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@alexfree Here's a Kodak Ultima CD-R that I got about a year ago. I used that disc for my MottZilla stealth unlocker video.
You got to have some patience with such a thing 4x 4x 6x and USB 1.1. Boy, that is slow.
Problematic because of the CD-RW functionality. Commonly available are only High Speed CD-RW, this one needs normal speed (normal speed and Ultra Speed as well as Ultra Speed+ are virtually unobtainable).
I'd like to know how this drive performs regarding copying protected PC discs.
Somewhere buried deep in the moving boxes is supposed to be an old IDE writer (produced about 1998) by Creative with 2x2x24x. No idea if it still works (and where the f… it is). I should burn some PS1 discs with it if possible.
=======
Don't have any old Verbatim 650MB, but the best results I ever got for a PS1 backup disc is this:
Short loading times (for PS1 standards of course), no noise from drives, no stuttering, no problems, nothing
Almost equally good performed Kodak Gold Ultima:
Sadly this won't do much for anybody (including myself) as these are hard to find and outrageously expensive on eBay and the like. That is all I got:
Could not visit flea market for many weeks now due to hard work and weather. Maybe next Saturday. Always have the eyes open for some old discs and drives. Most people are happy to get rid of theirs.
Flea markets and thrift stores are your best bet. The few offers online are beyond good and evil.
Doesn't the burner actually matter more than the media if it's about playability? It seem like with the NEC ND-3550A I can use cheap media and it produces PS1 discs without stuttering music or FMV's.
Some time ago I got ~120 pieces Sony CD-R for free and these plays fine on my PS1's (SCPH-5552, SCPH-7505, SCPH-102) as long as I burn them with the NEC. I've a Gran Turismo 2 pressed silver CD from Hong Kong which had skipping FMV on the SCPH-5552, but the copy I made from it on this Sony CD-R is not skipping and loads faster then the pressed disc.
Of course, if you want to store the games for prolonged time I thing archival grade media is a way better. The cheap media maybe isn't playable anymore over a couple of years.
Some time ago I got ~120 pieces Sony CD-R for free and these plays fine on my PS1's (SCPH-5552, SCPH-7505, SCPH-102) as long as I burn them with the NEC. I've a Gran Turismo 2 pressed silver CD from Hong Kong which had skipping FMV on the SCPH-5552, but the copy I made from it on this Sony CD-R is not skipping and loads faster then the pressed disc.
Of course, if you want to store the games for prolonged time I thing archival grade media is a way better. The cheap media maybe isn't playable anymore over a couple of years.
Code:
ATIP info from disk:
Indicated writing power: 5
Is not unrestricted
Is not erasable
Disk sub type: Medium Type B, low Beta category (B-) (4)
ATIP start of lead in: -11834 (97:24/16)
ATIP start of lead out: 359849 (79:59/74)
Disk type: Short strategy type (Phthalocyanine or similar)
Manuf. index: 24
Manufacturer: SONY Corporation
So what I understand is there are different 'burning strategies' in each CD burner for different types of CD media (dye/substrate/brand/etc.). The cheaper newer drives don't want to store all of those strategies in their firmware because it increases cost so they instead use a 'generic' strategy that mostly works. And to complicate it even more each burn speed has slight changes in the strategy
I'm really simplifying things but I've been doing a lot of research but Drive+CD media+speed matters. I'm going to write up a webpage on my website eventually.
Verbatim DataLifePlus seems popular enough that basically every drive can burn them well.
I haven't had the results I expect with the CMC Pro discs with this modern wallmart burner drive though, the burns are quite unreliable just because the burner from what I can tell (I've gone through 2 batches, and some burns are great but most are trash).
I won't get that old USB 1.1 4x burner until next week to try stuff with.
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The ancient CD burner came early! I thought it wasn't going to work but it turns out the burner is so old it doesn't support SessionAtOnce (SAO) only TrackAtOnce (TAO). IMGBurn was auto-detecting and setting SAO which caused an error until I explicitly set for TAO in the settings. This thing really is plug and play on Windows 11.
Not supporting SAO means I can't use this for Dreamcast self-boot images since I assume there is sadly no multi-session support.
Post automatically merged:
The drive should work under linux too with the generic-mmc-raw driver https://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/drives.html, interesting! It doesn't support the generic-mmc driver
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So, some interesting results. I don't think IMGBurn supports this drive. I put IMGBurn into TAO and it wrote the disc just fine at ~4x but the music is completely silent so I think some support is missing. in IMGBurn for this drive because as far as I can tell it is not exactly MMC standard complient.
I went back to my trusty https://github.com/alex-free/cdrdao-pled and thank god I fixed that --swap argument bug in cdrdao when used in combination with the --driver generic-mmc-raw driver (see https://github.com/cdrdao/cdrdao/pull/14) because that is the only way to use this drive with CDRDAO. And yes, it does work!
