What's the best way to play Game Boy Advance games today?

[Sarge]

I'm not entirely sure about this, but do consoles actually adjust the power of their laser reading mechanisms, or do they employ a constant energy consumption? If the intensity doesn't adjust (and I'm going to take a guess that they don't, given that most attempts to resuscitate drive revolve around potentiometer adjustments), the only thing that will cause issues is if you're having trouble reading the disc. Having to make multiple reads and use a lot of ECC just to work is going to cause the laser to break down more quickly, not unlike the constant strain that playing DVDs in a console will.

I use burned media on my Sega CD and Saturn, as those drives don't seem to be picky at all with what I use in it. My PlayStation, on the other hand, has always had issues with trying to read burned media, and I suspect continuing down that route would have led the system to meeting an early demise... not that they were spectacularly constructed in the first place.

[Ziggy]

I use burned media on my Sega CD and Saturn, as those drives don't seem to be picky at all with what I use in it. My PlayStation, on the other hand, has always had issues with trying to read burned media, and I suspect continuing down that route would have led the system to meeting an early demise... not that they were spectacularly constructed in the first place.

Yeah, I'm not sure if the PS1 is a good example. On one hand, they touted it as a music CD player, but it was also before the time that CD-Rs were as common as the mixed tape. At least, in the early life of the console. The earliest revisions are also notorious for having bad drives, even the mid-life revisions aren't too great. And that's with pressed discs, let alone burns.

[Sarge]

Yeah, I had one of the last revisions (9001, I think?), and it read pressed discs like a champ, but barfed on burned media. Particularly when it came to XA audio or FMVs. I know that they can typically be tweaked a bit to improve burned disc reading, but I suspect that's jacking up the laser power and thusly burning it up faster. It did so well with regular games that I didn't want to touch it, anyway.

[marurun]

Burned discs put more strain on the laser and shorten their lifespan, do they not? Or is that just a Dreamcast issue?

This reference needs to be placed in any Burn Guide
Burned discs will make a laser work harder eventually shortening its life. How quickly is not clear, just imagine how the pits are formed on a commercial pressing vs a home disc burner.

1. The factory pressed disc will definitely have closer tolerance placed pits.

2. The pit reflective properties of a pressed disc are superior to the dye of a burned disc.

This is both true and untrue at the same time. Your numbered points are absolutely correct, that pressed discs, generally, will be easier to read than most CDRs. (There are exception, of course, in that some low-quality pressed discs are hard to read due to deterioration of the data layer, and some high-quality CDRs do come awfully close in quality to pressed discs.)

That said, the language used, that the laser will work harder, is nonsense. The laser diode doesn't work harder; it works longer, but then, so do all the mechanical parts. Basically, when the disc is seeking it is working more of the gears and mechanicals, moving the head in and out and altering the disc speed. Burned discs, being harder to read, will require longer seeks to find the relevant data, meaning this mechanical process may take longer, with more movement on the parts. Also, the laser, which has a set power level (it doesn't put itself on FULL BLAST mode when there are read errors, it just tries again and the same, set power level), will spend a little more time on, since it has to read the disc during the seek process.

So if a burned disc causes seek times to take an extra 5-10% longer, then you are putting an extra 5-10% wear on your drive during those seek operations. You aren't putting extra wear on during extended read sessions (like Redbook audio or streaming data) because those will be spinning and reading the entire time to keep the buffers full, even if there are minor CRC errors and re-reads.

So if your old PS1 spends 5 minutes seeking during a 1 hour gaming session, you've put 60 minutes of laser diode wear, 55 minutes of regular mechanical wear, and 5 minutes of intense mechanical wear on your system. If using a CDR extends that seek time to 5.5 minutes, that's still 60 minutes of laser diode wear, 54.5 minutes of regular mechanical wear, and 5.5 minutes of intense mechanical wear, and 30 seconds less play time.

It's been a couple years, but I actually emailed a CD-ROM expert about this once, and his response was the difference was probably negligible.

(Sorry for the rant. I feel very strongly about this issue. )

[CRTGAMER]

This is both true and untrue at the same time. Your numbered points are absolutely correct, that pressed discs, generally, will be easier to read than most CDRs. (There are exception, of course, in that some low-quality pressed discs are hard to read due to deterioration of the data layer, and some high-quality CDRs do come awfully close in quality to pressed discs.)

That said, the language used, that the laser will work harder, is nonsense. The laser diode doesn't work harder; it works longer, but then, so do all the mechanical parts. So if a burned disc causes seek times to take an extra 5-10% longer, then you are putting an extra 5-10% weak on your drive during those seek operations. You aren't putting extra wear on during extended read sessions (like Redbook audio or streaming data) because those will be spinning and reading the entire time to keep the buffers full, even if there are minor CRC errors and re-reads.

In my "Laser working harder", of course I was meaning the entire Laser Head assembly. The laser eye jumping up and down as well as pivoting just that little bit more multiplied by the entire read time and not just the initial seek time. Even during the extended reads the Laser is focusing (servos kicking around) just that little bit harder to read the pits of a burned copy vs the pressed disc. The pits are so so tiny, any burn will not be as "pristine" as the pressed original as stated in my previous Reply.



Overall life of the Laser will be reduced, just unclear how much sooner. One has to weigh if a burned copy is worth the risk even if maybe small, especially if the original pressed disc is not too costly. Consider the price of a replacement laser/console especially years later when harder to find on the cheap in good condition. Throw in if newer console that has locked purchased downloads when online support goes away.

