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I don't know for sure with those specific models, but I would guess that there's not really any tangible difference. My experience with the behavior of other Plextor drives makes me think that the U model is probably just the internal drive inside of a USB enclosure.

For example, I have a Plextor Premium internal drive. However, I only use it as an external drive over USB, as it's connected to a machine with no PATA ports. When I run Plextools Professional XL, it identifies the drive as a Premium-U (despite the label on the drive showing the model as just a regular Premium).

It turns out there's a note about the H353B in the Wiki. It's considered more trouble than it's worth. After acquiring one, I have to agree. I was able to get a few sections dumped, but it was taking an eternity and I'm not convinced the other sections were ever going to work. Anyway, I bought that model partly because it can also be flashed over to Kreon, so that drive is happily dumping Xbox discs now.

That's good advice leaving off the last character. Unfortunately for me, it looks like the SH-D162 version must not have been common in North America -- most results are way overpriced (including shipping) to get them to the States. I'm eyeballing a SH-T352C, but they still hover around $20 (including shipping). Not an extremely expensive drive by any means, but that seems like plenty for an otherwise unremarkable DVD-ROM drive from over 10 years ago.

Hopefully that's what I'll see when my European disc arrives. As it stands, I don't have any Code Lock discs that are identical pressings to those in the database. My Tropico disc is the North American version, and, while I suspect the errors are in the same locations (or nearly the same locations) as the European release in the database, it's definitely a different pressing. The sector count differs, etc.

So, my question is if I just haven't found the right drive to read my NA release with single errors, or if the error count is doubled compared to the European pressing. Hopefully, if I can verify that one or more of my drives will read the European disc with correct results, such a drive can be trusted to submit this NA release to the database, and we'll (sort of) know how many errors this damn disc is supposed to have.

Edit: I'm just realized I'm using the FW 3.02 on my BW-16D1HT (the one recommended by the Wiki). Sarami is using 3.10. It seems unlikely this explains the different behavior, right? I feel it's more likely the disc, but we are running different FW revisions... Does 3.10 have all the features that 3.02 does in terms of 0xF1, 0xBE on data sectors, lead-in, lead-out, etc?

I feel I'm missing something. I downloaded the DCdumper_(0.42a).7z, but I don't see any source code there.

From reading the old forum, I see that some archives of the binary also include a src folder, but I'm not seeing it in that archive.

Regarding the failure of the Plextor drives, as someone who was far too frugal to purchase a Plextor during their heyday (and my CD burning days), I always felt like maybe I was missing something. I had my cheap LiteOn or AOpen drive (or whatever drive I found cheap at a local retailer), and there were legends about the great Plextors that cost however many times what I was paying for my drives.

Having since acquired some Plextor equipment, I feel like it's...not that great. At first, I thought it was just because of the age. For example, I splurged and bought a used Premium some time back. The Premium is absolutely awful at reading damaged data discs. I thought it was just because it's 15+ years old. However, I went back and looked at the review of the Premium on cdrinfo.pl. They reviewed it back in 2003 and found it was among the worst of all the drives they tested for reading damaged data discs. (It was essentially tied with another Plextor drive, the PX-W4824A, for last place.)

On the flip side, the same review acknowledges the Plextor as a good audio reader. In fact, the review claims that the Premium can read CDS200-protected discs. However, I'm not sure they actually test such a disc in the review. I didn't go through the whole thing (and I'm reading it through a machine translator, so some details are iffy in any case), though.

Then there's the fact that it's nearly impossible to find a fully working Plextor DVD drive, which I also attributed to age. However, from reading about that, it sounds like PX-716s were dropping dead shortly after they were made too.

Anyway, my apologies that this rant isn't directly on topic, but I've been dealing with some damaged data discs (actual scratches -- not manufactured errors), and I was amazed to see how much better almost every drive I own is at reading damaged discs compared to the Premium. I'm still happy with the drive just to have another drive for dumping with DIC, though. And, I guess Plextors were really famous for their writing quality more than their reading prowess, so maybe in some ways my frustrations aren't fair.

More on topic, I think I might hunt around some at a local shop and see if I can spot any CDS discs. If I end up with one, I'll add my experiences here in trying to rip it.

I was doing some tidying and found this Tropico disc from when I'd set it aside a year ago. I've done some additional experiments expanding on what I mentioned in my last post, and I think I know a way to identify where the bad sectors are using a Plextor drive. I'll have to play around some more to see if we can actually read the good sectors this way, though.

