Here's an idea I'm going to try today: Using a CD-RW, I'll start messing with the CDD code to see if there's any rhyme or reason to how MR2 interperets the data. The obvious advantage to CD-R's is that I should be able to keep rewriteing the disc for each change. Any reason why this should not work or suggestions for a starting point?
By Farmer Jimbo on Saturday, April 28, 2001 - 06:51 pm:
Hmmpf. The PS1 does not do a good job of reading CD-RW's. It hangs and clicks and stops and sputters. After repeated attempts, I was able to get it to read the burned info correctly, but it's just not worth it. It takes the burner twice as long to write the CR-RW when compared to the CD-R and just as long to erase it in preperation for the next try. Oh well.
I have found that the reliability of the PS1 to read CD-RW discs used in such experiments depends on how new the model of PS used is. I have at my disposal a 1001 series model which will not read them at all, and a 9001 series which works almost flawlessly with them. This was a very important key to the research I have conducted using this technique, which I hope to post some results on tomorrow. Right now it's too late at night for me to learn how to do HTML tables.
By CatsGodot on Tuesday, June 26, 2001 - 08:27 am:
I wished my PS1 (or 2) could handle CD-RWs...woulda saved me a bunch of CDs...
--Cats
By Anonymous on Monday, July 2, 2001 - 05:52 pm:
I have a 9001 version ps1 and it does no better when reading cdrws I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
By John Hawley on Monday, July 2, 2001 - 06:07 pm:
What brand of CD-RWs do you use, Enigma? I just switched to Memorex and still can't get a read.
I'm using a Memorex CD-RW Platinum, 4x/2x speed 650MB/74min disc. To write it, I just use CloneCD as I would a normal CD-R, and I use CloneCD's erase disc functionality afterwards to wipe anything left off the disc so the next one will be clean. Do NOT format the CD-RW with something like DirectCD, as all my CD-RW's that are formatted that way all give the same monster, irregardless of what's on them.
By John Hawley on Monday, July 2, 2001 - 06:15 pm:
I figured out not to use DirectCD real quick. Thanks for the info.
One of you should check the subcode from those identical monster CDs.....(and what monster is it?)
By John Hawley on Tuesday, July 3, 2001 - 06:34 pm:
Working on Moo. What else?
By John Hawley on Tuesday, July 3, 2001 - 09:03 pm:
Never mind me, Lisa. I was typing while cooking. Never a good idea.
By Quincunx on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 02:05 pm:
Drat... just got my first CD-RWs, even though I've had the burner for ages... and my 7501 PSX won't read them. Wonder which will be cheaper in the long run: hundreds of regular CD-Rs or a new PSX.
Question: If I were to even consider the latter option, would I be better off getting one of the new PSone machines (the tiny rounded new PlayStations) or trying to find an "old" 9001?
By John Hawley on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 02:52 pm:
The only report we have of a working Shrine for CD-RWs is the 9001. Since ~400 CD-Rs = one PSX, it's your call. Just how much research do you plan to do?
By Lisa Shock on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 03:08 pm:
Also, don't trust a used machine. If you're going to spend the money, you're better off in the long run buying a new machine.
By Lisa Shock on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 03:14 pm:
I just tried a CD-RW (which had data readable by a CD-ROM on it) in my PSone. All I kept getting was "insert disc".
Maybe I just got ridiculously lucky with my brother's PSX, I don't know. Sometimes I have to open the drive door, reseat the disc, close it and hit the X button a lot to get it to read, but I can almost always get it to work. If I hear the CD spin down to stop, I open it and try again. It's not perfect, but it's passable.
Good luck with anyone else trying it.
By Quincunx on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 01:53 pm:
Wow... thanks for all the responses!
John: Well, there are 333 non-rare, playable monsters. So 400 test discs would not be out of the question; in fact, it would likely be much more than that.
Lisa: True, I shouldn't trust a used machine, especially since I'm on my second PSX already and I know they're not eternally functional. And thanks for the PSone test.
Enigma: Actually I tried multiple times with no response. So maybe you were lucky, or maybe your brother has a 9001? (If you said otherwise, please forgive.)
And not to keep pushing this, but CatsGodot said his PS2 could not read CD-RWs, either. I haven't bought a PS2 yet and wasn't planning to until MR3 was released, but is the PS2 no good at reading CD-RWs as well (for MR2 Shrine), or did Cats just have a bad string of luck?
Thank you all for your help. I sincerely believe that I have enough devotion, curiosity and foolishness to uncover the secrets of the MR2 Shrine. But I don't want to leave a floor-to-ceiling stack of burnt CD-Rs in my wake.
By John Hawley on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 02:17 pm:
Yeah, the PS2 won't read them either. That's my main machine right now. I hauled the 7501 out of storage to see if it would. It didn't.
