VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => Hardware and Tech => Topic started by: inheritancedpa on February 05, 2014, 09:32:06 pm
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First of all, greetings to everyone! A few days ago I registered on this forum. And unfortunately here I bring you my first topic that I would have preferred to be for another reasons. But let's get to it.
There was a few years since I played Shenmue for the last time, so a few days ago I started to re-play it, but I've been having trouble with freezings.
Sometimes in moments of loading the game, the video and game freezes (while the audio is still playing). And the only thing you can do is turn off or reset the console. So maybe I have an old lens with problems.... Any suggestion... I've read and watched some videos about calibrating the lens... but maybe there are better options before opening the Dreamcast.
Any tips to clean the lens?
More info:
The Shenmue discs are in mint condition...
It always happens in transitions to battles or in-game videos. Never happened in another situation.
I didn't tried to play or reproduce the error with another games.
Sometimes after a freezing and after reseting the console, the dreamcast is not able to reproduce the game at all... After a few minutes it plays it again normally...weird stuff :-S
Thank you!!!
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I'd recommend re-calibrating the lens, it's not too difficult, just a little intimidating at first, if you want to clean it use rubbing alcohol, preferably 90%, and a q-tip and just clean it very gently, like you're barely even touching it. I've had to do that a couple times with my dreamcast and Saturn, until I just re-calibrated it. Just be careful
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I'd recommend re-calibrating the lens, it's not too difficult, just a little intimidating at first, if you want to clean it use rubbing alcohol, preferably 90%, and a q-tip and just clean it very gently, like you're barely even touching it. I've had to do that a couple times with my dreamcast and Saturn, until I just re-calibrated it. Just be careful
and if this doesn't work, you might need to replace the laser which is not all that difficult and it is pretty cheap, if the dreamcast is anything like the PS1, it will be very easy get to/replace the laser
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I'd recommend re-calibrating the lens, it's not too difficult, just a little intimidating at first, if you want to clean it use rubbing alcohol, preferably 90%, and a q-tip and just clean it very gently, like you're barely even touching it. I've had to do that a couple times with my dreamcast and Saturn, until I just re-calibrated it. Just be careful
and if this doesn't work, you might need to replace the laser which is not all that difficult and it is pretty cheap, if the dreamcast is anything like the PS1, it will be very easy get to/replace the laser
Unfortunately, the dreamcast is not like the PS1 from my understanding. Very few lasers are compatible. You need one that is compatible with GD-Roms optically. Also, you need a very specific laserhead due to the distance being different from the DC and a typical laser from a CD-ROM drive for example.
It's very common for laser replacements to read CD backups but not official GD-ROMS because of this.
The dreamcast is a strange beast.
Tweak that laser if you need to. Keep in mind this will shorten the lifespan, but if it is not reading games anymore, tweak it. If that does not work, replacement consoles tend to be about $30. Start stocking up.
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I'd recommend re-calibrating the lens, it's not too difficult, just a little intimidating at first, if you want to clean it use rubbing alcohol, preferably 90%, and a q-tip and just clean it very gently, like you're barely even touching it. I've had to do that a couple times with my dreamcast and Saturn, until I just re-calibrated it. Just be careful
and if this doesn't work, you might need to replace the laser which is not all that difficult and it is pretty cheap, if the dreamcast is anything like the PS1, it will be very easy get to/replace the laser
Unfortunately, the dreamcast is not like the PS1 from my understanding. Very few lasers are compatible. You need one that is compatible with GD-Roms optically. Also, you need a very specific laserhead due to the distance being different from the DC and a typical laser from a CD-ROM drive for example.
It's very common for laser replacements to read CD backups but not official GD-ROMS because of this.
The dreamcast is a strange beast.
