PC Engine CD hardware damage?

[StealthRUSH]

Hello Emuparadise users, I've burned countless of roms and played them on my consoles in the past for PS,SAT,DC and eventually wore down my DC, and Saturn only after several years or so. Recently I've obtained a PCECD interface unit, very old hardware (first disc based console) and I'm worried playing burned games will damage my disc drive. Has anybody had success playing burn PCECD games without damaging the hardware? Any advice for properly burning PCECD games to run them on actual hardware without damaging the system? Would love to play english translated works and uber pricey titles.

[Warrior]

If I recall right old systems like PCECD and Sega CD are not affected "much" by burned media, Playstation 1 and 2 sure are though.

Playstations are designed with weak lenses and are meant to break after a set period of time.

If you use quality burnable media and a good drive burned at the lowest possible speed it should be just dandy.

Don't quote me on that though.

[Zorlon]

The Dreamcast possibly just needs the laser tuned a little

Can't say I have had an issue playing burned media on my Dreamcast though, but have tuned the laser a couple of times to read CD-R's better

As for PCECD I can't say as I never had one or a Sega CD for that matter

my PSone still runs just fine as does my Saturn and both play CD-R's

PSX's (including the PSone) are more prone to the silly little CD clip things to drop apart and that makes reading CD-R's almost impossible and originals may start to struggle also

The laser in the PSX is especially bad though

[Ragnar]

I've never heard anybody complain about a PCE CD's laser going kaput. I think they're good in that respect? Just burn the best discs you can, like Warrior suggested.

Lots of PCE stuff suffered from capacitor plague though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
That's the real issue with them. Don't leave them stuffed in a closet unplayed for 20 years, fire them up now and then to see that they're still working. If they aren't running right it's good to tear them apart asap and make sure nothing is leaking or whatever. It's a relatively simply problem to fix, you just need to change the problem parts out. But weird leaks left unchecked for years can cause irreparable damages.

[StealthRUSH]

If I recall right old systems like PCECD and Sega CD are not affected "much" by burned media, Playstation 1 and 2 sure are though.

Playstations are designed with weak lenses and are meant to break after a set period of time.

If you use quality burnable media and a good drive burned at the lowest possible speed it should be just dandy.

Don't quote me on that though.

thanks for the reply. lowest possible it is!

The Dreamcast possibly just needs the laser tuned a little

Can't say I have had an issue playing burned media on my Dreamcast though, but have tuned the laser a couple of times to read CD-R's better

As for PCECD I can't say as I never had one or a Sega CD for that matter

my PSone still runs just fine as does my Saturn and both play CD-R's

PSX's (including the PSone) are more prone to the silly little CD clip things to drop apart and that makes reading CD-R's almost impossible and originals may start to struggle also

The laser in the PSX is especially bad though

I've tuned my saturn gear/lens higher and it ran them fine.
after reading your response that seems to be the problem, my DC just seems to keep struggling to read the burn games.
is it true after tuning extensively eventually the gear will wear out? I've read this on another forum..

Same here never had a problem with my PS1 playing CD-R's even the cheap kind.
I have the original model of PS maybe that makes a difference compared to later models.

Thanks for the reply, i'm going to look for high quality CD-R's and burn them on the lowest possible settings and give it a shot (on my PCECD).

I've never heard anybody complain about a PCE CD's laser going kaput. I think they're good in that respect? Just burn the best discs you can, like Warrior suggested.

Lots of PCE stuff suffered from capacitor plague though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
That's the real issue with them. Don't leave them stuffed in a closet unplayed for 20 years, fire them up now and then to see that they're still working. If they aren't running right it's good to tear them apart asap and make sure nothing is leaking or whatever. It's a relatively simply problem to fix, you just need to change the problem parts out. But weird leaks left unchecked for years can cause irreparable damages.

That is good to hear. I was just skeptical since its such old hardware, and I paid a lot for it lol.
My system is vert active so no problem there.

Thanks for the reply.

[Zorlon]

If you tune a laser too high or low it will destroy it (that would be way beyond the reading point though and mostly if you went silly with it and done a full turn but I presume you know not to do that anyway having done that with other consoles) but if you do that by very small amounts it will run perfectly fine, but to wear out is not something I have heard of from tuning a laser

The Dreamcast has the laser optimised for GD-Roms though and CD-R's will struggle at that tune point, re-tuning the laser for CD-R's is going to make GD-Roms struggle and CD-R's read better

A laser that is struggling to read any media type though will eventually burn out though, one of the reasons to make sure you burn onto good quality media and burn at the optimal speed for your burning drive (usually the slowest possibly speed)

For Dreamcast games you are best off going for newer rips also as the file sorts puts high demand files (such as FMV files) on the outer edge of the disc that is easier to read from and games that are smaller than a standard 80min CD-R's have dummy data to push all the data to the outer edge to help the data be read with a lot less strain to the laser