Quincunx: My brother's 9001-series PSX is the only case we have of a working reader of CD-RW discs, and there was a post from an Anonymous whose 9001 didn't work. I do not know the reasons behind this beyond ridiculous luck on some part. I just re-double-checked, and a CD-RW burn that will read on the 9001 will not even spin on my old 1001-series PSX (which does read CD-Rs, btw). There must be something fundamentally different enough between CD-Rs and CD-RWs that the drive can detect the change even without reading from the disc. Perhaps the CD-RW weighs just a bit more, and the drive has a built-in safeguard to prevent it from using an 'unbalanced' disc. I don't know, I'm at a loss on this one. If your drive at least spins the disc, there's a chance you can read a CD-RW. Otherwise, good luck.
By barronbrad on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 11:15 pm:
i have never gotten my 9001 series to read one(although i have only tried once)
Pity about the PS2 not reading them... that would have been the cheapest solution in the long run. (Since I'm going to buy one anyway...)
Enigma: My guess is that the PSX isn't intentionally designed to not read CD-RWs. I think there's something fundamentally different about the structure of a CD-RW that (a) lets it be rewritable, but also (b) makes it unreadable, or at least difficult to read, by the PSX. Maybe the readable layer is buried at a greater depth into the plastic, for instance.
Anyway, it looks like this puts a chink in my planned research. I'll either be buying cheap CD-Rs by the gross or taking up a new and less painful hobby... like whittling memory cards out of sandstone and aluminum foil. «shrug»
By John Hawley on Friday, July 13, 2001 - 07:08 am:
Even if you just use the browser, the PS2 reports it as a Read Error. Just something about the CD-RW, I guess.
As I stated before, on my 1001-series PSX, it doesn't even TRY to read the disc. I close the door, hit X, and it sits there. The disc does not even spin at all. My guess would be a CD-RW weighs a bit more (they do appear to be ever so slightly thicker than a standard CD, but I lack the proper tools to measure the thickness/mass of the discs exactly) and the PSX CD-rom drive has a built-in failsafe to prevent it from spinning up an unbalanced load to keep it from breaking and leaving the owner with a rather large, expensive paperweight. I also have a few mini-CD-R's (hold about 150MB) and I tested it with one of these. This spins up just fine in my 1001 PSX, so if it is checking for weight, it only checks for too much, not too little.
Perhaps one thing you might be interested in trying is finding some mini-CD-RW's and use these. They are guaranteed to weigh less than a normal CD-RW, and might work. I don't have any of these on hand to test with, as they are not easy to come by (at least I do not see them often in the local shops), but $1-2 on one of these discs for testing is less expensive than taking your chances buying a whole new system that the odds are against working with CD-RW's. Just a thought.
I've never run across mini CD-RWs, but if I do, I'll definitely snag a couple and try it out. That would also definitely help to understand whether it's a disc weight issue or a disc format issue.
I found some of the mini CDRW disks at a computer show today. They behave identically to the larger CDRW disks in my PS2, it makes clicking noises and gives the "Insert CD" message. I should be sending one off to Enigma in the next few days for checks on the playstation models that he has access to.
By Lisa Shock on Friday, August 3, 2001 - 01:51 pm:
As an aside note, I got a free mini DVD in a magazine and it made a monster in MF3.
By DurahanMasta on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 01:34 pm:
How do i tell which model my Ps one is?
By Lisa Shock on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 01:53 pm:
As far as we know, there is only one PSone model. All the other models represented changes in the motherboards, or chips, or the input/output configuration. I personally doubt that Sony is going to invest any more effort in retooling the system any more.
By Michael Wells on Monday, August 27, 2001 - 05:56 pm:
Ok, i don't know where to put this, but since we're talking about CD's, has anyone tried CD-RW's? I figured that would be a good way to generate random monsters, just put random data on the CD and burn in, and then you can erase it and try again. I dunno how this will work though, i've tried 4 CD-RWs, and the first three (All by a company called Imation) wouldn't read, but then the fourth, by Phillips, did read, and gave me some monster i already had (I didn't check the stats, right now i'm going for variety) Has anyone else tried this? I would, but my burner doesn't work very well
By Michael Wells on Monday, August 27, 2001 - 06:09 pm:
Ok, i just saw that whole laboratory section (I've never scrolled down that far on the home screen :) ) and saw that people have problems with CDRWs... well, just to clarify, i was using a PS2, not a PSX, if that makes a difference to me being able to read that one CD
By John Hawley on Monday, August 27, 2001 - 06:12 pm:
This belongs in The Laboratory > Misc. Questions.
Most models of PS machines won't read any CD-RWs, so you can count yourself real lucky.
By B Campbell on Sunday, February 10, 2002 - 05:13 pm:
On the topic of CDRW's and why they don't work...
CDRW's are fundamentally different from CDR's. To explain it, we need to know a bit about how CD's work. When a CD player laser reads a CD, what it's actually reading are pits impressed upon the CD. conventional commercial CD pressing actually physically 'stamps' these pits into the CD.
A CD-R has a layer that can heated by the laser in a CDR drive (burnt) to simulate these pits. You're basically burning the pits into the CD. This is obviosly an irreversible process.
