/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7326613]

We all know how to clean cartridge connectors, but what does /vr/ do about scratched discs?

[Anonymous No.7326615]

Depends on how deep the scratch is.

[Anonymous No.7326620]

All the methods i've used eventually fuck the discs more, I even went out of my way to secure a disc buffing machine from a blockbuster store which closed, it was even worse.
Toothpaste trick will help in some cases but once you start seeing that disc read error, its never going to be the same.

[Anonymous No.7326623]

sell the disc and continue to play my backup

[Anonymous No.7326630]

>>7326613
always always always dump your discs, it's not just the scratches, the glue for the reflective foil also rots, leaving it to peel

[Anonymous No.7326638]

You can't really do anything about it, and it's not like it really matters too much since it's not hard to find a copy of the game for download if it's /vr/-related.

[Anonymous No.7326651]

>>7326613
>but what does /vr/ do about scratched discs?
Hold it baby, touch it baby,
Try to make a play
Squeeze it, push it try, to tease it
Tilt, and you're to blame.

Join me baby, try it baby,
Play me it's no crime
Plug the SD, load the ISO
Back to the starting line

Hard disks, loaders, ODEs
Play them Video Games,
XStation, Satiator
I love them all the same

Your turn, my turn,
Competition's getting to my brain
Your cart, my cart, low rom, high rom,
Stop the SNES again

Tuuuuurn, turn on the video
Caaaaan't play the originallll
Tuuuuuurn, turn off reality
Briiiiiiiiiiiing, bring out the piracyyyy
Video Video Video Video
Video Gaaaaames
Video Video Video Video
Video Gaaaaames

Oops I missed a play, oops I missed a play
(Freeze it, eject it, don't get caught, video games accepts no fault)
Oops it scratched again, oops it scratched again.
(Load that disc and close the door, if you can't don't play no more)

[Anonymous No.7326667]

OP here, in this case I mention it because my copy of Ace Combat 5 is scratched and won't play music, but playing off the HDD with OPL, the cutscenes have no audio.

[Anonymous No.7326673]

Disc Dr. has been pretty good to me.

Shame they're basically gone now.

[Anonymous No.7326678]

>>7326667
I'm sorry for your loss, you have a good game there, there isn't a solution I'm afraid, don't fall for some of the sillier methods, even the toothpaste buffing is a bust. Thankfully the ISO for your game is archived.
I know this isn't the news you wanted, but it is the truth.

[Anonymous No.7326685]

Anons, the info on a CD/DVD isn't written on the scratched parts. It's on the bottom of the label. You can buff off the scratches. They make machines for it, but don't get a cheap one.

[Anonymous No.7326703]

>>7326685
I have one of those machines with the specially crafted glue-like liquids, they make it worse, and if you accidently misalign the pads it is utterly destroyed.

[Anonymous No.7326704]

>>7326667
Try reading the compatibility list

[Anonymous No.7326715]

>>7326613
>We all know how to clean cartridge connectors, but what does /vr/ do about scratched discs?
Same thing you do with a cartridge with a damaged ROM chip. Burn a new one. Remember all those people saying that preservation is BS and the people in the emulation scene only care about piracy and playing games? Yeah, this is why preservation is important.

[Anonymous No.7326756]

>>7326715
>remember when i coped about "preservation" when i wanted free games
>i'm still doing it

[Anonymous No.7326794]

>>7326630
pretty much fucking this!!
>everything has a life cycle
>dump>burn>dump...

[Anonymous No.7326808]

>>7326703
dang it

[Anonymous No.7326810]

>>7326613
If it isn't too bad, ignore it. I've used one of those at home resurfacers at least once with acceptable results on a horribly scratched disc. I've had a disc resurfaced in a pro machine before, and the results were excellent. Couldn't see any weird swirls or anything like that. Would love to own one, but honestly it's probably more economical to just pay per disc.

[Anonymous No.7326857]

>>7326630
How long does it take for discs to rot? Is my playstation collection just going to die one day?

[Anonymous No.7326860]

>>7326857
It's a meme that's been on this board for years that refuses to die

[Anonymous No.7326875]

>>7326857
An accelerated aging study at NIST estimated the life expectancy of discs to be 30 years if stored at 25°C (77°F) and 50% relative humidity.
It is highly dependent on the glue used, storage temp, the usual estimate is 30 to 100 years, it's a large range.

