Protip! If you have a DVD rom drive that will read pressed DVDs but not burnt ones, you can adjust some pot meters and then it won't read pressed DVDs anymore either!

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#retrocomputing

No lid? No problem!

#retrocomputing

FOUR, I tired FOUR IDE DVD drives today. One of them won't read anything, one will only read pressed DVDs and burned and pressed CDs, one will only read pressed DVDs and nothing else, one reads pressed CDs and nothing else.

These things are fiiiickle.

#retrocomputing

@hp That sounds to me like the actual technical development of optical drives. Pretty sure each type of media was initially only supported pressed, and then they added tolerances so burned ones would work better.
@uliwitness two of them are DVD burners themselves. THEY HAVE NO EXCUSE!
@hp Ooops, missed that. πŸ˜… Maybe just the laser losing adjustment over the years then.
@hp More than ever, we need a cheap DVD-ROM equivalent of the Gotek.
@hp and that's why I'm so happy that the N64 used cartridges instead of optical media
@hp Yes. Yes, they are. Those laser diodes surely are the worst example of silicon rot. And then there's media, burnt or pressed, that starts to rot from the outside in. When I think of it, I'm pretty sure I don't miss optical media at all.
@hp Wait, I still have a couple Canofiles, big stand alone document scanners that save on optical cartridges. Haven't looked at them for 15 years. Now I really want to know if those drives and disks are still fine...

@skab what kind of optical cartridges are that! Like CDs in caddies or something more exotic?

One of those magneto optical doohickeys?

@hp I wonder if you can start a fire with the friction
@hp This is a safe and reasonable way to operate a DVD drive.

@ozzelot Some say, it is the only way!

That would be me. I say that.

@hp there are some fancy and expensive cd players that use weights to keep discs in place

@b_rawr What?! That'd totally destroy the warm sounds of the bytes.

Kids these days...

@hp haha learned this lesson the hard way with my PS1
@vga256 I just want a working IDE DVD ROM drive! I have like 5, and they are all broken in different ways. Very frustrating!

@hp hahah i've kept way, way too many of these drives just to make sure i have a few working ones.

all of them needed replacement belts, but only a couple had weak lasers.

there were never any guarantees that a dvd-rom drive could read DVD+-R back in the day, unless it specifically said that in the manual (and even then, it was hit/miss depending on the DVD brand/formulation)

i've found that if a laser can't read a +-R disc, it's not worth trying to force it to.

my sega cd, however, did teach me that when they stop reading factory-pressed discs, it's because the laser has weakened and *can* be replaced!

@hp
Can you fix my laptop that seems to be running fine?
@Nerde absolutely I can! What would you like it to not do!
@Nerde @hp I can offer you my burn-in service, where I burn something in the machine.
@hp instructions unclear, DVD drive now reads Blu-Rays
@lown That'd be quite the trick! :D
@hp How about just taking a hammer & sending that crap DVD drive to tech Walhalla and getting one that understands everything you feed it? 😎✌
@ArenaCops If you read the rest of the thread, you will see that I tried FIVE that day :P
@hp ::nods sagely:: uniform symmetry, hm hmmm
@faraiwe "Perfectly balanced as all things should be"
@hp what if i press the dvds by accidentally leaving them on my desk chair and then not realizing they are there when i come back to the computer