GD-ROM "Swap Trick" Ripping Process
- CD/DVD Drive Testing Results

0.0  Disclaimer

Please note that producing a backup of your LEGITIMATELY OWNED Dreamcast games, using the methods described in this docuement (and all related pages on my website), for YOUR personal usage at home, is NOT illegal; or at least, definitely not in the UK. As for other countries - I have no idea, so consult your local solicitor now if you are concerned. Anyway, moving on...

1.0  Introduction

This document lists all the drives that I, and other contributors, have tested using the ripping process described in the other two GD-ROM ripping docs on this site. Although a couple of large (but scrappy) compatibility lists have existed on the Web for several years now, they lacked detailed information about the listed drive's ripping capabilities - as I have found during my time testing drives, it is not always merely a case of "this one can't rip anything, but this one rips everything" and so I have tried to clear up the situation.

Of course, with the literally huge amount of branded drives swamping today's computer market, this is a far from easy task, and it has taken me quite a while to test all the drives you see in this list; hence, help from contributors is massively appreciated. As a companion to this document I've also produced a tidied-up list of compatible and non-compatible drives based on various sources from around the Internet, which can be read through here.

2.0  Table of results for drives tested with the GD-ROM ripping process

Test games: see table note no. 2 just below the bottom of the table for a full list. All games tested are PAL|E unless stated otherwise.

Please remember that partial rips can only be produced by CDRWIN if Error Correction is set to Ignore / Replace and the program is closed via Task Manager once the ripping process halts - this has to be done because when it is set to Abort it will automatically close the ripping progress bar and delete the incomplete ISO upon hitting any errors. By doing this, you may be lucky enough to be able to dump games which have a very small amount of data, e.g. Crazy Taxi, which only takes up around 100MB.

In this table, some date-of-drive entries which only have a year may have been guessed, either because: A) I need to get the drive out of its respective PC again to check it, or B) the drive is now in a PC that I have given to someone else (and so I have guessed to the best of my recollection). I have used asterisks (*) to designate drives where B) applies.

Total number of drives tested: 29

2.1  Results table footnotes

1 ↓

The best drive to use. So far I have successfully ripped these single data track games: Sonic Adventure, Fur Fighters, Metropolis Street Racer, Fighting Vipers 2 and Crazy Taxi; and these mixed audio & data track games: Ready 2 Rumble (all data & audio tracks ripped) and ChuChu Rocket! (just the first data track & CDDA tracks; only 89% of the second data track can be ripped, and examining it reveals nothing but null data). However, currently only Sonic Adventure and R2R are playable in Chankast, despite the fact that all those titles are confirmed as working in it.

For reasons unknown, all other single data track games have been found to have some of their files corrupted. Although CDRWIN does not report any errors for rips of these games, such games are rendered unplayable as a result.

As of 14/02/2005, I have finished testing all of the available firmware revisions from this page; you can read through the results here. But given that none of the firmware revisions actually made much difference to drive performance, it's not likely that I will extensively test different firmwares on any future drives.

Finally, this drive does have one minor annoyance; the disc fastener is integrated into the drive casing, meaning that you must remove the whole lid to swap discs; to allow this to be done easier, I bent the two rear metal side clips at the end of the drive outwards. Having said that, I suppose it's better than conventional disc fasteners that have to be screwed in & unscrewed out all the time.

2 ↓

This is virtually identical to the LITE-ON DVD drive (uses Mediatek components), however it is built much better mechanically (i.e. the tray operation is very quiet). Why the LITE-ON works so well and this Sony doesn't work at all is odd. Some research has also discovered that some Artec, Gigabyte, LG, Memorex, Relisys, & TOP-G have used / currently use Mediatek chipsets in their drives.

3 ↓

Same drive as a LITE-ON LTR-52327S.

4 ↓

This was the first CD-ROM drive, that I tested, to get anything substantial off a GD-ROM disc ("anything substantial" being a small amount of files from Sonic Adventure, and CDDA tracks 02-04 from ChuChu Rocket!).

