Future of disc drives

[Yoyoman]

 In the future, if disc drives become able to read GC/Wii discs, will that be implemented into future stable versions of Dolphin? If it happens we can just insert our favorite GC/Wii discs into the future disc drive and play! 

[AnyOldName3]

Standard disk drives are never likely to read GC/Wii disks, as they're technically not compliant to DVD specifications, so aren't something drives are supposed to read. Those that can only work because people discovered bugs in their firmware that allow software to do things like move the motors outside normal ranges and request data without the drive checking that it's actually valid. Reading the disks isn't necessarily a difficult thing to do, it's just that drives are only designed to read CDs and DVDs (and sometimes Blu-Ray disks) and throw errors when something goes wrong in case you confused the drive for a biscuit warmer or something.

[Yoyoman]

So you're saying disc drives are never going to be able to do this for years to come. 

[Shonumi]

Probably not. There's little to no incentive for manufacturers to change really.

[Yoyoman]

Then how come you guys don't list the disc drives that have bugs in their firmware that let you run GC/Wii games off of the disc? Is it because it's risky and not guaranteed to work? 

[JosJuice]

There is a list already... https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-howto-dump-wii-or-gamecube-games-with-pc-no-wii-needed

Also, Dolphin doesn't support running games in this way. You can only use those drives to dump games.

[Shonumi]

(04-13-2015, 06:12 AM)JosJuice Wrote: You can only use those drives to dump games.

And quite slowly at that.

[Yoyoman]

So running Dolphin games off of the disc is not going to be a possibility?

[NKF98]

You will not be able to play Wii/GC games on Dolphin off disc unless, like, you blackmail drive manufacturing companies or something.

[Yoyoman]

Aww...*sigh*.