3DO reading burned games

[Master Phruby]

I know the 3DO doesn't have any kind of copy protection so it should be able to read CD-Rs. Is there a certain kind of CD-Rs you would recommend? My machine (FZ-1) will read commercial games fairly well. When I burn a game, it might read it the first time but not other times. It might have problems with cut scene playbacks. Sometimes it won't read the disc at all. Could it be the laser just needs cleaning?

[akator]

I no longer have a 3DO, but when I did I found the solution was the same as other old disc-based systems: use a brand of CD-R with high reliability (like Sony) and burn slow. I had the same experience with Sega CD, PlayStation, Saturn, and Dreamcast.

[goldenegg]

I've found FZ-1 units to be unreliable with recordable media. I don't know if it's just an issue with laser alignment/power (like the GameCube) or something else. I haven't had the same issue with the FZ-10.

[desiv]

I use burned media on my FZ-1, but I did find some cheap media didn't work well from any machine I had..

But more than the cheap media, I have some burners that don't burn well.

Specifically, the burner in my laptop..

If I burn a disk with that, it will have issues on the 3DO.

If I use the same media and burn it on my desktop, no problems....

 

desiv

[Austin]

Burned games worked fine on my FZ-10, however, I would have to burn the games at the slowest speed possible (4x on my burner), otherwise the discs were unreliable, particularly on games that have a lot of FMV.

[desiv]

Yeah, my laptop burner won't let me select a "slow" speed. It's options are 24x, 32x (I think those are the only choices).

It's fast, but doesn't work well for 3DO...

I think it works fine for SegaCD burns tho..

 

desiv

[CatPix]

The main thing is to use quality CD or Cd with a thick layer (cheaper CD tend to have a think layer, thin enough to allow ou to see through, so it's kinda linked) and to burn them at slow speed.

I have CD burned at 10X (can't do better... as in slower) and they work fine on my FZ-1. There is some time where games stop to load, but it might just act the same in the original game. I can't tell as I only have one original game for it.

[Hatta]

Use Taiyo Yuden CDRs (buy from Rima.com), and an old drive that burns at 1-4x.

[+thegoldenband]

Use Taiyo Yuden CDRs (buy from Rima.com), and an old drive that burns at 1-4x.

 

This combination has worked for me every time. I've had two FZ-1s and a Goldstar pass through my hands, and all of them had different tolerances; my first FZ-1 was extremely picky and couldn't handle cheap media, whereas my current FZ-1 and (surprisingly) the Goldstar seem to have no trouble.

 

But the Taiyo Yudens have worked perfectly with all three. On my first FZ-1, I sometimes needed to let it warm up for 10-15 minutes first, and then it would read the Taiyo Yudens as well as an original disc. On the other machines, they have no trouble booting Taiyo Yudens from a cold start.

 

(The thing I still don't know how to do, alas, is how to successfully burn 3DO discs on a Macintosh. I was using an early 2000s Windows machine with ImgBurn, but I think the HD failed.)

[desiv]

Use Taiyo Yuden CDRs (buy from Rima.com), and an old drive that burns at 1-4x.

I'll check them out..

And they have the white printable (not the lightscribe things, although they have those) CDRs too!!!

I have an Epson printer that prints on those guys directly, love that thing..

 

desiv

Edited November 8, 2013 by desiv

[Master Phruby]

I used Imgburn to burn Gex to a Phillips CDR. I told it the minimum speed (1x) but it said the minimum for my drive was 8x. Gex worked. I tried burning Road Rash and it wouldn't play probably because of the write speed. it's almost not worth burning games to play on the real hardware when 4DO plays the game just was well. Collecting the games would be fun though.

[Austin]

There is also a hard disk drive mod you can do, but I'm not sure if they are still available. Kind of pricey, too, as they had to be ordered from Russia.

 

Another option is the track down an older CD burner. Drives from 2007-ish may still allow 4X.

[CatPix]

Well your software also gotta allow it.

I tried this on an old CD burner that I remember being able to select 1x with Windows 2000. Using windows XP I couln't choose under 10x (which was the max speed if I remember).

Might be an imcompatibility with either Windows of the burn software (a GPL software) but you might need more than just an old drive.

(I can't run more tests on the drive I'm mentionning because it's now busted )

[Rex Dart]

It's not about how slowly you burn the disc, it's about what the optimal speed for your drive & media is. 8x might be the speed you want. Just don't use crap memorex discs in a crap iomega burner and you should have good results.

 

I have a laptop whose burner produces discs that are totally unreadable in anything other than a PC. Piece of junk. But I know not to blame the dreamcast when it doesn't read the discs that come from this laptop.

[StoneAgeGamer]

There is also a hard disk drive mod you can do, but I'm not sure if they are still available. Kind of pricey, too, as they had to be ordered from Russia.

 

Another option is the track down an older CD burner. Drives from 2007-ish may still allow 4X.

 

Hard drive mod was discontinued, but USB version is on its way. Its more expensive than the HD version though. Keep on eye on our site for new USB mod.

 

We have a few HD mods left that we will be modding into some FZ-10s we have and put up on eBay. Here is first one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=231088100829

 

If you have the money these mods work very well, but like you said they are expensive and are considered an "expert" level mod. Not something an amateur should try tot tackle.

[Austin]

 

Hard drive mod was discontinued, but USB version is on its way. Its more expensive than the HD version though. Keep on eye on our site for new USB mod

 

Very interesting, I was unaware of a USB mod. Any idea how much more or less difficult it will be to implement into an existing system (soldering, etc.)?

[+remowilliams]

It's not about how slowly you burn the disc, it's about what the optimal speed for your drive & media is. 8x might be the speed you want. Just don't use crap memorex discs in a crap iomega burner and you should have good results.

