In need of a nice VGA adapter, can I get a reccomendation?

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

How much will he basically charge do you think Adam if I get same as yours (except giant Sega blue white logo instead of dc swirl) and also dreamshell 4 bio chip (next to region free chip) ? I think dreamshell can be put in some kind of chip, idk much about this stuff. Why not have a HDMI (you'll see on outside back of dc) wire connected into VGA wire into motherboard ? Basically how much did he charge you though for your setup total ?

[AdamKoralik]

I'd rather not discuss my financial dealings.

I recommend contacting him directly, he seems to work on a case by case basis.

But the mod you're describe sounds...expensive.

The HDMI part especially.

Assuming that's even possible the parts alone would be like $120...just for that aspect of it.

It wouldn't include everything else.

This is his e-mail address: [email protected]

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

Ok thank you Adam, I will contact him. Also in your video you mention "cd-r will strain dc laser" I heard that rumor almost as long as I heard "32x won't work in a cdx" (which is untrue, just fcc booklet typing non$en$e).

But is there any truth to a laser straining reading the binary code of a cd-r yet not straining reading same binary code from a gd-r ? I mean in 2013 the cd-r/iso/burnt games uploaded seem to be exactly like original (just not gd rom, you don't even need a separate boot disk, etc).

I wouldn't be surprised if almost everyones dc laser isn't even 90% as strong as it once was. I mean your modded dc you just got could have passed through 10 peoples hands using burnt games only over the years yet it plays your gd Shenmue perfect.

[AdamKoralik]

Let's be clear, burned games DO damage the laser provided they're not processed properly.

MOST ISOs floating around the internet are not well made.

As a result, burning them does significant damage to the laser.

Now, lately groups have been working to properly process Dreamcast games so that burned copies won't cause the same level of damage.

Though, while they will cause far less, they will still inflict some damage.

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

Let's be clear, burned games DO damage the laser provided they're not processed properly.

MOST ISOs floating around the internet are not well made.

As a result, burning them does significant damage to the laser.

Now, lately groups have been working to properly process Dreamcast games so that burned copies won't cause the same level of damage.

Though, while they will cause far less, they will still inflict some damage.

Ok, I believe you, but is there actual proof of this or an expert who worked on DC who backs this up ? I'm basically asking a question and I would like an answer besides seeing my question repeated ha. Why or how can a cd-r strain the light/laser ? "they're not processed properly." Like binary code is different ?

I'd guess after 13 years or more and being shipped to 100 people, 99% of DCs would have a weak laser even if nobody used cd-r in them ? That's why I want a dreamshell rc 4 chip (with my sd card) because I don't trust people on ebay or a DC that went through 25 hands and different shipped locations (only place besides guy info you gave where I can get one, but maybe he bought his off ebay).

[Raen]

Saying that burned games damage the laser is not entirely true and is a false truth that goes back to the Dreamcast days.
Burned games will not damage the laser DIRECTLY, at least, as most people tend to make believe.
It's a "yes and no" question.

What happens is that DC scene releases in general - and the burned games that most DC gamers still use are old scene releases - were rushed out at the time, just because the one group to release the game first would be given the credit of releasing it, and so they weren't properly done like they could have been done, even for the time.

Some if not most we're made to fit on 74min CDs (~650 MB) instead of 80min, ripped out stuff that could have stayed, weren't dummied to fill the entire disc and did not kept the original file sort order that game developers intended for the GD-ROM discs - the fact that the Dreamcast GD-ROM drive reads the outer region of the disc faster then the inner region, allied to the fact that it reads CD-ROMs (6x) slower than GD-ROMs (12x), means that the data that the console needs to read/load from the disc while playing it should be in the outer disc region; among other things...

These factors tend to stress the GD-ROM drive, making the laser head move and read more times than it necessarily had to, wearing it out over time faster than what it was engineered for/expected (not only the laser head itself but the mechanical part that moves it too), but that's just it, no direct damage is made as most people make believe, as if it was like dropping acid on your skin where direct and/or immediate damage occurs.

It's just like when you do an overclocking to a PC, it can damage some components if it's not done right (i.e. not properly cooled) because it will possibly stress and force them to work on conditions that they weren't designed to operate on, and so it reduces their life term/expectancy.

Recent rip groups/projects like ReviveDC or the DC Clean Merge Project assure that their rips are meant to be as close to the original GD-ROM counterparts, by ripping only unnecessary/unimportant stuff, downsampling only what's needed and to a minimum using modern encoders that are quality/size wise making you barely noticing any quality loss, dummying the discs where needed, keeping the original sort order, etc, which minimizes the effort that is forced onto the GD-ROM drive, and in turn makes loading times faster, etc, when compared to (old) scene releases.

This is a subject that every now and then comes up (I've had the same doubt in the past) and while I'm no expert, far from it, these were the conclusions that I took of it, from explanations that some experts like atreyu187, comradesnarky, etc, graciously gave (mainly at Underground Gamer and The ISO Zone).

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

Thank you, great post ^.

[Raen]

Besides those factors that should be kept in attention, there are no problems related to the use itself of CD-ROM media on the Dreamcast instead of GD-ROMs, as it was designed to support MIL-CDs which is a CD-ROM format that Sega themselves developed (they removed this support on Rev. 2 model consoles to try to fight piracy).
Sometimes there are people who imply (be it on YouTube, etc) that if it's not a GD-ROM, it will damage the console/laser which is not true.