[Anonymous No.7326884]

>>7326860
It's really not a meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

[Anonymous No.7326889]

>>7326860
Keep living in denial.

[Anonymous No.7326892]

>>7326857

[Anonymous No.7326894]

>>7326884
He's right though.

[Anonymous No.7326896]

>>7326613
Use the "backup" copies you made years ago.

[Anonymous No.7326903]

>>7326894
He's not right. It's 100% real. Motherfucking NIST did aging studies on it, there are academic papers on it, where the fuck are you getting the notion its a meme? Do you think they last forever?

[Anonymous No.7326904]

>>7326875
So all ps2 games on the planet are going to begin to disappear in 10 years?

Are cartridges the only viable form of retro collecting now?

[Anonymous No.7326912]

>retard little brother always scratched up the discs for our games, forcing repurchases
I'm so glad to enter the digital/card age where this isn't an issue anymrore.

[Anonymous No.7326921]

I just had a disc resurfaced at a game store, and it looks fucking amazing. I was very impressed with how it turned out.
The other chain's machine sucks. It makes things worse AND leaves shitty brasso residue on the inside of the hole.

[Anonymous No.7326926]

>>7326904
Carts also die, bitrot is worse than disc rot and to make even more confounding, we still don't even know the solid methods behind bitrot, theories from the labs go from everything to electro-migration to cosmic rays.
Bitrot is the leading cause of bad dumps, there are carts and arcade boards out there now which are entirely unreadable.

[Anonymous No.7326927]

>>7326884
>>7326889
t.

[Anonymous No.7326930]

>>7326926
Wow, so this hobby is a ticking time bomb until we all are stuck just playing roms.

[Anonymous No.7326936]

>>7326930
Yes, it's why we all scream DUMP IT

[Anonymous No.7326939]

>>7326926
This. Its also why games like super mario 64 look worse today then they did in 96. The graphics were much more mind blowing but bit rot made them worse over the 25 years.

[Anonymous No.7326943]

>>7326939
kek

[Anonymous No.7326948]

>>7326939
don't troll, this is serious

[Anonymous No.7326949]

>>7326904
Dumb anime poster. There were literal boomers on this board who had discs from the late 80s that still work.

[Anonymous No.7326952]

>>7326949
the literal boomers made redump.org and TOSEC because their shit was going bad

[Anonymous No.7326958]

>>7326949
you have so much to learn, child
http://redump.org/

[Anonymous No.7326959]

>>7326949
not all storage mediums are made equal. Some will just degrade slower than others. Even your disk drives have a best by date on them, you just wont realize it because youll trash them before they go bad.

[Anonymous No.7326962]

>>7326958
If you aren't storing your discs in a literal swamp you have literally nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous No.7326968]

>>7326962
Yes you do, the glue is an organic substance.
You cannot fight entopy with hope.

[Anonymous No.7326975]

>>7326968
And I'll be dead before that happens.

[Anonymous No.7326979]

>>7326962
You should visit a media museum some time and ask the curators.

[Anonymous No.7326982]

>>7326975
t. collector who lives on hope and wishes

[Anonymous No.7326984]

>>7326613
Mayonaise on the disc will fix most scratches

[Anonymous No.7326985]

>>7326975
you really think a disk made with $1 worth of parts was planned to be built to last?

[Anonymous No.7326990]

>>7326985
Do you really think a zoom zoom such as yourself knows what you're talking about?
>>7326982
>t. Zoom zoom projecting again

[Anonymous No.7326994]

>>7326985
>$1
Closer to $.01

[Anonymous No.7327000]

>>7326990
if youre just here to troll you can probably have more fun on /v/ or something

[Anonymous No.7327003]

>>7327000
Nah, the zoomies need to go back to /v/ instead so they can talk all about their fotrnites and disc rots.

[Anonymous No.7327012]

>>7326990
>he thinks im a zoomer instead of a 36 year old archivist that dumped the roms
I'm telling you the truth.

[Anonymous No.7327013]

>>7326952
I find it funny how MAME went from "hey, lets figure out how these old games worked" to "JESUS CHRIST DUMP IT ALL BEFORE ITS GONE FOREVER EVEN THE CALCULATORS AAAHHHHHH". People only spend so long dealing with old stuff before they realize how important it is to dump and back up everything.

