Please help dispell this rumor

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:33 pm

yes, playing burnt games on your dc or any other console, makes the laser work harder than normal and can make it wear out faster. It has happened to at least 2 of my dcs and one of my 3do's.

For the record, with your old dc that your scrapped in favor of the new, it sounded like it could just been the cd spindle or something relatively simple.

Post by **Roofus** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 1:57 am

It's mostly playing pirated games off of CDRs that wears out the laser. Homebrew doesn't generaly have the problem.

Bruno Bronson · Post by **Bruno Bronson** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 5:04 pm

That's not true I played burned disks on my friends crapcast and he never complained of it not working. It all depends on the model of the dreamcast the first editions are pieces of junk.

TheDumbAss · Post by **TheDumbAss** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 3:59 am

With pirate games if the disc isnt burned right then it can cause the lazer to work harder than it should. On comercial games the files are usually put in a certain order to reduce the amount of travel the lazer must do to load. Their reason is more of a load time concern than lazer life. If that order is wrong (pirate games) then the lazer will have to seek around more. More work = more wear = shorter life.

While it is true that homebrew and emulators usually dont have this problem there is something to remember...
The more you use the lazer the quicker it will wear out. For example:
A simple emulator will load very few files. Sometimes as little as the *.bin (emulator executeable) and the ROM. Usually also menu graphics though. So not much wear overall.

Quake and Beats of Rage both have a larger number of files they have to load to get the game running. So these games will wear your lazer down quicker.

Glad adjusting the lazer got your old one working again!