[Ziggy]

So if your old PS1 spends 5 minutes seeking during a 1 hour gaming session, you've put 60 minutes of laser diode wear, 55 minutes of regular mechanical wear, and 5 minutes of intense mechanical wear on your system. If using a CDR extends that seek time to 5.5 minutes, that's still 60 minutes of laser diode wear, 54.5 minutes of regular mechanical wear, and 5.5 minutes of intense mechanical wear, and 30 seconds less play time.

Point taken, which reminds me...

I'm not entirely sure about this, but do consoles actually adjust the power of their laser reading mechanisms, or do they employ a constant energy consumption? If the intensity doesn't adjust (and I'm going to take a guess that they don't, given that most attempts to resuscitate drive revolve around potentiometer adjustments), the only thing that will cause issues is if you're having trouble reading the disc. Having to make multiple reads and use a lot of ECC just to work is going to cause the laser to break down more quickly, not unlike the constant strain that playing DVDs in a console will.

I was gonna quote and comment on this before, but forgot (I was posting at work, where I get distracted every two seconds).

This is something that I've always wondered myself. I know most drives have a pot that you can use to adjust the intensity (power going to) the laser. Surely cranking that up will cause any drive to wear out sooner ("sooner" being relative). But can the drive adjust the intensity of the laser on the fly? Maybe not as drastic as the pot will, but more of a fine tune? I mean, all discs are not equal. CD drive manufactures must have known this would be the case from the start.

If the drive cannot adjust the intensity, then I would have to agree that reading burns would only add seek time which would be, in normal cases, a negligible amount of wear and tear.

[Tanooki]

Ok maybe I'm not forgetting where this started but how did a discussion of CD/DVD format end up in a 'best way to play GBA games today' thread happen anyway?

I'm glad no one at Nintendo ever got the dumb idea to use optical on a portable, they're too easy to mess with as the PSP showed.

[marurun]

Most CD drives that stop working do so for mechanical reasons, or because the laser fell out of adjustment over time in terms of intensity (also mechanical, but at least it's user-adjustable). In the PC Engine/TG-CD, the most common failure point on the original CD-ROM2 unit is a small plastic gear, but age is probably a bigger culprit than wear.

In my "Laser working harder", of course I was meaning the entire Laser Head assembly. The laser eye jumping up and down as well as pivoting just that little bit more multiplied by the entire read time and not just the initial seek time. Even during the extended reads the Laser is focusing (servos kicking around) just that little bit harder to read the pits of a burned copy vs the pressed disc. The pits are so so tiny, any burn will not be as "pristine" as the pressed original as stated in my previous Reply.

Whether the disc is pressed or burned doesn't affect the ability of the laser to raise or lower itself to the proper height to focus on the disc's surface. The chemical layer used in CDRs is reflective enough that it doesn't introduce any problems unless the laser is simply too weak (sometimes the case is very old drives), and in that case it just won't work at all. It's not like the laser head's height is being constantly adjusted. Once it's locked onto the disc's surface it pretty much stays put.

There also isn't any pivoting in a CD or DVD drive. The angle of the laser is set and not adjustable. If you hear the drive cranking it's seeking, scanning the drive for a new location not adjacent to where it was pulling data from before. It's not refocusing or anything like that. Focusing is done solely by the height of the laser head.

Overall life of the Laser will be reduced, just unclear how much sooner. One has to weigh if a burned copy is worth the risk even if maybe small, especially if the original pressed disc is not too costly. Consider the price of a replacement laser/console especially years later when harder to find on the cheap in good condition. Throw in if newer console that has locked purchased downloads when online support goes away.

I really am sorry to be so argumentative on this point, but there simply isn't any actual data on this. All we have are a few anecdotes, and anecdotes aren't reliable data. This really strikes me as fear-mongering (though not the deliberate kind, I know you're not being a dick). The only way to keep our systems from dying is to not ever turn them on or play games on them, and even that strategy isn't any good, because age alone does a lot of damage to disc-based consoles. I think age is in fact a much greater risk to consoles than the wear and tear of use. Any plastic gears or belts will get brittle with age. The Famicom disk system is the most obvious example of that. The disks and the belt are equally likely to die on you whether you've used them or just stored them.

The problem with this entire issue is that because people love their old systems and don't want them to crap out on them they often turn to simplistic mantras to preserve their valuable consoles. "Don't use burned discs because they make your system work harder," sound perfectly reasonable, but as soon as you dig down and look at how a CD or DVD drive operates, there really isn't that much room for "extra work." For the most part, these things either work or they don't. Most of the time you're playing a game the drive is either idling (spinning at low speed) or reading sequential data for audio or other media.

[CRTGAMER]

Ok maybe I'm not forgetting where this started but how did a discussion of CD/DVD format end up in a 'best way to play GBA games today' thread happen anyway?

Blame ElkinFencer who started this and all of us chiming in!

An important topic, I quoted all the posts over to a new Thread. Please discuss disc issues over there to get the "Game Boy Advance games today" back on track.

Pressed Discs vs Burned Discs
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1063646#p1063646

[retrosportsgamer]

I certainly see the validity in how cramped the SP 101 is, but its really very similar to how you'd hold your phone to play a mobile game (vertically obv). It's still my preferred GBA route (I also have one of the original GBAs) and I really like it for original GB games since you get the backlight.

Also love how it folds into being very compact. Easy to throw in the work bag. I don't know what they go for now, I got mine back in like '11 I think for $40 with a flawless screen despite some cosmetic issues on the outer shell.