Prime example is how the networked versions of the SF Rush games might be lost since all the arcade techs used the non-networked versions to "fix" the non-working networked versions and didn't make a copy of the chips or the hard drive before they replaced them. It kept a lot of SF Rush cabs from ending up in a dump, but it also means the possibility of playing the arcade SF Rush games on your PC with 7 other players over the internet may be lost forever.

[Anonymous No.7327017]

>>7326990
WHY WOULD A MUSEUM LIE TO YOU.

[Anonymous No.7327032]

ITT bit rot people: the earliest CDs made in the 80s were of much poorer quality than what was made in the mid 90s onward. DVDs should last most of our lifetimes.

[Anonymous No.7327036]

>>7327012
>i larp on the fourth channel
>>7327017
>why would a zoomie like me be retarded over the interwebz?

[Anonymous No.7327039]

>>7327036
You're a genuine spastic, I'm done with you.
Enjoy you're utterly worthless plastic in 20 more years. You deserve it.

[Anonymous No.7327042]

The future is digital and FPGA. And this isn't a bad thing. Enjoy your current collection for now, but also appreciate all of the steps in place to preserve both content and hardware

[Anonymous No.7327047]

>>7327017
>he trusts museums
You FOOL!

[Anonymous No.7327052]

>>7326857
Disc rot is a meme

[Anonymous No.7327067]

>>7327039
99% of discs will live a long as time if you take care of them. Cartridges even more so. No shit dumping and preservation is a good thing, but this disc rot nonsense is fear mongering to anybody who takes good care of their shit.

[Anonymous No.7327068]

>>7327052
>it's just a meme
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/legacy/sp/NISTspecialpublication500-252.pdf

[Anonymous No.7327071]

>>7327067
Tell that to the museums. Go phone one up right now and tell them you know better and that because you think what do you do, that their discs will become readable.

[Anonymous No.7327084]

You're not being meme'd on, people are trying to save you the horror of it all dying in your lifetime.

[Anonymous No.7327093]

>>7327084
Everything I own is going to die in my lifetime. So what?
>>7327071
Yes I do know better because only faggots on /vr/ are spamming this shit.

[Anonymous No.7327105]

>>7327093
>it's just /vr/ spam

[Anonymous No.7327119]

>>7327093
Phone a museum and record it for us if you are so certain you are correct.

[Anonymous No.7327137]

>>7327119
How about you lick the pussy juice off my cock after I fuck your wife with it you fairy?
>>7327105
>2-5
>when a vast vast majority of discs from over 30 years ago still work
Fake news.

[Anonymous No.7327146]

>>7327137

[Anonymous No.7327154]

>>7327137
that is 2-5 years of constant use, optical media has a range of 30 to 100 without constant use

[Anonymous No.7327158]

>>7327146
>3 years
Again, no disc has ever failed on me. Have you zoomies ever owned optical media? Or do you just repeat what you hear on the internet?

[Anonymous No.7327161]

>>7327105
>10yrs for a Nintendo cartridge

[Anonymous No.7327162]

>>7327105
>hard drive
>3 - 5 years
u wot.
Pretty sure all those numbers are nonsense.

[Anonymous No.7327169]

>>7327162
these are constant use, numbers, as in fully spinning hdds, not just spinning up when required

[Anonymous No.7327181]

>>7327161
yes, 10 years of constant use of an eeprom chip will kill it via electromigration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

[Anonymous No.7327196]

>>7327181
10 years of constant use is 87000 hours. My most played game on steam is only 3k. Im sure these Nintendo carts will outlive me.

[Anonymous No.7327197]

>>7327169
>constant use numbers, as in fully spinning hdds,
Even accounting for that, that number is ridiculously low.
There are only 8,640 hours in a 365 day year.
I've had drives last over a decade of near-continuous use, and were still functioning when I replaced them (although the drive motors were on the verge of failing). No bad sectors, no read/write problems.
While I don't believe the figures of 300,000+ hour MTBF quoted by manufacturers, your number is a comical underestimation of hard drive reliability.

[Anonymous No.7327201]

>>7327197
It's not my number, it's from an academic paper on data decay

[Anonymous No.7327205]

>>7327201
>muh academia
I've read more than my share of crap papers in my time.
Humor me and provide a citation.