First, a little background. I never bothered to get a European copy of Tropico in order to test my setup. I'll probably look into it now that I'm looking into this again. However, I did find (via Internet Archive) an image of the European disc that matches the CodeLock version in the database (CRC-32 of 72AAB3E6). That image has 758 errors. The best I've been able to get dumping this American disc is 1516 errors, or exactly twice the number of errors in the European release. I've lost track of exactly which drives I've tried to read this disc, but it's at least 12+ drives across 3-4 different computers at this point. The best performer is an HP-badged TS-H653 drive -- that's the drive that gave the image with 1516 errors. I've also tried an Optiarc, various LG / Hitachi-LG, at least one TSST, a LiteOn, various Plextors, a Pioneer, etc. I can get the model numbers for most of the drives if anyone wants to know.

Anyway, the fact that the European image has exactly half as many errors as my image leads me to believe that, probably, the actual number of errors on the American disc is the same as the European version. In fact, loading up the European image in CDMage shows me that its first few errors are at sectors 2462, 2472, 2482, and 2507. In contrast, my image's first errors are 2461, 2462, 2471, 2472, 2481, 2482, 2506, 2507. Thus, both images have errors at 2462, 2472, 2482, and 2507, but my image also has errors on the preceding sector for each of those. Sure, it's possible that the US release has errors in groups of two, but that just doesn't sit right with me. It seems like it should be single errors.

But, if they are single errors, where are they? Is the error in sector 2461 or 2462? After all, there's no reason the error couldn't have moved from 2462 on the European release to 2461 on the American release. So, how can we get any insight into whether the error is at 2461 or 2462?

Well, here's what I found out. If we convert CDMage's sector numbers to sector numbers compatible with the px_d8 utility (i.e., subtract 150 from the CDMage sector numbers because px_d8 maps MSF 00:02:00 to sector number 0 instead of 150), we see some interesting results.

For example, here's what happens if we try to read sector 2311 via px_d8 (equivalent to 2461 in CDMage):

Interestingly, the Plextor can read that sector (or, more specifically, it sees that it exists -- it actually can't read it, at least not via CloneCD), so it doesn't seem like there's an error there. What about 2312 (equivalent to 2462 in CDMage):

That sector definitely seems to be in error -- not even a sync. How about 2313?

The Plextor at least finds the sync for sectors 2313, but notice that all the sudden the offset is completely different. I think for every sector that's not adjacent to a bad sector, the offset is 18 samples on the Premium. For sectors that are adjacent to errors, though, the offset goes crazy. But, the sync is there, so that seems to imply that the error should be just at 2462, like in the European image.

I haven't checked every single sector, but we see a similar pattern everywhere I've looked. For example, here's trying to read the last error and its neighbors:

So, it looks like the last error should be at CDMage sector number 10167. In fact, that's where the last error is in the European image.

Anyway, long story short, I'm pretty sure that the American release is supposed to have exactly 758 errors in the exact same places as the European release that's already in the database. However, I've yet to find a drive capable of reading this disc with only 758 error sectors (despite having tried a ton of drives on various computers).

I can't speak to the compatibility for crossflashing those specific drives, but I have previously crossflashed a Creative branded drive (which was actually just a rebadged Plextor) with the Plextor firmware.

It's been some years since I did it, but I'm pretty sure all I did to crossflash was just (1) locate the drive model string in the Plextor flasher, and (2) hex edit that string to contain the model of the Creative drive instead.

I don't have that drive hooked up anymore, but I think I remember it still identifying itself as the Creative model, but I think it was running the Plextor firmware? I don't recall if / how I was able to verify that, as it's been years since I've played with that drive. It was an old 12x CD-RW. I crossflashed it back when I first started dumping, hoping that maybe the Plextor firmware had lead-in / lead-out dumping ability that the Creative firmware didn't. I never could get it to do lead-in / lead-out, so I gave up on that drive.

You might try asking over on Myce or CDRinfo.pl. Must of CDRinfo is in Polish (which I don't speak), but there's absolute tons of great info on there to be found using a machine translator. In a brief search, I did see that people had done work on renaming Plextor drives. Apparently it's possible to rename my old Creative into a Plextor. Maybe I should take a look...

I agree that BW-16D1HT is a very useful drive. I've found it has much better ability to read damaged discs compared to some of the Plextors. Just recently, I was going to do a comparison in dumping a zero offset disc between my Plextor Premium and my LG WH14NS40 (cross flashed over to BW-16D1HT). Unfortunately, there are several sectors that the Premium can't read (i.e., have ECC/EDC errors) even after several hundred retries. In contrast, the BW-16D1HT doesn't even report any C2 errors, and the ECC/EDC match after the first try.

I hope for that reason alone we can get all the kinks worked out with the ASUS / LG drives. They seem to be better readers. That might just be because they're less aged and worn, but I suspect it's also just because they're newer technology.

