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NEC PC-Engine/SuperGrafx => PC Engine/SuperGrafx Discussion => Topic started by: sanjo on April 11, 2016, 12:35:37 PM
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I live in Japan and thinking of buying a PC-Engine Duo.
Since it's been over 20 years since it first came out, how is the disc rot?
I know some consoles have that problem more so than others, like the Dreamcast.
anyone have a large pce-cd collection can tell how well their cd's have held up?
also any thing else I should keep in mind when buying the Duo?
I've read some guides that the Duo R is the best one to go for as the other ones have problems with their caps.
thanks!
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I live in Japan and thinking of buying a PC-Engine Duo.
Since it's been over 20 years since it first came out, how is the disc rot?
I know some consoles have that problem more so than others, like the Dreamcast.
anyone have a large pce-cd collection can tell how well their cd's have held up?
also any thing else I should keep in mind when buying the Duo?
I've read some guides that the Duo R is the best one to go for as the other ones have problems with their caps.
thanks!
I have never heard of PCE CD disc rot and have never encountered any while playing hundreds of games.
You're best off getting a console with various mods/servicing. If you plan to not have anything done, then get a Duo R or RX.
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anyone have a large pce-cd collection can tell how well their cd's have held up?
Mine are going strong. No problems. Aside from Shenmue II for Dreamcast I've never had an optical disc rot on me.
also any thing else I should keep in mind when buying the Duo?
Hookers and blow.
I've read some guides that the Duo R is the best one to go for as the other ones have problems with their caps.
thanks!
If you don't want to mess with caps get an R or RX. I prefer the DUO myself.
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I firmly believe that the US version of buster bros/pomping world is prone to disc rot. I've seen many U.S. versions of this game with small flakes missing off of the top of the CD. This part is what holds the CD information/data. So then some audio tracks may skip here or there. Not sure about the PCE JP counterpart.
Nothing wrong with a pc engine DUO as long as the caps have already been changed.
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Nope. Never.
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Never with any official games.
With CDR's I still have a few Black Memorex's and Taiyo Yuden Burns that work from the early 2000's, but everything else has data-bled to hell.
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I firmly believe that the US version of buster bros/pomping world is prone to disc rot. I've seen many U.S. versions of this game with small flakes missing off of the top of the CD. This part is what holds the CD information/data. So then some audio tracks may skip here or there. Not sure about the PCE JP counterpart.
Nothing wrong with a pc engine DUO as long as the caps have already been changed.
Is that disc rot or just poor silk-screening?
IN GENERAL: I have accidentally chipped/scraped the topside of CD's and compromised the data/audio tracks underneath. It sucks.
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I've yet to see any Turbob disc rot.
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More than 30 years, too many CD and CD-ROM, over 2,000 DVDs, and a sumber of LD I've had only 1 disc go bad that wasn't caused by scratch.
Bad disc do happen but it's almost always caused by rough handling or poor storage that damages the label side of the disc, which exposes the fragile data layer. A few early DVD-9 and some really old CD did go bad due to poor manufacturing method used to seal in layer(s)
tl;dr check disc, both sides. If it looks scratched or if you easily see pinpoint of light through label, it's likely bad.
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I firmly believe that the US version of buster bros/pomping world is prone to disc rot. I've seen many U.S. versions of this game with small flakes missing off of the top of the CD. This part is what holds the CD information/data. So then some audio tracks may skip here or there. Not sure about the PCE JP counterpart.
Nothing wrong with a pc engine DUO as long as the caps have already been changed.
Is that disc rot or just poor silk-screening?
IN GENERAL: I have accidentally chipped/scraped the topside of CD's and compromised the data/audio tracks underneath. It sucks.
I feel like most of what is attributed to "disc rot" nowadays is really just low quality silk screening from the top failing due to bad mishandling. Sega CD and Saturn games which had almost no artwork on them and still have a silver surface seem to be prime candidates for having issues.
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Only time I ever noticed any kind of disc rot was from LDs from back in the 90s when I collected them. I never knew if it was a manufacturing error on these disc or the hot summers in Texas. I had friends who left their LDs in their car and that was a big no no for good old laserdisc.
As far as cd based games and cd-r I still have really old ones that work just fine.
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Bit rot in general is a massively overblown phenomenon. The most famous offender is Laserdisc but I have literally hundreds of the suckers and have only had one rotter, the vast majority of rotter LDs being either very early in the format's life or whatever crap Sony was pressing in the late 90s in their US factory.
The format with the worst percentage of rotters is probably HD-DVD. I only know this because for some stupid reason people actually collect this format despite there being almost no exclusives and the quality being identical to Bluray. If it had been allowed to continue then people would have been pretty pissed but the swift and unnatural death of the format kinda made it easy to forget. There are a lot of rotter HD-DVDs.