Tweak that laser if you need to. Keep in mind this will shorten the lifespan, but if it is not reading games anymore, tweak it. If that does not work, replacement consoles tend to be about $30. Start stocking up.
i completely forgot that the DC used GD-ROM, for those who don't know GD was sega failed competitor to DVD that they got out before DVD and it was pretty much only used by sega also as soon as the PS2 with its DVD drive came out, GD-ROM was killed by DVD
i hope cleaning it works because good luck finding GD laser replacement
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I'd recommend re-calibrating the lens, it's not too difficult, just a little intimidating at first, if you want to clean it use rubbing alcohol, preferably 90%, and a q-tip and just clean it very gently, like you're barely even touching it. I've had to do that a couple times with my dreamcast and Saturn, until I just re-calibrated it. Just be careful
Thank you all guys! I will try to clean it at first, if that doesn't help, recalibrating the lens will be the next step!
I can use 96ยบ Alcohol?
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I agree with the other comments so far. You can try cleaning the laser, but I don't think that is the issue.
Normally from the issues you are having it means the lens needs to be re-calibrated or one of the two motors is dying out on the machine.
The strange thing is that this issue shows up on certain games more so than others. Might mean those games are more intensive (using the motors more to search for data or using the lens more).
This issue seems to first show up on Skies or Arcadia or Shenmue (any game can make it happen, but in my experience those games are reported the most - for me personally my consoles start to show issues on Skies of Arcadia before they go bad). Game freezes - music keeps playing. The music is already cued up in the ram and the console is trying to find and load what is to appear next on the screen.
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Launch window games are notorious for being early warnings. Blue Stinger or the Midway games (Hydro Thunder, Mortal Kombat, Ready 2 Rumble, Gauntlet) are some other games that refuse to load early on.
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I agree with the other comments so far. You can try cleaning the laser, but I don't think that is the issue.
Normally from the issues you are having it means the lens needs to be re-calibrated or one of the two motors is dying out on the machine.
The strange thing is that this issue shows up on certain games more so than others. Might mean those games are more intensive (using the motors more to search for data or using the lens more).
This issue seems to first show up on Skies or Arcadia or Shenmue (any game can make it happen, but in my experience those games are reported the most - for me personally my consoles start to show issues on Skies of Arcadia before they go bad). Game freezes - music keeps playing. The music is already cued up in the ram and the console is trying to find and load what is to appear next on the screen.
As you said, cleaning it had no effect at all... so next step will be re-calibrate the lens. Wish me luck :D
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I agree with the other comments so far. You can try cleaning the laser, but I don't think that is the issue.
Normally from the issues you are having it means the lens needs to be re-calibrated or one of the two motors is dying out on the machine.
The strange thing is that this issue shows up on certain games more so than others. Might mean those games are more intensive (using the motors more to search for data or using the lens more).
This issue seems to first show up on Skies or Arcadia or Shenmue (any game can make it happen, but in my experience those games are reported the most - for me personally my consoles start to show issues on Skies of Arcadia before they go bad). Game freezes - music keeps playing. The music is already cued up in the ram and the console is trying to find and load what is to appear next on the screen.
As you said, cleaning it had no effect at all... so next step will be re-calibrate the lens. Wish me luck :D
Good luck. When tweaking the laser... TINY turns.
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Im curious at the title of this thread. It says Dreamcast "begins" to fail. That junk system failed the day it was released! :)
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Im curious at the title of this thread. It says Dreamcast "begins" to fail. That junk system failed the day it was released! :)
It's not an unusual title at all. Almost anyone who plays said system can't believe that it failed. Some people, such as the original poster, go in denial... thinking that it is only beginning to fail. Some people angrily revolt, much like a teenager turning to drugs, and become RPG players. We all have our ways of coping with the loss of sega and its awesome arcade ports.
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Im curious at the title of this thread. It says Dreamcast "begins" to fail. That junk system failed the day it was released! :)
Soera, please dont request a war with one of my beloved and most favorite consoles of all time... ;)
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Im curious at the title of this thread. It says Dreamcast "begins" to fail. That junk system failed the day it was released! :)
It's not an unusual title at all. Almost anyone who plays said system can't believe that it failed. Some people, such as the original poster, go in denial... thinking that it is only beginning to fail. Some people angrily revolt, much like a teenager turning to drugs, and become RPG players. We all have our ways of coping with the loss of sega and its awesome arcade ports.