Now, to allow a CD-RW to be 'erased' and reqritten, you have to make it a revisible process. The materials used are a bit different, but the process is different as well (that's why a CDR drive can't write to CDRWs). When a drive writes to a CDRW, the main difference is that it doesn't 'burn' as hot. The disc is burnt at a lower temperature, which simply makes a reversible change to the emulsion, basically just changing the 'color' so a reader thinks there's a pit there. Then, when the writer 'changes it back', it just writes at a different temperature that makes a change in the emulsion to it's original state.
The only catch here is that a 'written' area on a CD-RW is different than that of a CD-R, not to mention a conventional CD. The best way to explain it is that, while a 'pressed' CD has 100% fidelity, a CD-R has about 95% and a CD-RW about 70%. Basically, it means that instead of being able to read the recorded data on the CD-RW, the laser is just scattered.
You can probably find a more in-depth explanation at 'howstuffworks.com'. But the problem isn't the weight of the disc or anything like that, it's the way the data is written.
By Anonymous on Saturday, March 30, 2002 - 03:30 am:
Sorry too interupt this but couldn't you just get a mod chip inserted into your psx, pso, or ps2 which would allow the system to read CD-R, CD-RW, and also allow you to play imported games.
By Lisa Shock on Saturday, March 30, 2002 - 10:25 am:
It won't affect the programming in the shrine portion of the game. Changing the regional lockout to play a game is far different from the fact the CD-RWs won't even spin in most PSX models regardless of the region. And, in the models they do spin in, there is still the problem of the TOC subcode being different from CD-Rs.
By Dracx Dino-Zuum Rancher on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 01:44 am:
I've had some experience with RW's and have actually produced a Grape on my PSX from a CD-RW. It was recorded with DirectCD burner program I have. I recorded it as a music cd with 17 tracks just some misc music. I don't know how to check the encoded info on CD's but if anyone has any questions on how I recorded it I'll be going through the program with a test CD tomorrow and post how to make a finished CD-RW. I'll make sure to test it out myself that way I can make sure I got down exactly how I did it last.
By Anonymous on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 05:34 am:
I think, if you plough through the entire thread, you'll see that the general consensus is that it ain't the CD-RW, its the PS.
Whether you can read a CD-RW has more to do with which machine you have. Unless you can post a way to make CD-RWs that will work on most of the models of Playstation, I don't know if its worth the effort.
By Lisa Shock on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 11:42 am:
Exactly. Most PSX models won't even spin a CD-RW's, so there is very little point.
As for the rest, if your program doesn't display subcode in text form there's no way to duplicate results. Try reading the FAQ section's first thread "Laboratory Basics FAQ (read before posting messages)" for more info on this. You will simply run into the pressings problem.
By Dracx Dino-Zuum Rancher on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 05:57 pm:
Anonymous: I see I did read the information above twice before I posted.
Lisa: I understand that that is why I decided to download the cd burning program used by most of the people posting subcodes. I can post the subcode of the cd in question. I tried using CDRW's in my PS2 and as said above by many people it doesn't work. Though if I want to try I could always use my PSX. Where would you like me to post the code if you would like to try it?
By Lisa Shock on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 07:08 pm:
Tough call, I suspect that brand may affect it, also if the disc has been used before may do things too.
Post it in this thread, I just don't know who can confirm it.
By Vince_V_ on Sunday, February 9, 2003 - 04:18 pm:
From the Faq in the Lab: Can I used CD-RWs, and save money? Probably not. (Only one person ever reported having success with their PSX being able to read CD-RW discs, and he has disappeared.)
I have success with CD-RW's and I am very much here. Just saying, seeing as how it sounds like there is almost no one to try test this stuff out.
By Dracx Dino-Zuum Rancher on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 01:12 am:
Sorry it's been so long but I've been having computer problems with my burner. Got it under control now and plenty of space on my Harddisk to burn cds and such. I got the code for the CD-RW disk I have that worked with my PSX that got me a Dino/Naga - Grape in MR1. Again sorry for the lengthy wait but I finally got it.
Ok, I am new here and I just got back into my MR phase again and I wanted to share my insight on the CDRW debate here.
I have used CDRW's succesfully in the following Model numbers 1001, 7501, 9001. They work(ed) every time. I no longer have the 1001 and 7501, but all 3 have the same 7-wire "enhancment" chip installed (back in 1999/2000). I don't have particular access to any "un-enhanced" models to substantiate this theory personally, so I will rely on all of your input from above.
It seems to me that the PSX will play/read CDRW's, its just that S0NY has programmed out this ability. Hence the ability for the my 3 major models to read CRDW by bypassing the S0NY "DO NOT READ CDRW'S" code with the help of the "enhancement" chips. I also seem to remembr (maybe) that the one person here who did get his to read cdrw's also had some sort of enhancement device.
On another note, I do remeber these chips having the ability to switch into different modes, or even off completely. I'll see if I can find the paperwork and test this out with the chip off, although unfortunatly only on my 9001 model.
well I hope this is helpfull, I know this site has been a great help to me.
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