Getting a CDROM drive to work with redhat

calimer · 07-08-2002, 10:54 PM

Hi, I've been having trouble getting a cdrom drive to work with redhat 7.2 and 7.3 I have two cdroms, one is quite old, but it installed redhat fine, but then crashes when KDE or GNOME loads up. Then I got a newer CDROM drive, a matsushia-kotobuki model CR-585-B That fails in exactly the same way. I'm wondering, would a newer cdrom drive even help? I want to get that newer cdrom drive to work but I have no idea how, and I haven't been able to find linux device drivers for it. I would greatly appreciate any help, thank you for your time.
-calimer

sewer_monkey · 07-08-2002, 11:00 PM

What do you mean the CD-ROM crashed? How can it crash? What exactly happens? Does KDE freeze when you try mounting the CD-ROM? If it does freeze, can you escape to a text console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1?

zLinuxz · 07-09-2002, 12:38 AM

yeah man, what the heck crashes? your car? a boat on the dock?, need way more Detailed Detail!!

calimer · 07-09-2002, 06:47 AM

It's the computer that crashes. KDE crashes at the last part of the desktop environment loading, right when the mouse icon turns into a little cdrom icon. I forgot exactly where GNOME crashes, but it's at a similar point. When it freezes, I can't do anything to it, as far as I know anyway, I've hit all sorts of buttons and tried commands and it is unresponsive. Hope I got enough info in there now.
-calimer

finegan · 07-09-2002, 10:21 PM

And if the CDROM is disconnected, IDE cable, power and all, this doesn't happen?

That's very weird. There are very few drivers specific to different models of CDROM, and they're all usually very very very old. The ATAPI standard made for it to be simple to make one driver for everything CDROM and IDE, so that's probably not the issue.

Cheers,

Finegan

calimer · 07-10-2002, 02:16 AM

Yeah, if I disconnect the IDE cable then Redhat loads up fine, minus a working cdrom of course. This is what I HAVE to do if I want to run redhat, obviously, because I haven't found a way around this problem. It's very frustrating, because I've tried it with three cdroms. They have all been a bit dated but not THAT dated, at least the one I have been trying now. Well this last one is about 5 years old so I guess that is some time. Well if anyone has some ideas on how I can get a cdrom to work, especially the one I mentioned, please help me out. Thank you for your time.
-calimer

linuxcool · 07-10-2002, 03:19 AM

Could you post a copy of your /etc/fstab file.

anoop_chandran · 07-10-2002, 05:29 AM

well if it's NOT a driver problem then it also could be possible that the /dev/cdrom -> points to some non-existing device...in /dev

boot into the runlevel 3 mode..

check dmesg and find what ur CD roms are /dev/hd? as identified by linux kernel...use the text mode (run level 3)

usually it's like this..
/dev/hda -------- the primary master HD
/dev/hdb -------- the primary slave HD
/dev/hdc -------- the secondary master...(possibly ur first CDROM)
/dev/hdd -------- the secondary slave...(2nd CD may be..)

am i right ?i hope.......

try checking
#ls -l /dec/cdrom ( it could be cdrom1 in ur case ...)...

it should point to what ever ur kernel has identified ....hdc or hdd
if not link it to hdc or hdd as the case may be...

bye.....

finegan · 07-10-2002, 11:16 AM

This has got me kinda baffled. A couple of wild ideas:

Are the CDRoms jumped for CS, cable select? This makes the 2.4.x kernels's dma support go wacko.

What's the motherboard? There may be a quick for it that RH didn't compile in the fix for.

This is not on an extra (i.e. pci riser card, SB sound card) IDE channel, right?

Actually, more hardware specs down the list would rock.

