Bit Rot Warning:Disposable Hero for CD32

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:39 pm

All Disposable Hero CDs were manufactured by PDO in the UK:

European CD maker PDO (Philips and DuPont Optical) discovered to its horror that tens of thousands of CDs it had pressed in the early 1990s were disintegrating. The discs contained a lacquer that was permeable to sulfur in the paper booklets packaged with the discs. Over time the sulfur evaporated into the discs, corroded the information layer, turned the discs a golden-bronze color, and left them unplayable.

Therefore you if you own the game you should make a backup of your CD as soon as possible; it is not a question of if it will become unreadable, but when. I've got two copies of the game, both have bronzing near the edges and the data layer of one of the CDs is beginning to peel off.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:48 pm

Thanks for letting us all know. Just bought the game - any special precaution I must take when burning a copy of it?

D · Post by D » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:03 pm

So was this the self-disposable version?
I always like to read about video game blunders. I wish there was a site dedicated to stuff like that. Like that Dreamcast game that a had a virus in the wallpaper for the pc that was on the disc. Can't remember which.
Or games that delete your VMU content.
A friend of mine has got a PAL gamecube and a freeloader and a jp Winning Eleven, he needs to eject his memory card everytime he plays the game because else all of his memory card content will be deleted.
What else? I wonder if a game was ever released that didn't even work on the console (like if they just tested on dev. machines)

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:04 pm

Turrican wrote:Thanks for letting us all know. Just bought the game - any special precaution I must take when burning a copy of it?

I used CloneCD; luckily my first copy of DH was still 100% readable. I then archived the disk image in case I'll need to burn it again later on.

Since the copy you bought is still sealed, it may actually be in worse shape than an opened copy because the disk was exposed to the booklet's sulfur more directly for a longer time...
But don't despair; if yours is unreadable I could send you a backup of mine

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:14 pm

Ceph wrote:But don't despair; if yours is unreadable I could send you a backup of mine

That might take time to verify, considering I'm still looking for a CD32 system - I can always take a photo of the cd to compare bronze stains. Thanks for the support anyway. Much appreciated

Bishamon · Post by **Bishamon** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:55 pm

I had about 45 audio CDs that suffered from this issue, and around two thirds have now been replaced by Philips... the first batch of around 18 were replaced around 1998, and the second batch of 10 were just replaced a couple of months ago. The remaining corroding discs I backed up onto '200 year' Archival Gold CD-Rs. Even the worst of the CDs are still playable (they look absolutely horrible), though I'm sure there was some missing data being 'filled in' by the CD player.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:01 pm

I remember when discs like these were being sold as a 2-day rental feature.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:20 pm

Bishamon wrote:replaced by Philips

Do you mean I could send my Disposable Hero CDs to Philips and they would replace them with newly made ones?

Daigohji · Post by **Daigohji** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:31 pm

Is this kind of problem really exclusive to Philips media? I'd be surprised if their manufacturing process was substantially different from other companies churning out CDs.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:58 pm

Daigohji wrote:Is this kind of problem really exclusive to Philips media? I'd be surprised if their manufacturing process was substantially different from other companies churning out CDs.

As you have read the problem occured only at one time in the early 90s in one UK facility because a bad lacquer was used; I haven't heard about it happening again or elsewhere since.

I personally have never seen any other CDs like these.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:36 am

With Turrican's permission I just opened the sealed Disposable Hero I sold him...

And there seems to have been a little fuzz about nothing here: the disc was perfect as it should be.

So possibly only a certain batch of cd's made by this factory/company are affected.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:38 am

I'm so happy

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:42 am

Super Laydock wrote:With Turrican's permission I just opened the sealed Disposable Hero I sold him...

And there seems to have been a little fuzz about nothing here: the disc was perfect as it should be.

So possibly only a certain batch of cd's made by this factory/company are affected.

Good to know! Either you got lucky with the good copy or I got unlucky to get two bad ones. What does it say on the inner ring of the CD?

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:48 am

Disposabe Hero 10279461 02 & made in u.k. by PDO

So it is made by them after all, but maybe from a different batch?

Any, I am glad to that this one isn't affected!

