PS1/2 Do modern burners/CD's make lower quality PS1 backups?

[ssjkakaroto]

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.

@alexfree do you happen to have a guide on lubricating the drive? I have a PSX here that I haven't used for many years and I'm pretty sure the lubrication has dried up.
Edit: You do have a guide! https://alex-free.github.io/unofficial-ps1-cd-drive-service-manual/

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Finally some CD-R with 64µm ATIP wavelength have arrived. At least I think they have the longer spatial period forcing the drive to linear velocity 1.4m/s to reach 1x data rate.



They are so old some that many applications fail interpreting the data, including cdrecord.
ATIP info from disk: Indicated writing power: 5 Is not unrestricted Is not erasable Disk sub type: Medium Type A, high Beta category (A+) (3) ATIP start of lead in: -9975 (97:49/00) ATIP start of lead out: 79981 (17:48/31) Disk type: unknown dye (old id code) Manuf. index: 0 Manufacturer: Unknown old Manufacturer code
Alcohol 120% fails as well, but Nero and PlexTools detect TDK as manufacturer. Hard coded? Wrong detection?


Interesting with these old discs is the reaction of a pretty new BD drive, bought in 2022. When inserting a common 80min/700MB disc the minimum write speed offered is 16x. Inserting the old mini CD-R leaves only a single option: 8x

Screenshot above shows in Nero DiscSpeed that the Plextor Premium is also only willing to use 4x and 8x despite being able to go up to 52x CAV mode on new CD-R.


================
Mavica discs are hard to find, at least in Germany. Still some eBay offers left in the USA, but shipping costs to Europe are beyond good and evil. Those 20 (which have cost me way too much already) on the picture above is probably all I will ever be able to get.
Once there is some kind of speed/seek times test application I would be willing to use one or two for this. Same for a Tonyhax International disc (once no updates are expected anymore).
Sadly no testing commercial games on CD-R with longer ATIP wavelength… with the full-sized discs being so overly expensive: This is out of range for hobby.

 

[Alexander1970]

Do modern burners/CD's make lower quality PS1 backups?​

Definitely, no matter what the Experts” say.
The 2x/4x CD Burners from back then,combined with blank CDs that were much better produced back then, created 100% better copies.
I won't let that stop me.

Counter question: Why should plastic parts (blank CDs) have the same quality today as they did 20 years ago when almost all electrical devices/electrical parts etc. are of increasingly crappy quality these days and are produced cheaply.

So why should blank discs be as good or better these days?

 

[Blakejansen]

Burn speed is a myth from where I sit, or at least massively outdated advice. Made sense when buffers were small and hard drives were slow. Today buffers might be in the order of a CD and loading from a SSD or otherwise fast drive on an optimised OS...

Verbatim might once have done good media, CDs even, but how many they sell and how good their lines are that they bother to keep standards tight... most cars these days don't even come with a CD player.

The quality of burners did slip but that is more in the high end max out, and possibly lower end options such that it tried to manage 16x burn speed but actually higher would have been better.

What you said goes in line with what I have read. Low burn speed for better back ups turned out to be out dated advice based off the ps2 threads I have come across on google.

 

[SylverReZ]

Finally some CD-R with 64µm ATIP wavelength have arrived. At least I think they have the longer spatial period forcing the drive to linear velocity 1.4m/s to reach 1x data rate.
View attachment 394576


They are so old some that many applications fail interpreting the data, including cdrecord.
ATIP info from disk: Indicated writing power: 5 Is not unrestricted Is not erasable Disk sub type: Medium Type A, high Beta category (A+) (3) ATIP start of lead in: -9975 (97:49/00) ATIP start of lead out: 79981 (17:48/31) Disk type: unknown dye (old id code) Manuf. index: 0 Manufacturer: Unknown old Manufacturer code
Alcohol 120% fails as well, but Nero and PlexTools detect TDK as manufacturer. Hard coded? Wrong detection?
View attachment 394575

Interesting with these old discs is the reaction of a pretty new BD drive, bought in 2022. When inserting a common 80min/700MB disc the minimum write speed offered is 16x. Inserting the old mini CD-R leaves only a single option: 8x
View attachment 394574 View attachment 394577
Screenshot above shows in Nero DiscSpeed that the Plextor Premium is also only willing to use 4x and 8x despite being able to go up to 52x CAV mode on new CD-R.


================
Mavica discs are hard to find, at least in Germany. Still some eBay offers left in the USA, but shipping costs to Europe are beyond good and evil. Those 20 (which have cost me way too much already) on the picture above is probably all I will ever be able to get.
Once there is some kind of speed/seek times test application I would be willing to use one or two for this. Same for a Tonyhax International disc (once no updates are expected anymore).
Sadly no testing commercial games on CD-R with longer ATIP wavelength… with the full-sized discs being so overly expensive: This is out of range for hobby.

