that the laser was close to the power supply in older models AND the laser assembly was made of improper plastics that the heat would deform and cause problems. This was corrected in either the 500x or 700x series I think. They both moved the laser and used better materials.
PS1 CDs were not "71 minutes". They were like every CD-ROM, 74 minutes until later on when 80 minute CD-ROMs came about some games were on those I believe. CD-Rs also used to come in 74 minute capacity until 80 minutes became more common and nowdays you can only find premium archive discs that still are in 74 minute length.
Lots of rumors surround things like this. The truth is usually less dramatic than the rumors.
actually the black plastic you see the workers futzing with is actually a master copy made from the glass master the plastic master copy is whats really used in disk pressing they coat it witch nickel to make it durable
and use it until it spits out useless disks and then make a new plastic master copy from the glass master and rinse and repeat
i learned that from the numerous videos on youtube showing DVD and DC manufacturing also " How Its Made " helped also
I have a number discs that have clouded. Some are obliviously because of fingerprints I stupidly left but others have no apparent reason. I think the black color just fades over time for some reason and anything like fingerprints, dust particles, ect simply exacerbates it.
On the plus side it doesn't seem to affect them from playing since every game I've tested still plays just fine.
Well, it's rather brutal here. Right now we are advising all our clients to put everything they've got into canned food and shotguns.
Well from a collector's point of view this is a nightmare.
Indeed, It's already bad enough that PSOne games scratch easier than 99% of CD/DVD based games on the face of the earth.
I have games that i've boughten new, kept only in the original case and played once to completion with the disc never being removed from the console until it was completed, covered in scratches even though i've never even remotely touched the the data surface , nor set it on something that would scratch it.
Makes me glad that projects like redump.org exists. At the very least the game data can be saved (in cases where the actual disc can be endangered). But I can see this definitely sucking for collectors unless you some how have collected everything sealed.
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