How sensitive is pc engine duo to cd-rs?

[sayin999]

I recently got a pc engine duo off ebay boxed with some stuff, but I want try out the english translated version of dracula x and the unreleased space fantasy zone proto. Now I know the pc engine can read cd-rs but I hear a lot of people wear out their laser super fast doing this. Is this true? If so would gold bottom cd-rs make a difference?

[_SD_]

When I did my copy of SFZ I burnt it at the slowest speed I could, 2x I think, and used the highest quality media I could find. I was always a little scared to use it though in case I ended up breaking my drive, so it never did get played as much as it should.

I have however come across a few brand-new boxed PC Engine replacement CD mechanisms on eBay recently, so it's probably worth getting one as a back-up anyway.

[APE]

Plextor+Taiyo Yuden=bliss.

This Plextor I have from 2003 burns my TY discs beautifully but either of my modern LG burners mangle them. At the very least the former works great on most everything where as the latter tends to have issues.

[JohnnyBlaze]

Do what I did:

I got the Prodisc silver CD-R's with the Pioneer DVR-212D. You couldn't ASK for a better combination! I gotten a 100-pack of them from a friend who used to burn Rap Mixtapes for the local scene. The Pioneer drive has been discontinued, but you can find it for dirt cheap on eBay. Just make sure to buy an extra SATA cable and mounting screws. I play these more than my original CD's and I can't tell the difference. They boot right up. With the prices that these Turbo/PC Engine CD's go for now, I'm better off playing my copies and keeping my originals handy for a manual or when I need to make a new copy.

[takeshi385]

The PC Engine cd discs are pressed on cd-rs as with an other game under 780 mb of data on cd system. My point is that I could be the way the were burnt. I imagine the first cd-rs weren't quite as big as today's and that would mean the system would read it differently. That theory is nice and all but, If this was the case I would think there would a special format for the disc images and a piece of software that would spread the data in accordance to the original disc and there would be no problem. At any rate I myself like the option of piracy for backups but, the problem here is these disc are about 20 years of age the data will soon become corrupt due to die deterioration. I can't remember were I saw this ,but APE said (sorry if the quote is messed up I am do it off of memory) " The quality of cd-r's has gone down In the past years and that only a few makers such a Taiyo Yuden make quality cd-r's now" this makes sense because as the predominant use of cd based media kept growing the quality of reader would get better I.E reinforced beter design so they could make crap quality and get away with it.
I recomend buying a backup laser unit just incase something goes wrong.

[APE]

MAM-A, Taiyo Yuden and there exists a third of which I'd say makes quality CD-Rs. Looking into DVD-Rs right now but it seems Taiyo Yuden makes good DVD-Rs too.

[jinn]

I'm with APE on this
MAM-A Gold, Taiyo Yuden/JVC and Verbatim DataLifePlus AZO are the best blank media you can buy for older consoles. Keep in mind you will also need a good burner. I use a dedicated Plextor CD Burner for all my retro CD based consoles, all of them play flawless and consoles show no sign of laser failure

[APE]

To clarify on my above post (that was clearly made when I was exhausted), the Plextor I got from Jinn (PX-W4824TA) burnt my Taiyo Yudens to perfection. My laptop sports a "HP DVDRAM GT20L" which is a re-badged LG. It burns my Taiyo Yudens at 12x IIRC and does a pretty good job overall. However, in the last few SCPH-5501 PS1s I've acquired they boot maybe 30% of the time without some sort of trouble. The SCPH-7501 and 9001 (as well as 101) will accept these burns without too much hassle but still not quite acceptable (acceptable being 98% boot success without skipping once booted).

However upon switching to the Plextor and burning at 8x? Golden. I had very few boots that didn't complete successfully without needing to adjust the laser at all for power. I need to test these burns out on more than just the single 5501 but I anticipate similiar success.

What sucks here is that trying to sell these things to the average Joe means that most people A)want to use what I've termed "gas station CD-Rs" and B)want to use whatever burner they already have access to. Neither of which is a mortal sin but the former is just stupid if you want to keep your lasers functional and the latter shouldn't be an issue if cost cutting measures weren't so ridiculous and quality was a priority. There is no reason this laptop's burner shouldn't produce high quality burns on high quality discs yet it can't.

Though truth be told my cheapy Sony CD-Rs boot quite well on my PS2 and SegaCD. Doesn't mean I want to do this and I sure as hell won't be doing this for much beyond throw away burns for testing something.

[_SD_]

We really need a Super CD Rom2 emulator so ISOs can be loaded from an SD card.

[MottZilla]

From what I've heard, and experienced, this is all false. Just use decent media and a decent burner and it'll be fine. Using the CDROM drive at all is going to eventually wear it out. The Cds you use aren't going to affect it drastically unless they are very poor quality. But chances are you'd have actual problems playing the games in that case. Plain old Sony CD-Rs you can buy in most stores will work fine.

