DRE's and non-booting official games on Dreamcast

[Niode]

I have had my dreamcast since launch, and i love it to pieces but a few years ago it start to go on the blink. During extended bouts of Soul Calibur with my mates it would lock up during the loading screen. This at first started happening randomly, we would play 'til it locked up then play another game and the go back to it. After a while the DC just stopped loading official games altogether, so i had to resort to playing my backups. I then just decided to lay it to rest into early retirement to one day hope to solve this problem.

Recently pulled my Dreamcast out. Now there is only a few official games working. Even shenmue 2 gets DRE's early on into playtime. I'm having to resort to downloading backups of my favourite games just to play!! Could my use of backups have doomed my DC into an early grave?

Anybody know of a way fixing this problem? If it's the GDrom failing then where could i get replacement parts from?

BTW what happens is when i place a game into the DC it boots the sega enterprises screen etc, then just goes into the dash. i click play and the DC just flashes back at me saying there's no disc there! Sometimes the games will load but will crash early into the game. Very frustrating.

I've also heard that increasing the strength of the lazer will fix the problem, but not knowing where the hell this is and being very reluctant to open up my precious DC without good reason to do so severely puts me off from 'experimenting'.

[lunar]

BTW what happens is when i place a game into the DC it boots the sega enterprises screen etc, then just goes into the dash. i click play and the DC just flashes back at me saying there's no disc there! Sometimes the games will load but will crash early into the game. Very frustrating.

This happens with my VF3:TB disc, but not with my other originals. The discs are mint, so it looks like with some discs you need a stronger laser. Tweaking the laser would be easier than replacing the GD-rom drive.

[retrogamer]

I think the laser intensity can be adjusted with relative ease. A quick google search will bring up a few websites on how to do it. There is also a site on how to fix the F1 resistor for the control port. It might be wise to keep a spare Dreamcast or two since you have amassed a fairly large collection. People are still working on alot of great stuff that should be released sometime in the near future for the DC so the system still has alot of life in it.