[Aleron Ives]

Sometimes there are people who imply (be it on YouTube, etc) that if it's not a GD-ROM, it will damage the console/laser which is not true.

People started spreading this idea as a way to fight piracy in the early days, although there is little point in continuing to reinforce the misinformation now. Your post largely covered the matter, but I will attempt to add some further explanation. As you mentioned, many early Scene releases did not use the original GD-ROM sort order, which significantly increased the stress on the GD-ROM drive associated with playing those rips.

When a game is on a loading screen, the laser assembly has to move back and forth to load various files into RAM, and official games usually sort their files in a specific way so that related files (e.g. the data for level 1, level 2, etc.) are grouped together. Doing this reduces the seeking the laser assembly has to perform to load files. When you build an ISO filesystem, the default behaviour is to sort the files alphabetically, which is what many early Scene releases do. As a result, related files can end up being far apart from each other on the disc, and the laser assembly consequently has to seek back and forth to load those files.

Not dummying discs also plays into this, because a GD-ROM is designed to start at LBA 45000, whereas many early Scene releases start at LBA 11700, which is the lowest session 2 LBA value possible for a multi-session disc. Since the Dreamcast spins games at CAV (constant rpm), files on the outside of the disc are closer together and can be read faster, while files on the inside of the disc are farther apart and read slower, even if the files are sorted in the same order. As a result, starting the second session earlier will result in more seeking and more wear-and-tear on the GD-ROM drive. Finally, since a CD-R has a lower capacity than a GD-ROM, the tracks on a CD-R are already farther apart than they are on a GD-ROM to begin with, simply due to the CD-R's lower data density (capacity), which also results in more seeking with a CD-R as compared to a GD-ROM, even if the discs are structured the same way.

As a result, a properly structured CD-R will be nearly the same as a GD-ROM, but it will almost always require a bit more seeking and thus add a little more wear-and-tear on the laser assembly. I say "almost", because as with most rules, there are exceptions, as even Sega doesn't design all of its GD-ROMs intelligently.

If you want a hyperbolic example of what an old Scene release CD-R does to your Dreamcast, put in a GD-ROM copy of PSO Ver.2 (US or EU), go to the character loading screen, and listen to the noise the GD-ROM drive makes while it tries to load your character. The horrible sound it makes is the laser assembly seeking from the very outside to the very inside of the disc over and over, because PSO has to play the BGM for the character selection screen while also loading the models and textures for your character. With the PSOv2 GD-ROM, Sega sorted most of the files on the disc alphabetically, which causes the exact same problem that old Scene releases do on CD-R. Sega actually made it worse, though, by putting all of the character data on the very outside of the disc. When you're on the character selection screen, the game is trying to buffer ADVR.ADX, which is at the very inside of the disc, due to its name starting with the letter "A", and it is also trying to load the player models and textures from the very outside of the disc. Since the GD-ROM drive has almost no buffering capabilities, its only recourse is to seek back and forth across the entire disc while it juggles the buffering of both files. This behaviour is what makes PSOv2 destroy your Dreamcast when you play it frequently.

This brings us to the exception of the "CD-Rs are worse for your Dreamcast than GD-ROMs" rule. Sometimes even Sega uses sub-optimal alphabetical sort orders on its original games, and if you have a particularly poorly designed game like PSOv2 and can improve its loading times by changing the sort order, it is actually possible for a CD-R to be better for your Dreamcast than using a GD-ROM. This kind of scenario is pretty much unique to PSO, though, as most Sega games have intelligent sort orders that can't be improved to the same degree as the one in PSO. (Some people have even speculated that Sega deliberately designed the sort order in PSOv2 to be as inefficient as possible so as to make the game destroy your Dreamcast and force you to buy another one, because PSOv2 came out at the end of the Dreamcast's life cycle when Sega was desperate to make more money.)

With all this in mind, it is however still true that a CD-R is ~20% less reflective than a GD-ROM (or any pressed disc), which does make a CD-R harder to read than an original disc. CD-RW discs are more like ~80% less reflective than GD-ROMs, which is why most Dreamcasts won't read them without an adjustment to increase the power of the system laser: a CD-RW is so unreflective that a Dreamcast laser at normal intensity won't be able to bounce enough light off the relatively dull surface of a CD-RW to read the data on it.

Of course, most people don't want to read these lengthy explanations, which is why it is simpler for most people to continue perpetuating the notion that CD-R = bad, GD-ROM = good.

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

^ Another great post. I don't mind if a post is long or small, I read it and then re read it.

I just brought this up because I always heard these things. But I had my DC since late 1999, it's 2013 now and I been using retail gd, cd-r, vcd, homebrew apps on cd-r like dreamshell which links to serial port sd card etc etc and the DC doesn't sound like it's in a car crash (laser seeking) like my friends for example, who doesn't use cd-r and who plays his DC less.

So I been hearing this rumor for well over a decade, and yet my DC is quite and plays everything I throw at it. So when I saw posts on forums of people saying "I put a cd-r in my dc and the laser broke" I was like umm oh like the rumor of "a 32x won't play in a cdx" which is total nonsense.

But it seems Adam and others have a point, it does cause, while minor, laser drive wear and tear problems. I guess my DC is a champ then. Thank you for answers everyone.