Won't Boot From a Disc Anymore?

[Glendower]

Wow! Nice to see an active Dreamcast forum! I searched for this before I posted and didn't see anything quite like this, so I hope someone can help me out.

This weekend, I decided to get to some DC games that I never finished (nothing against the games, it's just how I am, especially with games that I like, I never want them to end!). I decided to start Grandia II over (I was REALLY close to the end before it got shelved by life) after several years of not playing it. I popped in my barely used Gameshark Lite (Seriously, I think I used it 5 times tops... jeeze, sorry for all of the parentheticals) and loaded up some cheats for it. Like I said, I was at the end and just wanted to see the story again because I'd forgotten a lot of the details. I played for 3 hours or so and stepped away for a while. Later that night, I went back and it wouldn't boot from the Gameshark! It plays games fine, but it won't boot from the GS. I turned on the autoplay feature, still nothing. I cleaned the disc with water and then with alcohol, checked for scuffs or smudges, nothing. It just won't start. I tried using a lens cleaning disc but it won't spin up, at least not for very long.

Just to test, I downloaded and burned the utopia boot disc at the slowest speed possible and it won't boot from that, either. So something screwy happened between the afternoon and evening. I'm completely confused... I even tried different controllers, different VMUs in different slots... it won't boot from a disc, but everything else works okay.

Any tips? I'm baffled.

[MikeStutzzzz]

Sounds like one of the problems i have had with outtrigger. i would burn echelion version dident start burn dcres version dident start bought the game dident start. then bought a new dc started

[Glendower]

Ugh. of course. As soon as I posed this it booted from the utopia disc... at least i think it did, my TV was giving me an "Unsupported video format" so I assume I downloaded a PAL disc.

I took a Q tip with a little 90% alcohol on it and cleaned off the lens very delicately and then used the dry end to lightly wipe off any excess... booted off the gameshark. Sorry to waste everyone's time!

[Glendower]

Bwahaha Now the green channel is gone from my VGA out I've tried another cable, I've disconnected and reconnected (the S-Video output works just fine, so the signal to the box seems to be clean). Oh what a day!

[Glendower]

Pardon me for bombarding my own thread-- the lesson learned today is clean clean clean!

The boot problem was fixed with cleaning and now the color issue has been, too. I took another swab, more 90% alcohol (I Think 100% would be better, but 90% evaporates pretty quickly) and cleaned out the connection on my VGA box and on the DC and now it looks great.

Maybe this silly tip will solve someone else's booting/color issues

[AussieDC]

Not a waste at all, im sure someone will benefit.

And welcome!