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CD Drive rejecting burned disks

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Culbrelai

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2017
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65
Location
SE Michigan, USA
Anyone have any ideas on why this would occur?

I've got this beast

1Q8LlMr.jpg


Reads stamped factory CDs just fine. original windows 95 disc works. original game discs work.

Refuses to read any burned CDs, even ones I put at the correct burning speed for the drive. Anyone know why this particular drive doesn't like burned CDs? I have a single drive SCSI teac from about the same time (caddy loading) and it does not have this problem iirc.

The system i'm using this in is an IBM PS/2 9595/A, Buslogic BT646 SCSI controller.
 
Could be the media or could be the laser getting on in years and starting to fail. Could even be both.

The RF signal level from the burnt disc is always lower than the that of a pressed disc and if the laser is failing its possible the levels are below what the drive can cope with. You might be able to tweek the laser pot a bit to increase the level but to be honest its probably easier just to use a different drive. If you decide to try and adjust it do so in small increments and make note of the previous position. Ideally you'd want to hook up a scope to the RF test pad and take a look at the levels. BTW it is very possible to push the laser to the point that it'll read burnt discs but then not read pressed. Also note that in pushing the laser you'll be shortening its life span further.
 
Culbrelai said:
Anyone have any ideas on why this would occur?

I've got this beast

1Q8LlMr.jpg


Reads stamped factory CDs just fine. original windows 95 disc works. original game discs work.

Refuses to read any burned CDs, even ones I put at the correct burning speed for the drive. Anyone know why this particular drive doesn't like burned CDs? I have a single drive SCSI teac from about the same time (caddy loading) and it does not have this problem iirc.

The system i'm using this in is an IBM PS/2 9595/A, Buslogic BT646 SCSI controller.
Click to expand...


Cool drive, but some of those early drives believe it or not just are not able to read burned media. You can try different brands... following to see if you get any to read.
 
It depends on the combination of drive, media and burning speed.
Generally, try to burn the disc as slow as possible to use on a slow reader.
Not all drives can read multi-session discs, so always finalize.

I've had a drive which rejected "blue" CD-Rs, but happily read "gold" ones.
And my Panasonic CR-562 rejects all burned discs I tried, similar to yours.
 
I've never had a drive reject an authentic Taiyo-Yuden disc burned on my Pioneer at 8x. And I've worked with all kinds of heinous drives over the years.
 
Hey, I had one of these devices, no wait, a similar one, with 6 or 8 disks made by Nakamichi (what a name right!!, well in the cassette world). It has a dedicated SCSI controller like yours.

When anyway had the same issue. It's to do with the reflective nature of the burnt vs pressed disc.

Never did get it working with burnt discs, however isnt there some urban folklaw like you can coat the top surface of your burnt disk with something, or if the mechanism allows put 2 disks into one drive (at your own risk).
 
I had issues with CDs being burnt as a CD to add more files and folders to it with a 2x CD-ROM Panasonic CR-563-B drive and after installing a 24x CD drive, it works. Try burning CDs as a single session and not multisession.
 
retro-pc_user said:
I had issues with CDs being burnt as a CD to add more files and folders to it with a 2x CD-ROM Panasonic CR-563-B drive and after installing a 24x CD drive, it works. Try burning CDs as a single session and not multisession.
Click to expand...

I do similar to my older kit. Sure beats period correct cdrom drives.
 
I have had problems with some vintage drives not being able to read a bluish color CD. I guess it all depends on CD brand or the laser in the drive. Also some drives write only to "+" or "-" blanks and I guess could be having a problem with some newer stuff. Make sure you are closing the writing of the disk too.
 
retro-pc_user said:
I had issues with CDs being burnt as a CD to add more files and folders to it with a 2x CD-ROM Panasonic CR-563-B drive and after installing a 24x CD drive, it works.
Click to expand...
I can confirm. That specific drive is not multisession-capable.

DeltaDon said:
Also some drives write only to "+" or "-" blanks and I guess could be having a problem with some newer stuff.
Click to expand...
The difference between "+" and "-" media existed for DVD media only, never for CD.
 
R and RW are the big difference for CDs: one is green, 1 is blue. DVD R and RW are the same color coating. I remember some early PS2 systems had issues with blue or purple CDs and didn't work with them if the laser was off tune. Even my other 486 has a 32x CD-ROM connected to it as well for multi-sessions and for some games to load swiftly, such as Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri (that game runs smooth as butter on both my 486 machines with AMD Am5x86-P75 CPUs (1 of them is Write-Thru only for turbo to work and the other is Write-Back since Packard Bell never worked with WT L1 cache and impossible to use the L2 WB cache with the L1 WT cache CPU).
 
What capacity are your working disks? I used to have a car CD Player which would not read burned 700MB CD-Rs, I had to specifically seek out 650MB media for it which became very hard to find after about 2001.
 
Get a spindle or two of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs (more commonly available under brand names like That's and JVC, but available from better vendors as Taiyo Yudens directly). They work on about as much as can be expected, and tend to have among the longest lifespans once burned.
 
Current production "taiyo yuden" are actually manufactured by CMC and are trash. CMC bought the brand name. Make sure you don't get ones that are made by CMC, it's indicated on the label if they are
 
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