I wouldn't trust using 8cm CD-Rs on my PS1. I once tried that and the PlayStation had a hard time reading the disc.

 

[Alexander1970]

This "Burn Speed" Myth is maybe today not really a Topic.
But try to read on an 386er PC with 10x CD Rom an 48x burned CD - Have Fun.

Burning Verbatim DVD-R´s for the PlayStation 2 (Drives) with maximum of 4x is also a myth,ey ?
Try that also on an Wii...

Yes,go ahead an burn as fast as you want - My personal Experience for
PlayStation / PlayStation 2 / Wii/ Dreamcast / GameCube /XBox (Classic) is a maximum of 4x.
Gamecube and mabye some Wii Drive Models is better with 2x or 1x Speed.

Reading / Intializing a GameDISC is NOT the same as playing 3 - 4 Hours from an CD/DVD Backup !
DRE´s & Co are greeting and maybe will "affect" your Gaming Fun....

 

[alexfree]

What you said goes in line with what I have read. Low burn speed for better back ups turned out to be out dated advice based off the ps2 threads I have come across on google.

Newer cheaper drives/cheap CD-R media from what I understand in general burn with less accuracy and introduce subtle issues/errors that modern readers don't care about so it is 'within tolerance' however super old readers end up struggling to read said media. Going to pro grade/archival grade media and using a burner from back in the day (which had to be more accurate and introduce less errors since old readers need really good burns to work as expected) solves this, I've seen this with my own eyes.

Every time someone says 'this is outdated advice because xyz' I think they just got lucky and their burner of choice just happens to be high quality in the sense talked about above or they happen to have used good enough CD-R media in combination. There are countless people who can't get CD-Rs to boot on PSX consoles and it's been because of the CD-R media, the burner, or the cdrom drive needing to be refurbished. Just because one burner can burn at some rediculous high speed and it works doesn't mean someone without that specific burner can do the same and have the disc even be detected by the console at all due to the quality of modern burners being all over the place.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

You are going to have fun with this one:

I've sent the problem "Slow burning not available on new drives" and "Does speed matter for the burn quality?" to the ASUS support – the only one I could easily find, but I will try to reach other manufacturers as well. I'm interested in getting official or semi-official opinions on this.

Answer from ASUS support (actual human and not some chatbot AI) something like this (not a direct quote):
This is not my main field of. Generally success depends more on the blank medium. A speed of 8x is slow enough for even make older device not struggle in reading the result.


I guess this is about DVD then, since 8x is not available for CDs.
=====

My new shelves are ready now, I can now unpack all of the optical disc stuff and start systematic experiments whenever concentration allows it. Planning in-depth write/read tests with various writers, various blanks, various speeds and old readers (2x CD-ROM on PC, CD-DA player from 1993, DVD players, gaming consoles).

 

[alexfree]

You are going to have fun with this one:

I've sent the problem "Slow burning not available on new drives" and "Does speed matter for the burn quality?" to the ASUS support – the only one I could easily find, but I will try to reach other manufacturers as well. I'm interested in getting official or semi-official opinions on this.

Answer from ASUS support (actual human and not some chatbot AI) something like this (not a direct quote):
This is not my main field of. Generally success depends more on the blank medium. A speed of 8x is slow enough for even make older device not struggle in reading the result.


I guess this is about DVD then, since 8x is not available for CDs.
=====

My new shelves are ready now, I can now unpack all of the optical disc stuff and start systematic experiments whenever concentration allows it. Planning in-depth write/read tests with various writers, various blanks, various speeds and old readers (2x CD-ROM on PC, CD-DA player from 1993, DVD players, gaming consoles).

It is interesting that he says 'slow enough' there. So this further confirms speed is a factor and that drives burn the disc in different ways at different speeds even for the same media.

I did end up buying a single 'PlayStation Master Disc 71PS CD-R' (71 minute CD-R) for $86. Not only can I get the ATIP info, I can burn something to it at 2x speed with my IOMega Zip CD 650 USB (DOM: 8/04/2000). Either a Tonyhax International Boot CD-R, or the CD performance test psx homebrew that doesn't exist yet.

 

[Alexander1970]

If it is correct,the Sony Mastering CD-R´s have this underside Color:
(found on archive.org)

This Two maybe helpful...maybe.
Interesting...I think.

 

[alexfree]

If it is correct,the Sony Mastering CD-R´s have this underside Color:
(found on archive.org)

View attachment 394936









This Two maybe helpful...maybe.
Interesting...I think.