[APE]

From what I've heard, and experienced, this is all false. Just use decent media and a decent burner and it'll be fine. Using the CDROM drive at all is going to eventually wear it out. The Cds you use aren't going to affect it drastically unless they are very poor quality. But chances are you'd have actual problems playing the games in that case. Plain old Sony CD-Rs you can buy in most stores will work fine.

Perhaps for this specific console but my experiences are far from nonsense; when applied to PS1s at least. SegaCDs aren't terribly picky about CD-Rs either so maybe consoles not made by Sony are immune.

[MottZilla]

Well you should always use good quality media, but using poor quality media will probably result in playback problems before causing your system to get all stressed trying to read it over and over. Basically though if your system is still on it's ORIGINAL cd-rom unit, don't be surprised or blame CD-Rs if it stops working. Using original pressed discs is best (assuming they are clean and not scratched) but if you have good clean CD-Rs it should work fine.

One thing that can happen, is the CD lens sled can get stuck. This usually happens only with CD-Rs. I had it happen on my old PCE DUO, but never yet on my DUO-R.

[APE]

Agreed as that is exactly what happens more often than not.

Never had anything die that I can directly attribute to poor media.

[Flash]

Some consoles can't read higher quiality media, especially dark blue/green or black TY/Verbatim discs but fine with cheaper discs. For that "CD-R kills your lazor" myth - it's just some unlucky guys who got failing OPs, they start to use CD-Rs, time passes and console can't read CD-Rs anymore, then it stops reading pressed discs, but it has nothing to do with CD-R discs. If laser starts to degrade it will fail eventually, disc type doesn't matter.

[APE]

Some consoles can't read higher quiality media, especially dark blue/green or black TY/Verbatim discs but fine with cheaper discs. For that "CD-R kills your lazor" myth - it's just some unlucky guys who got failing OPs, they start to use CD-Rs, time passes and console can't read CD-Rs anymore, then it stops reading pressed discs, but it has nothing to do with CD-R discs. If laser starts to degrade it will fail eventually, disc type doesn't matter.

Why exactly does it have nothing to do with CD-Rs? Dreamcasts have had their lasers crap out from extensive CD-R use but it has to be extensive. Unless you were one of those unlucky with equipment capable of taking measurements that is.

And I've never heard of consoles being unable to read higher quality media. Fact is anything beyond pressed media is going to require more work to be read shortening the life span to some extent. The extent is dependent on a wide variety of factors and cannot be dismissed as pure 100% grade A myth using anecdotal evidence generated fifth hand.

In the case of the PC Engine Duo I would doubt it'll have much of a problem but burning high quality CD-Rs in a fashion of quality is a must unless you don't mind calling McDonald's fine dining.

[Druid II]

From what I've heard, and experienced, this is all false. Just use decent media and a decent burner and it'll be fine. Using the CDROM drive at all is going to eventually wear it out. The Cds you use aren't going to affect it drastically unless they are very poor quality. But chances are you'd have actual problems playing the games in that case. Plain old Sony CD-Rs you can buy in most stores will work fine.

This is correct. CDR and burning quality does not matter anymore, unless you use the absolute cheapest shittiest burners and media, but there's a good chance that those kind of burns would fail at verification anyway (you do verify your burns, right?).

Most problems with CDR games not booting is related to using bad settings at burning, or a bad burner application. PCECD stuff is problematic so I hear, because it uses crazy mixed mode setups with multiple data/audio tracks and crazy pregaps in the subcode (even some mastering errors).

[jinn]

Introduction

Low CD-R media prices, unknown CD-R vendors, conflicting claims by these vendors, then there are the green / gold / blue dye's and gold / silver metallizations. All this information is very confusing to the CD-R buyer. Users just want quality CD-R's for a low price but usually this does not mix...
There are a lot of these low budget CD-R's on sale everywhere but no-one can really tell what the quality of these CD-R's is and will be the impact of ageing is on the CD-R's. Some people think that CD-Recordable media will last as long as any normal CD but this is not true!

In early 1999 a few computer magazines in Europe featured a very interesting article on the quality of CD-R's. In this article a total of 170 CD-R's (17 brands, 10 per brand) were subjected to a test and the results varied a lot.

Some CD-R manufacturers claim that they have quality CD-R media just by testing the compatibility with all kind of CD-Writers. Let's be clear: Compatibility does not equal Quality!

This article will give you some insight on the real quality for those low budget CD-R's which are sold everywhere now.


CD-R Quality vs CD-R Compatibility
Most people think that when they have burned up a spindle and did not get any coaster that the quality of these CD-R's was very good. In fact this is NOT true as this only tells you that the used CD-R's are compatible with your CD-Writer.
Over the years most CD-Writer manufacturers have learned how to make their hardware compatibility with all kinds of CD-R's (even the low budget media!) so it is not strange that less coasters occure.

So keep in mind that nobody can claim that a certain CD-R is of good quality just by successfully burning a number of CD-R's!


