CD Burner possessed by the Dark Spawn of Satan

Brane Ded · 11-30-2003, 04:51 AM

I needs help with this. When I first installed slackware, I burnt an ISO of Knoppix(this has nothing to do with my current probelm). It burnt at 52x, my burner's top speed. I got some LG 52x24x52 burner, and it worked great before.

Since then I've recompiled my kernel(this most likely has something to do with it). I'm quite sure I didn't screw anything up(if you know of an option I may have messed up on, tell me though

). At any rate, I'm thinking some value somewhere must have got reset. The damnable thing burns at about 16x now. And it doesn't even stay that high, it fluctuates between that and around 5x. I managed to burn off a CD like that, and it seemed to read okay afterwards, but there's hardly a point in having a 52x burner and only burn at ~5-16x.

Here's some information that may or may not be useful:

Command I'm using:
cdrecord -v -dummy speed=52 dev=0,0,0 -data KNOPPIX_V3.3-2003-11-14-EN.iso
It works the same with or without the dummy flag. And it does the same thing when I set the speed to 0.

cdrecord -scanbus output:

Code:

Cdrecord 2.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.25
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
scsibus0:
        0,0,0     0) 'HL-DT-ST' 'CD-RW GCE-8520B ' '1.00' Removable CD-ROM
        0,1,0     1) *
        0,2,0     2) *
        0,3,0     3) *
        0,4,0     4) *
        0,5,0     5) *
        0,6,0     6) *
        0,7,0     7) *

hdparm -i /dev/hdd output:

Code:

/dev/hdd:

 Model=HL-DT-ST GCE-8520B, FwRev=1.00, SerialNo=
 Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
 RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
 (maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
 IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:227,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
 AdvancedPM=no

hdparm /dev/hdd output

Code:

/dev/hdd:
 HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Invalid argument
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 BLKRAGET failed: Invalid argument
 HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

I don't know if IO_support should be 32 bit. I set it to that to see if it would do anything.

If any more info is needed, I'll try my best to supply it. I need to get this fixed. Thanks.

At any rate, I'll be knocking myself unconcious soon on my bed for the night. So my replies may not be too swift.

enyawix · 11-30-2003, 08:29 AM

LG Burners tend to be media pickey try a different brand of cdr media. liteon, asus, and plextor make some of the best cd burners I have ever used. Compaq uses LG burners and we know compaq is junk. I will never buy another LG burner agen.

finegan · 11-30-2003, 01:47 PM

Same media? Same burner? Same distro and software? Different kernels?

Seems like parms got set differently between the two kernels, 32-bit is right, DMA being off is troublesome, but it looks right in hdparm -i output, but then again hdparm returns unreliable results on everything but IDE hard drives, so don't necessarily trust it. Have you got the same outputs on the original kernel to compare it to?

Cheers,

Finegan

enyawix · 11-30-2003, 01:53 PM

Try the force dma option in the ide section of the kernel setup

Brane Ded · 12-02-2003, 06:03 PM

Code:

Track 01:  698 of  698 MB written (fifo 100%) [buf  99%]  53.2x.
Track 01: Total bytes read/written: 732551168/732551168 (357691 sectors).
Writing  time:  136.564s
Average write speed  34.9x.
Min drive buffer fill was 91%

Victory.

I recompiled my kernel and set it to default to DMA for all drives(or something like that). Aside from having a little trouble getting my internet connection back up(decided to turn a few things into modules), everything went okay.

I'm probably going to recompile again soon though(not messing with DMA settings this time

) to slim it down a little more. Is 1.088Mb a little big for a kernel? Or am I obsessing?

Oh well, thanks for all the help.

enyawix · 12-03-2003, 12:33 AM

1.088Mb is good you are smaller than me