[Anonymous No.7327208]

>people putting this much faith in a circle of plastic with a squirt of glue and reflective tape
youre mad if you think they made these with greasy neckbeards 50 years in the future in mind. The second they even start to degrade even a little they will be unreadable or the RPM of the disk drive will just kill them.

[Anonymous No.7327218]

>>7326620
Just go to your local retro store, mine has an actual professional machine that does them for $5 apiece. No Disc Doctor bullshit, no toothpaste or sander memes, no ugly marks on the disc label and if the discs still don't work they were duds anyways

[Anonymous No.7327234]

>>7326930
Yes. Discs and cartridges will degrade over time just like wax cylinders and vinyls. Luckily we'll be dead by the time they're completely gone.

[Anonymous No.7327245]

>>7327234
>we'll be dead
I've personally dumped carts from as late as 1994 that have been bit-rotten through, it's not something that can be put off thinking it's not happening

[Anonymous No.7327252]

>>7327234
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon.
We know from numerous that the number of surviving texts from the classical period is a tiny fraction of what was written.
Something like 80 - 90% of all the silent films ever made have no surviving copies, primarily because they were shot on nitrate stock (which degrades, and is highly flammable).
While the ability to reproduce information en masse has improved in great leaps and strides, information loss is still a problem we haven't solved, and I doubt we ever will.

[Anonymous No.7327259]

It's not just the disks, it's also the lasers in the disk readers.
It's all special hardware that will die at some point.

[Anonymous No.7327430]

>>7327259
based 12yo who's so boomer his altzheimers has his brain stuck in the 60's where lasers are "special hardware"

[Anonymous No.7327463]

>>7326889
>>7326884
That why president of Nintendo love cart.

[Anonymous No.7327468]

Depends on the damage, if the disc has only severe surface scratching from misuse (ex. all of my PlayStation games cause my father was a fucking retard). Resurfacing the disc whether on your own or professionally can get your disc working like brand new.

[Anonymous No.7327470]

>>7327161
>>7327146
Imagine Nintendo 64 has use Zip Disk-base Game Pak cart hybrid.

[Anonymous No.7327661]

>have disks were you can see light through holes in the foil backing
>load them in the PS2
>they work

Does this mean there's no data written in those spots or is this something that's going to become a problem perhaps further in the game?

[Anonymous No.7327790]

>>7327661
>Does this mean there's no data written in those spots or is this something that's going to become a problem perhaps further in the game?
Could be either, it depends on the game. Some games use almost the entire capacity of the DVD, and some are much smaller.

E.g.
>THPS3 http://redump.org/disc/12524/
>3.1 GB
>Forbidden Siren http://redump.org/disc/2444/
>4.6 GB

You can try ripping the disc on your computer and comparing the hashes to those on redump.

[Anonymous No.7327817]

>>7326613
oh no, the Silent Hill 3 disc i payed 300 dollarinos for! what do i do now reddit?

[Anonymous No.7327935]

>>7327032
>be 90 years old
>put Hidden Invasion in ps2
>fucker doesn't load
>panicking
>move down the shelf
>kh1 with proper colours, mutant melee, save the homeland and primal
>none load
>die on the spot

On a more serious the only game game in my modestly sized collection is soul reaver 1, which I bought at a gameshow as is. Even Sega cd games load perfectly

[Anonymous No.7328018]

>>7326857
I have audio CDs from the mid-80s and PS1 games (originals and CD-Rs) from the mid 90s and they're all working.

The only discs who died on me actually died shortly after being burned because the CD-Rs were ultra low-quality no-name crap.

[Anonymous No.7328032]

>>7326949
why did you use past tense?

[Anonymous No.7328498]

>>7327012
>I'm an archivist, I own a Chinese EEPROM reader and tons of carts in my unkempt bedroom
Collectors are mentally ill

[Anonymous No.7328521]

>>7328032
Because all the boomers died from cancer.
Because that's what this board became.

[Anonymous No.7328529]

>>7326613
If it doesn't work, take it to a resurfacer. They can be found at libraries here.

