CDDA music is skipping in games, but only after ~30-45 min

[dark]

I have an issue with CDDA music skipping in games that use it. I get the same issue with Mr Driller and Gunlord, I haven't tested others, but I don't seem to get skipping on other games without CDDA yet.

An interesting thing about it, is that it takes about 30-45 minutes of play time before the skipping starts. Then it keeps getting progressively worse until the music either cuts out or just skips a lot. The disc drive starts making lots of noise while it tries to frantically read the disc. If I reset the DC, either by turning it off and then on, or if I just open the lid which causes the GDrom to reset the laser's position, then I can instantly play a CDDA game like normal for another good while.

I figure it's most likely to be a laser pot adjustment issue. I haven't messed with this particular laser's intensity before, but I thought it was interesting and sort of uncharacteristic of a laser going bad that the issue would be instantly fixed just by opening the lid and letting the system re-load the game.

[CD AGES]

Hmm... most interesting. May I ask what model Dreamcast this is occurring on (Rev 0, 1 or 2)?

[dark]

rev 1, sports dc.

[CD AGES]

Hmm. Are you the orginal owner of the unit? More importantly, have you ever tinkered with the driver before (pot tweaking)?

[dark]

I've owned the unit for a year and got it off ebay used. Judging from the other hundreds of unrelated items the seller was selling, I bet the seller was a storage room auction buyer or something similar. The controllers that came with the system still had stiff D-pads and seemed very lightly used though, so I figured the console was probably lightly used too - but everything was very dusty.

This was also the DC that I sent out to get a modified bios. The problem didn't start immediately after it returned, so I don't think there is a connection there, but it's been opened up, shipped cross country twice, and seen a lot of use from me in the last year as my main DC, so I could believe that normal wear and tear might be causing an issue.

I have some backup rev1 DCs that I can simply switch the gdroms from in order to keep the region free bios and the black shell for my daily use, it would be nice if this were an easy fix, but if it's not just a spec on the lense or a pot adjustment, I don't know what else to try.