Also, this drive is very similar to the Wearnes CDRW-4424. I had a broken CDRW-4424 and I dismantled it while I was bored; the rubber stubs that held the drive tray, laser & motor assembly to the metal casing and the usage of mostly Philips chipsets on the drive's PCB mean this is likely an Acer clone.

5 ↓

Attempting to extract the TOC in CDRWIN always led to an "unrecoverable drive error" with both my home-made trap discs and the Yursoft ones. Also, the Pacific Digital drive model 161040ei CD-RW drive is believed to be based off this model, but with an IDE interface.

6 ↓

Drives made by ASUS are apparently made with the same components as Pioneer drives, whose DVD-ROM drives are in turn similar to Philips and some AOpen drives.

7 ↓

The MT1318E oscillator (QFP-type) in this drive is like the MT1338E in the LITE-ON I tested. The rest of the drive PCB is also very similar to it - yet its model number appears to be ripped off from BTC (though I doubt BTC had anything to do with the drive's construction - I have a broken BTC DVD-ROM drive made around the same time and most of the parts on the PCB are made by Sony). Regardless, it's evidently a pile of crap.

8 ↓

The third & fourth best CD-ROM drives to use respectively, even though they can't completely rip GD-ROMs they can rip a substantial amount from the high-density area, so - as stated earlier - some games may be dumpable with these two drives.

Having said that, it's not anywhere near as bad as having to painstakingly unscrew the fastener as is the case with a lot of drives; these LG drives have fasteners held down with plastic clips, which can simply be pressed inwards with a small screwdriver for removal.

9 ↓

Thanks to moi (yes, that is his username =P) at the BOOB! DC Research forums for testing this drive.

10 ↓

This drive is a rebranded Samsung SCR-series drive.

11 ↓

Thanks to another user at the BOOB! DC Research forums for testing this drive - I've forgotten his name now, so if you are the person who tested this drive, contact me and I'll credit you here.

12 ↓

Thanks to Onky at the EmuTalk forums for testing these drives.

13 ↓

A friend lent me this one for testing, cheers.

14 ↓

This drive can "only" rip up to about sector 440,000 of a single data track DC game; the second highest of any CD-ROM drive (Onky's drive being tops, since it can do full rips =P). The firmware revision on the drive is 2.0A, while the latest is version 3.0B, so it might have been worth updating to see if it's possible to extract any more from those DC games. At least, it might have been worth doing, were it not for a small snag.

Basically, when I actually got around to booting into DOS from a bootable CD, and then running the flash utility, I was presented with a "firmware revision not compatible" message. Apparently, the utility will only upgrade your drive if your firmware revision is v1.0, not any other version. Since I can't be bothered to ask Teac why this is so, it seems this "plan B" to get the drive to read more GD-ROM data is grounded. Ah well.

15 ↓

To be fair, while these drives all failed to get anything, on the outside they were not in great condition. Mind you, all of them still seemed to be in good working order, so I guess it's just bad luck more than anything. Where PCB similarities are concerned, the Hitachi & Panasonic (yes, a non-crappy-fixed-lid Panasonic =P) both had two similar Sanyo chipsets, although the Hitachi featured additional chipsets, one made by themselves, the other by Sony. The NEC, on the other hand, looked eerily like one of the LGs, as it had an OTI 910 chipset, a Sony oscillator of some sort, and a couple of other bits I forget. But all of them do seem to be unique models to anything else I've tested, so I guess it was worth it.

16 ↓

This drive - the first Plextor I've tested - can rip up to or around the same point that the Teac drive is capable of. No firmware upgrades are available for this, so it doesn't look like it'll be possible to squeeze anything more from this.

17 ↓

Plextor have got about 10 different firmware revisions for this drive on their website, but after the whole fiasco with flashing my LITE-ON over and over again to try and get improvements - only to get nothing - it's probably not worth the effort.

3.0  The End

Yes, it is. And I'm glad, because it took far too much of my life to test all these drives, write this guide, and so on - hope you appreciate my efforts!

3.1  Copyright Information

Unless otherwise stated, all of this information was written by myself (RobbyW / STC-Fan / zedeckseightyone) ©2004-2008 or adapted from sources who have helpfully contributed information to this document. You may NOT use any information from this document unless you ask nicely beforehand, or something like that.