[Anonymous No.7328537]

>>7328498
I'm not a collector you piss soaked reprobate, im a dumper, i get the carts and arcade boards, dump the data, release for free and add to mame, then resell
And guess what you need to do that, an eeprom programmer

[Anonymous No.7328540]

smear peanut butter on it

[Anonymous No.7329023]

>>7328521

I was wondering why this board was shit now

I only came here to get away from /v/ and it's almost as bad

[Anonymous No.7329039]

All storage mediums have a lifespan, at least nobody here uses a medium that's stored on tape ribbon, the quintessential business decision of "it's cheap, high density and we secretly wouldn't like our security footage to last longer than 10 years"

[Anonymous No.7329043]

>>7329039
you're going to get screamed at by people who have convinced themselves they will last forever

[Anonymous No.7329059]

>>7326930
Yes. Luckily lots of consoles have mods that allow them to run ROMs off an SD card, like the PSIO or GDEMU. Still get the original hardware experience, and the only thing being emulated is the disc reader itself.

[Anonymous No.7329068]

>>7328521
Kek

[Anonymous No.7329072]

>>7326857
A long time if you handle and store them right. My oldest working Audio CDs are from 1982.

[Anonymous No.7329095]

>>7326949
Anecdotal evidence does not hold up when there is a plethora of data that says otherwise. I genuinely don't understand how "if it isn't impacting me right this second then it doesn't exist" people function in day to day life. I'm glad you haven't had to suffer with it, but a lot of people have, and it isn't fearmongering to make people aware of a very real danger to their collections. By this logic, telling someone it's important to watch the road when driving because other drivers may not be paying attention is just fearmongering too.

[Anonymous No.7329116]

>>7326620
Disc buffing machine takes off a tiny layer of the disc. It's meant for minor scratches. Nothing can fix a deep scratch except maybe parity. The data on that part of the disc is no longer there.

[Anonymous No.7329131]

>>7329023
>almost as bad
>bait threads, buzzword spam, /pol/ leaking and tranny paranoia on /v/
>console war faggotry from decades ago, generation circlejerking, but actual videogame discussion on /vr/
As another migrant from /v/ who almost exclusively lurks, you're out of your fucking mind if you think the two are even comparable in quality.

[Anonymous No.7329225]

>>7329131
It might be slightly better than /v/ but old /vr/ before the rule change was even better. You typically only had 1 (one) dedicated thread to console warring (which was mainly 5th gen shit) where you were laughed at anywhere else, wojaks and pepes were deleted, the general population respected old game design philosophies instead of jerking off the same marios and zeldas that "aged well", it was a different time.

[All fields No.7329267]

>>7329225
To add, 1 in every 5 threads here is bait or shitposting now. Old /vr/ jannies had the common courtesy to delete sega system autism.

[Anonymous No.7329386]

>>7326904
dumb zoomer fag,i have cds that my dad bought in the early 80s that still work,i have my original mega cd games from the early 90s that still work

disc rot is when you dont keep cds in their cases and you live in some swamp air shithole like florida

[Anonymous No.7329401]

>>7327017
lmao these was cheap disks that was made early on,higher quality discs didnt have this issue,ive literally just pulled a copy of night trap off my shelf for the mega cd and it is mint still.

[Anonymous No.7329897]

>>7326889
>"I left my disc in an un-heated, un-airconditioned attic for 15 years and now it's all fucked up. SELL YOUR DISCS IMMEDIATELY. TO ME!!!"

[Anonymous No.7329907]

I have CD's from the late 1980's that still work perfectly.

[Anonymous No.7330159]

>>7329131

I haven't stopped by for a while but I don't remember /vr/ being so full of angry dickheads

[Anonymous No.7330260]

>>7329401
Its not a CD, that is a BBC doomsday laserdisc

[Anonymous No.7330307]

>>7330260
>BBC
hehe.

[Anonymous No.7331947]

>>7329023
This /v/ shitposters you were trying to get away from were already here

[Anonymous No.7331968]

>>7331947
the number increases each time there is a banwave in /v/, usually from soijack spammers, the jannies over there seem to prefer per-board bans and not global 3 days, leaving them to find a new board to turn into their leper colony

[Anonymous No.7332075]

>>7326715

It's important that preservation be fought at every step. If you take scarcity away from the games, you make the games worthless. Let the games die with the physical copies.

[Anonymous No.7332198]

>>7326904
Everything is destined to degrade and rot away eventually. Just take take of your things and enjoy while you can.