That stuff is excellent, it proves the PSX80MP theory:

https://alex-free.github.io/psx80mp

It’s supposed to be here in two days btw!

 

[Alexander1970]

@alexfree

This seems maybe also interesting....

 

[alexfree]

@alexfree

This seems maybe also interesting....

I’ll take a look, also I never mentioned this but I brought this up to no cash about the 71 minute thing

 

[Alexander1970]

I’ll take a look, also I never mentioned this but I brought this up to no cash about the 71 minute thing
View attachment 395059

Then this seems to be already known,correct ?

The standard PlayStation CD, played at normal speed can be up to 71 minutes, 59 seconds and 74
sectors long (so not quite 72 minutes). This gives a total capacity of 624Mb:
71(minutes) x 60 (seconds) = 4260 (seconds total length)
4260 (seconds) x 75 (sectors per second) + 74 (sectors) = 319574 (total sectors on the CD)
319574 (sectors) x 2048 (bytes of data storage in a sector) = 654487552 (bytes)
= 639148 (Kb)
= 624 (Mb)

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I am not entirely sure how the whole CDR is harder on a laser than normal media thing works... I mean its like a light bulb it's either on or off, it's not like it's going to kick into some higher power output because of what it's shining on. Now if someone said the pickup might be getting a different wavelength of light hitting it... Maybe? That's a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but I could at least see it as possible. About the speed of a disk being burned, I always found different software to be the most important factor. Right now honestly I would recommend Imgburn. Probably someone will say it's crap but I have had really good luck with it on modern equipment.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

I am not entirely sure how the whole CDR is harder on a laser than normal media thing works... I mean its like a light bulb it's either on or off, it's not like it's going to kick into some higher power output because of what it's shining on. Now if someone said the pickup might be getting a different wavelength of light hitting it... Maybe? That's a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but I could at least see it as possible. About the speed of a disk being burned, I always found different software to be the most important factor. Right now honestly I would recommend Imgburn. Probably someone will say it's crap but I have had really good luck with it on modern equipment.

The laser is used in a way more than a light bulb that is just on or not (and I'm not even talking about the burn process which is MUCH more complicated).
Warning: Information below is some kind of half-knowledge and I might be making a fool of myself. I'll try my best:

The analog signal created by the reflections of the laser light on the photodiodes is also used as input for the used light intensity – at least for drives having automatic bias/gain. This feature can even be (ab)used for copy protection purposes – and sadly exactly this happened in the form of SafeDisc v2 and newer. When using the entropy scrambler (simple XOR) manually on a regular pattern, the burner will use it again and retrieve the regular pattern. This might result in an EMF pattern with extreme DSV (meaning the amount of pits/lands isn't approximately equal). You will need the EMF lookup table to create something evil.
The deepest details go over my head (and off-topic here), but the result can be loss of sensible signal due to too low or too high laser power.

That said, I doubt a CD-R will "burn the laser out". General reflective characteristics are very similar to those of a pressed CD. Unsurprisingly since CD-R generally work even in the oldest audio CD players and have been created for exactly that purpose: Just work like the real thing.
For CD-RW this is different as the differences pit/land are way more subtle. This requires a drive to be built to detect much weaker signal. It won't burn out an old drive as well – the old drive just stops. In many cases the PS1 spins a CD-RW just a second and instantly stops with "No Disc" because not getting anywhere near a valid signal.

 

[alexfree]

I am not entirely sure how the whole CDR is harder on a laser than normal media thing works... I mean its like a light bulb it's either on or off, it's not like it's going to kick into some higher power output because of what it's shining on. Now if someone said the pickup might be getting a different wavelength of light hitting it... Maybe? That's a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but I could at least see it as possible. About the speed of a disk being burned, I always found different software to be the most important factor. Right now honestly I would recommend Imgburn. Probably someone will say it's crap but I have had really good luck with it on modern equipment.

Okay I really want this to be cleared up. Some modern systems (do??) increase laser intensity to read discs with less reflectivity. CD-Rs are 60-70% as reflective as CD-ROMs. The PSX and also Dreamcast DO NOT change laser intensity based on using a real CD-ROM or CD-R. The only thing that might happen is they will seek around the disc more (and you can re lubricate the drive on both systems). You can NOT burn out the laser by just reading CD-Rs.

Post automatically merged: Sep 21, 2023

Then this seems to be already known,correct ?

If it was, it got lost to time. Where is that quote from?

 

[Alexander1970]

If it was, it got lost to time. Where is that quote from?

 

[alexfree]

OMG IT IS REAL 71 Minutes

 

[AkikoKumagara]

That's interesting that you got a late enough version to have PlayStation 2 mentioned, too. Very cool pickup and info.