*Sigh*
Alright. I'm back at my main computer and can fully answer now.
I just realized none of my games work, except from the original ones. The disk reader works fine, it detects the mini-dvds but soon the game stops working and the reader stops spinning the disk.
Really: Please test the burn quality. Especially for DVD there are huge differences when comparing writers and blanks, as well as the question if a writer "likes" certain blanks or not.
When talking about recordable optical discs nowadays, answers like this are guaranteed to pop up:
Forget burning disks anymore and load them off the sd2sp2
It is true that the optical disc technology comes with huge problems and limitations and using other methods nowadays is superior (and I would generally advise to use other methods of game loading in practice over wearing down aging optical drives). That doesn't mean that optical discs don't work at all. Some trial and error might be required.
For GC you can often find the advise to look for RITEK-G04 media, as the GC seems to like the dark dye. They are out of production since… eternity… and there is no guarantee for them to simply work out of the box under all circumstances. In other context, not GameCube, you can often find statements that RITEK media are very low quality.
I took two RITEK-G04 mini DVD-R and burned two copies of Pokémon Box with two different writers. DVD-R from the same batch.
The first one was recorded with some external drive. Could as well have been "Amazon's Choice for DVD Burner" a few months ago when I ordered this – to have one external drive for the case I have to deal with modern laptops and need DVD access. Recorders leave their name on the disc.
The second one is a full-sized Lite-On drive promising real time adjustment of writing strategy for good burns on unknown and poor blank media.
Now have a look at the scan results when checking the burn quality. The external drive delivered a garbage recording. (Lower left corner shows the total errors). This external thing clearly had no idea how to properly handle the medium. Next to incompatible to these blanks. The worst part at the beginning might be still recorded in CAV mode which needs on-the-fly adjustments to the writing strategy.
This is an extreme case of bad burn quality. I've rarely encountered something like this:
The big Lite-On drive seems to do as the bold claims in the adverting says: Almost no Pi failures and a lot less Pi Errors (note the different scale on the upper graph reaching only to 100 compared to over 1000). The result is not overwhelming quality, but acceptable
Despite this obvious difference in quality… the PC reading drive doesn't hesitate or struggle or complain. Both DVDs are read full speed (which is reduced for the mini DVD-R in the media description compared to proper 12cm DVDs). No problems. This horrible amount of errors is well within the capabilities of the error correction. Imgburn "Verify after burning" reported success for the bad burn (factually correct, since the PC drives can read everything and correct the mass of errors).
Can you guess how the GameCube with XenoGC clone reacts to the two copies?
- The bad copy isn't even there → "No disc inserted"
- The good copy starts like an original
Those RITEK-G04 might be too old by now, with unknown storage conditions. But with a good writer they are still usable.
Try finding a combination of writer and DVD-R that work together well. Not every writer can handle all media alike. Be prepared to experiment when burning discs for consoles. The GameCube is among the most picky consoles.