 

 

Having done lots of field research in this area, that is about the best advice I would give as well. Good burner, good media, good speed match.

[StoneAgeGamer]

 

Very interesting, I was unaware of a USB mod. Any idea how much more or less difficult it will be to implement into an existing system (soldering, etc.)?

 

I haven't modded it myself. the.golden.ax has. The USB version requires the same modding as the hard drive version did. I think the hard part is that there is a chip that needs to be de-soldered that has 80-pins or something like that. For modders with experience modding system usually takes about 2 hours their first time from what I have seen.

[Rex Dart]

 

Hard drive mod was discontinued, but USB version is on its way.

 

I've seen the HDD mod, but what would a USB mod provide?

[Austin]

 

I've seen the HDD mod, but what would a USB mod provide?

 

I would assume the same thing, albeit with less storage space to hold your disc images. And possibly an easier way of disconnecting and transferring data back to it when in need. And this may be a stretch here.. but I wonder if you will still have to gut the CD drive of the FZ-10? I'm sure SAG can clarify.

[StoneAgeGamer]

 

I would assume the same thing, albeit with less storage space to hold your disc images. And possibly an easier way of disconnecting and transferring data back to it when in need. And this may be a stretch here.. but I wonder if you will still have to gut the CD drive of the FZ-10? I'm sure SAG can clarify.

 

Actually USB version adds more space. It can handle up to 2TB, whereas HD version only handled up to 120GB. It still replaces CD-ROM drive. Which honestly is not a big deal. As far as I know its 100% compatible with all games. Once you have it you will never want to use the CD-ROM drive anyways. Currently there is USB FZ-10 verison and a USB Goldstar version. The developer is also working on FZ-1 version of of the USB version as well.

[Seob]

Use a good brand media with 650mb storage max. Don't use 700 mb disks, don't know why but some of my cd-i's and cdtv won't work with 700 mb disks, but burned to 650mb discs they worked.

And burn slow.

[TheGameCollector]

Another thing to consider is that if you store your ISO's on external hard drives, sometimes not all the data will burn to the disc if your computer slows down during the recording process. I've had audio CD-R's that would burn from .wav format just fine from the local hard drive but when burned from my friend's external hard drive there would sometimes be a couple seconds of blank space in the middle of a song. I haven't experienced the same thing on any of my own external hard drives though so it might have just been a problem with his hard drive's USB connection speed.

[jce3000gt]

Hate to revive this topic but it relates to a few questions I have so no point in starting a new topic.

 

1) Do CD-Rs regardless of quality damage the 3DO in any way?

2) If any do not damage the 3DO can you please tell me which specific discs are 100% the best quality.

3) Is ImgBurn a good program to do the actual burning of discs or should I use another program?

 

I have a US FZ-1 from 1994 and I just bought a mint condition Japanese FZ-10 (date unknown as it is in transit) and a few games (so far) and as a test I ripped a couple of my retail discs to ISOs and burned them with my fairly new-ish Lite-On DVDRW drive (circa 2010?) at the slowest speed using cheap Memorex discs. All but 1 disc worked on my US FZ-1 but I mainly did that as a test to verify functionality of the 3DO reading CD-Rs because I'd use higher quality discs next time.

 

Now that the background is set let me explain what I want to do specifically so I can get some advice/information. I'm a ROM hacker by trade (mostly SNES RPGs) and I like poking around with games to do various things the main thing being hard or easy versions of games by request to name a couple. In 2014 I made a Supreme Warrior Easy mod by both request from someone and for my personal use. So I'd like to burn my mod of Supreme Warrior and other mods I'm working on to disc so I can both test them to and play them once finished. I am working on doing easy or hard mods for Star Control II, Lucienne's Quest, and Guardian War. Right now I'm data mining but I'd love to know if I'll have to use 4DO to test or if I can test them on real hardware.

 

Any help or advice is appreciated.

[+thegoldenband]

1) Do CD-Rs regardless of quality damage the 3DO in any way?

2) If any do not damage the 3DO can you please tell me which specific discs are 100% the best quality.

3) Is ImgBurn a good program to do the actual burning of discs or should I use another program?

 

1) "Regardless of quality" makes this question difficult to answer as asked. There's no doubt that cheap CD-Rs put strain on the system, but does a well-burned disc on quality media strain the laser or drive assembly? There's a lot of mythology about the issue and very little hard data. I suspect some of the mythmaking comes from people destroying their Dreamcasts by playing burned games that were reauthored to fit on a CD-R, and the reauthoring process ends up making the GD-ROM have to seek much more than it normally would -- so the culprit in that case isn't CD-Rs per se.

 

But of course, you can trash your system with cheap CD-Rs. Personally I think you can tell how your console is doing by simply listening to it (as well as monitoring gameplay, of course). I have commercially pressed CD copies of Sega CD games that have only a few light scratches (and no foil damage), but make my Sega CD eventually overheat and give up; if I play those same games on a clean burned copy on Taiyo Yuden media, they work perfectly.

 

OTOH my old FZ-1 struggled to read burned discs until it warmed up for 10-15 minutes, and it would only read the best-quality discs, but had no trouble with commercial CDs. My newer one will read anything, but when I play burns I only use the best discs. And speaking of which...

 

2) Taiyo Yuden CDRs are by far the best I've used, but I'm not sure if they're still being made. Mitsuis might work well too but they're expensive.

 

3) I think any reasonable burning program should be fine; I'm on OS X so there are very few options, but Burn does the trick for 3DO games.

 

BTW great to know that we've got another person on the scene with 3DO hacking skills. Have you ever considered looking into translating one of the games? If you can find the game's script, you can probably find someone to translate it for you.