CD-ROMS stoped working.....
 

Big problem here people...Last night I d/l the 9.2 iso's & burned them without a hitch.
I went to install from disk#1 and relized I had a bad burn (I checked the size of the cd after install failed). So I burned another cd with success this time :D Install was going great till mandrake went to update the rpm packs durring install, then my cdr &rw both stopped working :eek: I aborted the install and went to try again when to my suprize instead of booting to mandrake install, I went strait into win98 :confused: That's when I relized that the cd drives didn't show up at all.
I went into my bios setup to see what was going on & it said "none" to seconary master & slave. Ofcourse I tried to change this but couldn't. Then I tried to do use "Data Lifeguard Tools" to see if it had any info for me to no prevail.
My next guess was that the cdr was bad becouse I could access the cd-rw (not use it, just open and close it) and not the cdr. I tried running the cdrw alone and still nothing :confused: . Now all it can be is that somehow my bios was corrupted. I flashed it, still nothing :confused: Yep, I tried diffrent power leads & installed new ribbons too.....



I'm stumped...any ideas?
:scratch:

This is a hardware problem IMHO. The fact that it crapped out during the mandrake install is coincidence. Post your hardware specs. Without knowing more, my main suspect would be a faulty power supply unit(psu) since you already swapped out all your ide cables on the effected devices. Bad psus can cause a lot of erratic problems. Have you noticed anything else going wrong? The hardware specs will give some clue as to the drain on the psu, also post psu manufacturer and wattage if you know.
I'd also double check those cables and the connection on the motherboard (any bent pins?). Recheck your bios and see if the devices are listed. There is no way windows will see them if the bios doesn't and you indicated that one of the devices at least showed up in windows even though it was not functional.
Bad ram can also cause a lot of goofy problems. If you have more than one stick of ram, you can try pulling one and just run with one stick; see if the problem goes away then try with the other.
For the problem you report, my main suspicions would be cabling, psu then ram. It's also possible that a bad psu could take out components or damage your motherboard. You learn when you do your own builds to never skimp on the psu. You could also try slaving one of your optical drives to your hard drive and see if it is recognized in your bios.

ok, I know it's old, I'm $300 short for my new system thanx to the hurricane :cool:

system was baught new from Gateway in '99
P3-500
256 sdram (128 shipped, I added 128)
Tabor3 mobo (I installed the last know flash with no problems)
shipped with a Voodoo3500 (it died so I installed a new Nvidia G4-MX420)
shipped with a Qantum Fireball 12.5 gig (I've added a WD12.5 gig slave & WD30 gig master, I swap out the master drive depending on who's useing the computer)
shipped with a 250 watt power (the new system I building will have 300-350 watts)
shipped with 40x cdrom (I added a 40x cd-rw)
soundblaster 64d
I added a nic (godda' have cable :D )

win98 didn't see either cd drive. I geuss I wasn't too clear on that. What I ment is that on the cd-rw I can open and close the tray, the cdr is completely dead. I didn't mean to imply that the mandrake install caused this, it's just that the timeing sucked LOL.
I've tried running both cd drives alone and together with every possable jumper setting.

I hope you can point out something that I might have over looked. I haven't tried the ram yet, but as far as I can tell, all 256megs are working fine. Atleast it says 256 at boot, system devices and www.pcpitstop.com saw 256.
If you need more info, I'll be happy to provide it.
Thanx for your time & help
;)

Nothing on IDE2 is being detected by your bios. The possibilities are bad cables, bad power to the devices on that channel, bad optical drives(can't imagine what would take out both other than a bad psu, power surge, etc), or a motherboard problem screwing up IDE2. Try this to limit it down. Pull out the IDE1 connector on the motherboard that connects to the hard drives and put the cable that the optical drives are on on IDE1 on the motherboard. Boot up and enter your bios setup and see if the optical drives are detected. If they are, there is a strong possibilty that something is wrong with the mb(same cable, same drives, different ide channel would mean trouble with ide2 pointing to a mb problem). If not, swap the cables from the hard drive and reconnect the optical drives to ide1 on the mb. If detected in the bios, you probably have some bad cables on the optical drives, if not, you've got to wonder whether the drives are good or properly configured; check the jumpers and try jumpering explicit master and slave rather than cable select.
I think you get the idea, by following some logical sequence you can limit the problem area to determine the best possibility for repair. The trick is to keep your cool and be very systematic.