CDV is also a historically rot-prone format. Mainly this is because almost every PAL CDV has rotted and those are the ones people would probably want to collect. The ones made in and for Japan will probably outlast the island itself.
PCE CDs are the same, physically speaking, as audio CDs probably the most durable format on Earth. I don't see any reason to think the 25 year old games I have would behave differently than the 25 year old audio CDs I have that I bought the same day.
Regarding DC: There were a fair number of defective GD-ROMs even when the system was new. I specifically remember brand new copies of Crazy Taxi just not working. I've never experienced anything like this with my own collection but considering GD-ROM is essentially just a unilateral hack of CD-ROM I wouldn't be surprised if variations in DCs (not a complete POS, especially compared to today's complete garbage, but not at all reliable by 1990s Sega standards) and mastering/reproduction issues that are now being attributed to "rot" may have stacked up and made a particular disc unplayable on a particular player.
As for leaving discs in a car in the Texas sun. That's just stupid. I wouldn't leave change in a car in the TX sun for fear it would melt into a useless alloy ingot. There's a reason so few people lived there before the advent of air conditioning. It's less a state and more like a hostile alien planet, not actually suitable for human life.
One more thing: a lot of times "rot" is blamed for stuff that isn't rot at all. Rot refers to a manufacturing defect that allows an ongoing chemical reaction in the disc to continue afterwards. In the case of Laserdisc this basically means that some day the disc won't work. It may be day one, it may be 10 years from now. Certain environmental factors can speed it up or slow it down but it's unavoidable if the disc wasn't sealed properly (the laquer on top of a CD) or glued back to back properly (like LD, DVD, HDDVD, BR). In the LD world people wrongly attribute all sorts of stuff to "rot". Badly aligned players, warping, mastering defects, LD manufacturing defects of a different kind. I was watching one of those dumb "I've been to a flea market, see what I got" videos a while back and a guy played a section of something, probably Star Wars knowing these f*cks, and he says "this is laser rot" when what was on the screen was in fact just some rolling dropouts, very common on CLV discs. It's a defect, but it's not rot. I have a few discs with this issue that haven't eroded one tiny bit since I bought them back in the day. Rot implies progression of some sort.
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Zeta elaborated on my earlier post. His post is eloquent. It was so enjoyable to read.
Thank you :)
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i don't think i have ever seen disc rot/decomposition/inherent vice on pc engine cd rom games
but gamecube metal gear solid disc is well known to have manufacturer defect which causes cracks on the disc
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The only turbo game I have that no longer works is my Jackie Chan hucard. All of my CD games work fine.
As for leaving discs in a car in the Texas sun. That's just stupid. I wouldn't leave change in a car in the TX sun for fear it would melt into a useless alloy ingot. There's a reason so few people lived there before the advent of air conditioning. It's less a state and more like a hostile alien planet, not actually suitable for human life.
I live in Texas and I've literally had change get so hot that it has melted plastic in my car. That being said, heat hasn't bothered my audio CD collection that has been in my car since the 90s.
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While on this subject, I will mention something about Blu-Rays and the obvious no-brainer thing to do is always test a product upon purchase...
If you don't know, Warner Bros. (and perhaps others) had a bad/defective batch of Blu-Rays released unto the market for their movies and later had to offer a special phone number to offer replacements to customers.
Unfortunately I bought one of them: Superman, the original 1978 with Christopher Reeve. But what I didn't do was immediately unwrap and test the product, I simply left it on my movie storage stand - I bought it as an upgrade to my DVD collection because it's a classic and worth owning but I've seen it plenty of times growing up.
For Blu-Ray classics such as this, I wanted to wait until I purchased a full 1080p HDTV for my next viewing to get the actual benefit, or nowadays, I'd make sure to go for a 4K as I did for my bedroom which does both things very well, TV and monitor usage when connected to a PC. So that's why I didn't immediately test it upon purchase.
Anyway, it was years later when I got the itch to watch it, but when I tried, my Blu-Ray player would tell me it's an invalid disc... So I went to a videostore and asked them to test it which they did with a PS3, and same thing, it was just plain defective... Tried somebody else's player too, still no dice. There were no scratches, no cracks, no visible imperfections, it looks 100% perfect/new, but no Blu-Ray player could read it and it wasn't a matter of old firmware causing bugs...
Point is, watch out for Blu-Rays - you should immediately unwrap and test the disc upon purchase so you can exchange it if need be. As I waited years for my Superman disc, I couldn't exchange it in person at BestBuy -- which I believe is where I bought it -- so I tried the Warner Bros. line when I learned about it, and those clowns sent me a new DVD back instead... So that's how that ended... :roll:
Appears other producers have had problems too:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/tags/show/Technical_Glitches