Recently I pulled out ye oldie Xbox v1.1 on a boring summer day, and threw together a much epicer, softmodded xbox mit 80gb hard drive so all the games and apps and emulators can flourish in its 2001 epicness. My MS dash corrupted, so I found another ye oldie Xbox at a yard sale for $5 and bought it too.
And everything was going well until one day my Halo 2 disk stopped reading. A couple minutes with some silver polish and I could launch the game again. I attempted to copy it to the hard drive on my softmodded xbox, but it would fail at 12%. A trip to the local gamestore revealed :
- Gamestop does not have xbox games.
- Rhino's has xbox games
- Gamestop murdered ye local Rhino's.
So I looked online and found that another local game store popped up by the name of "Play N' Trade".
Upon investigation, not only do they have a massive collection of retro games, but they also do disk resurfacing for $5 a disk. So I bring in 2 disks (halo 2 and midtown madness 2, both unplayable without extensive polishing), and throw my wallet at them. 20 minutes later they hand me back my disks, my MM2 disk looks perfect, my Halo 2 disk looks wavy, but mostly smooth.
I put them in both xboxes and:
- Halo 2 disk initializes for 10 minutes before saying its a Video disk.
- Midtown Madness 2 will launch, display the loading screen for 10 minutes before it says the disk is "dirty or damaged".
With 14 day warranty in had, i march back there, consuming glorious amounts of petroleum with 12.7mpg x 38mi round trip x2 = $18.50.
They accept to resufrace both my disks, and they hand them back anther 20 minutes later.
*Que more killings of the ecosystem for the trip back*
Throw them both at ye oldie Xbox.
- Halo 2 will initialize for 10 minutes before doing nothing.
- Midtown Madness 2 does same as before.
Throw them both at ye oldie softmodded Xbox.
-Halo 2 will initialize for 10 minutes before displaying the name as garbled text, attempt to launch opens file explorer.
-Midtown Madness 2 does the same as before.
And now I have wasted $28.50 on two $10 games credit this "resurfacing".
What are your experiences with this? Scam or Unlucky?
All that happens when you get an optical disc resurfaced is that a thin layer of the plastic substrate on the bottom of the disc is removed in order to try and level out the scratches in the surface with the surface itself. This ensures that when the laser passes though the plastic substrate to read data on the top of the disc, it isn't deflected or fractured to the point where reading the data becomes impossible.
But disc resurfacing isn't always guaranteed to work. The scratch in the disc could be too deep, or the reflective coating on the top of the disc could be damaged, or even the imprinted information on the top layer of plastic could be damaged.
Do other games load fine ? maybe you should try clean the optical assembly.
Also paying for this kind of service isn't worth it, just get a very fine abrasive polish (I.E Brasso) and a fine grit sand paper, sand it down a bit so all or most of the scratches are eliminated then polish it to a transparent finish.
[QUOTE=Chryseus;43825451]Do other games load fine ? maybe you should try clean the optical assembly.
Also paying for this kind of service isn't worth it, just get a very fine abrasive polish (I.E Brasso) and a fine grit sand paper, sand it down a bit so all or most of the scratches are eliminated then polish it to a transparent finish.[/QUOTE]
I have litterally rebuilt the entire xbox, replaced the dvd laser 2 yr ago, replaced the eject band when i did the softmod, AC5 on everything that heats up, cut the fan grill, I take very good care of my xbox.
I bought battlefeild 2 and ridick from them, they put it in for a short cycle and it works :/ Other games read perfectly, minus my HL2 disk thats scratched to a firey pit that shall not be named. I haven't touched the other xbox really, I cant really remember why I even bought it now...
If the "data layer" is damaged, doesn't that mean that its kinda at a state of no return?
[QUOTE=aPanzerIV;43830446]If the "data layer" is damaged, doesn't that mean that its kinda at a state of no return?[/QUOTE]
The data layer is under the top label of the disc, you'd need a really deep scratch from the bottom to reach it. But if you accidentally scratched the label through, it could cause irreversible damage.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;43831084]The data layer is under the top label of the disc, you'd need a really deep scratch from the bottom to reach it. But if you accidentally scratched the label through, it could cause irreversible damage.[/QUOTE]
The labeled side looks fine, I said before if i used enough silver polish I could get the game to start, but niether would copy successfullly, and after the resurface, neither work. how far do these systems tear up the bottom of the disk?
I also did notice that the resurfaced dvd is thicker than the non-resurfaced ones, is it possible that the data layer is "out of range" or something?
[QUOTE=aPanzerIV;43834706]I also did notice that the resurfaced dvd is thicker than the non-resurfaced ones, is it possible that the data layer is "out of range" or something?[/QUOTE]
Resurfaced optical discs are thinner than non-resurfaced discs because the plastic substrate is removed.
A thinner/thicker disc could have problems being read if the laser couldn't focus on the data layer properly.
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