thanx for the ideas ;) I'm going to watch monday night football right now, but I'll give this a try in the morn and let you know what happens
thanx again

ok,tried the cd's on ide1....nothing, bios said;

PM=<none>
PS=<none>
SM=<none>
SS=<none>

When the ribbons are in the correct spot, I get

PM=WD30gig drive (ofcourse make and model)
PM=WD12.5gig drive *edit* sorry, should say "PS"
SM=<none>
SS=<none>

When I goto configure the ide drives, It still has the correct settings for the CD drives, but says <none> for both drives, and it's "grayed out" where I can't change the settings
I never let the robbons chose what drives are master & slave. I always use the jumpers. I tried all possable jumper settings, including no jumpers (solo & daisy chained) to try and figure this one out.... :scratch: And as you saw in this thread, I installed new 40 pin flat ribbons (I don't trust the round ones). I just took the trash out so I can't tell you the brand name of the ribbons, but I picked them up from Radio Shack. I think thery where the Radio shack brand though. They had 3 in stock, I bought 2.
I'm starting to think my 28oz framming hammer can fix it LOL

I'm starting to think this fix is something stupid that's staring me in the face :D One of those "good thing it wasn't a snake" things..... :confused:

Still no cd drives :cry: anyone else have any ideas?
As you can geuss, this puts my new system on the fast track. But I didn't really want the rest of the family getting on the new system downloading a bunch of crap and screwing up "my" computer.
I geuss they don't really need a cd drive except to rip music. But I'd like to get this fixed for my own piece of mind....

Anyone here try the new AMD 64 bit cpu yet? I'm thinking about coughing up the dough for it.

Did you switch the power cables on the cd drives? Try putting the ones from the hard drives on the cd drives. You know the hard drives are getting power so stick them on the cd drives. You seem to have eliminated everything but bad power to the cd drives or blown optical drives. If you have or can borrow an old cd drive, you can try swapping it in and see if it works. If you want to positively eliminate any problem with the ide channels, you can put your hard drives on ide2 and see if they're detected. Did you swap the ide ribbons with the one from the hard drive which you know is good.

Edit: Bad news JT; check out this post:

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=8886

Several reported problems of mdk9.2 frying LG cdroms on install. I wouldn't of thought it possible:confused:

Man, that really chaps my ass !!! I got the cd-rw to work as a primayr slave, but the cdrom is toast I geuss :mad: As a matter of fact, I installed 9.2 from the cd-rw just befor I came here. Now I have to buy a new cdrom....seems to me like there should be some kind of recourse I (we) can take against an OS that fries out peoples hardware. Yeah, I know...It's got to say somewhere in the EULA that their not responsable for it.
I've got to say....LINUX REALLY LET THE WHOLE WORLD DOWN WITH THIS ONE !!! I'd exspect to see something like this from MS.
I'm going to forword the post to www.techtv.com and see if they mention it on "The Screensavers" tonight.

for those of you that are haveing the same type of problem, please read here...

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=8909

Good - J.T. I was about to comment on the "Linux Mandrake 9.2 install frying some LG cdrom drives" myself... prolly isn't a hoax or the Mandrake ppl. would have pulled the plug on the guys posting this on their forum. - Perhaps an idea that the LQ ppl put this up as a general warning?

Source: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=8886

Well, on the bright side, you can check "Have you ever damaged/destroyed hardware with software" on the geek-test.

--ArmedGeek

Just to set the record straight, that forum is not sponsored by Mandrake; it's a totally independent , volunteer effort. The people there want to remain independent of Mandrake and do not hesitate critisize the distro. So if your ticked off at mandrake, don't go trash the people there; they're just a group of people trying to help other linux users. Take it to the source of the problem at mandrake.com.

K - Writing Mandrake to verify or debunk.... Be back when I've received a reply...

It's listed on the mandrake errata page for 9.2 so it's official:

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/errata.php3

Don't be too quick to blame mandrake though. There's an extensive discussion of this on slashdot:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...id=147&tid=187


Summarizing the discussion there: There are standards for communicating with a cdrom device. If mandrake software complies with those standards and fry LG cdroms then it's LG's fault. Only certaing firmware revisions of the LG cdroms are effected and there appears to be a bug in those firmware revisions, i.e. those revisions do not comply with the cdrom standard which is causing the problem. I wouldn't rule out taking up the matter with LG. Maybe they could come up with a firmware flash to resurrect the drive if that's possible.