Beta, dont feed into Soera's comment. He's just mad because he never got to experience the true power of the Phoenix Mirror...He never got to skate wild on buildings and in the streets tagging everything in site very colorful...He unfortunately first met Shadow on some bogus system called the PS2...He never got to play Resident Evil on a console that showed the first RE games in the best detail...He will probably say that Shenmue was not the first open world game made on a console...He can't admit that even without the help of EA Sports, Sega was so brilliant that they came out with their own line of sports called 2K which made some of the best sports games of that era...He will never pick up taxi fairs the original way they were intended...He probably thinks that a playstation 2 memory card is a real memory card...He will never know that the Dreamcast controller is one of the best controllers ever to be held by man...He prob forget that the Dreamcast introduced online gaming (for those who like online gaming) so on and so forth...You get the point
;) ;) ;) ;)
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Heh the Dreamcast's uber suckfest is only surpassed in horribleness by the thing known as the N64. :)
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Heh the Dreamcast's uber suckfest is only surpassed in horribleness by the thing known as the N64. :)
HA ;) The N64 is awesome too! ;D I'm surprised tho' that some one who like the SMS and Nintendo stuff you dont like the Dreamcast or n64?
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There are 2 things a system must have to be considered "good or cool".
1- Rpgs
2- Controllers not the size of basketballs.
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There are 2 things a system must have to be considered "good or cool".
1- Rpgs
2- Controllers not the size of basketballs.
1 only applys to harley riding rpg players ;)
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My vote is the only one that counts! 8)
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There are 2 things a system must have to be considered "good or cool".
1- Rpgs
2- Controllers not the size of basketballs.
Aren't you going for a full set on the Master System? This system has 1 good RPG. The others aren't even decent. Miracle Warriors and Ultima iv are a level of garbage just a tad better than Black Onyx. The rest are adventure games.
In the same way the Dreamcast has Skies of Arcadia. But then the RPGs after that are at least more enjoyable than Miracle Warriors and Ultima.
Grandia 2
Record of the Lodoss War
Evolution
Evolution 2
Egg
Dragon Riders
Time Stalkers
Silver
This is an RPG every two months. In all honesty, a decent showing for Sega's last system. And granted , I realize you are just having a bit of fun with this post. But it does make me wonder, why do you collect for the master system? It's garbage for RPGs. Honestly, when you get down to it, the NES is not a great RPG machine either. Why have full sets? Is it just the idea of a full set? What makes Soera tick?
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I am going for a full MS set but it has multiple levels for me. Miracle warriors is actually a great game. My avatar name Soera stemmed from that game. Ultima IV is the best Ultima game out there. I also really enjoyed Ys and Golvellius (more action RPG than traditional but still good games). R-type is my favorite shooter. Basketball nightmare and Rocky are also fun nostalgia games for me. The SMS is the system I grew up with. My mom refused to ever let me own an NES but actually bought me an SMS for Christmas one year. I was the only person in my entire group of friends that owned one and Im glad I did.
The NES isnt a beast for RPGs but they do have 2 of the biggest series that started there. DQ and FF. Destiny of an Emperor is a really unique experience as well. I will be the first to say however that the NES has one of the biggest libraries of shovelware ever though. Out of 765 total games, I would say that 10% max is actually decent.
When compared to the PS1 & 2 though, the N64 and Dreamcast simply lose. There isnt even a comparison. :)
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I am going for a full MS set but it has multiple levels for me. Miracle warriors is actually a great game. My avatar name Soera stemmed from that game. Ultima IV is the best Ultima game out there. I also really enjoyed Ys and Golvellius (more action RPG than traditional but still good games). R-type is my favorite shooter. Basketball nightmare and Rocky are also fun nostalgia games for me. The SMS is the system I grew up with. My mom refused to ever let me own an NES but actually bought me an SMS for Christmas one year. I was the only person in my entire group of friends that owned one and Im glad I did.
The NES isnt a beast for RPGs but they do have 2 of the biggest series that started there. DQ and FF. Destiny of an Emperor is a really unique experience as well. I will be the first to say however that the NES has one of the biggest libraries of shovelware ever though. Out of 765 total games, I would say that 10% max is actually decent.
