New DC sees Boot Disc & backups as audio CDs? 2 many coasters!

CyberZer0 · #1 29-06-2001, 18:09

First of all, I've thouroghly tried every option I could before coming here & have a respectable pile of 20+ coaster. Also, I've "followed" the DC scene for some time now, but I've only recently (3 days ago) purchased a DC, so I'm FINALLY going to try to do something. First of all, the DC is brand new, & has the manufacturing date printed on it as being December 2000. I'm using an ATAPI (EIDE) Plextor Plexwriter 12x10x32 (Which I hear is nearly the best for this) and have tried *EVERYTHING* I know how to get anything to work. I've used DiscJuggler v2 & v3, Nero, etc & I can't even get a Utopia Boot CD to work! The Utopia CD was an obvious 1st choice for this because it is a samll, fast burn to test & see if it can self-boot, although I have tried other boot CDs & games such as Crazy Taxi 2 (Eurasia, JAP) & the Nero Utopia Boot CD. I was instructed to leave all settings alone in DJ & Nero because the CDI/NRG images set them automatically. After burning over 20 coasters, I have not gotten 1 single successfull boot. The DC ALWAYS goes straight to the "CD Player" screen. I have tried everything over again on various media brands like Imation (3M), TDK, Verbatim (Dark blue, recommended in the DC backup channels) & Prime Peripherals, but they all render the same results. Am I missing something? Does anyone have a newer DC or one of the same manufacturing date that can play backups? Has anyone else been able to make a working backup with a Plextor 12x10x32 drive (I know this drive supports everything required)? I've been told that this is caused by the media used, but the same people recommended the Verbatim CDs that still don't work. All my friends are waiting for this

Any suggestions?

Stress · #2 29-06-2001, 20:30

i've only had my DC 2 months, bought new, it's pal but there's no date on the bottom of it.

i've downloaded and burnt 166 games in the last 2 months and they all work fine, the only thing is i mucked the settings up in diskjuggler and the last few came up with the picture of the CD like yours, i re-installed diskjuggler so the settings were default again and it worked.

i use a scsi sanyo BP3 12-10-32 writer, the only thing i have to do if i copy from another CD is read the cd on my writer and not my non-scsi cd rom drive

hope this helps

laterz

Sisco_1 · #3 29-06-2001, 20:52

I suggest (if possible) to get hold of an already copied DC game that is known to work on another DC and try in in yours, if the game doese'nt boot then you know that your NEW DC will not play backups, if however the game boots fine then it is obviously your burnin method.

I would try this if possible B4 you make any more coasters and i may be able to help if it's a burnin problem, but if it's a DC hardware problem then sorry there is not much i can do.......

CyberZer0 · #4 30-06-2001, 16:32

I read this in another post regarding self-boot games simply dumping you on the "DC menu." This sounds like my problem, though there was no mention of the DC seeing it as an audio CD, there was this fix described:

"Have you just recently bought your DC ? As the newer ones don't recognise self-boot games with the audio track burnt first, you could try extracting the data files from the selfbooting image to a bin/iso and then use bin2boot to make it selfbooting again. Bin2boot burns the audio track last."

I'm gonna try this now & report back. Seems like someone would have publicized a copy protected US DC unit, so I'm skeptical at best...

CyberZer0 · #5 30-06-2001, 19:26

Well, it didn't work. After running CDIRip on various self-boot CDI files & the Utopia Boot loader (Yes, I tried the /bin option too) Bin2Boot wouldn't work...
I'm screwed

All I have left to try now is to find someone with a known back-up compatible DC or find a known good back-up to try in this one (And so far, I still know NO ONE with a DC)...

Wayne · #6 01-07-2001, 04:10

##### your discs on your computer. If you can see the files on the disc, it would probably work on most (older) DC machines.

If the disc shows up as blank and says it has 648mb of space available, the problem is with your image files for sure!

