Help with crappy Dreamcast system

[Joe Redifer]

As we are all aware, the Dreamcast is, by far, Sega's worst system since it is about as reliable as, well, it's not reliable at all.  Either the discs wear out and stop working for no reason whatsoever or the system freezes.  That's what's happening to me.  I am trying to play Shenmue, but it keeps freezing despite having worked just fine many times before.  I simply can't enjoy the game because I am frightened that it will freeze at any second, and it usually does at some point.  I can't even get to the first town.

Is there anything that can be done, or are Dreamcasts just designed to suck really, really hard?  Just recently my Daytona USA disc stopped working for NO REASON.  I am pissed at this system.  Even Sony products are more reliable.

[grahf]

I dont own a dreamcast myself, but ive heard a few times before that the freezing is an overheating issue. People usually suggest just moving the console to a more ventilated area, but im kinda doubtful that it woudl be any help if your problem is severe. Check the fan to make sure its working.

[Joe Redifer]

What's weird is that this is a recent issue.  Although I haven't played the system for more than 6 months, it just now decided to start doing this.  All games worked perfectly back then.  Absolutely nothing has changed.  The Dreamcast is where it has always been, and nothing new has been placed anywhere around it.  I think since Sega did a real shoddy job manufacturing the system, it is probably starting to die completely.  I bet in a decade no Dreamcasts will work, and there will be no way to play Shenmue.

[Keranu]

Is this a normal problem with Dreamcast so it's not just two Jet Grind Radio discs I have been through? I thought I just had really bad luck or something, because after some months of having Jet Grind Radio, it would get stuck on this loading when you boot the game and it didn't really have any scratches or anything on the disc. My brother has been really upset about this, so he bought it again off eBay and the same thing happened! I don't think I have ever really had this problem with any other games though.

[guyjin]

i've never ever even heard of this problem before. Have you considered picking up a new dreamcast?

[Michael Helgeson]

Its the GD-Rom laser going out or is just weak.Somes decks just had really weak lasers.

Ive had decks that are dead for sure going out and they let you know by never loading a game period.
Ive also run into weird problems  with disc like D2 japanese version where no deck I had could get past this one part,a scene with the crazy on drugs guy talking to the Laura and the other girl at gun point as they were tied up I think,it had to constantly load data as the scene played and something would randomly trigger the laser to misread,and the game was programed to where as this happened the scene had to play again. It was funny to see the guy constantly trow up but jesus at teh same tim eit was annoying.

 I think what happened was there was too much data that had to be read in a time frame as the scene played out and the data was spread across for god knows what reason. I only had one deck that could play this scene without messups.
Had nothing to do with age of the system either because about all my decks were near new. I think laser calibration may have had apart in it.

Other problems Ive seen are Sword of the Berserk exiting out of the game at random and going to the DC's main menu area.
Ive also had some disc that came from  a bad press run,like japanese copy of Red Line Racer which was in mint but wouldnt boot,and Sonic import that had audio issues,along with early USA releases with audio issues. Some of the Dreamcast Magizines demo disc were flawed too,and wouldnt boot.

[termis]

Though I've heard of a couple bad-pressed GD issues, I've never had a problem with my DC...   PS1 on the other hand...   

But hope might not be lost - if your GD-Rom's laser simply got weaker over time/use, you can try adjusting the intensity of the GD-ROM laser.  There's a tweak that people originally did to allows your unit to read CD-RWs by intensifying the laser - I normally wouldn't recommend it as it shortens the lifespan of your laser pickup, but I've done this and saved a non-working Sega saturn unit when that unit's laser was getting weak and couldn't read data off original pressed CDs.

Though I've never done the above for DCs, you can do the same by adjusting a silver screw that's on your GD-ROM laser pickup - you can find pics here:
http://geocities.com/toogam/easymods.htm

Try it out - what do you have to lose?

[Joe Redifer]

I will try that, thanks for posting it.  I'll also try resurfacing Daytona if that doesn't work, and maybe getting a new Dreamcast and swapping out the GD-ROM drives.  My DC is modded to play imports and I don't want to give that up with a new console.

