Re: ide-cd? Can burn DVDs, just not read them...

Lennart Sorensen
2005-04-25T20:32:38Z

On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 10:55:15AM -0700, Randy Gardner wrote:
> Don't have an easy way to test that; I'd have to take it back to the
> person with a dual-boot box, as I'm pretty sure their update utility is
> a windoze bianry...

You should be able to see the firmware version using one of the cd
writing tools (cdrecord or dvd+rw-mediainfo or whichever). Comparing to
what the manufacturer has on offer could at least tell that. As for
updating, if it isn't a plextor it almost certainly requries windows
and/or dos to update (usually windows it seems).

> But, since problems are also happening with my cd-rw drive (even with
> the dvd-rw out of the system), which I know worked before, I don't think
> it's a drive problem.

Well that does sound odd. Is this your own kernel build from plain
kernel.org sources or are there any patches involved?

> Originally it shared a cable with my cd-rw drive, but I've tried it both
> on its own cable and sharing with one of my hard drives, on both the
> ata/66 controller and the ata/100 raid controller, with no changes at all.

As far as I know, promise cards are only recommended for harddisks, but
I am not sure of that. I have only ever used them for harddisks myself.

> 80 conductor cables for all tests. I might be able to dig up a 40
> conductor one for testing, but I don't think that'll help...

Different cables tried? Just in case you have a bad cable in there?

> Someone suggested I try a binary search of kernel versions to figure out
> exactly when the cd-rw drive was broken (which worked before, unlike the
> dvd, which I have no idea if it ever worked), in an effort to figure out
> what caused it to break... going to try this, but haven't had the
> time... a long project. :)

Sounds painful.

Well so far I have had no problems reading or writing with 2.6.11,
2.6.10, 2.6.8, and some earlier 2.6 kernels (all Debian sarge or sid
builds).

Len Sorensen