No issues like I have with my modern cheap wallmart burner and the CMC Pro 80 minute modern discs so far...
Date code on this burner is 8/04/2000
Last edited by alexfree,
Nothing but good things to say about this IOMEGA ZIPCD 650 USB from Y2k. And yes, you can burn new CD-Rs (at least CMC Pro TY and Verbatim DataLifePlus Discs) at 2x. 4x also works fine,
The CD burner is a beast with it's own power supply, but it is also plug n play on Linux with CDRDAO using the right arguments. And it is infinitely better then the Wallmart USB DVD burner for CD-Rs.
The only think I can't get it to do yet is Dreamcast multi-session self-boot discs.
If you have a CD burner that works well with making CD-Rs readable by the PSX please comment the model/year in this thread? It might be nice to have a list of good and bad ones.
The CD burner is a beast with it's own power supply, but it is also plug n play on Linux with CDRDAO using the right arguments. And it is infinitely better then the Wallmart USB DVD burner for CD-Rs.
The only think I can't get it to do yet is Dreamcast multi-session self-boot discs.
If you have a CD burner that works well with making CD-Rs readable by the PSX please comment the model/year in this thread? It might be nice to have a list of good and bad ones.
Found another Gem on the Sony SCEA BBS from 1995:
3/29/95 2:34 PM
*Why 71 minute? Why 900e?
BillÊ"Angus" Guschwan
CD
>I had 2 CD questions: >1) Can we use the CDW950E with the CDGEN software? Why or why
not?
CD-ROM Generator doesn't support CDW-950E. CDW-950E doesn't have compatibility in SCSI
protocol and doesn't have capability to create master disc.
>2) Why do we need to use 71 minute media? Some people like to use the cheaper >74 minute
media. Can you tell me why we need the 71 minute CDRs?
The 71min disc is different from 74min at the dencity. PlayStaion is tuned up for 71min and
make reliability for data read. A 74min disc makes error rate more higher
@AkikoKumagara do you have the ATIP info of the Verbatim DataLifePlus 74 Minute Discs from the 90s? I don't have any at the moment and am working on the research summarizing the results of this thread and everything I've learned since 2021 when I starting with the PSX
3/29/95 2:34 PM
*Why 71 minute? Why 900e?
BillÊ"Angus" Guschwan
CD
>I had 2 CD questions: >1) Can we use the CDW950E with the CDGEN software? Why or why
not?
CD-ROM Generator doesn't support CDW-950E. CDW-950E doesn't have compatibility in SCSI
protocol and doesn't have capability to create master disc.
>2) Why do we need to use 71 minute media? Some people like to use the cheaper >74 minute
media. Can you tell me why we need the 71 minute CDRs?
The 71min disc is different from 74min at the dencity. PlayStaion is tuned up for 71min and
make reliability for data read. A 74min disc makes error rate more higher
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@AkikoKumagara do you have the ATIP info of the Verbatim DataLifePlus 74 Minute Discs from the 90s? I don't have any at the moment and am working on the research summarizing the results of this thread and everything I've learned since 2021 when I starting with the PSX
Last edited by alexfree,
I finally got to a point where the information I've learned over the past few years investigating this and everything that I've found in this thread has been organized and put up 'The Ultimate Guide To PSX CD-Rs' page on my website: https://alex-free.github.io/psx-cdr/
Huge thanks to everyone in this thread. Please comment any recommendations, issues, findings, etc..
Huge thanks to everyone in this thread. Please comment any recommendations, issues, findings, etc..
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Interesting read.
The best drive I tested burning a PS1 game was with a PX-760A drive at 4x speed with Verbatim media. So far, I had no issues whatsoever as the PS1 read the discs just fine. Would for sure recommend a Plextor for perfect burns.
@alexfree I added your guide to ConsoleMods. https://consolemods.org/wiki/PS1:PS1_Mods_Wiki
Last edited by SylverReZ,
Thanks! I really struggled using a $30 Wallmart burner and Maxell/'fake' Verbatim CD-Rs personally when I first got into the PSX.Interesting read.
The best drive, I tested burning a PS1 game with the PX-760A drive at 4x speed with Verbatim media. So far, no issues whatsoever.
The PS1 read the discs just fine.
Would for sure recommend a Plextor for perfect burns.
@alexfree I added your guide to ConsoleMods. https://consolemods.org/wiki/PS1:PS1_Mods_Wiki
It was a perfect storm of a bad burner, bad media, and nearly 30 year old CD-ROM drive hardware (that wasn't exactly high quality to begin with) in dire need of a refurb. I of course knew none of that in 2021, and I really just wanted to get it down to a science. I couldn't understand why the situation was so dire. Modchips existed since IIRC '96, and people used things like the PSX Change boot discs back in ~2000. So what had changed in 20+ years? Why does everyone seem to have issues playing CD-Rs on the original hardware?
