DVDRW IDE1108 DVD-drive causing issues on boot in Fedora 13

coreychch · 07-25-2010, 09:12 AM

Hi all,

I have an intermittent problem (that seems to be coming more frequent) with an IDE DVD-ROM drive installed in an Intel Core-i5 machine running Fedora 13 with a 2.6.33.6-147.fc13.x86_64 kernel.

On boot, it *sometimes* hangs the machine. I have turned off the 'rhgb' and 'quiet' options on boot so I can see what is going on, and this comes up:

Code:

ata7: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xec00 ctl 0xe880 bmdma 0xe400 irq 18
ata8: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xe800 ctl 0xe480 bmdma 0xe408 irq 18
ata7.00: ATAPI: DVD-RW IDE1108, VER B028, max UDMA/66
ata7.00: configured for UDMA/66
scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM            DVDRW    IDE1108          B028 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

... and thats where it stops / hangs. If it continues, it shows this:

Code:

ata7: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xec00 ctl 0xe880 bmdma 0xe400 irq 18
ata8: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xe800 ctl 0xe480 bmdma 0xe408 irq 18
ata7.00: ATAPI: DVD-RW IDE1108, VER B028, max UDMA/66
ata7.00: configured for UDMA/66
scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM            DVDRW    IDE1108          B028 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 1x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5

... etc.

The drive is IDE and was added to the machine after it was purchased (from another machine). The drive seems to work fine, as I installed the O/S using it, and it reads/writes ok. I am a bit mystified as to why it only happens sometimes, but it seems to happen 2-3 times in a row before it will boot.

I have noticed that the smolt hardware profile makes no mention of the drive (I assume it should be in there somewhere?) and the "cd-drive" command hung the machine when I tried to run it.

It seems to be running the B028 firmware revision - are there later ones? I haven't really been able to track one down, so if anyone can point me at one that would be helpful.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Any thoughts as to the problem?

Happy to provide more info if needed.

Cheers,
Corey.

Drakeo · 07-25-2010, 11:09 AM

85 percent of the time it is as simple as cleaning the DVD not with a 5 dollar cleaning disk spend the 15 dollars and get a good one that comes with solution. the Machine works but hey the optic laser Thin glass cover may have a micro spec of dirt. as it moves aback and forth to find the data.
the other 15 percent can be caused by software issue but that would be BIOS but that is not the problem if it works.
one spec of dirt in the wrong place on a laser or DVD can render them useless.

DrLove73 · 07-25-2010, 06:00 PM

Make sure that you plugged IDE cable correctly, with longer end plugged in MB, not other way around. If it makes trouble I would just buy new DVD and thus avoid this problem altogether.

coreychch · 07-25-2010, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrLove73

Make sure that you plugged IDE cable correctly, with longer end plugged in MB, not other way around. If it makes trouble I would just buy new DVD and thus avoid this problem altogether.

Hmmm ... good point. Not something I thought of checking. I'll take a look - hoping it really just is a simple mistake like that.

I was hoping to avoid buying another DVD drive as the one I've got actually works fine. But if I have to, then so be it.

DrLove73 · 07-27-2010, 02:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by coreychch

as the one I've got actually works fine.

This is VERY subjective, since I have seen various good products not working well together (10 years professional IT both hardware and software). So, if it works well on most systems, it does not mean it will work well on all systems.