[Joe Redifer]

I turned up the pot about 1/8th of a turn, maybe a touch more (don't want to overdo it).  Daytona still won't boot.  I'll try Shenmue later on and see if it still freezes (getting sick of playing the beginning of that game again and again).  It seems to be having trouble reading the "high density" areas of the Daytona GD-ROM, as it can read the boot data in the nomal regular density section just fine.  So I am assuming in Daytona's case, the disc has rotted because that's what some DC discs do for NO REASON.

[TR0N]

I've had my DC die on me afther one to many sesson of PSO on it  :oops:

Still i didn't have to buy a new dc all i did was... replace the gd-rom drive and it work np afther that.

Oh and i do agree that system isn't that durable afther many, years of playing it will break down.

Btw i don't care for the type of disc it use 'either the gd-roms are too f*cking fragile 

[GUTS]

I've never heard of the bad GDRoms either (other than the launch batch of Sonics and stuff), I thought it was pretty much universally accepted that the DC was a great quality system.  I've bought and sold at least 10-15 of them over the years and never had a single problem.

[termis]

I turned up the pot about 1/8th of a turn, maybe a touch more (don't want to overdo it).  Daytona still won't boot.  I'll try Shenmue later on and see if it still freezes (getting sick of playing the beginning of that game again and again).  It seems to be having trouble reading the "high density" areas of the Daytona GD-ROM, as it can read the boot data in the nomal regular density section just fine.  So I am assuming in Daytona's case, the disc has rotted because that's what some DC discs do for NO REASON.

1/8th of a turn?  Turn up the juice up, dude - I'd start with 1/2 a turn and go on from there.  If that GD-ROM laser is already no good, then you can't do much worse to it.  And you can always turn it back down - nothing bad is gonna happen, I promise.   (well, no I don't, but I'm 99% sure nothing's gonna happen).

And like Tron says, the worst case scenario is that you'll just have to replace the whole GD-ROM assembly from another DC, and DC was an over-produced machine, so it's pretty cheap on the 2nd hand markets...

[Joe Redifer]

I've heard sites say never to turn that pot more than 1/3rd of a turn.  Anyway I've been playing Shenmue for a few hours and it hasn't froze at all, so maybe something is fixed.

But yeah, GD-ROM discs can go bad after awhile, and I don't know why.  Happened with my original copy of Shenmue and now with Daytona.  Both games I bought brand new when they were released and I store them in the cases vertically on the shelf where strong light is never on them.  There is a halogen light in the room, but I don't think it's strong enough to rot GD-ROMS through their cases.

[Michael Helgeson]

I've never heard of the bad GDRoms either (other than the launch batch of Sonics and stuff), I thought it was pretty much universally accepted that the DC was a great quality system.  I've bought and sold at least 10-15 of them over the years and never had a single problem.

I think the worst flawed disc runs were in Japan. I also think the system is top notch too,high quality. It was a new disc format,new technoligy and they had to learn to master it. I think any issues would have been gone by the 4th year for sure if manufacturing stayed strong. I still perfer the Dreamcast any day of the week over the PS2. I love Giant Gram,and about all the other arcade ports for the system. I spent hours with Zombies Revenge,D2,Sword of the Berserk, import Blue Stinger, both Giant Grams,Guilty Gear X,import KOF 99 Evo.most all the Capcom arcade stuff,DOA2,Code Veronica,Grandia 2,Time Stalkers,Giga Wing 2,Ikaruga,Soul Calibur ect ect...
MY ALL TIME FAVORITE DC TITLE !!!! The underdog sleeper title Illbleed!!!!! That game was awesome,and still tops my list of favs. Back around the time it was released I used to go into chat room sand type out really horrible stories and use people in the rooms names for the characters,on the fly. At anyrate,the horrible theme stories in Illbleed were right along the same lines as what I was writing,so I fell inlove with the game right away. That and I mean,you can die from heart attacks and bleeding to death in a mannor no other game had tried. Awesome.

[Joe Redifer]

I can't stand how they wrecked things so badly when they designed the Dreamcast controller.  Tiny buttons, two less buttons than the Saturn, a crap d-pad (compared to the Saturn and Genesis and most systems that came before it) and not exactly the best analog pad.  Thankfully there is an adapter that lets you use Saturn pads for games that require a REAL controller.