Is Duo's CD driver supposed to load this slow?

[Bekic]

I've been meaning to do that for about 15 years now.

That's my thinking too. The DD2 isos floating around the net load super slow probably because they are imperfect copies. Same with Drac X, a lot of bad isos out there.

Seriously, what is "DD" or "DD2"? Didn't you punks go to school? Abreviations are fine, but the first time you use the thing you want to abbreviate, use the entire thing. Abreviate as much as you want afterwards. In legal matters this is known as "letting people know what the f*ck (WTF) you are talking about."

Regardless, there is really no reason for bad images of PCE games to continue to circulate. Those should have been weeded out years ago. Learn how to pirate shit, if this is the case. I wouldn't assume it was a bad image though, it's most likely a bad burn combined with a very tired drive manufactured before the existence of the CDR as we now know it.

It's Double Dragon 2 man, Jesus Christ. Granted the game is not as profilic on the PCE-CD as the NES versions but still.

The games are original and in immaculate condition so it can't be that but whenever that black screens appears and i hear that buzzing sound from the reader i'm bugging the f*ck out and expecting the worst (that it won't start at all).

[galam]

[ClodBuster]

Galam, you make me smile.

[ccovell]

Seriously, what is "DD" or "DD2"? Didn't you punks go to school? Abreviations are fine, but the first time you use the thing you want to abbreviate, use the entire thing.

Hear hear!  For a while I thought he was talking about the legendary adult film "Dwarf Dongs 2" and maybe was posting on the wrong board.

[NightWolve]

That's my thinking too. The DD2 isos floating around the net load super slow probably because they are imperfect copies. Same with Drac X, a lot of bad isos out there.

ISO/WAV/CUE image file sets of PCE/TG CD games that have bad/altered TOCs because MP3 decoding creates wave files with different file sizes than the originals causes crashes, lip syncing issues, audio tracks starting at later or earlier points, etc. I solved this problem years ago actually with an app called TocFixer, found here.

If you wanna know if the TOC is bad/altered, use MagicEngine and see if it detects the full name of the videogame. If your CD-R or disc image of say Ys IV is detected as "Ys IV - The Dawn of Ys (J)" then the TOC is proper. If all MagicEngine shows you is "PCECD" then it indicates the TOC is bad/altered/unoriginal which will cause problems with most games. If you only have the CD-R, you'd have to use TurboRip to rip to ISO/WAV/CUE, run TocFixer on the file set, then burn it back as a solution.

Anyway, since he stated these are original CD-ROMs, it was never poor CD-R brands, etc. That leaves the laser assembly I guess. I'd try relubricating the slider pole before ever attempting full replacement. The caps may have been replaced, but was the 20 year-old grease on the slider pole refreshed ? Usually though the known problem that causes is limited to audio tracks skipping, ceasing play and not resuming till the next event in the game forces another track to play. That's because the laser has lost agility given the dried-up grease. So, I'd try that first. Next thing to try is maybe an expert tweaking of the 3 CD related pots. There are PCEFX guides here on how to do that, but it's risky for a novice.

[Gentlegamer]

I take it TocFixer won't work on .cue/.iso with no .wav files.

There's a source for images that have all the games in that format. I tried playing Cosmic Fantasy 2 and the audio tracks are all out of wack.

[SignOfZeta]

Did you not know exactly what I was talking about? I don't feel the need to spout verbal diarrhea when I'm making a quick post in my phone at lunch.

I genuinely did not know what you were talking about. It was trying to figure out how you got a CD version of Double Dungeons. Of course I could have found an alphabetical list of PCE games and found it, but I've grown tired of having to do a Wiki search between every post. I'd rather just have a conversation.

Regardless, it is not "verbal diarrhea" to spell out the full name of something once. Technically, it's not verbal at all, but regardless, nobody is going to be bored to death because this thread is so excessively lengthy that it actually contains the entire name of of the game once.

[graffias79]

I take it TocFixer won't work on .cue/.iso with no .wav files.

