An SSD can resurrect your old Sega Saturn and Dreamcast consoles:
Classic disc-based consoles are getting long in the tooth. As their optical drives burn out, they're rendered unplayable, which is a shame -- these systems were the peak of gaming in the eyes of many. Hardcore gamers who miss titles like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Power Stone may want to perform life-saving surgery on their Sega Saturn or Dreamcast consoles this summer, as a new solution will be able to replace dead disc drives, with no soldering skills needed. The Terraonion MODE -- Multi-Optical Disc Emulator -- simply drops into your console of choice, reads ROMs from a storage medium, and passes the data onto the console for processing. The dream of the '90s is alive.
[...] Some may wonder what the big deal is. Most of these games can be played on an emulator. But emulators simply don't have that magic that original hardware does. Is that worth the nearly $200 price of something like the MODE? For a lot of hardcore gamers -- especially those who are privy to the Saturn and Dreamcast's vast Japanese libraries -- the answer could be yes. It may be time to dust off some old consoles and relive one of gaming's greatest eras.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Friday April 24 2020, @04:36AM
Most of the optical drives from that generation just suffer from misaligned/dirty mechanisms, outer/inner lenses that need to be cleaned, or occasionally need to have their potentiometers tuned/replaced. Anyone who has the time & ability to use a kit to hack in a SSD to take their place would be capable of fixing most of the problems they'd be using it to replace.