Questions regarding Burnt CD's for PC-E

[AnnaTheBanana]

Hi all!

I've recently acquired a PC-E / CD IFU-30 System and I've been thinking of playing some of the custom-made titles (Like the NES2PCE Projects) and would like to ask some questions regarding Burning CD's for it.

- Will a 650 MB CD Work better as opposed to a 700 MB CD?
- Do Burnt CD's actually reduce the overall lifespan of the Laser Reader?
- Currently I only have a System Card 1.0, Will I need a 3.0 / Arcade Card in order to play Burnt CD's, or do the Games that work with the System Card 1.0 still work on a burnt CD?
- Does the region lock still apply for Burnt CD's?
- Any software you would recommend for Burning CD's for the PC-E? I know IMGBurn is popular, however, from my research some claim that IMGBurn's Burn quality is not that good.

Thankss! 

[_joshuaTurbo]

- Will a 650 MB CD Work better as opposed to a 700 MB CD? (either should work, but I'm not a pro- go ahead and try it)
- Do Burnt CD's actually reduce the overall lifespan of the Laser Reader?  (it depends on who you ask. If you get the laser replaced, it might actually read burns better than original games like my recapped/laser updated Duo does!)
- Currently I only have a System Card 1.0, Will I need a 3.0 / Arcade Card in order to play Burnt CD's, or do the Games that work with the System Card 1.0 still work on a burnt CD?  (just grab a 3.0/ACD so you can play a strong majority of the CD library. I think 1.0 only plays a small library of CD rom games.  CD-rom2, Super CD-rom2, and Arcade Cards are what most CD games are listed as.)
- Does the region lock still apply for Burnt CD's?  Nope, all CD's from any region can play on any region (us or Japanese)
- Any software you would recommend for Burning CD's for the PC-E? I know IMGBurn is popular, however, from my research some claim that IMGBurn's Burn quality is not that good. (Imgburn is great!)

Cheers, and welcome to the community!






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[Necromancer]

650mb would theoretically be better due to wider grooves and/or no overburn area where the laser might get stuck, but I've been using 720mb (maybe only 700mb?) JVC branded Taiyo Yuden discs for years without issue.  I'd not worry about it.

CDRs are only going to hurt your drive if you ignore that it's not working correctly.  If it plays without issue, your drive will be fine; if it struggles and loses its place and has to refocus often, you'll kill it eventually.

1.0 syscard is pretty uncommon, but most any 'regular' CD should work just fine.  The more common 2.0 card is mainly big fixes and an added music CD player.  You definitely will need a 3.0 syscard eventually, though, as there's way too many great Super CDs that need to be played; including those NES2PCE games, I believe.  I'm fairly certain that the newer everdrives can be used as a 3.0 syscard, so I'd invest in that before bothering with a real one.

I use Imgburn and haven't made a coaster in years.  They always fail validation, though, but they still work fine.


Just my zwei pfennig.  Welcome aboard, best of luck to you on your burning adventures, and please keep us updated on what did (or didn't) work for you.   

[AnnaTheBanana]

Thank you Joshua and Necromancer for the assistance, and thanks for the warm welcome 

CDRs are only going to hurt your drive if you ignore that it's not working correctly.  If it plays without issue, your drive will be fine; if it struggles and loses its place and has to refocus often, you'll kill it eventually.

Would there be any way to test if a CDR is working correctly? Any telltale signs that the laser is struggling from your experience?

[Necromancer]

Would there be any way to test if a CDR is working correctly? Any telltale signs that the laser is struggling from your experience?

There's often a high pitched squeal when it's having troubles.  That may not be noticeable to anyone that hasn't owned the system for years and is used to how it normally sounds; what will be more obvious is songs that stop playing abruptly and don't start again until moving to a new stage (where the track would normally change anyway), or loading times that're inordinately long or multiple seeks, which you'll clearly hear.  There's a few games that aren't well organized and do load from multiple locations, but most only load from one continuous spot, taking just a couple of seconds.

[AnnaTheBanana]

I burnt a game to test (Avenger JP, which assumedly should work with the 1.0 System Card), and while the burnt CD worked on my friend's Duo-R without any problems, the CD rom 2 in my Interface Unit got stuck on a Disc read error (Displayed as Red text on the Boot Screen, Under the Press Start text) and made a very strange noise, to which i turned off immediately.

As a test, I put in a pressed Audio CD (Thanks John Lennon!) in the CD Rom 2, powered independently away from the Interface Unit, and seemingly played smoothly without any problems or any strange noises.

I have decided to purchase a pressed CD of Ys I & II  in order to be able to see if the Disc read error and strange noises re-occur, before testing any further burns, just to be on the safe side while I hunt down a decent NTSC CRT (I live in Europe, so it's not easy to find CRT's that aren't PAL, lol)

Thanks for the info, much appreciated 

[Keith Courage]

Unfortunately there isn't an overall full-proof way to make CD-R discs for DUO or PCE/Turbo CD drives.

I repair multiple systems per week and in that time I also test with CDR discs. Unfortunately every system and drive can work better with a particular CDR brand of disc vs the other. Regardless of it always being the same type of system or not.

Meaning, while one PCE DUO might work great with Cheap CDr media like basic verbatim discs(light green bottom), other DUOs will hate those and will only work good with better quality media like Taiyo Yuden brand or the nicer Verbatim(Data Life Plus) discs. Then there are some DUOs that will only work with the cheaper light green bottom discs and can't be used at all with the better quality stuff.

Sometimes systems can be made to read CDR discs better by making some minor lens adjustments or replacing the lens and other times making adjustments or changing the lens makes no difference at all.

So the best kind of media for your system is basically whatever works best for your system. You can't just go by what works good in one DUO system because another can act very differently. 

This also hold true for the White PCE drives and Black Tg16 CD drives.

Also, you don't need a CD burner that can go all the way down to 2x or 4x. Usually just setting your drive to the slowest it can go is good enough. So if you have a drive that can only go down to 12x or 8x then that's just fine.

It's more a question of how well does your particular CD burner work with the particular type of CD-R media you bought. I keep multiple CD-R drives on hand because 1 brand of media will burn more accurately with one drive vs the other.

So there are a lot of variables here.

The reason I test multiple types of discs on the systems customers send me for repair is so I can let them know what CD-R discs works best with their system.



In the past, I'd have many instances where someone would get a CD drive or duo back from me and then complain it wasn't reading discs.
I would then have to ask, are you using real game cds?  Answer (NO)
What CD-R brand discs are you using? (generic something or other)

Then I'd have to explain to them that they need to try another brand of media or a different CD burner.

This way, if I just do all the testing ahead of time and let the customer know what CD-R discs work best. It avoids all the back and forth questions later and then no worry from the customer about the state of their newly repaired CD drive.