I think with my refurb and PSX CD-R guides I have figured that out. The number one Github issues with the various soft-mods for the PSX are 'X game does not boot/X game freezes at this point' and almost every time it is a disc read issue that I can't reproduce on my hardware. It is telling because most of these issues are it locking up right before a FMV is played, or audio stuttering/cutting out. Finally with these guides, I can point someone to some more useful advice other then (does it read the disc if you turn the console vertical?: https://github.com/alex-free/tonyhax/issues/28#issuecomment-1578802945 ) lol.
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It all boils down to either faulty lasers or crappy CD-Rs that these people are using.
Surprisingly it's not actually a faulty laser most of the time. Usually the lubrication just dries out before the laser diode dies. I've worked on a lot of PSX consoles and I am not even sure if I ever once encountered a dying laser (where re-lubricating the drive didn't work). The CD-R media is also a factor, but maybe even more of a factor is the CD burner itself (due to not having good strategies/burn speed support/quality of write). There is really something nice to be said about having backups that perform exactly as good as the real CD-ROMs.
Code:
ATIP info from disk:
Indicated writing power: 5
Disk Is not unrestricted
Disk Is not erasable
ATIP start of lead in: -11080 (97:34/20)
ATIP start of lead out: 335100 (74:30/00)
Disk type: Long strategy type (Cyanine, AZO or similar)
Manuf. index: 11
Manufacturer: Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
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I noticed it's missing "Disk sub type" field that yours all have. Not sure why that's not present. I used cdrecord (cdrtools) on Arch Linux. Does it just not display that for certain disc types?
Last edited by AkikoKumagara,
Updated the guide. thank you soo much!
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Hmm, maybe? Never noticed that, these are really old discs maybe that wasn't a common thing in the ATIP back in 1998
Already did but good catch, github takes a minute to update the site everytime I push just keep refreshing
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Just updated the guide with this drive.Interesting read.
The best drive, I tested burning a PS1 game with the PX-760A drive at 4x speed with Verbatim media. So far, no issues whatsoever.
The PS1 read the discs just fine.
Would for sure recommend a Plextor for perfect burns.
@alexfree I added your guide to ConsoleMods. https://consolemods.org/wiki/PS1:PS1_Mods_Wiki
If anyone has any good or bad experiences with more drives, let me know!
Also don't forget that you can use IDE/SATA drives with USB adapters
Last edited by alexfree,
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Sure will :3Already did but good catch, github takes a minute to update the site everytime I push just keep refreshing
Post automatically merged:
Just updated the guide with this drive.
If anyone has any good or bad experiences with more drives, let me know!
Also don't forget that you can use IDE/SATA drives with USB adapters
Anybody won the lottery?
I've never even heard of 71min CD-R even existing before. But…
The same seller on eBay, which I linked before in this thread (including screenshot for preservation) actually has PS1 Master Disc CD-R with PlayStation logo. And those have a number 71 printed on (which could be minutes).
Well, if those aren't the the perfect blanks for PS1 backups →
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185774937302
It is very tempting. But waaaaay tooooo expensive.
I've never even heard of 71min CD-R even existing before. But…
The same seller on eBay, which I linked before in this thread (including screenshot for preservation) actually has PS1 Master Disc CD-R with PlayStation logo. And those have a number 71 printed on (which could be minutes).
Well, if those aren't the the perfect blanks for PS1 backups →
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185774937302
It is very tempting. But waaaaay tooooo expensive.
Imagine you burn a coaster with it because the PC/burner crashes... that will be very expensive
I searched for more out of curiosity. There are some of these from other sellers available in the US, but usually individually for around $70-80 (and up) USD for a single disc. Wild.
I can't imagine the dye was rated for 3 decades either. Also this does confirm that Taiyo Yuden was what Sony used for the official CD-Rs (so the great grandchild of this thing are the CMC Pro discs. Now we have some great pics to add to the guide though).Imagine you burn a coaster with it because the PC/burner crashes... that will be very expensive
Maybe I might just buy exactly one disc to get the ATIP info and burn a 71 minute Tonyhax International Boot CD lol.
The 63 minute media above is also insane:
Also, I wonder how different the That's CD-R 74 minute ones are (besides of course the 3+ extra minutes): It
s the same back case text:
Last edited by alexfree,
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SylverReZ:
You can make a post on the DS forum about your findings, and they'll do their best to respond. They have a GBAtemp account here, you know. -
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Materia_tofu:
oh ye i made a post i did forget they had an account i prob shouldve tagged them in the post+1
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