this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Sega Dreamcast is not an example of a console that I would describe as "built to last". I had two and both of them died in the same way - the optical lens cracked from heat stress and stopped reading disks. There was never any warning it was about to happen, and no way to prevent it as far as I knew.
As unlucky as I was with the Dreamcast, I made up for it by only ever having to buy one Xbox 360. I still own my original console which was never refurbished and never red ringed on me.
I have 4 of them, 3 with this issue
This is why SD card mods are important for optical disc consoles. The OG hardware just isn't going to last.
Most problem those give tend to be turn it on and it says, "hey I'm not so sure you put a game in me, would love to play one for you, though!" Or "I think this might be a game or it might just be a weird blue pattern because the connection is there but only partially".
At least the NES was like that. You had to know the ritual to put the cartridge in correctly and that ritual changed. I don't ever remember having a ritual with my N64.
The lasers can also weaken over time leading to issues reading discs. There is a small trim pot that can be adjusted to recalibrate it. You do want to be careful and only make very very small adjustments though.
They should've picked Playstation. Those things are near indestructable.
I'm not sure where this idea comes from, the PlayStation had a bad reputation even when it was new.
The optical drive would often fail and need replacement. There was a whole meme about people using the console upside down to combat this.
I got this idea by actually owning one. I abused the fuck out of that thing, and it lasted half of my childhood.
was that the ps2? i had to refocus and polish the lens on that so many times
The ps2 was also quite bad in that regard, but the meme about using it upside down was the original ps1.
Console reliability took a sudden nosedive with the switch to optical drives.
I'm sure the sony consoles weren't the worst in that regard, but being by far the most popular meant you knew a bunch of people whose playstation would take half an hour to load a game if at all, but the one saturn you'd seen in your life worked fine.
damn, my ps2's lens is kinda wonky and i was hoping i could flip it upside down to fix it.