CD-R Quality Factors
The quality of CD-R's is directly related with the time the CD-R's will last without losing the information on them. The second important issue is that the CD-R can be used on any kind of CD-Reader without any problems.
One of the solutions to test the quality is to write a few CD-Rs, then wait about 25-50 years and check if the CD-R's still hold the correct data. This is ofcouse a bit extreme.


A better solution is to use the CATS CD-R/CD-RW Analyzer which is made by Audio Development. This company is market-leader in supplying reliable automated test systems for all CD & DVD media. The CATS Analyzer is a complete hardware & software test solution which is build around the Philips CDM4 Optical Drive. This drive is specially designed to retrieve very accurate information from a CD.


CD-R Test Method
The idea is to speed-up the ageing process of a CD-R from about 25-50 years to only a few days. The answer for this is to use a Climate-Chamber, which artificially ages CD-R's by exposing them to extreme temperatures and humidity.
Before the CD-R's go into the Climate-Chamber a number of them are written to, then they are subjected to the CATS CD-R Analyzer to measure the current quality. After they are "aged" for a number of days the same measurements are conducted again to check for differences.


When the differences are minor then the quality of the CD-R is good, when there are big differences then this means the Data on the written CD-R's is not useable anymore which results in a low quality CD-R.


During the actual test a total of 136 CD-R's (8 per brand) were burned and then the CATS CD-R Analyzer was used to measure the Before results.
Then all 170 CD-R's were put in a Climate-Chamber which artificially "aged" the CD-R's (this test method is called the Cyclic Damp Heat Test). The CD-R's where left in this Climate-Chamber for 1 week, where they were exposed to extreme temperatures and humidity.


After this week the 34 CD-R's (2 per brand), which where not burned yet, were burned on a Plextor CD-Writer at single speed & quad speed.


After this all 170 CD-R's were subjected again to the CATS CD-R Analyzer to get the After results.


CD-R Quality Results
Both Before and After tests were compared and here are the results of the test:

Brand Factory Quality Misc
Imation Taiyo Yuden Good
Kodak Kodak Good
Philips Gold Kodak Good
TraxData Gold Kodak Good
Philips Silver Taiyo Yuden Good
Ricoh Premium Ricoh Good
Sony Taiyo Yuden Good
TDK TDK Good
NoName Mitsubishi Good
Ricoh Standard Ricoh Medium
Arita Ritek Bad
Philips IQ Silver Ritek Bad Problems writing the "aged" CD-R's
TraxData Silver Ritek Bad
NoName Ritek Ritek Bad
FujiFilm Ritek Bad Problems writing the "aged" CD-R's
NoName Fornet Fornet Bad

Good Quality Results:

Do not have any problems with the aging process.
Don't have errors.
Can write at all speeds it is supposed to be able to handle.

Medium Quality Results:

Don't have major problems with the aging process.
Still have errors which can't be corrected.

Bad Quality Results:

Totally can't handle the aging process.
Too many errors which can't be corrected.
Are not suited to record AUDIO data.
Have problems writing at speeds higher than 1x.
The article also encountered a very bad TraxData Silver batch (which came in softcase), which was very sensitive to UV light. While testing the CD-R's a lot of errors were encountered exactly where there was no print on the label (so you could "read" the Traxdata logo in the errors!) It seemed that the ink was hardened with UV light thus causing the errors.
This faulty batch was replaced by TraxData for a "better" one before the above results.

The article is old and some of those companies no longer make CD-Rs.
From my personal experience only about 4 companies make CD-Rs

CMC Magnetics Corporation dominates the CD-R market. You will find them in Sony, TDK, Verbatim, Staples, Phillips, Memorex. Maxell and so on and so on.
CMC is the worst media to buy. CMC CD-R's ability to maintain reflectivity is poor giving it a very short life span. It also delivers the weakest reflection contrast and thus can cause read errors when run on old CD drives.

The best media is made by:

1. Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals. MAM-A bought the patented dye which has a characteristic gold color. MAM-A Gold CD-R

2. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation [MCC]. The makers of AZO and Super AZO. Only one company carries MCC CD-Rs which is Verbatim under the DATALIFEPLUS AZO Series.

3. Taiyo Yuden/JVC. Taiyo Yuden invented the CD-R, along with Philips and Sony, on June 13th, 1988. At the time, Taiyo Yuden was the only manufacturer of CD-R media in the world, supplying media to many well-known CD-R distributors. The CD-R was not given the boost it needed until 1992. In that year, CD-ROM drives were introduced into the computer market. At that point, the CD-R market changed from mainly audio applications, to the data market, which because of its quick market expansion gave the CD-R notoriety and market success. As time passed, many Taiwanese manufacturers started to release their own CD-R media, thus resulting in a decrease in prices that continues today. With the market changing rapidly every day, Taiyo Yuden has managed to keep quality their number one issue. Because of this, they continue to be one of the best quality CD-R products in the market today.

I side note: CD-Rs which have a fun color recording surface [BLACK, PURPLE, BLUE, RED, ORANGE] are also made with CMC Dye. You will see no improvement in using COLOR bottom CD-Rs
The Kodak CD-R on the above quote use the Mitsui dye.