Hi,
I'd recently installed OpenSUSE 10.3, and now my IDE drives are represented as SCSI ones - sd* and sr*, instead of hd* from my previous distro. All of them are old pATA and ATAPI, not Serial ATA ones: sda - my hard drive (ex hda), sr0 and sr1 - my DVD-RW and CD-RW (ex hdc and hdd). The question is - how to set the DMA modes for the optical drives. Before the new distro, it was "hdparm -d ...", but with the SCSI representation, this doesn't work anymore. Please, don't tell me, that it's enabled by default, that the SCSI driver sets the maximum settings, etc. I'd read all this for the last 2 days of googling. Yet, for some unknown reason, my drive sometimes switches the DMA off or to a lower udma mode (did so on my previous distro too). Before, the workaround was simply "hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc". What's the command now?

thanks 4 bringing this to my own attn

install sdparm and try man sdparm or here
http://sg.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html

edit

so this was a little useful for me
sdparm --page=rw --long /dev/sr0

Since kernel 2.6.20 or thereabouts, the hd* is dropped in favor of s**. My IDE drives show up as sd* and my SATA drives show up as sr*.

back to hdparm....insert a disc and
hdparm -I /dev/sr0

I get on first try
/dev/sr0:

ATAPI CD-ROM, with removable media
Model Number: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D
Serial Number: FCDL192208WL
Firmware Revision: 1.06
Standards:
Likely used CD-ROM ATAPI-1
Configuration:
DRQ response: 50us.
Packet size: 12 bytes
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Buffer size: 64.0kB
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* Power Management feature set
* PACKET command feature set
* DEVICE_RESET command
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0 determined by the jumper

BTW I hope you are not comparing opensuse 10.3 with mdk 10 as we mdv users are now up to mdv 2008.1

I have sdparm, and briefly read the man-page, but nowhere I saw something remotely related to the DMA. BTW, while searching, I passed through a page, describing how to revert to /dev/hd* behavior, but I forgot the URL, and moreover, as far as I remember, it was written before the 2.6.20. I'm not comparing Suse with the recent Mandriva though, before installing Suse, I was on Mandriva 2007, not 08. Is it possible to get the old way with a recent kernel? See, before I could write at speed 8-9, now it barely gets 2-3, and the buffer is constantly going low - just a bit better than my previous system with DMA-off. As I wrote, all my drives are Parallel ATA, the computer is fairly old.

well it must be the scripts for opensuse cos mdv 2008.1 already has my dvd at udma4.

I did try -d1 and got an error but you are right sdparm does not appear to have dma as such I am referring to hdparm (commnand) /dev/sr0 or sr1 etc