Thought I'd burn all my Sega CD and PS1 images to CD to get them off the hard drive. No problems whatsoever burning Sega CD games and running them under Fusion. I'm having trouble with ePSXe's CD-ROM.
I burned Castlevania SOTN to disc. I know it's good as I can play the ISO flawlessly. I am having issues setting up the CD-ROM plugins to actually play off a disc, though. Every plugin and setting I've tried has the same issue- slow loading, massive stuttering and choppy sound on the into Konami movie. Things smooth out at the press start screen, but get choppy again going into the menu after that.
The drive itself is a TSSTcorp TS-H493B. An older DVD drive that only has CD burning capability in a Windows XP computer, but it should still be more than sufficient for this emulator. I use the XP computer for emulation and older gaming.
If need be I can swap out the drive with a better Asus drive, they're cheap enough. I still think it's a plugin setting issue, however.
Update- I adjusted burning speed down to 8X, the minimum the drive supports, and redid SOTN. Same playback issues. I burned a copy of Final Doom at 8X and it has the same issues. Just to check burn speed being the problem, I redid one of my Sega CD discs at 8X, and saw no difference in that. The Sega CD games I'm burning work fine, PS1 do not. I'm not testing these on actual hardware nor am I concerned with them working on real hardware since I don't own the systems, I just need them to work in this computer.
The discs are a spindle of 100 Verbatim CD-Rs I ordered from Amazon which have an excellent customer rating. I still think it's a plugin issue of finding the right one, could be the drive though, could be the brand of discs, I don't know.
Update 2- Alright, I can confirm it's either the drive or a plugin issue- I dug up a legit PS1 game disc I still own and had the very same stuttering/playback issues using that. I can rule out an issue with burning now. But none of the CD plugins work right so it may be the drive. Later, once I get a chance, I'll copy my ePSXe install folder to my Windows 7 PC and see what that does using an Asus drive. I'd be willing to be it's a physical drive issue, drives that are factory installed tend to be junk.
Update 3- Much more promising results on my Windows 7 PC with the Asus DVD drive. Not perfect, had some minor sound issues but it may be a matter of selecting the right video and sound plugins for this PC, being different hardware. Either way I got smooth loading off the actual disc without stuttering. I'll buy an Asus drive for the XP PC, and if I somehow can't get things to work totally smoothly after that... then I'll backup my ISOs to disc instead. I'd go for a modchipped console, but I have an HDTV, so trying to hook any composite or s-video up to that is guaranteed to look awful. Although that XP computer still has zero issues running Sega CD or Turbografx CD games, guess PS1 are just more hassle.
I burned Castlevania SOTN to disc. I know it's good as I can play the ISO flawlessly. I am having issues setting up the CD-ROM plugins to actually play off a disc, though. Every plugin and setting I've tried has the same issue- slow loading, massive stuttering and choppy sound on the into Konami movie. Things smooth out at the press start screen, but get choppy again going into the menu after that.
The drive itself is a TSSTcorp TS-H493B. An older DVD drive that only has CD burning capability in a Windows XP computer, but it should still be more than sufficient for this emulator. I use the XP computer for emulation and older gaming.
If need be I can swap out the drive with a better Asus drive, they're cheap enough. I still think it's a plugin setting issue, however.
Update- I adjusted burning speed down to 8X, the minimum the drive supports, and redid SOTN. Same playback issues. I burned a copy of Final Doom at 8X and it has the same issues. Just to check burn speed being the problem, I redid one of my Sega CD discs at 8X, and saw no difference in that. The Sega CD games I'm burning work fine, PS1 do not. I'm not testing these on actual hardware nor am I concerned with them working on real hardware since I don't own the systems, I just need them to work in this computer.
The discs are a spindle of 100 Verbatim CD-Rs I ordered from Amazon which have an excellent customer rating. I still think it's a plugin issue of finding the right one, could be the drive though, could be the brand of discs, I don't know.
Update 2- Alright, I can confirm it's either the drive or a plugin issue- I dug up a legit PS1 game disc I still own and had the very same stuttering/playback issues using that. I can rule out an issue with burning now. But none of the CD plugins work right so it may be the drive. Later, once I get a chance, I'll copy my ePSXe install folder to my Windows 7 PC and see what that does using an Asus drive. I'd be willing to be it's a physical drive issue, drives that are factory installed tend to be junk.
Update 3- Much more promising results on my Windows 7 PC with the Asus DVD drive. Not perfect, had some minor sound issues but it may be a matter of selecting the right video and sound plugins for this PC, being different hardware. Either way I got smooth loading off the actual disc without stuttering. I'll buy an Asus drive for the XP PC, and if I somehow can't get things to work totally smoothly after that... then I'll backup my ISOs to disc instead. I'd go for a modchipped console, but I have an HDTV, so trying to hook any composite or s-video up to that is guaranteed to look awful. Although that XP computer still has zero issues running Sega CD or Turbografx CD games, guess PS1 are just more hassle.