Just as a precaution I would back it up though if I were Turrican.
Maybe keeping the disc in a different jewelcase apart from the manual might help too here.

Daigohji · Post by **Daigohji** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:51 am

Could exposure to air be part of the reaction? Maybe keeping it sealed all these years is what protected it.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:18 am

Super Laydock wrote:
Disposabe Hero 10279461 02 & made in u.k. by PDO
So it is made by them after all, but maybe from a different batch?

My two copies have the exact same number.

Daigohji wrote:Could exposure to air be part of the reaction? Maybe keeping it sealed all these years is what protected it.

Now that would suck ;-D
Well, before reading the website linked to above what I thought happens is that sulfur evaporates from the paper and makes the lacquer layer around the disc's edge porous. Then oxygen permeates inside and reacts with the metal layer (which may actually be silver in these particular discs), causing it to oxidize.

The webiste I linked to says that only the sulfur permeates into the disks and causes the reaction.

In any case, separating disk and cover and storing the disk vaccum sealed is advisable.

@Turrican: You should still make a back-up as soon as you get it.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:54 am

Gotcha guys - sheesh, I'm beginning to think that my humble double density disks will outlast the CD32 version

Is at least the redbook audio worthy?

eretsua · Post by **eretsua** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:00 am

slightly ot: i have a few copies of "The Canian Chronicle" by Ancient that all have the top side picture eating through the disc. So now on all 4 copies that i've owned you can see the outline of the logo and the track titles in the dye leaving the discs totally unplayable. never seen anything like it (and hope i never will).

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:14 am

Turrican wrote:Gotcha guys - sheesh, I'm beginning to think that my humble double density disks will outlast the CD32 version

Is at least the redbook audio worthy?

Yeah, it's very good.

Bishamon · Post by **Bishamon** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 1:35 pm

Ceph wrote:
Bishamon wrote:replaced by Philips
Do you mean I could send my Disposable Hero CDs to Philips and they would replace them with newly made ones?

Possibly. I sent an email to an address set up several years ago to look after this situation, not really expecting a reply (I originally dealt with them by phone in the late 90s when they managed to replace 20 or so titles, and the email address I found was set up back in 2002 or earlier, so getting a reply in 2006 was surprising).

I'll have to dig up the email address when I get home from work.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 11:19 pm

D wrote:Like that Dreamcast game that a had a virus in the wallpaper for the pc that was on the disc. Can't remember which.

Marie & Elie no Atelier!

I actually have that game but never bothered/dared to check if my copy contains the virus as well.

Bishamon · Post by **Bishamon** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 12:55 pm

Bishamon wrote:
Ceph wrote:
Bishamon wrote:replaced by Philips
Do you mean I could send my Disposable Hero CDs to Philips and they would replace them with newly made ones?
Possibly. I sent an email to an address set up several years ago to look after this situation, not really expecting a reply (I originally dealt with them by phone in the late 90s when they managed to replace 20 or so titles, and the email address I found was set up back in 2002 or earlier, so getting a reply in 2006 was surprising).

I'll have to dig up the email address when I get home from work.

The email address for the Philips/PDO disc issue is:

PatBurnsHelpline@compuserve.com

The person who I was dealing with at that address is Andrea Hoyle:

ANDREA HOYLE
PDO HELPLINE
PHILIPS ROAD
BLACKBURN
LANCASHIRE
BB1 5RZ
ENGLAND

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:00 pm

In case anyone cares: I tried to get a replacement but PDO changed owners several times in the past years, and even though they promised in 1995 to keep replacing the defective CDs for 20 years, the new owner (Entertainment Distribution Company) stopped doing it. Besides, even when PDO was still replacing CDs, they never made reprints of every single affected CD; only those with larger print runs requested by a number of people got repressed. I seriously doubt that Disposable Hero for CD32 was among them.

I recently purchased yet another copy of Disposable Hero which is in much better shape than my other two copies, but if you look closely you can also see a few tiny brown spots near the edge of the disk. I'm keeping this one stored in a plastic sleeve to prevent any further exposure to the sulfur from the booklet. I advise anyone who owns the game to do the same.