When compared to the PS1 & 2 though, the N64 and Dreamcast simply lose. There isnt even a comparison. :)
Golvellius. I got that game a while back and played it and beat it in a few days. I will say Golvellius is a very fun and exciting game. In the first 10 minutes, I was so iffy about it and about to turn it off but played a little longer and began to love it! :) I actually think they should of made a sequel to Golvellius. I will say that I enjoyed Golvellius more than Phantasy Star on the SMS.
You mentioned Destiny of an Emperor. I actually have this game in the box sitting on my shelf and never played it. I looks very cool on the back with the screen shots but never tried it. I have confidence now that I will enjoy it.
Per the Dreamcast being compared to the PS1 and PS2. To me, it's fair to say that if the Dreamcast got the love and more time, it would have been on top. I love the Dreamcast controller, the small portion of games that did come out, the sound, the graphics, I think its amazing!
Now, the N64 just was so fun to me as a kid. It was the first system that I could play with more than 1 friend for hours and hours. At the time compared to the Saturn and PS1, the 64 had the best sports games and multiplayer. Mario Kart, Duke Nukem, GOLDENEYE, I mean so much on the 64 that is so precious in my opinion..
But of course, sales wise, the ps2 has the most sales ever
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Ultima IV is the best Ultima game out there.
When compared to the PS1 & 2 though, the N64 and Dreamcast simply lose. There isnt even a comparison. :)
I have never played Ultima. I turned off on it when I realize the first of the series was on pc or something. I have always been curious about it tho'.
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My mom refused to ever let me own an NES but actually bought me an SMS for Christmas one year. I was the only person in my entire group of friends that owned one and Im glad I did.
Herein lies most of the dreamcast love I see. Most fans grew up with the Genesis. The dreamcast was at the exact right time to be our first system that we saved up for. If you are a SEGA fan, you are probably an arcade fan first and foremost. The arcade is what SEGA is known for. And in the late 90s, the Naomi system was the king of the arcades. It supported all of the big Namco, Capcom, and SEGA games, which were probably over half of the arcades being produced. Most of these came to the dreamcast. 250 games for the first year of a systems release is impressive. This is due to the arcade game ports.
So, the SEGA dreamcast being the last SEGA console, at the time most of the kids growing up with the Genesis could afford it, being the last true arcade experience at home, and embodying the arcade scene in it's final glory days, combine with a short but prolific era of quality arcade ports, creates a very fondly remembered machine that outlasts what its actual legacy is.
Take a poll of die hard dreamcast fans, most of them will be in their late 20s. People older or younger won't have the same nostalgia for it. It's a personal story, just like your master system.
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My mom refused to ever let me own an NES but actually bought me an SMS for Christmas one year. I was the only person in my entire group of friends that owned one and Im glad I did.
Herein lies most of the dreamcast love I see. Most fans grew up with the Genesis. The dreamcast was at the exact right time to be our first system that we saved up for. If you are a SEGA fan, you are probably an arcade fan first and foremost. The arcade is what SEGA is known for. And in the late 90s, the Naomi system was the king of the arcades. It supported all of the big Namco, Capcom, and SEGA games, which were probably over half of the arcades being produced. Most of these came to the dreamcast. 250 games for the first year of a systems release is impressive. This is due to the arcade game ports.
So, the SEGA dreamcast being the last SEGA console, at the time most of the kids growing up with the Genesis could afford it, being the last true arcade experience at home, and embodying the arcade scene in it's final glory days, combine with a short but prolific era of quality arcade ports, creates a very fondly remembered machine that outlasts what its actual legacy is.
Take a poll of die hard dreamcast fans, most of them will be in their late 20s. People older or younger won't have the same nostalgia for it. It's a personal story, just like your master system.
What's true is that I am in my late 20s; however, I don't know much about the arcade ports. My love for the dreamcast is this. During the Genesis era, I owned an NES and SNES but my best friend owned a Genesis. I played hours upon hours of the Genesis at his house. I fell in love with Sonic. Sonic was tied with Mario for me as a kid in the early 90s. So when I first played Sonic 3D Blast for the Saturn, I love it! The very first time I played a Dreamcast, It was the friend of a friends. He had a ton of games and accessories. So the first game I played was Sonic Adventure, which I enjoyed being a fan of sonic. Second game I played with the legendary SHENMUE. I was so amazed at that game and I could not believe what I playing. He got mad because I played for so long. After that I played Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Ready 2 Rumble, and so much more. He had at least 20 games. I loved all them!! :) :) I remember at that time that I was stunned at the Dreamcast. The graphics, gameplay, the games, everything. It made me feel cool to play it.