There's a source for images that have all the games in that format. I tried playing Cosmic Fantasy 2 and the audio tracks are all out of wack.

I think from what he said you could burn it to disc then rip it back with TurboRip and then run the TocFixer program.

[NightWolve]

I take it TocFixer won't work on .cue/.iso with no .wav files.

There's a source for images that have all the games in that format. I tried playing Cosmic Fantasy 2 and the audio tracks are all out of wack.

I think you mean that they're in BIN/CUE format, if not, that was wrong of them to rename the BIN to ISO, but yeah, this is not a problem either.

1) Mount the CUE file with a virtual CD/DVD emulator like Alcohol 52%/Daemon Tools, etc.
2) Run TurboRip and point it to the virtual CD drive and rip it normally.
3) That'll yield you a full ISO/WAV/CUE image file set and then you can run TocFixer on it.
4) Burn the CUE file of that new image file set, and you're ready to go!

To be sure that the TOC is damaged, try using an emulator like MagicEngine and seeing if it detects the name of the game like I mentioned earlier. If it just shows you "PCECD" then in fact the TOC is altered due to MP3 encoding.

The history of the problems caused by MP3 encoding is because when you decode them back to a full WAV file, the original file size cannot be restored, it's close, but not exact. OGG solves this and if it had been used instead, all those problems would've been avoided. The only drawback is for us audiophiles that know some minor audio quality is lost with lossy encoding schemes such as MP3/OGG, but the amount of compression was too tempting and that's why they were used.

[technozombie]

When I was messing with xak3 I think that imgburn ripped it as cue/iso which I thought was strange. I'll verify that this evening when I get home from work.

[Gentlegamer]

It's definitely in .bin/.iso, though that may just be a renamed .bin file. I found another source that has the images in .cue/.bin, so that makes sense.

I had used Magic Engine to check, and it's definitely not detecting the proper format. I'll try "reverse ripping" it and see how it works.

Edit: TurboRip is saying the mounted image isn't a PCE image.

[NightWolve]

I had used Magic Engine to check, and it's definitely not detecting the proper format. I'll try "reverse ripping" it and see how it works.

Yeah, a MP3 mess, so that's your problem and pretty terrible... What happened was this: the image file set was once like ~60 Megs in ISO/MP3/CUE form prepared for Internet distribution, somebody downloaded that archive, decoded the MP3s back to WAV, burned the CUE file to a CD-R, ripped the CD-R back to full BIN/CUE form (so now it's back to ~600 Megs), and finally, that was then zipped and uploaded to the Internet, passed off as a good "1:1" original rip...

There is actually a way to analyze a wave file and see if it's been the victim of MP3 encoding/decoding, but anyhow, you get the idea of what happened here.

[Gentlegamer]

TurboRip is saying the image isn't a PCE image.

I double checked with Magic Engine and Ootake, ME says "PCE CD" and will boot the image, Ootake shows it as "Unknown Title" with a number string but still boots.

I'm guessing it's been ripped, re-ripped, so it's all out of wack.

[NightWolve]

Right, TurboRip has the same TOC database as MagicEngine and Ootake. But, you know what game it is. Rip it to ISO/WAV/CUE with TurboRip, run TocFixer, select the game title that you know it is, browse the file set, pick a file, click Repair, and it'll resize the files properly so when you burn the CUE back to a new CD-R it will be recognized properly as well as solve sync issues caused by a bad TOC - that's the "fixing" process.

[Gentlegamer]

TurboRip

Right, TurboRip has the same TOC database as MagicEngine and Ootake. But, you know what game it is. Rip it to ISO/WAV/CUE with TurboRip, run TocFixer, select the game title that you know it is, browse the file set, pick a file, click Repair, and it'll resize the files properly so when you burn the CUE back to a new CD-R it will be recognized properly as well as solve sync issues caused by a bad TOC - that's the "fixing" process.

TurboRip keeps saying "a valid PCE game disc was not detected!" so I can't get the ISO/WAV/CUE to run TocFixer on.

The image will boot in both ME and Ootake.