Has to be one of two things...RIGHT??? Simpsons Bowling

casuall002

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Has to be one of two things...RIGHT??? Simpsons Bowling

Ok, I've had my Simpsons Bowling for years. However, I am having some issues now. This exact thing happened awhile ago and I cleaned the inner ring of the cd***see below for what I mean and it started working.

Today it was working fine and it froze. Now when I boot and get to the media check I get CDR BAD (with the word bad in red) and below it also says "Hardware Error" in red...Anyway, it's a CD based unit so pulled the CD and the cd is fairly clean and doesn't really looked too scratched BUT on the inner ring of the cd, there is a sticky substance. I've tried to clean it off and put it back in but still doesn't work but this happened once before and it worked fine. But when I put it in and it gets to that spot, it doesn't sound like it's spinning right. SO...I would imagine that it's either the disk or the CD-ROM...So, I have 3 main questions but happy to have any input.

Do you think it's the CD
Do you think it's the CD-ROM
If you think it's the CD-ROM, is there a cheaper model I can replace it with? It's a Sony CDU76S

I appreciate all the help!

Thanks!
 
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CD rom drives are dirt cheap. Im pretty sure any one will work as long as its not like a 2x or something ancient like that. You might want to swap out the ide cable too to rule that out. Again, dirt cheap piece of mind.
 
So, just use a standard 4x and a new IDE...Question though. Searching the CDU76S, it shows as a SCSI...But, it looks just like an IDE connector???

I don't mess with games so I apologize for the simple questions.
 
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Also, so I can just take an internal CD-ROM out of a desktop computer, correct? Can I also use the connector from that or is it a special one?
 
Are you sure it's a 40 pin connector?

I seem to remember at least one game I worked on in the past having a drive that I thought was a regular IDE drive that you had to buy special. Wasn't a Simpson's Bowling though, I want to say it was a Soul Caliber or one of the Tekkens.
 
Looking at the same model online at 3 diffferent places, it is a 50 pin SCSI

I will also post some pics
 
You can probably find a scsii drive cheap or find a used one. Ask around at computer repair stores and see if they have any old stuff laying around.
If its a scsii drive, I think there are two different type connectors they used. I know one looks like a standard ide but there was another that was much smaller.
 
So, I can't use a 40pin CD-ROM, correct? What age of computer would this type of drive come out of? I have several old computers at my disposal. Is the ide looking cable different as well?

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Scsii drives were ued, but not limited to servers. The ribbon cable look the same as a 40 pin, just has an extra 10 pins. At some point they had a different scsii connection but im not sure when that happened.
 
Had the same issue with our Simpsons Bowling.

The CD-rom is indeed a SCSI drive. Standard IDE drives won't work. I picked up a NOS replacement on eBay for dirt cheap. I did manage to stumble across the exact model number drive for mine, but from a technical standpoint any SCSI drive *should* work.

I too had the problem of dried rubber on the cd. Came from the spindle clamp. In my case the cd was pretty much "glued" to the spindle from it and the cd started to crack around the hub hole during removal. I did manage to get it off and was able to get an image read from it and duped it to a new cd using an ordinary PC. As far as I could see, there's nothing unusual about the cd that prevents it from being copied and replacement I made works fine.


D
 
Any 50 pin SCSI drive will be fine. The purpose of the jumpers you see is to set the SCSI ID of the drive. Whether the game PCB cares about what ID I have no idea.
 
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