Need help from someone who has experience with Dreamcast pirating

[Neo559]

My DC has been acting weird lately. It plays real GD-ROMs just fine, but doesn't play my backups well at all. First, a backup game will freeze after about 2 hours of play, and then it won't restart. I'll flip the power and hear the disc RRRing around and making noise, and there's some horrible clicking, but the game won't load. That backup or any other backup I have won't load. But any real game will, just fine in fact.

If I let the DC cool off or at least not play backups for awhile (like an hour), I can go back and play a backup again. It will load fine each time, even if I try a bunch of times in a row. But if I leave it on for awhile, it will overheat again and won't play backups.

Now this makes no sense to me. First, I don't get how a console can overheat and NOT play backup games, but still play normal GD-ROMs absolutely fine. Is this some inherent problem with all DCs, or is my just messed up? Did I burn out my DC by using backups? Or is it possible for me to get a new DC and play backups fine with none of this crap?

I've considered buying another Dreamcast cuz I hate having it freeze and me lose all my work, and I hate worrying about it, but I don't want to have to search everywhere for a new copy of PSO cuz then my old key wouldn't freakin' work.

[DrKupo]

it is just you.

[SomeUserGuy]

i like the title of the thread: experience with dreamcast pirating.

[Neo559]

Crap, I think I just may end up buying all the DC games I've pirated. Not that I've gone all moral or something, but CD-R games really mess up your DC, making the laser work overtime. With Audio CDs, it knows its a CD so it switches modes. Pirated games, it thinks its a GD-ROM so it can burn itself out. I've only pirated like 5 games, so it won't be TOO expensive, I think...