Quote Originally Posted by Gametrek View Post
You can repair any CD-rom drive and does not require the high amount of tech skill outside of knowing
which wire goes to which and soldering. I am sure there are guides on the subject. If people are repairing the dreamcast or even PS2 why not. In fact I own a PC-Engine CD-rom with matching system.
It looks as if somebody did some kind of repair job because the CD-rom center does not pop, I had another system as well and that one was not working would pop up, and I was able to sell it high at the time ( guessing they would figure out how to repair it ).
They're repairable as long as you can still get compatible lasers, different drives require different lasers.


Quote Originally Posted by Gametrek View Post
CDs reads like Cassette tapes. In order for the data to be played it looks up the index, which is usually located on the inner-most-tracks and literally go to it's location by browsing the entire disc ( which looks like less then a second but is really a long time ).

When you backup a Disc, you will most likely backing up as indivisual tracks with an index file used to
look up the information on those tracks. Imagine.

Game loads

Data located on track 01

Song/vocals located on 02 at 00.00.00 location.

Most PC-Engine, SEGA-CD, Saturn, and some PSX games works this way. PSX actually can have games and various content in data-mode creating a multiple boot disc that works cross platform.

Remove the audio/video content and your left with a file that is usally less then 50mb in most instances. The SFC/SNES had "Star Ocean" which is probably the biggest game on the system
along side "Far East of Eden:Zero" that holds around 56-98mb of data. They had to have extra
storage just to hold these games. Amazing fact that "Star Ocean" on the SFC is actually better in
every other way then any other remake of the game as with "TOP"

With a CD you can loads FMV, and Audio data with next to no compression.

Games got bigger over time because of uncompressed data and larger bitmap files
for the higher resolution and various media formats.
You are aware that a Sega CD add on contains more than just a CD drive to physically read a disc, aren't you? There's other electronic components including proprietary chips, audio circuitry, as well as a BIOS. Sega CD games aren't just standard Genesis games stored on a CD.