Then, maybe a year later or so, I remember being at school. At my school, we had your usual drug dealers, but we also had game dealers. They would sell bootleg playstation 1 games and dreamcast games. I remember trying to get a Dreamcast system from someone because I really wanted the system. I found out from this one dealer that he stopped selling Dreamcast games. I asked why and he said "they dont sell them no more". I was heart broken :'(
So I eventually got a ps2 from my mom as a christmast gift and even tho' I loved the ps2, my heart always remembered the Dreamcast. It kind of disappeared at that time and no one talked about it but I never forgot it. When I got older and had a job, I did not hesitate to buy my first Dreamcast for 40 bucks at my flea market :)
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Im curious at the title of this thread. It says Dreamcast "begins" to fail. That junk system failed the day it was released! :)
It's not an unusual title at all. Almost anyone who plays said system can't believe that it failed. Some people, such as the original poster, go in denial... thinking that it is only beginning to fail. Some people angrily revolt, much like a teenager turning to drugs, and become RPG players. We all have our ways of coping with the loss of sega and its awesome arcade ports.
Beta, dont feed into Soera's comment. He's just mad because he never got to experience the true power of the Phoenix Mirror...He never got to skate wild on buildings and in the streets tagging everything in site very colorful...He unfortunately first met Shadow on some bogus system called the PS2...He never got to play Resident Evil on a console that showed the first RE games in the best detail...He will probably say that Shenmue was not the first open world game made on a console...He can't admit that even without the help of EA Sports, Sega was so brilliant that they came out with their own line of sports called 2K which made some of the best sports games of that era...He will never pick up taxi fairs the original way they were intended...He probably thinks that a playstation 2 memory card is a real memory card...He will never know that the Dreamcast controller is one of the best controllers ever to be held by man...He prob forget that the Dreamcast introduced online gaming (for those who like online gaming) so on and so forth...You get the point
;) ;) ;) ;)
WOW, I've been a few days out! So sorry for a late reply. 90nostalga, totally agree with you except for the controller... great console, but a horrible controller... it's to big for me and the triggers just dont feel good, the analogue stick it's in a weird position for my hand... at least it's pretty lightweight for its size.
About the recalibration... tried to turn it a little bit to the clockwise and no difference... A little more and it just doesn't load the games. Counter clockwise does more or less the same... It's difficult reproduce the reading errors... so i would need more time... maybe the best it's to wait till dreamcast became unplayable. Because in some playing sessions (3-4 hours) sometimes works perfect.
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Tweaking the Dreamcast is a pain at times, and definitely hard to test and see if your tweaking helped.
I love the Dreamcast debate going on in this thread. I love the Dreamcast because it was the last gaming system I had bought before college, work, and wife became too much for me to invest any more time in gaming. (just to note since Sin2Beta brought it up - I am 34 right now - so a little older than the proposed age range for loving this system) The games I played on my Dreamcast were amazing though. I had just played about every RPG known to man on my PS1 and I was ready to just play some games that were simply fun and not 50 hour story adventures.
My wife later on surprised me with a PS2 and Final Fantasy X even though I thought we were broke. Yet I was sad that I had missed out on the Dreamcast's swan song. It is like when someone in your family dies and you just replay the thoughts that if you had only spent more time with them, only learned more about them while they were alive. I have the same kind of feelings about Dreamcast. If I had only spent more time online, bought more games, relished in Sega's final console.
There are definitely better consoles before and after the Dreamcast, but the Dreamcast was put to rest way before it had time to truly shine.
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I forgot to even mention that the E3 shows were amazing for Dreamcast. I used to spend more time at the Sega booth than any other. Well until the year Sega made their booth invite only. That was when everyone knew it was the beginning of the end.
Also it was cool to see grown men waking around the university with VMUs playing Pinta's Quest and taking their Chaos for a walk. Too funny!