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why should that have been unplayable?
Apparently it could be played in many cd roms that had trays, but not ones where you had to insert.
You’re right.
The trays had a groove for a CD. So placing it in the groove it would work because its edges would always fall into that groove correctly all the way around the tray.
This, however, wouldn’t work on a slot loaded drive since they worked by having a set of arms with rollers that grab the edge of inserted disc and another arm with a roller that pushed it the rest of the way in from the opposite edge when it’s inserted enough.
You can see how this worked here on a DVD drive that uses the same setup. https://youtu.be/qi3v7X6BpAA
So there’s only ever 3 slim points of contact which is fine as long as it’s a circle. Yet the irregular shape here would cause it to get partially in and then pushed by the arms into the edge/internals of the drive.
Slot-loading CD drives would get jammed if you inserted anything other than a round, full-sized disc.
Irregular-shaped disc had to use drives that let you secure the disc to the spindle directly.
Slot-loading CD drives would get jammed if you inserted anything other than a round, full-sized disc.
The launch model Wii was an exception, with parts in there specifically for handling mini-discs for GameCube compatibility. The feature was quietly removed from later models.
Correct. There was a very complicated and delicate armature inside the drive that guided mini DVDs to the center. The revised Wii had a tray-loading drive, and no GameCube compatibility. So even though you could insert GameCube discs without issue, they wouldn’t play.
Those original Wiis still could not handle the Diddy Kong Racing disc due to the non-circular shape.
There was a model before the tray loading one that dropped GC support, too. I found out when the disc drive on my Wii died and I replaced it with an official later model drive and it couldn't read Wind Waker anymore.
I didn’t realize there was an in-between model. So that’s what that black Wii was!
You inserted a GC disc and it didn’t jam? If a mini DVD went in properly and could be ejected, then those guides for the smaller discs were still there, just the software no longer registered the disc as a game.
It's been a while, but I think the disc didn't center as it went in and the system just spat it out. The rest of the system was an original model Wii, so the software should have still been there, but the newer drive couldn't handle minidiscs. Launch model was apparently the RVL-001. The RVL-101 dropped GC support, but looked almost identical. The RVL-201 was the top loader model.
The Wii somehow was able to take both full-sized Wii disks and the smaller GameCube disks.
I was able to insert the mini disks that came with Lego Bionicles on my family's iMac back in the day. Never had a head-shaped disk, though.
I'm just guessing but it would be unbalanced as it spins in the disk reader, and probably wobble up and down making the laser inaccurate?
The tracking on the lasers for CDs is pretty crazy, since at those scales even well balanced CDs wobble like crazy. If it had to be super flat for it to work, each disc would be much too expensive. And as soon as it got dirty or warped in the sun, it wouldn't work anymore. In reality CDs are pretty rugged and can take a lot of abusive before they can't be easily read in even a cheap reader. It's amazing technology really. It's kinda crazy to think about how many holes per sec the laser can track and read for something like a blu-ray disc running at multiple times playback speed for data transfer.
i think CDs spin faster - there were some business-card sizex CD ROMs back in the day. nb data is read from the inside out
It looks like it’s pretty balanced. The chin appears to be slightly further from the center than the hat to account for the extra weight of the ears. With how leverage works you don’t need much more weight to balance as long as it’s just a little further.