Help with crappy Dreamcast system

[FM-77]

Unfortunately the Dreamcast laser is of extremely poor quality (probably the worst in any console ever). This issue you've got is very, very common and appears to be almost inevitable.

It won't read discs that are even remotely scratched, it is incredibly sensitive. That's probably your problem - there's a 0,012 mm scratch on your disc somewhere.  Although some (a few) Dreamcasts work better. Actually, playing copied CD-R games work better than using the crappy GD-ROMs.

All Dreamcasts will surely die, hehe, but there's a pretty good emulator called Chankast. Super high-res and anti aliased Dreamcast games = pretty.

[Joe Redifer]

Yeah, that's why I want to try and get the disc resurfaced to eliminate any flaws it may have.  I have noticed CD-R games working MUCH better than GD-ROM discs.  That's probably because there's no high-density portion on a CD-R.  I'm sure I could acquire Daytona on CD-R, but I'd rather not.  I don't like how many CD-R versions have stuff removed or recompressed to fit.

[Digi.k]

I remember getting heating problems with space channel 5 and phantasy star online when the machine just resets and boots to bios..

maybe give the inside laser bit a good blast of wind to shift any dust.. also a q-tip with some alcho cleaner might help

[Joe Redifer]

I did clean the lens.  It's OK to do that with my tongue, right???   

The self-resetting problem is pretty easy to fix.  Just take the system apart, remove the power supply board, clean the rods that stick up which connect that board to the rest of the system and make sure they get good contact, even if that means "persuading" them in one direction to the power supply board fits a bit more tightly.  Also dusting off the lid switch isn't a bad idea in that case, either.