CyberZer0 · #7 02-07-2001, 08:47

I can see the files (3 text files w/ German text on the Utopia Boot Disc for example), & I'm sure I burned them PERFECTLY with a compatible burner (Almost the latest Plextor drive). Now I guess I need to find someone local with an older DC, but that's gonna be hard to do considering that in all this time, I've only met 1 person before that had one and he doesn't anymore. If it is a copy-protected DC, how will I go about reporting it? So far, EVERYONE in the DC channels & forums I've visited tells me that all DCs work with backups (Even though I heard a looooong time ago the the imported Sakura Wars Edition DC does not play backups)... So it's as if no one else has my problem.
BTW: 8 new coasters and still nothing works...

Wayne · #8 02-07-2001, 21:52

What does the date on the bottom of the machine show? I have heard that dates of October 2000 and later won't work with the copies.

chalbing · #9 03-07-2001, 08:36

Hey cyberzero, give me and email with your Address and i will ship you a working back-up of a DC game. That way you can tell if it is your DC or your backing-up skills. my address is chalanderbing**********com.

CyberZer0 · #10 06-07-2001, 09:48

Well, alot has happened since I last #####ed up in here (My PCs been at a LAN party) so here's what's new:
I took it back to Wal-Mart and they took it back. I found one manufactured in 1999 at a local pawn shop that wanted $99 for it (and every other used DC & N64 they had. Ridiculous!). I talked him down to $50 & brought it home (Still paid too much). I popped in one of my many "coasters" & behold, the Utopia intro graces the screen (Don't quit reading yet, it's not over)! Problem solved I thought, so we decided to look through my other disc in the pile for one of my Crazy Taxi 2 backups so my friend & I could actually play something. By luck, the very next disc was it & we played for a few rounds. After that, we decided to go through all the wasted disc to find what was good and what wasn't. So, I popped in the next disc & saw the familiar DC audio CD player screen. I labeled it bad. By my estimation, I should have had at least 2 good copies for every bad copy in my pile of disc, but we had gotten more than halfway through before I realized that we had not found a single good CD (I was labeling each "Audio" CD as "BAD" so there were a good many labeled like this). I knew something was wrong so I popped in the known working CT2 backup that we had played earlier & sure enough, all I saw was the DC Audio player screen! Same thing with the Utopia CD... After leaving the console off for a while, my friend and I tried CT2 again & it worked, but when we got to the title screen the announcer's voic made a quick stutter. After the game was in progress, eventually, the music began stuttering & stopped. After that, there was no more reading from the drive & when entering a new area of the map (such as the bridge) the floor will be completely invisible (Because it won't load anything else)! Sure enough, after finishing the round it freezes whil trying to load. After re####ting the console, I get the Audio player again! Same thing with the Utopia CD. Sometimes, after leaving it off for extended periods, I can make it through a couple 10 min rounds before I run into the problem.This makes it seem very much like a heat related issue, however DC games still work fine while backups are having these symptoms, so it's like the heat only affects it's ability to read CDRs. I now have a new theory as to why this and the previous DC wouldn't work:
I believe that the first 3 CDs I tried in the original brand new DC were bad (I selected "RAW" & they didn't properly "verify" in DJ). After trying these, all backups, even good ones, would take me to the audio CD player. After trying all the CDs in the used known-good DC, it stopped working correctly & began behaving the same way. This leads me to the conclusion that it is possible to damage your DC with bad backups! Yes, GD-ROMs still work fine, but I have no other explanation for this behavior. I've seen post here saying it's impossible because it's just light but just like reading a book in bad light can damage your vision, perhaps the laser could have had trouble reading the lower density data & higher speeds or the straining to do so can make it less able to do so or something. It's not impossible. Anyway, that's the best I can describe my troubles. Anyone expierience anything similar? I doubt there's much anyone can do to help now. I think the pawn shop guy will be flexible & let me get another, but they are all newer than this one.

Oh yeah, thnx for the offer Chalbing, but I know I've been backing them up correctly now. Thanx anyway though.