Cheers,

Finegan

calimer · 07-10-2002, 02:57 PM

Okay, well, here we go. Some interesting updates have happened. I think perhaps something may be wrong with the motherboard. I don't know the exact specs for it, or how to check them but it is a pentium I (MAYBE II, but I think I) and a 233mhz at that. But anyway, today I tried to get it to work again, and well for one thing, I have never been able to get anywhere, even installing redhat unless the cdrom was set to primary master and the hard drive was set to secondary master. When trying to install redhat it gets stuck at hda: disabling (U) DMA for wdcac32500h (the hard drive). Now strangely, even when I put the hard drive as the primay master it won't work. This is where it stops at loadup ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7, 0x3f6 on Irq 14 By the way I get this same error whether I use a HD that has 7.3 on it and on a 7.2 hard drive. When I have the hard drive in primay master and the cdrom drive secondary master it gets stuck at ide 1 at 0x170-0x1770x376 on irq 15. Now when I have the cdrom as primay master and the hd as secondary master it stops at "enabling swap space". This is using the redhat 7.3 hd. It is not even loading up to the KDE desktop like it used to. Pretty strange. After in install of a redhat each cdrom has been the same as well in the fact that when I first loaded up redhat it loaded with cdrom in, but it wouldn't let me mount it, then it was every time after it that it messed up. The cdrom is jumped for master. Let me know what hardware specs you want and how I can get them and I'll post them asap. Thank you for all the time and patience you all have put into my problem. Take care.
-calimer

finegan · 07-10-2002, 04:58 PM

You put it all down right... this might be a number of things, like your BIOS's limitation on what drive size it can comprehend. If these are bigger than 16Gb, that's probably what's doing it. A 233Mhz Intel btw is a P2, the first one.

Go to BIOS and see if you can either:

A) get it to autodetect the drive geometry

or

B) manually put in the # of Cylinders, heads, and sectors.

and

C) get it to autodetect the CDROM.

Luck,

Finegan

calimer · 07-10-2002, 09:18 PM

Okay, I will definitely try to see what I can do in BIOS. I'm a newbie but I do have a little practice working in BIOS so I hope I can get something to work. By the way both hard drives are only 2.5 gigs, I'm assuming it was HD's that you were refering to in your mention of gigs. (Not much else that it would be refering to though huh). I have been told that the HD HAS to be the primary master, but then through expirmenting, I found that the cdrom had to the be the primary master. What's the story with that? It all seems pretty odd to me. Luckily that machine is different than the machine I'm on now. I'm unfortunately on windows right now and am trying to make my way over to linux, but I want to make sure I have a working linux machine before I put linux on this machine, because if this one goes down, I have no way to get online and get help for my linux machine. Thank you for your time and effort, it is greatly appreciated.
-calimer

calimer · 07-11-2002, 11:31 AM

Okay, I tried C and got it to autodetect the HD and CDrom, but it failed in the exact same places as it did before. I tried both combinations too, with one as primary master and the other as secondary master. It seems strange that it gets stuck at "enabling swap space". Is it looking for swap space in the cdrom possibly? Now that I think about it, I HAVE had a cdrom drive work in that linux machine. It was when I took out my cdrom drive from THIS computer and put it in the computer I'm working on, but I was using mandrake at that time. I had to take it out of that computer because mandrake wouldn't install with the cdrom drives I had (I didn't have the cdrom drive I have in there now at the time). I'm really reluctant though to take out the cdrom drive from this computer again, because if i mess anything up with this computer I'm sunk. Plus it has my only dvd player, so that's another reason I'm reluctant. Does anyone know how far back redhats driver support goes? I mean 97 isn't THAT long ago. It's a 24X cdrom so it definitely isn't too slow. By the way, with your A & B Finegan, I don't really know how I would go about doing either because I'm too much of a NEWB. Thank you for all the time and effort you've put into helping me out.
-calimer

calimer · 07-11-2002, 11:54 AM

Okay, here is some updated info, sorry for not being as clear before. It's when I use redhat 7.2 (with cdrom as primary master, and the HD as secondary master) that it crashes right on the end of loadup with KDE and GNOME. It's with redhat 7.3 that it gets stuck at "enabling swap space" when the cdrom is primary and the HD is secondary master. If the "masters" role is reversed, they both get stuck at the same IRQ spots I detailed above, as well as the same IRQ spots if I ONLY run the HD as a master with nothing else attached but a floppy drive. Seems strange. I could of sworn I have run the HD's alone as primary masters before. Isn't something strange about the fact that I HAVE to have the cdrom as the primary master? Isn't it really supposed to be the HD that is primary master? Thank you for your time.
-calimer