Help Me With A Possible Prototype GD-ROM Dreamcast Disc
Hey guys.
I recently came into possession of a development GD-ROM disc, one of those orange ones. The seller informed me that he had no idea what was on the disc but that he could see (and the pictures showed proof of this) rings where a disc-writing laser had cut into the disc close to the center. I thought ,"why the hell not, could be a prototype" and so $65 later I was the proud owner of a GD-ROM. I received it today and immediately got to work on trying to find out how to play it on a retail Dreamcast. I found a swap trick method in which you would first load a retail game, wait for the drive to stop spinning, then discretely swap out the retail disc for a GD-ROM without the console knowing you lifted the door. I have tried this with several retail games (Dead or Alive 2, Soul Calibur, Shenmue Disc 1, Dream Passport) and have received little to no result. I did however manage to read the GD-ROM in the Dreamcast's CD playback section and it played me a message of a lady saying "Warning: This disc is for use only on Sega Dreamcast". At first it displayed Track 02 which was listed as 5 seconds long and after the message played it showed Track 3 which was listed as 122 minutes and 4 seconds long, but after I turned it on and off again, it played me Track 2 (the message) and then showed me that Track 2 was only 19 seconds long. I am beginning to think one of 4 things:
1. There is no data on the disc at all. There is a possibility that all blank development GD-ROM's that were manufactured already had the warning message written into them from the start, meaning that the rings that the seller could see on the disc were actually where the message had been recorded.
2. The disc is a bit scratched and dirty on the underside, so maybe it needs a clean. I have never cleaned a disc before, so any suggestions?
3. I don't have a retail game with the same amount of tracks as the GD-ROM prototype data. I know for a fact that Sonic Adventure is the best for trying to read/dump theses discs, but the only store near me that sells that game is 20 train stops away and about 3km of walking (I live in Tokyo and I am a fat bastard), plus their price is something ridiculous like $25 so I think I may have better luck with eBay. (NOTE: My console is NTSC-j, would this affect my results if the development GD-ROM had data of another region written on it?)
4. The disc is just screwed.
If anyone has had any experience with this sort of thing and would like to shed some light on the subject, please do, I need your help! I know that the people on these forums don't really deal with anything along the lines of development hardware/software, but the best website for this post (assemblergames.com) won't let me register. I never received a verification email so I am not allowed to make posts. Assemblergames uses a very similar looking structure (nearly identical) to this site and I seemed to have the same problem here, the difference being that one of your kind admins/webmasters/god people actually replied to my email and manually verified my account for me.
Snowman
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Originally Posted by thunderkid
if the boot disk doesn't work then you are back to the drawing board, but the DC was never a secure system to begin with, chances are it will work.
