Utopia CD Loader

Grinder wrote:
snip
> That is indeed what I mean by late model. There are *two* Dreamcasts in
> my remarks, though, and I'm having problems with an "early model"
> Dreamcast. It will boot Utopia without any problem, but it would not
> run a backup from there.
>
> As it turns out, it looks like the problem was with my burning software.
> I was using BootDreams to burn CDIs, but they were not working.
>
> At this point I have some other questions about creating boot discs
> specifically for late model Dreamcasts, but I'll defer those until I
> accomplish a bit more research.
>
> Thanks for your responses, Relic and BelPowerslave.

While there are some DCs with a bios that won't allow boot discs (or
real MIL-CDs, or anything that is meant to take advantage of the MIL-CD
loading thing), I have yet to see any reliable reports that any of them
showed up in US DCs. They definitely showed up in the pink Sakura Taisen
DCs in Japan, but every report in the US has seemed to come from people
who didn't know what they were doing or people whose lenses weren't
adjusted properly/were dirty.

I wonder if the relevant alteration is on the DC's motherboard or if
it's in the drive assembly setup somewhere. If it's in the drive, I
could easily see units that were refurbed late in the game in the US
having this issue, but then the date on the hardware would be meaningless.
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Grinder wrote:
snip
>
> Is it possible for the lens to be out of adjustment for MIL-CD but not
> GD-ROMs? I have two Dreamcasts that perform differently:
>
> +---------------+------------+------------+
> | Manufacturing | Reads | Reads |
> | Date | MIL-CD | GD-ROM |
> +---------------+------------+------------+
> | April 2000 | yes | yes |
> +---------------+------------+------------+
> | December 2000 | no | yes |
> +---------------+------------+------------+
snip


Do you have any pressed MIL-CDs?
The general sentiment seemed to be that DCs would often not read CD-Rs,
but that a cleaned or adjusted lens would often fix that problem. So the
failure wouldn't have anything to do with the MIL CD format as such,
just with the media it's on.
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Ted wrote:
>
> Grinder wrote:
> snip
>> Is it possible for the lens to be out of adjustment for MIL-CD but not
>> GD-ROMs? I have two Dreamcasts that perform differently:
>>
>> +---------------+------------+------------+
>> | Manufacturing | Reads | Reads |
>> | Date | MIL-CD | GD-ROM |
>> +---------------+------------+------------+
>> | April 2000 | yes | yes |
>> +---------------+------------+------------+
>> | December 2000 | no | yes |
>> +---------------+------------+------------+
> snip
>
>
> Do you have any pressed MIL-CDs?

Not that I know of.

> The general sentiment seemed to be that DCs would often not read CD-Rs,
> but that a cleaned or adjusted lens would often fix that problem. So the
> failure wouldn't have anything to do with the MIL CD format as such,
> just with the media it's on.

The Dreamcast in question has no problem reading Audio CDs burnt onto a
CD-R, but it's worth following up you implied diagnostic. What would be
a cheap and ready supply of pressed MIL-CDs?

I know that Wikipedia's bona fides have taken a hit of late, but the
article there on the Dreamcast also says:

| Dreamcast used a proprietary format called GD-ROM
| (Gigabyte Disc Read Only Memory) or "GigaDisc" for
| storing games in order to discourage software pirates,
| although it had similar overall technology to the
| CD-ROM. However, the first run of discs had a high
| rate of defects; and eventually pirates managed to
| copy the games anyway (in some cases distributing them
| before the release of the legitimate versions). The
| primary reason this was possible was the existence of
| regular-CD booting code in the Dreamcast BIOS to
| enable multimedia functions (called Mil-CD) for music
| CD releases on the Japanese market; this was
| eventually discovered and exploited by pirates. Mil-CD
| support was removed from the final Dreamcast revisions
| toward the end of the console's life, but rampant
| piracy is often cited as one of the major reasons for
| the failure of the Dreamcast.
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Grinder wrote:
snip
> The Dreamcast in question has no problem reading Audio CDs burnt onto a
> CD-R, but it's worth following up you implied diagnostic. What would be
> a cheap and ready supply of pressed MIL-CDs?
snip

Cheats N Codes, Game Shark, DC-X, etc.
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