VERY interesting reading problem in my Saturn!

[Xen]

Heya SS:UK!
After a long time of being busy, today I busted out my Saturn to play some Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Cop. It was in storage (in a box under a cloth) for a while, like 2 months or so, and now I noticed that it takes REALLY long to load Virtua Cop (can't say if long as before), and sometimes will seek, and seek, and seek the disk failing to find it, same with VF2. I cleaned the lens with a clean qtip after that, and then VF2 started loading easy, but Virtua Cop was still hella slow. To see whether it's the discs, I burnt copies of both, and BOTH copies load better than their originals, perfectly, actually.

What's up with that? I thought backups were supposed were supposed to work worse than pressed discs, even if they are scracthed up a bit (the games tested are), what's up? Has my Saturn developed a taste for backups?

It's a Hitachi model 1, with a model 1 modchip.

[mick_aka]

Sounds like lens slightly out of alignment.

[Xen]

Do you have a suggestion on how I can fix it? It really does seem weird.

[mick_aka]

I've not had a similar problem with a Saturn, but after my old Marantz CD player got knocked it would only read CDRs, bizzare as previously it wouldn't read CDRs.

I'm afraid the technical knowhow to re-align a lens is beyond me, I've done it once with a brand new lens but it was very much trial and error over several hours

[Xen]

What's the general idea though? What guides do I look for?

[mick_aka]

First try cleaning the laser with alcohol.

Next thing you need to try before getting into the pain in the ass that is laser allignment is knocking your laser bias up a notch.
The Saturn's potentiometers are square pots with plastic cross head screws inside, the orange screw in the back of the laser runner is the bias screw.

Use something (fine nibbed pen, scalpel, but never a pencil!) to mark on the pot the position of the screw.

Now adjust the plastic orange screw in small increments to the left and right to change the intensity of the laser until it reads the proper discs.

If neither of those works:

Pretty much the same procedure as a CD player allignment:

www.ehow.co.uk/how_5935408_align-cd-player-laser.html

[Xen]

Rubbing alcohol did the trick mick!
Thanks

[zyrobs]

Apr 2, 2011 11:02:05 GMT Xen said:

Rubbing alcohol did the trick mick!
Thanks

Rubbing with alcohol *always* does the trick.

[swedishmeat87]

Im not supprised at all Rubbing with alcohol has always worked for me I bought over 10 "broken" DreamCast consoles all worked like new after rubbing

[Aydan]

There's nothing like rubbing one out every now and then...

[zyrobs]

Apr 2, 2011 18:10:39 GMT swedishmeat87 said:

Im not supprised at all Rubbing with alcohol has always worked for me I bought over 10 "broken" DreamCast consoles all worked like new after rubbing

I didn't mean game consoles.

[swedishmeat87]

Apr 2, 2011 20:49:06 GMT zyrobs said:

Apr 2, 2011 18:10:39 GMT swedishmeat87 said:

Im not supprised at all Rubbing with alcohol has always worked for me I bought over 10 "broken" DreamCast consoles all worked like new after rubbing

I didn't mean game consoles.

oh god ! how lame...

[mick_aka]

Just this once swedishmeat, we agree on something.

[zyrobs]

Apr 3, 2011 0:17:16 GMT swedishmeat87 said:

Apr 2, 2011 20:49:06 GMT zyrobs said:

I didn't mean game consoles.

oh god ! how lame...

Don't worry. One day, you too will discover the joys of sex with women. Maybe.

[mick_aka]

*insert generic facepalm image here*

Great comeback to two of the forum members with children.