I've started writing some code to play around with this disc using my Plextor. On a "good" sector, I see an offset of 72 bytes from the start of the data stream to the sync pattern (reading via 0xd8 on my Premium).

However, if I read one of the bad sectors (or at least, one of the sectors the Plextor can't read but is *probably* actually a good sector), the sync pattern is suddenly at the wrong offset. For example, for sector number 2314, the sync shows up offset 1560 bytes from the start of the data stream, instead of 72 bytes. Interestingly, if I manually move the sync to the correct place, descramble the sector, and check the ECC/EDC, I get what appears to be a valid sector (ECC/EDC match) with an address of 00:32:64 (2314). So, the Plextor *can* read sector 2314, but it's somehow lost tracking when it reads it, so the sector data is in a different location within the stream. Note that this isn't a particularly amazing achievement -- the Optiarc and TSST drives were able to read that sector without all the fuss. But, this implies that it's sometimes possible to read sectors by manually adjusting the offset in software when the hardware seems to somehow lose tracking, so that's a pretty neat trick I didn't know was possible.

Is it possible the Plextor can read all the other sectors the same way? Probably not, but I'm going to keep playing with it to see what I find out.

I've attached scans of the front and back. I'm fairly certain it's a different version of Tropico than the existing CodeLock one in the database. CloneCD gives an image of size 776,559,840 for this one -- smaller than http://redump.org/disc/53929/. The mastering ring is different too (though they're both Disctronics). I wouldn't wish the frustration of this disc upon anyone, so obtain at your own risk!

On a completely random note, I think this is the only disc I have where the mould SID is directly on top of the mastering SID.

Regarding the drivers: I just put the Optiarc drive in an old Windows 7 desktop machine I forgot existed (like Core 2 Quad era old). This machine has an older generation of SATA controller than the other machines I tried, and so likely has different drivers as well. It's dumping with CDManipulator on that machine right now, and so far it's still getting errors in sets of 3 in the same pattern as seen on the other machine when the Optiarc was used. I plan to cycle various SATA drives (TSST, Optiarc, maybe LiteOn) through this machine just to see what happens with it, but right now it's looking like it'll probably be mostly the same outcome based on the Optiarc.

I also dropped the Optiarc drive like 2 feet onto the ground what I was installing it. I dunno if that invalidated the experiment, though, lol. It looks like the drive still works the same way it did.

Edit: It got done using the Optiarc on the other machine with 2276 errors. I'll try the TSST next.

Do you know which drives might be best to try next? I've tried so far an Asus BW-12D1S (a rebadged Pioneer, I think), multiple Plextors (Premium, PX-760, PX-716), two different LG drives (BP50NB40 and GP60N), an Optiarc (AD-7290H), and a LiteOn (iHAS124). So far, the fewest errors were given by the Optiarc (3 in a row) (Edit: Fewest as in "smallest groups". I think by raw error count, the LiteOn was lower.). Most drives gave 4 or 5 errors in a row. There might be some hope from the LiteOn if I read a bunch of times and combine rips, though, because it sometimes only has 2 in a row (and sometimes 4, but usually 3).

I'm currently trying the Panasonic in my old laptop (UJ260AF), but so far it's reading errors in groups of 5 or more.

I've got some other drives in storage, and I'm willing to buy some more cheap drives (I already bought a cheap Optiarc to see how it'd perform). The obvious thing would be to try a drive with a different chipset, but I think I've tried most chipsets (IIRC, the Plextors have Sanyo, probably at least one of the LGs is a Renesas, LiteOn is probably Mediatek, Optiarc is NEC, etc.) at this point, though, so I'm not sure where to go next. I haven't tried any of my old SCSI drives yet -- maybe they'll behave differently? It'll be a while before I can get any of them out of storage to try, though. Maybe the smaller cache might help...

That's what I thought, too, but Aaru was actually able to read two more sectors after a *ton* of retries on the Optiarc. Unfortunately, that just made it match the CD Manipulator dump and didn't really provide anything new compared to my other dumps. I think the LiteOn was able to read a few sectors that the Optiarc wasn't, though, so maybe I can dump the disc a few more times and narrow down which sectors are "supposed" to be bad.

Maybe I should try Aaru on the LiteOn just for the hell of it. It seems like maybe it has the most promise in terms of the number of errors. Last time I dumped with CloneCD. What's another 14 hours, lol.

On another note...is it possible to get a list of which sectors have errors for the European version of Tropico? I'm curious how it maps. I also wonder what drive(s) it was dumped on.

Edit: I gave up on the Panasonic -- it was showing errors in groups of as many as 10. I remembered I had a TSST that wasn't in storage (SH-224). So far it's erroring only in groups of 2, so maybe TSST is the winner.