CD-RW's Drive Problems.

Gregory J. Neumann gjn at certainlywood.com
Tue Mar 12 18:27:56 EST 2002


Hi, Ron!
Just to confuse things, here's my $.02: ;-)
I'd try the Linux route myself, but be sure to read the HOWTO and follow the kernel 
/ module recommendation carefully!  Mandrake may come w/ the kernel already pre-
compiled properly.  mkisofs maks an image on the CD and cdrecord uses RAM (you can 
specify how much, too!) as the buffer, so buffer underruns are very rare, unless 
you want to do Quake or something equally CPU intensive while burning.  On my ol' 
486 w/ 32 Meg of RAM I used to burn CD's while browsing w/ Lynx and never had a 
problem.  This is where Linux's superior memory usage really shines! :-D  The only 
problem I've had w/ cdrecord is a bug in the early 2.4.x kernel ide-scsi emulation. 
IIRC, it was fixed in 2.4.13 or thereabouts.

I'd also try moving the HD's to the primary bus and set up the CD-RW and CD-ROM to 
the secondary bus.  Linux cares not at all whether the drive it's on is a master or 
if the partition it's on is set "bootable".  That sort of thing is from the 
arrogant Microsoft mindset that the only O/S on the system is Microsoft.  I've also 
run into at least one CDRW that refused to work until I moved the CD-ROM it was 
"bussed"(?) with to a different bus, though.  Seems to me that there's a potential 
bottle neck, as the CDRW would interfere w/ the ATA-100 (or 33 or 66?) because they 
can't run at that bus rate.  Things may have changed, but WAY back in the old days 
(486's were VERY fast then!), the ide bus ran at the speed of the slowest device on 
the bus, and CD-R(OM)(W)'s are VERY slow compared to any HD.  But back in the 
386/486 days, who could tell? ;-)

> I'm most likely going to move the drive to my AMD box that has Mandrake 8.1
> sitting
> all on its lonesome and try a burning with one of the software installed.
> 
> > Master or slave should work if the drive is jumpered correctly.  There has
> to
> > be a master on the bus though, and single master is certainly the best
> > arrangement.
> >
> <-----------------------------------snip------------------------------------
> ----.
> Correction the manufacturer states that the recommended jumper settings is
> (master)
> I can't do that I have (two) drives set to master. 1. win98 2. RedHat 7.2 CD
> reader is slave
> on IDE secondary channel, and cd writer is slave on IDE primary channel.
> The cd-rw's hardware design from the info provided by the manufacturer
> states that it is suggested
> to be jumpered as master. So lets see...then it wants to BUS master the IDE
> Channel. Not much room
> for customizing here to my liking. So I think I'll move it to the AMD box,
> and put it on its own IDE channel as
> master!
> 
> So much for modern better design!
> Bull!!!
> 
> Ron
> 
> > Ken Galle
> >
> >
> > > Ronald Maggio wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm having a problem with a I/O magic burner. I will state that I'll try
> it
> > > with Linux before I give up.
> > > Ok here it is I have set the drive to slave although I/O magic states
> that
> > > they recommend to use it as master.
> > > I'm getting nothing but buffer underruns and questionable copied cdr's.
> > > Does anyone have any input on this before
> > > I remove it and its software. These off brand or cheep knockoff's of
> this
> > > type of hardware are not as flexible in there
> > > installation settings as better brand named products. ie: Hewlett
> Packard
> > > and the like.
> > > I assume the same problems should occur in Linux since its a hardware
> issue
> > > and not a software issue.
> > > I did close (((ALL))) tsr's. I'm running dual-boot and can't set it to
> > > master.
> > > I read all the info that came with it and I went to there web page to
> find
> > > info, but I came up with the same conclusion.
> > > It has to be set to master in order to work right.
> > > If this can't be worked out I'll just remove it and save up the money to
> > > buy a named brand unit. ie: HP.
> > >
> > > Ron
> >
> 




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